Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was the son of Elizabeth, sister of
Edward IV. His plottings against Henry VII, encouraged by Maximilian,
failed, and he fled the kingdom, and remained abroad several years.
But Philip, King of Castile, who had given him shelter, visiting Henry
in 1506, persuaded him to spare the fugitive’s life on his surrender,
and Suffolk was committed to the Tower. Here he remained until 1513,
when he was beheaded by order of Henry VIII on a charge of plotting.
But he had involved two men in his ruin; Sir James Tyrrell, the same
who had assisted at the murder of the two princes, and Sir John
Wyndham, who had been knighted for his good service against Perkin
Warbeck, were both executed on Tower Hill for their share in Suffolk’s
treason. Tragedies enough, these, for one reign; yet we have hardly
come to the end of them. The marriage of Prince Arthur with Katharine
of Aragon took place in St. Paul’s Cathedral on November 14, 1501,
and the rejoicings took the form of a succession of tournaments and
feasts within the Tower walls. There were great pageants to emphasize
the descent of the bridegroom from his namesake the British hero whose
fabulous exploits fill the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth. But they
could not alter the fact that he was a poor sickly child of fifteen,
and five months later he died. The calamity was a terrible blow to
his mother, Elizabeth, of York, whose health appears to have failed
from that time. On February 2, 1503, she gave birth to a daughter,
Katharine, in the Tower, and died nine days later, on her birthday,
aged thirty-eight. An amiable and beautiful woman, according to all
accounts; “brilliant, witty, and pious,” so says Erasmus. Six years
later her husband was buried by her side in the Abbey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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