His eldest brother
John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln (c. 14641487), may have been named heir to the throne by his maternal uncle, Richard III of England, who gave him a pension and the reversion of the estates of
Lady Margaret Beaufort. However, on the accession of
Henry VII following the
Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, Lincoln took the oath of allegiance instead of claiming the throne for himself. In 1487, Lincoln joined the rebellion of
Lambert Simnel and was killed at the
Battle of Stoke Field,
Nottinghamshire. The second brother,
Edmund (c. 14711513), succeeded his father while still in his minority. His estates suffered under the attainder of his brother, and he was compelled to pay large sums to Henry VII for the recovery of part of the forfeited lands, and also to exchange his title of duke for that of earl. In 1501 he sought out
Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, in
Tyrol and received from him a promise of substantial assistance in case of an attempt on the English crown. In consequence of these treasonable proceedings Henry VII seized Edmund's brother
William, with four other
Yorkist noblemen. Two of them, Sir
James Tyrrell and Sir John Wyndham, were executed; William de la Pole was imprisoned; and Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk, was outlawed. Then in July 1502 Henry VII concluded a treaty with Maximilian by which the Emperor bound himself not to countenance English rebels. Presently Suffolk fell into the hands of
Philip I of Castile, who imprisoned him at
Namur and in 1506 surrendered him to Henry VII, on condition that his life was spared. He remained a prisoner until 1513, when he was beheaded by Henry VIII at the time his brother Richard took up arms with the French king. Richard de la Pole joined Edmund abroad in 1504, and remained at
Aix-la-Chapelle as surety for his elder brother's debts. The creditors threatened to surrender him to Henry VII but, more fortunate than his brother, he found a safe refuge at
Buda with King
Ladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary. He was excluded from the general pardon proclaimed at the accession of
Henry VIII, and when
Louis XII of France went to war with the
Kingdom of England in 1512, he recognised Edmund's pretensions to the English crown and gave Richard a command in the French army. In 1513, after the execution of Edmund, he assumed the title of
Earl of Suffolk. In 1514 he was given 12,000 German mercenaries, ostensibly for the defence of
Brittany, but really for an invasion of England. These he led to
St. Malo, but the conclusion of peace with England prevented their embarcation. Richard was required to leave France, and he established himself at
Metz, in
Lorraine, and built the La Haute Pierre palace on the . While at Metz, he was visited by
Pierre Alamire, the German-Netherlandish composer and music copyist, who was a spy for Henry VIII. However, Richard employed Alamire as a counter-spy against Henry, and Alamire, on being suspected of unreliability by
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and Henry VIII, never returned to England. Richard de la Pole had numerous interviews with King
Francis I of France, and in 1523 he was permitted, in concert with
John Stewart, 2nd Duke of Albany, the Scottish
regent, to arrange an invasion of England, which was never carried out. He was with Francis I at the
Battle of Pavia on 24 February 1525, where he was killed and was buried in the
basilica San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro. In a picture of the battle, preserved at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, his lifeless body is represented in the thick of the combat with the inscription
Le Duc de Susfoc dit Blance Rose (The Duke of Suffolk, known as White Rose). ==Children==