page_title: John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk
section_title: Under Edward IV
hierarchical_section_title: John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk / Later career / Under Edward IV
caption_attribution_description: English: St Mary the Virgin parish church, Iffley, Oxfordshire: 15th-century stained glass of the arms of John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk (1442-1491/2), KG. Arms: Quarterly, 1st &amp; 4th: Azure a fess between three leopard's faces or; 2nd &amp; 3rd: Argent, a chief gules, over all a lion rampant double queued or; Impaling the arms of his 2nd wife Elizabeth of York, the sixth child and third daughter of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York and Cecily Neville. Crest: An old man’s head gules, beard and hair gold, with a jewelled fillet about the brows.
context_page_description: John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, KG, was a major magnate in 15th-century England. He was the son of William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Alice Chaucer, the daughter of Thomas Chaucer. His youth was blighted, in 1450, by the political fall and subsequent murder of his father, who had been a favourite of the king, Henry VI, but was increasingly distrusted by the rest of the nobility. Although the first duke of Suffolk had made himself rich through trade and – particularly – royal grants, this source of income dried up on his death, so John de la Pole was among the poorest of English dukes on his accession to the title in 1463. This was a circumstance which John felt acutely; on more than one occasion, he refused to come to London due to his impoverishment being such that he could not afford the costs of maintaining a retinue.
  As a youth, John de la Pole married twice; his first marriage was annulled, but his second marriage, to Elizabeth of York, made him the brother-in-law of two kings, Edward IV and Richard III. It brought him eleven children, the eldest of whom, John, would eventually be named heir to Richard III in 1484 and die in battle in the Yorkist cause.
context_section_description: One of de la Pole's first commissions under the new regime was to accompany Edward on his campaign against the Scots in winter 1462, although he had returned to Norwich by early the next year. Suffolk also attended the reinterment of the king's uncle and cousins, Richard, Earl of Salisbury and his son Thomas at Bisham Priory in 1463. Soon after, Suffolk's dukedom was confirmed to him by Edward IV in letters patent dated 23 March (possibly, it has been suggested, on account of contemporary uncertainty as to whether he ever had been downgraded in 1460). He actually took seisin of his estates six months before coming of age, and was absolved from having to prove his age as was the legal custom. He was a trier of petitions at the parliament later that year. In 1465, the king granted Suffolk an annuity of 100 marks (nearly £67) a year, although this was only during the life of his wife, the king's sister. It may only have been compensation for lands lost by Edward's need to endow his queen with a landed estate. Two years later, in a clear mark of royal favour, his eldest son John was created Earl of Lincoln. Suffolk himself regained his father's Wallingford and Chiltern Hundreds offices, with a £40 per annum salary for it. In 1467, he acted as feoffee for his sister-in-law (the King's sister), Anne, Duchess of Exeter.
  Although Suffolk was receiving minimal financial benefit from the new regime, he still took conspicuous part in all the major state ceremonies. Such events ranged from the 1465 royal wedding to tournaments such as that between Lord Scales and the Bastard of Burgundy in 1467. By this time the king's relations with the powerful Earl of Warwick had soured to the point that the discontented earl was fomenting rebellion against Edward. Suffolk remained loyal to his brother-in-law, and appears to have taken no part in the Neville/Woodville feud that occupied much of the second half of the decade. Suffolk participated at the Battle of Empingham in 1470 and particularly helped the king crush the Lincolnshire Rebellion the same year. Edward was subsequently forced into exile however, and Suffolk appears not to have been trusted by the resurgent Lancastrian government, possibly because he refused to come to London to meet the chancellor, even if he appears to have come rapidly to terms with the new government personally. His wife kept in touch with her exiled brothers in Burgundy. When Edward IV returned to England in March 1471, de la Pole joined him on that campaign, in which Edward regained his throne. Thus Suffolk also took part in the battles of Barnet (at which Warwick was killed) and Tewkesbury (at which the House of York finally crushed the remnants of the Lancastrian army).
  Following Tewkesbury, Suffolk was granted the estates of the under-age Francis, Viscount Lovell during Lovell's minority, and may have received the custody of the ex-Lancastrian Queen, Margaret of Anjou, in 1472, since Margaret was held at one point in Wallingford and subsequently in Ewelme. This was followed by a number of other offices and promotions, none of which were lucrative. In 1472 he was appointed High Steward of Oxford University and the following year made a Knight of the Garter. He was also the King's Lieutenant of Ireland (in later centuries the post came to be known as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) between March and July 1478 (although he probably never took the position in person). So little, in fact, had his financial situation improved, that in the first parliament after Edward's return from exile—in 1471—Suffolk refused his summons to attend parliament. This was because he felt himself unable to sustain the status and maintain the retinue of a royal duke in London for whatever duration the parliament turned out to be. With the exception of the Lovell estates Suffolk received no major grants, in stark comparison to Edward's brothers George, Duke of Clarence and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and even the king's Woodville in-laws. Suffolk's continuing poverty was reflected in the fact that, although he again took loyal part in
caption: Church of St Mary the Virgin, Iffley, Oxfordshire, 15th-century stained glass of the arms of John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk (1442–1491/2), KG. Arms:  Quarterly, 1st & 4th: Azure a fess between three leopard's faces or (de la Pole, (here shown with six leopard's faces)); 2nd & 3rd: Argent, a chief gules over all a lion rampant double queued or (Burghersh of Ewelme); Impaling the royal arms of England with label of three points argent, the arms of his 2nd wife Elizabeth of York. Crest: A Saracen's head gules, beard and hair gold, with a jewelled fillet about the brows
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