Edmund de la Pole and the Spies, 1499-1506: Some Revisions

Abstract

Edmund de la Pole and the Spies, 1499-1506: Some Revisions As students of early modern England well know, our present fascination with spies and double agents is nothing new. Questions of loyalty especiaUy exercised people's minds - and imaginations - during the precarious reign of Henry VII so that, for example, Polydore Vergil felt obliged to discuss a claim that Robert Clifford had been, not a rebel on behalf of Perkin Warbeck, but a spy of Henry's.l Henry undoubtedly employed counter-agents against the dissident Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk and Yorkist heir to the throne. But evidence is so fragmentary and ambiguous that many of these agents remain protected in anonymity to this day, while suspicion must hang over other of de la Pole's friends, even his apparently devoted steward, Kiltingworth. The activities of Sir Robert Curzon are a case in point. Historians from Polydore Vergil onwards have debated whether Curzon was an adherent of Edmund or a mole that the king had planted in his camp.2 About 1 July 1499 Edmund had stolen away from England, visited St. Omers (and possibly Bruges to see his aunt Margaret, dowager duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV and implacable intriguer againt Henry Tudor), and then spent some time in Guines castle as a guest of its captain, Sir James Tyrell. In September king Henry sent Sir Richard Guildford on a successful mission to pursuade Edmund back to his allegiance.3 After being reinstated in Henry's favour, however, in August 1501 Edmund deserted again and went to seek the support of Maximilian, king of the Romans. H e remained in exile until the archduke Philip of Burgundy, king of Castile, who had been forced by a storm to land in England, agreed to surrender him to Henry early in 1506. In thefirst,manuscript, version of his Anglica Historia Vergil said that after Edmund's return in 1499 Henry remained suspicious of a conspiracy, but held his hand until his enemies revealed themselves. So when 'immediately after the earl's return to England, Sir Robert Curzon, commander of the castle of Hammes,fledto Flanders to aU intents and purposes as one of the conspirators, many people suspected that he had not really abandoned his king, but had been sent by the king to spy out at Margaret's court all the plans of the conspirators. Many people even today hold this view'. After all, Curzon had prospered in the x The Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil, a.d.1485-1537, Denys Hay, ed. and tr., Camden Ser. LXXIV, 1950, 74. 2 lbid., 124. 3 His private instructions are printed in Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII (hereafter L&.P), ed. James Gairdner, 2 vols., 1861-3, I, no.XVH, 129-134. 104 A. Hanham king's service, and was in no known trouble. If, perhaps, he had been seduced by some foolish hope, the fact remains that 'Finally, when in M a y 1502 the plot was laid bare and many of the conspirators punished by death, he returned to the king's favour. When these things are thought of it may easily be believed that all he did was done on Henry's orders'.4 There are two major flaws in that argument. In thefirstplace, Vergil does not mention that on 29 August 1499 Curzon obtained the king's licence to leave his post in H a m m e s in order to fight against the Turks, under Maximilian's aegis. Evidently he did campaign for a lime, and it is unlikely that his departure from Hammes had anything to do with Edmund's presence at Guines. O n the contrary, if Henry was setting him lo spy on Sir James Tyrell and others he should have kept him in Tyrell's vicinity. This part of Vergil's time-scheme was later muddled in Edward Hall's translation, which was based on the 1534 printed version of Vergil's work.5 Where Vergil originally dated Curzon's departure 'statim post reditum Comitis Edmundi in Angliam', his 1534 text has 'statim ut comes e Flandria reuersus est', which Hall...