Edmund de La Pole

On 4 May 1513 Edmund de La Pole, Earl of Suffolk, the 'White Rose', was executed. Suffolk, a nephew of the Yorkist Kings, Edward IV and Richard III, had been restored to favour by Henry VII, http://bit.ly/1RCUldq after the Battle of Stoke, where his older brother, John, had been killed. Suffolk was permitted to inherit the earldom, but in 1501 had escaped to the continent and had been received by the Emperor Maximilian, who found him a useful tool. In 1506, after Maximilian’s son, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, was shipwrecked in England, Suffolk was sent back to England, on the understanding that he would not be executed. Henry VII was a man of his word and kept Suffolk in confinement, but alive. Henry VIII had no such scruples and dispatched Suffolk before embarking on war with France.