were granted him in 1522 and 1523. In April 1525 he became constable of Windsor Castle, and on 18 June following Marquis of Exeter. In August of the same year Courtenay went to France as the king's envoy to negotiate an alliance, and to secure the release of Francis I, taken prisoner by Spain at the battle of Pavia. On his return in September the king appointed him the privy councillor to be in immediate attendance on him, and on 17 May 1528 he was nominated lieutenant of the order of the Garter. Throughout the proceedings for the divorce of Queen Catherine of Aragon Courtenay actively aided the king; he subscribed the articles against Wolsey (1529), signed the letter to Clement VII demanding the divorce in 1531, and acted as commissioner for the deposition of Catherine in 1533. When the suppression of the monasteries was imminent in 1535, Exeter was made steward of very many abbeys and priories in the western counties, where he was also acting as commissioner of array (6 Oct. 1534). At the king's request he also acted as commissioner at the trial of Anne Boleyn two years later, and was sent to Yorkshire with the Duke of Norfolk in October 1536, in order to aid in the suppression of the Pilgrimage of Grace. But he hurriedly retired from the north to Devonshire. A rebellion under Lord Darcy broke out in Somersetshire in 1537, and Exeter was ordered to act as lord steward at Darcy's trial.
Courtenay's power in the west of England had now become supreme, and he assumed a very independent attitude to Henry's minister, Cromwell, whom he cordially disliked. As the grandson of Edward IV, he had a certain claim to the throne, and his wealth and intimacy with the Yorkist Poles and the Nevilles readily enabled Cromwell to point him out to the king as a danger to the succession. Of the character of his first wife, Elizabeth, daughter of John Grey, viscount Lisle, by whom he had no issue, nothing is known. But his second wife, Gertrude, daughter of William Blount, fourth lord Mountjoy [q. v.], by whom he had a son Edward [q. v.], was a devout catholic; had supported the agitation of Elizabeth Barton [q. v.], and had visited her shrine at Canterbury. In 1533, when Barton was executed, the marchioness had begged the king to pardon the intimacy (Wood, Letters, ii. 96–101). She was godmother to the Princess Elizabeth in the same year, and carried Prince Edward at his christening in 1537; but her decided views in favour of the Roman catholic religion and her affection for Queen Catherine, with whom she corresponded after the divorce, gave additional ground for the suspicions with which her husband was regarded as soon as Cromwell had become his avowed enemy. Gradually information was collected in Devonshire and Cornwall to justify a prosecution for treason. At St. Keverne, Cornwall, a painted banner had been made which was to be carried round the villages, rousing the men to rebel against the crown in order to declare Courtenay heir-apparent to the throne, at any rate in the west of England. Reginald Pole, the cardinal, was found to be in repeated communication with Courtenay. Pole's brother, Sir Geoffrey, turned traitor, and came to London to announce that a conspiracy was hatching on the lines of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Early in November 1538 Courtenay, his wife, and son were committed to the Tower. On 3 Dec. Courtenay was tried by his peers in Westminster Hall. Evidence as to the marquis's treasonable conversation with Sir Geoffrey Pole was alone adduced; but he was condemned and beheaded on Tower Hill 9 Dec. 1538. A week later he was proclaimed a convicted traitor, and guilty of compassing the king's death. His wife and son were kept in prison, and were attainted in July 1539. The marchioness for a time had for her companion Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury (mother of Cardinal Pole), who was beheaded 27 May 1541, and the distressed condition of these two ladies was made the subject of a petition from their gaoler to the king in 1540. Subsequently the king pardoned the marchioness, and she was released. The Princess Mary was always her friend: in 1543 Mary sent her a puncheon of wine, and other presents were interchanged between them for many years afterwards. On Mary's accession to the throne she became a lady-in-waiting; her attainder was removed, and she took part in the coronation and all court ceremonies. She died on 25 Sept. 1558, and was buried at Wimborne. Her extant letters to her son Edward [q. v.] show her in a very attractive light.
[Dugdale's Baronage; Burke's Extinct and Dormant Peerage; Wriothesley's Chronicle (Camd. Soc.); Herbert's Life of Henry VIII; Gairdner and Brewer's Letters and Papers of Henry VIII; Polydore Vergil's Hist. (Camd. Soc.); Doyle's Official Baronage; Froude's Hist.; Madden's Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary; Wood's Letters of Illustrious Ladies.]
COURTENAY, HENRY REGINALD (1741–1803), bishop of Exeter, was the eldest surviving son of Henry Reginald Courtenay, M.P., who married Catherine, daughter of Allen, first earl Bathurst. He was born in the parish of St. James, Piccadilly, 27 Dec.
