POLE, RICHARD de la (d. 1525), pretender to the crown, younger brother of Edmund Pole [q. v.] and of John Pole [q. v.], was fifth son of John, second duke of Suffolk [q. v.] Two other brothers, Humphrey and Edward, who were older than himself, took orders in the church, the latter becoming archdeacon of Richmond. In 1501 Richard escaped abroad with his brother Edmund. French writers, who apparently have confounded him with Perkin Warbeck, erroneously state that he entered the service of Charles VIII of France as early as 1492, the year in which Henry VII besieged Boulogne; that Henry, on the conclusion of peace, demanded his surrender; and that, though this was refused, he was compelled to quit France (Duchesne, Hist. d'Angleterre, p. 975, 2nd edit.). Others say, equally falsely, that King Charles gave him a pension of seven thousand écus. In the parliament which met in January 1504 he was attainted, along with Edmund and another brother, William. He is called in the act ‘Richard Pole, late of Wingfield in the county of Suffolk, squire,’ while his brother is designated William Pole of Wingfield, knight (Rolls of Parl. vi. 545).
In March 1504 he joined his brother Edmund at Aix-la-Chapelle, and was left there by Edmund as a hostage or security for the payment of Edmund's debts in the town. The latter's creditors, unable to obtain payment, rendered Richard's life unbearable, and threatened to deliver him up to Henry VII. Richard, however, managed to attract the sympathy of the munificent Erard de la Marck, bishop of Liège, who contrived to get him out of his perilous situation, and he arrived somewhat later in the year at Buda in Hungary. Henry VII sent ambassadors to Ladislaus VI to demand his surrender, but that king not only refused to deliver him, but gave him a pension (Cal. Venetian, vol. i. No. 889, and Cal. Henry VIII, vol. ii. No. 1163 II; cf. Ellis, Letters, 3rd ser. i. 141).
In 1509 Richard, like his two brothers Edmund and William, who were then in the Tower, was excepted from the general pardon granted at the accession of Henry VIII, and in 1512, when England and France were at war, Louis XII recognised him as king of England, giving him a pension of six thousand crowns. Towards the close of that year he commanded a body of German landsknechts in the unsuccessful invasion of Navarre, during which his company sustained more severe losses than any other. In this campaign he and the Chevalier Bayard were warm friends, and suffered great privations together (‘Chronique de Bayard,’ p. 102, in Buchon). In the spring of 1513, when his brother Edmund was put to death in England, he assumed the title of Duke of Suffolk, and became an avowed claimant of the crown of England. Though his pretensions were not