Born into a family with close royal connections, he was at various times considered a possible match for the two daughters of Henry VIII, both of whom became queens regnant of England.

His early years were spent in the household of Mary Tudor, duchess of Suffolk and dowager queen of France, but following her death in 1533, he returned to his own family; he got private tutoring from Robert Taylor of Oxford.

While Exeter was a close companion of Henry VIII in the 1520s, he came under greater suspicion during the annulment crisis due to his wife's continued backing for Catherine of Aragon and his connection with dissatisfied Poles and Nevilles.

[1] His father was a prominent figure at the royal court and his mother enjoyed the friendship of Queen Catherine of Aragon even after the annulment of her marriage to King Henry VIII.

His father was accused of conspiring with the self-exiled Cardinal Reginald Pole to lead a Roman Catholic uprising in the so-called Exeter conspiracy and was executed on 9 January 1539.

His mother was released from prison in 1540 and for the rest of her life maintained a friendship with Mary Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VIII and future queen.

His designated heir, Lady Jane Grey, ascended briefly to the throne, but Mary Tudor, the king's elder half-sister, fortified at Framlingham Castle, was declared queen instead by the Privy Council on 19 July.

Gertrude Blount was still her close friend and secured the release of her son Edward on 3 August 1553, after 15 years of incarceration in the Tower.

On 10 October 1553, Edward was acknowledged as the proper heir to the lands and titles of his father, but was not allowed to succeed him as Marquess of Exeter.

On 2 January 1554, the new ambassadors of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor arrived in England, and the new Earl of Devon was assigned to receive them.

On Holy Saturday, Simon Renard, the Spanish ambassador to England, advised Queen Mary that the continued survival of the two "great persons" posed a threat to both her and her consort Philip.

[citation needed] He informed the Queen that he would not recommend the arrival of Philip in England until every necessary step had been taken to secure his safety, and until Courtenay and Elizabeth were put on trial.

Renard had therefore effectively informed her that Philip would not set foot on English ground until both prisoners were executed or otherwise rendered harmless.

He was next heard of in November 1555, when he wrote a letter from Brussels pleading for permission to return to England to pay his respects to Queen Mary and to his mother.

The Venetians too, although Catholic, were opposed to Mary's marriage with the Spanish prince, whose expanding European Empire threatened Venice's trade.

Another account has Courtenay on a gondola ride to the Isle of Lio, when a storm stranded him there and forced him to wait it out, all the while becoming soaked and suffering from exposure, until a ship rescued him.

[8][9] The epitaph was repeated by Camden (d. 1623) in his Remains Concerning Britain, "more for his (i.e. the Earl's) honour than the elegancy of the verse" and by other authors including Prince in his Worthies of Devon.

[10][11] It was deemed by Lodge (1823) to "afford from a somewhat singular source a corroboration of some of the most important circumstances of a story involved in much uncertainty and frequently disfigured by wilful misrepresentation".

[12] Which was partly translated as follows by Horace Walpole in his Reminiscences (1788):[13] The last 6 lines untranslated by him may be continued thus: He was unmarried and childless at the time of his death.