His youth was blighted, in 1450, by the political fall and subsequent murder of his father, who had been a favourite of king Henry VI but was increasingly distrusted by the rest of the nobility.

This was a circumstance which John felt acutely; on more than one occasion, he refused to come to London due to his impoverishment being such that he could not afford the costs of maintaining a retinue.

It brought him eleven children, the eldest of whom, John, would eventually be named heir to Richard III in 1484 and die in battle in the Yorkist cause.

John de la Pole, though, generally managed to steer clear of involvement in the tumultuous events of the Wars of the Roses.

Although he was politically aligned to the House of York by virtue of his marriage, he avoided participating in the battles of the 1450s, not taking up arms until Edward IV had claimed the throne.

De la Pole appears to have spent much of this period, in fact, feuding with his East Anglian neighbours, the Paston family over an inheritance – even interfering in parliamentary elections, for example, in an attempt to gain the upper hand.

Also, it had been his father's receipt of the wardship of Margaret Beaufort from the king that enabled John's marriage to her,[1] whilst both were still infants and despite them being within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity.

[7] Any plans his father had for John were rudely upset in 1450 when Suffolk was impeached by parliament over the loss of Normandy in the Hundred Years' War.

[8][9] Since Suffolk had never been formally convicted, he was not attainted, but the royal grants which had given John de la Pole such good prospects were now resumed to the crown.

[10] Sometime before February 1458, in a match arranged, it appears by his mother, John married Elizabeth, the second surviving daughter of Richard of York and Cecily, née Neville.

Thomson posits that "although he was not of such major importance, the young John de la Pole was a good catch for a magnate who wished wealth and dignity for a daughter".

He involved himself in some of the most controversial episodes in East Anglian society of the time, for instance, attempting to purchase part of the by-then somewhat infamous Fastolf inheritance in 1461.

[10] The duke also made other disputed (and in some cases outrightly illegal) claims to other properties in the region over the following decade, and in 1465, a group of his retainers destroyed the manor house of Hellesdon in Norfolk, ransacking its church.

Following their rout at Ludford Bridge in October 1459, Suffolk's father-in-law York and brother-in-law Edward, Earl of March, and allies had been forced into exile and attainted at the Coventry parliament.

[1] In 1460, the last year of Lancastrian rule, John was appointed a justice of the peace, but this was insufficient to prevent him taking the Yorkists' side, which, after the Battle of Wakefield on 30 December 1460, came under the control of the dead duke of York's eldest surviving son, Edward, Earl of March.

[1] John seems to have regarded himself from the age of eighteen as a potential force in English politics, and in the late 1450s seems to have deliberately avoided intimating support for either faction.

[1] One of de la Pole's first commissions under the new regime was to accompany Edward on his campaign against the Scots in winter 1462, although he had returned to Norwich by early the next year.

[10] Suffolk also attended the reinterment of the king's uncle and cousins, Richard, Earl of Salisbury, and his son Thomas at Bisham Priory in 1463.

Soon after, Suffolk's dukedom was confirmed to him by Edward IV in letters patent dated 23 March[1] (possibly, it has been suggested, on account of contemporary uncertainty as to whether he ever had been downgraded in 1460).

Thus Suffolk also took part in the battles of Barnet (at which Warwick was killed) and Tewkesbury (at which the House of York finally crushed the remnants of the Lancastrian army).

Suffolk's continuing poverty was reflected in the fact that, although he again took loyal part in King Edward's 1475 French campaign[1] (on possibly the only occasion he ever went abroad),[10] he could muster only forty men-at-arms and 300 archers.

[10] By July, the young king had been declared illegitimate; Suffolk was at Westminster Hall on 26 June 1483 when Gloucester claimed the throne, and he carried the royal sceptre at Richard's coronation.

[1] Indeed, Suffolk almost immediately regained Wallingford (since Lovell had been attainted after Bosworth), and played an active role in Henry VII's first parliament.

[1] Soon after Henry's accession, Suffolk, with the rest of the nobility, was forced to subscribe to royal diktat not to distribute livery or assemble great retinues.

He was buried, wearing the mantle of the Order of the Garter,[19] in the college he founded at Wingfield in Suffolk in a 'splendid' tomb which belied the "discreet obscurity" in which he had spent his final years.

[19] Suffolk's tomb in St Andrew's Chapel of Wingfield church[22] depicts him in effigy wearing a ducal robe and coronet.

[24] It was complete with funeral armour, line of cresting, and his and his wife's faces were both done as portraits, and has been described elsewhere as "one of the finest examples" of the figure of a robed Knight of the Garter with his Lady.

John de la Pole's two youngest sons, William and Richard, both seem to have been involved in a plot against Henry VII that was discovered in 1501.