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William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, 1st Marquess of Suffolk, 4th Earl of Suffolk (16 October 1396 at Cotton, Suffolk, - 2 May , 1450), was an important English soldier and commander in the Hundred Years' War, and later Lord Chamberlain of England. He also appears prominently in William Shakespeare's Henry VI, part 1 and Henry VI, part 2.

William was the second son of Michael de la Pole, 2nd Earl of Suffolk and Katharine de Stafford, daughter of Hugh, 2nd Earl of Stafford, K.G.

Almost continually engaged in the wars in France, he was seriously wounded during the siege of Harfleur (1415), where his father was killed. Later that year his older brother Michael de la Pole, 3rd Earl of Suffolk was killed at the Battle of Agincourt, and William succeeded as 4th Earl. He became co-commander of the English forces at the siege of Orléans (1429), after the death of Thomas Montacute, 4th Earl of Salisbury. When that city was relieved by Joan of Arc in 1429, he managed a retreat to Jargeau where he was forced to surrender on 12 June. He remained a prisoner of Charles VII of France for three years, and was ransomed in 1431.

After his return to the Kingdom of England, he became a courtier and close ally of Henry Cardinal Beaufort. His most notable accomplishment in this period was negotiating the marriage of King Henry VI with Margaret of Anjou (1444). This earned him elevation to Marquess of Suffolk that year. His own marriage took place on 11 November 1430, (date of licence), to (as her third husband) Alice (1404 - 1475), daughter of Thomas Chaucer of Ewelme, Kidlington, Oxfordshire, and granddaughter of the notable poet Geoffrey Chaucer and his wife Philippa (de) Roet. In 1434 the Earl became Constable of Wallingford Castle.

With the deaths in 1447 of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort, Suffolk became the principal power behind the throne of the weak and compliant Henry VI. In short order he was appointed Chamberlain, Admiral of England, and to several other important offices. He was created Earl of Pembroke in 1447 and Duke of Suffolk in 1448.

The following three years saw the near-complete loss of the English possessions in northern France, and Suffolk could not avoid taking the fall for the failure. On 28 January 1450 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was banished for five years, but on his journey to France his ship was intercepted, and he was executed. The person or persons behind his death remain a mystery.

His only known legitimate son, John, became 2nd Duke of Suffolk in 1463.

William de la Pole was also father, by a nun, Malyne de Cay, to Jane, an illegitimate daughter. "The nighte before that he was yolden (yielded himself up in surrender to the Franco-Scottish forces of Joan of Arc on 12 June 1429) he laye in bed with a Nonne whom he toke oute of holy profession and defouled, whose name was Malyne de Cay, by whom he gate a daughter, nowe married to Stonard of Oxonfordshire". (Historic MSS Commission, 3rd Report, pps.279-280). Jane de la Pole (d. 28 February 1494) was married before 1450 to Thomas Stonor (1423 - 1474), of Stonor, Oxfordshire. Their son Sir William Stonor, K.B., was married to Anne Neville, daughter of John Neville, 1st Marquess of Montagu.

The body of Sir William de la Pole, K.G., 1st Duke of Suffolk, was returned to the Collegiate Church at Wingfield, Suffolk, where it was buried beneath a purfled arch.

• Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press.
• Richardson, Douglas, Plantagenet Ancestry, Baltimore, Md., 2004, p.689.

• Battle of Jargeau