CONCLUSION

Summary

The sudden and dramatic fall of Edward, Duke of Buckingham, the greatest nobleman in England, inevitably made a lasting impression upon his contemporaries. Sir Thomas More, who had himself been rewarded with property from the confiscated Stafford estates, was clearly thinking of Buckingham's disgrace when he later came to write these lines on the subject of envy:

If it so were that thou knewest a great Duke, kepyng so great estate and princely port in his howse, that you being a ryght meane manne, haddest in thyne heart great enuy thereat, and specially at some special daye, in which he kepeth for the mariage of his chylde, a great honorable court aboue other times, if thou beyng thereat, and the syght of the rialty and honoure shewed hym of all the county about resorting to hym … if thou sholdest sodeinly be surely aduertised, yt for secret treason lately detected to the King he shold undoubtedly be taken the morow his courte al broken up, his goodes ceased, his wife put out, his children dysherited, himselfe caste in prison, broughte furth & arrayned, the matter out of question & he should be condemned, his cote armour reuersed, his gilt spurres hewen of his heles, himself hanged drawen and quartered, howe thinkeste thou by thy fayth amyd thyne enuy, shouldeste thou not sodaynly chaunge into pity?

The shock felt by many English noblemen and courtiers at Buckingham's end was rendered less severe by Henry VIII's shrewdly calculated distribution of offices and land from his inheritance.