"If the lords would handle him so, he would give them such a breakfast as never was made in England, and that the proudest of them should know." [Sidenote: The Courtenays and the Poles] He soon gave a terrible earnest of the way in which he could fulfil his threat.

The opposition to his system gathered above all round two houses which represented what yet lingered of the Yorkist tradition, the Courtenays and the Poles.

Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter, was of royal blood, a grandson through his mother of Edward the Fourth.

He was known to have bitterly denounced the "knaves that ruled about the King"; and his threats to "give them some day a buffet" were formidable in the mouth of one whose influence in the western counties was supreme.

Margaret, the Countess of Salisbury, a daughter of the Duke of Clarence by the heiress of the Earl of Warwick, and a niece of Edward the Fourth, had married Sir Richard Pole, and became mother of Lord Montacute as of Sir Geoffry and Reginald Pole.