But roars of laughter and back-slapping were a good way of concealing his real thoughts. Among these was a lasting obsession with murdering Edmund de la Pole’s brother Richard. Frustratingly, royal agents found that they were pursuing a very elusive quarry indeed. This obscure cousin frightened the king as much as Warbeck had frightened his father. Richard had been in exile since 1500 when he was a youth of about nineteen. Few Englishmen can have set eyes on him, while the tenants and retainers on the old de la Pole lands in East Anglia and the Thames Valley had long ago been given new lords. Yet beyond any question, the king feared Richard, convinced there must still be a strong Yorkist underground, the size of which, characteristically, he overestimated. Left behind at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1504 as security for the debts of Edmund (not then been caught by Henry VII), in a desperate letter, Richard begged his brother ‘humbly’ [‘ombully’] to send him money.2 In another overwrought letter, he said he was pestered in the streets of Aix, not only by Martyn, landlord at Le Pot, but also by other creditors.
