st the great house of Nevil, from whom these honors were derived.
In 1521 lord Montacute had been indicted for concealing the treasons,
real or pretended, of the duke of Buckingham; but immediately on his
acquittal he was restored to the good graces of his sovereign, and, two
years after, attended him on an expedition to France.

It is probable that lord Montacute was popular; he was at least a
partisan of the old religion, and heir to the vast possessions which his
mother derived from the king-making earl of Warwick her maternal
grandfather; sufficient motives with Henry for now wishing his removal.
If the plot in which he was charged by his perfidious brother with
participating, had in view the elevation of the cardinal to a
matrimonial crown by his union with the princess Mary, which seems to
have been insinuated, lord Montacute must at least stand acquitted of
all design of asserting his own title; yet it may justly be suspected
that his character of representative of the house of Clarence, was by
Henry placed foremost in the catalogue of his offences.

A similar remark applies still more forcibly to the marquis of Exeter.
Son of Catherine, youngest daughter of Edward IV., and so lately
declared his heir by Henry himself, it is scarcely credible that any
inducement could have drawn this nobleman into a plot for disturbing the
succession in favour of a claim worse founded than his own; and that the
blood which he inherited was the true object of Henry's apprehensions
from him, evidently appeared to all the world by his causing the son of
the unhappy marquis, a child at this period, to be detained a state
prisoner in the Tower during the remainder of his reign.

Sir Edward Nevil was brother to lord Abergavenny and to the wife of lord
Montacute--a connection likely to bring him into suspicion, and perhaps
to involve him in real guilt; but it must not be forgotten that he was a
lineal descendant of the house of Lancaster by Joan daughter of John of
Gaunt. The only person not of royal extraction who suffered on this
occasion was sir Nicholas Carew, master of the horse, and lately a
distinguished favourite of the king; of whom it is traditionally
related, that though accused as an accomplice in the designs of the
other noble delinquents, the real offence for which he died, was the
having retorted, with more spirit than prudence, some opprobrious
language with which his royal master had insulted him as they were
playing