He had been about twelve when he was imprisoned. The king who put him there would die before he came out. Gertrude regained her freedom, but her son stayed in the Tower.
The family's arrest began on 4 November 1538, when Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter, was committed to the Tower of London. His wife Gertrude and their son Edward followed him there within three weeks. From that point the family went three different ways: execution for the father, a long wait for mercy for the mother, and the rest of his childhood in royal custody for the boy.
Gertrude had married into a family close enough to the throne to make its prosperity look secure. Her husband was Henry VIII's first cousin. His mother, Katherine of York, and the king's mother, Elizabeth of York, were sisters, both daughters of Edward IV. The king had given his cousin lands, honours and the title of marquess. Edward Courtenay was a great-grandson of an English king. In happier circumstances, that was an excellent introduction.
Gertrude's own family belonged to the court too. Her father, Lord Mountjoy, served as Catherine of Aragon's chamberlain. Gertrude married Henry in 1519, and their life together included royal ceremonies, gifts and the privileges of a household the king favoured. At West Horsley in Surrey they kept a house with musicians, and when the Crown seized it in 1538 the inventory listed a double virginal, three pairs of regals, a small organ and nine viols. There were people to serve them, estates to support them, and a son to inherit.
But Gertrude's loyalty to Catherine survived the king's determination to be rid of her. She also supported Catherine's daughter Mary. Those were personal ties, and they had become matters of state. The king's break with Rome made the religion of his subjects a question of obedience; his treatment of Catherine made old loyalties dangerous. Gertrude had a political history of her own. She was not simply a wife caught beside the wrong husband.
The Courtenays were connected with the Pole family, whose royal ancestry gave the king another reason for suspicion. Reginald Pole, a cardinal living abroad, opposed Henry's religious policies. In England, his brother Geoffrey was arrested and repeatedly questioned. His disclosures supplied accounts of private conversations involving the marquess and other men in their circle. Complaints about the king's advisers and sympathy for the cardinal became evidence in a treason prosecution.
There was also suspicion that the marquess intended to marry Edward to Mary. A child with royal blood could be dangerous to a king long before he was old enough to arrange anything for himself.
Henry Courtenay was tried, convicted and beheaded on Tower Hill on 9 December 1538. Gertrude was now a widow in prison, with her son still held there. Being the king's cousin had not saved her husband. It was a large part of what had made him dangerous.
In 1539, Gertrude herself was attainted, condemned by an act of Parliament. The family's estates were forfeited to the Crown. The consequences reached beyond the loss of a great house. A woman accustomed to maintaining a noble household no longer had the means to pay the women attending her.
A warder at the Tower put their needs into a petition. Gertrude, he reported, "wanteth raiment, and hath no change", apart from clothing already ordered for her. Her gentlewoman Constance Bontane had no change either, and what she had was "sore worn". Another gentlewoman had been with her a whole year and more. The warder added that "very sorry is she that she hath not to recompense them, at the least their wages." The women stayed, unpaid, while their mistress depended on officials for the means to clothe herself.
She could be allowed attendants and still be unable to provide for them. She could survive her husband and still have no power to secure her son's release.
Gertrude was pardoned in late 1539 and was free by 1540. Edward remained in the Tower. Mercy had reached his mother without reaching him, and her restored liberty did not restore the household they had lost.
Arrangements were made for his tuition, with £4 a month for his diet. He could be taught, maintained and kept alive without being allowed to leave. His royal ancestry remained the difficulty. Gertrude could receive a pardon; Edward could not cease to be Edward IV's great-grandson.
When Henry VIII died in 1547, the boy had grown into a young man. The new king, Edward VI, granted a general pardon, but Edward Courtenay was specifically excluded. The decision to keep him imprisoned passed into another reign. Gertrude was still alive outside the Tower, and her son was still a prisoner inside it.
Edward VI died in 1553, and Mary, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon whom Gertrude had supported, became queen. On 3 August, Edward Courtenay was released. Gertrude had lived to see his freedom, but the boy of about twelve who went into the Tower in November 1538 was now about twenty-seven. Her own imprisonment had ended more than thirteen years before. His had lasted nearly fifteen.
