The Bastard King of England is a song misattributed to the Poet Laureate during whose reign?
The Bastard King of England "The Bastard King of England" is a bawdy English folk song commonly misattributed to Rudyard Kipling, or less commonly Tennyson, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, and Charles Whistler. The earliest known appearance of the song was in 1927. The song depicts various sexual escapades involving the title character, an unnamed Queen of Spain, a French king named Phillip, and the "Duke of Zippity-Zap" who gives the King a case of the clap. The song has a number of historical inaccuracies, since the last French king to bear the name Phillip died in the 14th century, but Spain would not become a united kingdom until the 15th. Also, it would be quite impossible to drag anyone from France to England behind a horse before the Channel Tunnel was dug.
John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, KG (27 September 1442 – 14~21 May 1492), was a major magnate in 15th century England. He was the son of William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Alice Chaucer, the daughter of Thomas Chaucer (thus making John a great-grandson of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer). His youth was blighted, in 1450, by the political fall and subsequent murder of his father, who had been a favourite of the king, Henry VI, but was increasingly distrusted by the rest of the nobility. Although the first duke of Suffolk had made himself rich through trade and- particularly- royal grants, this source of income dried up on his death, so John de la Pole was among the poorest of English dukes on his accession to the title. This was a circumstance which John felt acutely; on more than one occasion, he refused to come to London due to his impoverishment being such that he could not afford the costs of maintaining a retinue.