This is a traditional version of a broadside ballad on the death of the Duke of Grafton (son of Charles II and Barbara Villers) killed while storming Cork in 1690. The broadside is ZN316 in the broadside ballad index on my website (www.erols.com/olsonw). That relationship to William De La Pole, according to my reading of the evidence, is just a figment of Lucy Broadwood's fertile immagination (in JFSS #12, 1908). Somewhat similar in tone and style is another a little over a century earlier about the Duke of Bedford, and it is cross-referenced in my broadside ballad index, as is a later article on our song here.