The last important burial at Greyfriars was that of the soldier and courtier Sir Robert, Lord Curson (c.1460-1535), a very prominent figure in early Tudor Ipswich. Curson was knighted in 1489 and took part in the tournaments of 1494, and was Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1496–97. Having married the widow of Sir George Hopton in 1498, he joined the Emperor Maximilian I to fight against the Turks in 1499 while in tenure of the post of captain of Hammes Castle in the approaches to Calais, taking time to visit Edmund de la Pole, 3rd Duke of Suffolk, at Guînes. It was reported that he had attempted to enlist the Emperor's support for a Yorkist attempt against King Henry VII, and he was proclaimed a traitor in 1501, but escaped the condemnation which led to the executions of Sir James Tyrrell and Sir John Wyndham in 1502, and was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire for his exploits against the Turks. He built the large double courtyard mansion which stood on the corner of St Peter's Street and Silent Street, of which the retinue guesthouse survives on the opposite side of Silent Street. Conservative in his religious views, he fed the flames at the martyrdom of the Lollard Nicholas Peke at the Ipswich Cornhill in 1515, and wrote the account of the "Ipswich Miracle"J. Blatchly and D. MacCulloch, Miracles in Lady Lane: The Ipswich Shrine at the Westgate (D.K. and M.N. Sanford, Ipswich 2013). which brought Katherine of Aragon and later King Henry to Ipswich where they resided in his house.J.M. Blatchly and W. Haward, 'Sir Robert Curson, Soldier, Courtier and Spy, and his Ipswich Mansion', Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History Vol. XLI Part 2 (2007), pp. 335-49, at pp. 335-38 (Suffolk Institute).
