The loss of prestige to Humphrey was very great,[970] and it came at a time when his power in the kingdom was beginning to wane. Never again does he appear as a man of influence in the councils of the King; all the old fire of the days of the Protectorate is gone, and it is probable that he leaned far more on his wife than has ever been suspected. Till her disgrace young Henry seems to have had a strong affection for his uncle, but thereafter the simple-minded King, separated from the woman who had influenced him, turned from his uncle to other advisers, who had fewer claims to his regard, and no wiser heads than the discredited Humphrey. Indeed this incident is a definite milestone on the road to complete disgrace which the Duke was now treading. Ever since the time when he began to drop out of public life his influence in the kingdom had been slowly passing away. He had tried to reinstate himself in the popular favour, and thus strengthen his hands against his enemies, by his attack on Beaufort and on the policy of releasing Orleans, but the attempt missed its mark, and had only provoked this act of retaliation from his opponents. Hitherto the cry against him had been merely one of mismanagement and factiousness, but here we find the first signs of the charge of treason, with which he was ultimately assailed. It would seem that the Beaufort faction had now decided not only on his humiliation, but on his ultimate removal, for if he were to succeed to the throne, their power would be gone. Humphrey had not the determination nor the strength to meet this new attack, and he gradually gave way before the organised assault he had now to face. He had come to the critical time of his life, and his weak character, still further weakened by his moral failings, was unable to cope with the situation. His face was set towards the shadows, he knew it, and yet he had no strength to fight his way back to light and power. Though his physical capacities were unimpaired, all signs of moral force had disappeared from his character.

Gloucester continued to attend the Council, but we see very little recorded beyond his mere presence; occasionally he would act as a guarantor for a loan from that prince of money-lenders, Cardinal Beaufort,[971] or throw in sarcastic comment when the same cardinal used his position to exact special conditions under which the loans were made.[972] Most of his time was probably spent at his manor of ‘Plaisance’ at Greenwich, in the house on which he had spent so much money, and surrounded by the park which he had himself enclosed. It was here, at any rate, that in September 1442 he dated his decision in the matter of a dispute which had arisen at the Monastery of St. Albans.[973] For the rest, he seems to have devoted his attention to the care of his soul. He was already assured that masses would be said for him in perpetuity at Oxford, and in 1442 we find him in the rather strange company of the Archbishop of York and others, securing by the gift of certain manors a perpetual chaplain to pray for the souls of the donors themselves and of their children at the Church of St. Katharine at Gosfield.[974] The bitterness of strife was over, the political game was passing into other and younger hands, and these two old rivals made up their differences in a united hope for eternal salvation.[975] A year later Humphrey determined to devote the alien Priory of Pembroke, which had been given him by Henry V., to the same purpose of masses for his soul, but there seems to have been some doubt as to where he should place the gift. Adam Moleyne, Dean of Salisbury—he who had acted for the Council in accusing Eleanor—had the intention of securing the Priory of Pembroke for the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury, and went so far as to request and obtain from the Council a licence for this transfer.[976] Humphrey, however, refused to be driven to alienate his property in any way of which he did not approve, and three months later we find a charter assigning the alien Priory of Pembroke to the Abbey of St. Albans in accordance with a Royal Licence obtained as far back as 1441.[977] In spite of his inactivity, Gloucester did not entirely retire from public life, but his influence was gone, and the petition of the Parliament of 1442 that ladies of rank should have the same privilege as their husbands, and be tried by the peers for indictable offences,[978] shows his weakness, for this petition, which became a statute, is by way of a censure on the judicial system that had allowed the Duchess of Gloucester to escape with her life.

But if Gloucester was passing into the background, so were also the chief actors who had flourished with him on the political stage, though no cloud hung over them as over the late Protector. Archbishop Kemp, as we have seen, was beginning to think more of the next world than of this; Lord Cromwell’s day was passing, and the great Cardinal himself was now content to direct others in scenes where he had been formerly the chief actor. The Beaufort party was now represented in the forefront of the battle by the Duke of Somerset and the Marquis of Dorset, both nephews of the Bishop of Winchester, and in close alliance with them was William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk. This last had served in the French wars ever since the death of his brother at Agincourt, but of late he had been turning his attention to home politics. He had steadily increased the importance of his position, and by his connection with the House of Beaufort he now found himself one of the chief of those who so jealously surrounded the King. He it was, therefore, who was chosen to be head of an embassy to France,[979] which was to carry through a piece of Beaufort manœuvring. The King had reached a marriageable age, and it was considered advisable that he should look to France for a bride. The question remained, to whom should overtures be made? The embassy to France was to pave the way for the carrying out of a scheme proposed by the Duke of Orleans, that Henry should marry Margaret of Anjou, daughter of René, Duke of Lorraine and titular King of Sicily and Jerusalem. Though a man of no personal possessions, René was in the innermost circle of the French Court, owing to the fact that his sister was Queen of France, and his brother, Charles of Anjou, one of the King’s chief advisers. Such a marriage, therefore, presupposed some kind of agreement between the nations at war, and Suffolk was chosen to procure such an agreement.

The idea of the marriage was unpopular in England, as Suffolk himself acknowledged,[980] and it is probable that this unpopularity was based on the resistance to the match made by Gloucester. This time it was no factiousness in Gloucester that led him to oppose the plans of his opponents, for he was adhering to a policy which he had favoured from the first, when he warmly supported the project of a marriage with one of the daughters of the Count of Armagnac. This match, as well as the Anjou alliance, had been proposed by Orleans at a time when he was in alliance with the discontented Princes of the Praguerie, and was intended to draw Armagnac into an alliance with the English, part of a large scheme for uniting the discordant elements of the French kingdom with the English invaders. This idea was the product of the Beaufort policy which had released the Duke of Orleans, a reversion, in fact, to the methods of Henry V., who had won France with the help of Burgundy. Steps had been taken to open negotiations, and in 1442 an embassy, of which Thomas Beckington, formerly Gloucester’s Chancellor and now the King’s Private Secretary, and Sir Robert Roos, one of the Duke’s literary friends, were the heads, was despatched to Bordeaux for this purpose.[981] The French forces had invaded Gascony, and John of Armagnac, with the enemies of England encamped on his borders, had to tread warily in the matter of an English alliance. Delay was inevitable, and in spite of the best intentions on the Armagnac side, the negotiations were for the time abandoned.[982]

Gloucester had heartily supported the whole idea, since it was conceived in the same spirit as that alliance with Burgundy which had helped to bring half France under the dominion of Henry V. Though we may well doubt the wisdom of this plan, we must acknowledge that it was consistent with Gloucester’s past policy, and that in this instance he did not sacrifice what he thought to be right to his desire to oppose his rivals. It may be that he had learnt wisdom; it may be that recent events had taught him his increasing weakness, and had led him to a less narrow view of party politics. He certainly espoused this plan put forward by the party he had opposed so long, and took a personal interest in details of the embassy, for he was kept informed of the progress of affairs by Beckington, who, as soon as he returned, went down to Greenwich to tell him what had been done and what had been left undone.[983]

Humphrey, therefore, had chosen the better part, and had concurred in a policy of which he was not the originator, but the Beaufort party showed no signs of following this good example. They knew that Henry’s marriage would have an immense bearing on home politics, and that his wife would probably be able to influence him as she liked. They must therefore provide him with a bride entirely of their own choosing, and one who would not be acceptable to Gloucester, whose influence was to be counteracted by their nominee to the position of Queen of England. It was for this reason that they had changed their policy, and now were advising the marriage with Margaret of Anjou. Notwithstanding the popular opposition, Suffolk carried out his instructions; the marriage was arranged, and a truce was signed with France,[984] but it was no good augury for the usefulness of this marriage alliance that it could not be brought to form the basis of a final peace. To the last Humphrey urged that it was dishonourable to abandon the negotiations begun with the Count of Armagnac,[985] but when matters were finally settled, he determined to accept the situation, and was the most prominent of those lords and gentlemen who escorted Margaret to London after her marriage at Titchfield Abbey.[986] On this occasion he had with him a guard of honour consisting of five hundred men, dressed in his livery.[987] Later, too, when Suffolk was thanked in Parliament for his recent labours in negotiating this marriage, Humphrey delivered a speech in favour of the man who had brought to England one who was to prove a firebrand in the country, and to be numbered amongst his own chief opponents.[988]

This sweet reasonableness is not a trait hitherto found in any of Duke Humphrey’s actions, and it suggests that more and more he was coming to realise that he was playing a losing game. He thought it best to bow before the storm, for we cannot believe that, had he thought it to his own personal advantage, he would have abandoned a plan merely for the sake of the internal peace of the kingdom. We have here yet another indication that he was unable to summon to his aid even one of those fitful bursts of energy which earlier he had commanded, but if we are to believe the report of an historian who wrote in the early part of the sixteenth century, his natural impetuosity led him to give the lie to his weak behaviour, and to show that he still held by the principles with regard to English policy on the Continent that he had always voiced. We are told that he delivered a speech in Parliament, urging that it was necessary to defy all conventions and break the truce agreed to, which was, he declared, a mere subterfuge on the part of France to gain a breathing space, an interval during which to recoup her strength.[989]

There is, however, no absolute inconsistency between his recent actions and this speech. He had accepted the state of affairs when he welcomed Margaret to her new English home, but that did not necessarily imply a cessation of the war; marriage, which the historian generally accepts as the final confirmation of the treaty of peace, was in this case regarded as a mere preliminary to a possible, but rather improbable pacification. The truce was short, and the end of the war was not to be yet. The marriage of Margaret to Henry was an isolated incident, not part of a policy, in its effect at least, though it might be in its intention.

Humphrey had all along argued for the continuance of the war; he believed in its righteousness and in its advantages at home as well as abroad. Even as it was rumoured that Henry V. had embarked on foreign conquest as an antidote to internal dissension, so Humphrey, feeling the spirit of strife which was abroad—a spirit, be it confessed, that he had fostered—looked to the war to distract the nobles from conflict at home, and a French chronicler of the time was the first to realise this aspect of the Duke’s policy.[990] It was not a new idea. It had been Henry V.’s, as we have seen; more important still, it was mentioned as a maxim of government in one of those books which it was Gloucester’s joy to study. Ægidius, in his De Regimine Principium, writes: ‘Guerra enim exterior tollit seditiones, et reddit cives magis unanimes et concordes. Exemplum hujus habemus in Romanis quibus postquam defecerunt exteriora bella intra se ipsos bellare coeperunt,’[991] and a copy of this book was among Humphrey’s gifts to the University of Oxford. It is a wrong principle; to us it is even absurd; but the absurdity was not then obvious. It contains the too common fallacy of confounding cause and effect, for though the war for a time might distract the turbulent noble’s attention, it made him all the more turbulent when his new employment, the cause of his distraction, was removed. But contemporaries did not see this. Basin, the historian, who divined the motives of Gloucester’s war policy, has nothing but praise for the underlying principle.[992] Suffolk was no enthusiastic advocate for peace, and the Beaufort faction had espoused a peace policy in the past merely because it suited their private plans—plans, too, which were not to increase the internal peace of the kingdom—and because their nominees were totally incapable of carrying on the war, as had been lately proved by the failure of the incompetent Somerset.[993] If Gloucester followed the wrong policy in advocating war, we could not expect it to be otherwise when we remember his early training. It is a truism—like so many truisms, too often forgotten in practice—to say that a man must not be judged by the standards of an age that is not his own, and it is absurd to condemn Humphrey’s war policy when we look at the attitude of his contemporaries to the same subject. Advantage there was none for him to be reaped from the continuance of the war; factiousness is no longer a possible explanation of his motive; his attitude therefore may be attributed to a desire for the good of the kingdom, for the good of the House of which he himself and his poor, weak nephew were the last representatives.

Whether Gloucester had really delivered himself of these opinions on the war with France or no, he had succeeded in making his enemies desperate. Queen Margaret was not long in grasping the situation of parties in England, and she naturally leaned on Suffolk, the man who had brought her to the position she held, the man who from the first had declared himself her friend and servant. Together they scanned the political horizon, and only one obstacle could they see to the success of their plans, and that obstacle was Duke Humphrey. Though discredited at Court, and bereft of the influence he had once held in the councils of the nation, he had still a definite position in the kingdom as heir to the throne, and did not lack supporters among certain classes. Moreover, the Duke of York, a firm opponent of Beaufort influence, gained what little power he had from the support of Gloucester. Together these two had to be considered as the leaders of a party of some importance. It was the old story of Gloucester and Beaufort still, for the new party headed by the Queen and Suffolk was but a new version of that formerly led by the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester, and had the support of the Beaufort interest, that is, of the Earl of Somerset, Lord Say de Sele and Adam Moleyns.[994] Margaret, the centre of the confederacy, was an ambitious woman, with more ingenuity than common-sense. Young and inexperienced, she had alighted suddenly on a hotbed of intrigue and party strife. At once her mind was made up: she would be the predominant influence in English politics, and this by means of her ascendency over the weak mind of her husband, an ascendency so easy to procure. Suffolk was bound by every call of self-interest to play the game of the Queen; his claim to regard must be based on the Queen’s success; and with the impetuosity and cunning inherited from his mercantile ancestors, he drew the whole Beaufort faction with him. In opposition to this strong combination, whose various private interests impelled them to act together, stood Gloucester, almost alone, but with one very strong card in his hand. Suffolk whilst in France had been inveigled into agreeing to the cession of Maine to that country,[995] but that this was generally known at the time is very doubtful. At any rate, when it should become known, as known it must be sooner or later, there would be a very stiff storm to be weathered by Margaret and her friends, and if Gloucester were still to the fore, this storm might well cause shipwreck to her party.[996] Possibly the knowledge of this fact had produced Gloucester’s speech against the truce, but it is more likely that as yet it was a danger which lay concealed in the womb of the future. If this were so, Gloucester must be humiliated, perhaps removed, before the truth became known. Every effort was made, therefore, to alienate the King from his uncle;[997] suspicions as to his intentions were hazarded, and by degrees suggestions developed into direct accusations. The mind of Henry, already bordering on the brink of madness—a state in which suspicion is quick to arise—yielded readily to the treatment to which it was submitted. Gloucester, he came to believe, was plotting against his life from fear that an heir to the throne would be born; his preparations were being made. Everything, so Henry was told, pointed to this, for the deeds of Eleanor Cobham could not be disassociated from her husband. The one menace to the peace of the kingdom was Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester.[998]

The drama of Gloucester’s life is drawing to a close, and the tragedy of its end is in sight. Any lingering regard for his uncle in the mind of the King had passed, and his attitude during the visit of the French embassy which came to England in 1445 illustrates the success of the tactics employed by Margaret. It was on July 15 that the ambassadors came before the King, whom they found supported by Suffolk, Dorset, the Cardinal of York, the Chancellor, Adam Moleyns, Gloucester, Chester, and Warwick. Henry greeted them most warmly, and assured them of his great desire for peace, shooting glances of defiance all the time at Gloucester, and when he had finished his greeting he turned to Suffolk, and exchanged a smile of understanding with him. It was also reported that he had pressed the Chancellor’s hand, and had said that he was very glad that some present had heard his words, and that they seemed so little at their ease.[999] Margaret had been successful indeed. The King was entirely alienated from his uncle, and he delighted to show his contempt for his former adviser’s counsel, even as all small minds delight to show a contempt they have no right to indulge. Suffolk was even more outspoken than his royal master. He openly and loudly declared that he cared not what the Duke of Gloucester thought, or whether he opposed him or not, for his power was gone, and the King no longer regarded him.[1000]

Humphrey’s career was over. The King denied him access to the Court, and he was removed from the Privy Council.[1001] Indeed in the later chroniclers we read of an attempt to bring him to justice, and of an indictment before the Council. He was accused, it is said, of malpractices during his Protectorate, especially of having caused men adjudged to die to be put to other execution than the law of the land allowed. A brilliant speech, if we are to believe the report, refuted the charges so successfully, that they were allowed to drop.[1002] This partial success, however, availed the Duke nothing, as his enemies had decided to remove him from their path, and for this purpose it was proposed to call a Parliament to which he was summoned, ‘the which parliament was maad only for to sle the noble Duke of Gloucester.’[1003] Suffolk, it seems, had laid certain accusations against him,[1004] and he had induced the King to summon this assembly, to crush the only man that stood in his way. At first Parliament was summoned to meet at Cambridge, but it was ultimately transferred to Bury St. Edmunds, a place where Suffolk was strong,[1005] and Gloucester weak, apart from a certain support from the Abbey there.[1006] Gloucester’s fate was sealed. With cunning ingenuity Suffolk spread a report that a rising led by Duke Humphrey might be expected any day, and he made elaborate preparations for guarding the King at each stopping-place on the way to Bury. Besides this, the almost incredible number of forty or sixty thousand men was collected and stationed round the town.[1007] Gloucester was ordered to attend the Parliament, and all waited to see whether he would come.[1008] Totally ignorant of the elaborate preparations for his reception, yet knowing the dangers which beset his path, Humphrey set out for Bury.[1009] Far from making any show of resistance,[1010] or coming to Parliament in a spirit of bravado, and followed by an overwhelming retinue, he came all unsuspicious that a trap had been laid for him, like an innocent lamb—so the chronicler quaintly puts it[1011]—hoping that he might be able to procure pardon for his imprisoned wife.[1012] The same chronicler, who was not one of those who sang the praises of Duke Humphrey, says that he was conscious of no evil in himself, and suspected nothing as he rode out on his last ride,[1013] accompanied by some eighty horsemen,[1014] no extraordinary retinue for a prince of the blood royal on a long, and possibly dangerous journey.

Parliament had been opened on February 10 with a speech from the Chancellor, Archbishop Stafford, who declared with suspicious unction, that ‘blessed was the man who walked not in the counsel of the ungodly,’[1015] but it was not until the 18th that the Duke of Gloucester arrived. When within half a mile of the gates of the town, he was met by two officers of the King’s household, who told him that the King wished him to go straight to his lodgings, and not visit the Court, since the weather was so cold for travelling; at least so was the message reported subsequently by some of the Duke’s retinue. It was eleven o’clock in the morning when Gloucester rode into the city by the south gate, and passing through the ‘horsemarket,’ turned to his left into the Northgate Ward. Here he passed through a mean street, and as he rode along, he asked a passer-by, by what name the alley was known. ‘Forsoothe, my Lord, hit is called the Dede Lane, came the answer. Then the inborn superstition of ‘the Good Duke’ asserted itself; so with an old prophecy he had read ringing in his ears, and a word of pious resignation on his lips, he rode on to the ‘North Spytyll’ outside the Northgate, otherwise called ‘Seynt Salvatoures,’[1016] where he was to lodge. Having eaten his dinner, a deputation came to wait upon him, consisting of the Duke of Buckingham, the Marquis of Dorset, the Earl of Salisbury, Lord Sudley, and Viscount Beaumont. This last in his capacity of High Constable placed the Duke under arrest by the King’s command. Two yeomen of the guard and a sergeant were appointed to take charge of the prisoner, who was removed from the care of his own immediate servants, some of whom, including Sir Roger Chamberlain, were arrested the same evening between eight and nine o’clock. The arrest passed off quietly, but three days later about twenty-eight more of Gloucester’s retainers, including his natural son ‘Arteys,’ were arrested and sent to divers places of confinement. This was on Shrove Tuesday, but it was unknown to their master, who was lying in a state of coma, so that for three days he neither moved nor had any feeling. Towards the end of this time, however, he recovered sufficiently to confess his sins, and to receive the last rites of the Church, and then sinking again he died, so it is related, about three o’clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, February 23, 1447.[1017]

Next day the news of his death was proclaimed, and his body was exposed, so that all might see that no mark of violence was upon him.[1018] His corpse was visited by many during the day, and towards evening he was disembowelled, placed in a ‘seryd cloth, and layd in a lead chest,’ encased in a coffin of poplar-wood. On the Saturday, just a week after his arrival in the town, Humphrey’s body was carried to the Grey Friars’ Monastery at Babwell,[1019] escorted thither by twenty torches borne by members of his own entourage; indeed, apart from the three crown officials who had been his gaolers, none but his personal retainers accompanied the cortège. On the Sunday the Abbot of St. Albans ‘dede his dirge,’ and the next day, after a mass had been said for the repose of his soul, his earthly remains were carried out on their last journey. By slow stages the coffin was carried to St. Albans, resting by night at Newmarket, Berkway, and Ware, and arriving at its destination on Friday the 21st. Here again was a dirge said for him, followed by Mass, and on the Saturday the body was placed in the ‘Feyre vout,’ prepared for him in his lifetime, amidst the lamentations of many of his faithful servants, and in the presence of the crown officials, who were the only outward evidences that a king’s son was being laid to rest.[1020] The whole ceremony of interment was that of a private individual, not that of a prince;[1021] the outward glamour of the pomp and circumstance which had accompanied his three brothers to the grave was absent. Humphrey died a prisoner, a disgraced politician, but he was followed to the grave by a band of genuine mourners. All the artificial adjuncts of his life, all the pride of power and position which had conspired to make him a great prince, had vanished, and he was laid in his last resting-place by loving hands, who took a mournful pleasure in thus honouring their dead master without any of that formal and unlovely ceremonial which disguises death as a pageant.

CHAPTER VIII
SOME ASPECTS OF GLOUCESTER’S CAREER

In spite of the circumstantial story which records the events of the last few days of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, there hangs over the manner of his death a cloud which no existing evidence can entirely remove. Was he murdered, or was his death the result of natural causes? Such is the question to which the circumstances surrounding his last days give rise. Of contemporary chroniclers who give their opinion the Englishmen mostly agree in a quiet acceptance of the idea that arrest and disgrace so worked on an already weakened frame, that some kind of seizure was followed by collapse and death. Richard Fox, who gives the most detailed account of the tragedy of Bury, never for a moment suggests foul play, whilst Wheathampsted, the friend and follower of the dead man, clearly states that he died of sickness brought on by grief at his arrest.[1022] Hardyng carries this theory still further by describing the disease of which the Duke died as a sort of ‘parlesey,’ stating that he had been similarly attacked before,[1023] but an anonymous chronicler of Henry VI.’s reign, while describing the illness much in the same way as Fox and Hardyng—a paralysis of both mind and body—does not hesitate to hint fairly broadly that the disease did not take its origin from the natural state of the Duke’s health.[1024] The author of the English Chronicle reserves judgment. The truth about Gloucester’s death, he declares, is not yet known, but he quotes the Gospel to prove that there is nothing hid which shall not be made manifest;[1025] the London chronicler declares darkly that he was treacherously treated.[1026] Foreign contemporary writers go still further, and with one voice proclaim that Gloucester was murdered. Waurin states this as a bare fact, but his statements are not beyond dispute, for he adopts the same version as the continuator of the Historia Croylandensis, who says that the Duke was found dead in bed on the morning after his arrest.[1027] Mathieu de Coussy and Basin, both of whom were alive at the time, aver that it was a case of murder, and so it was generally believed on the Continent.[1028]

As time passed on, the growing unpopularity of Suffolk unloosed men’s tongues, and the idea that Gloucester had been murdered gradually arose, and became a firm belief. It was obvious to all that the Duke’s death had been desired by Suffolk to increase his power, and within three years of the Parliament at Bury another Parliament was clamouring for the disgrace of this upstart, who with the help of the Queen had monopolised the government of the kingdom, and it was but a very thinly veiled accusation of murder which lay behind the articles of impeachment that he ‘wase the cause and laborer of the arrest, emprisonyng and fynall destruction of the most noble valliant true Prince, your right obeisant uncle the Duke of Gloucester.’[1029] That this was no more than an accusation of complicity in Humphrey’s disgrace which indirectly produced his last illness is an interpretation which the words cannot bear when we consider the facts of the case, for at the same time Gregory records that among the charges brought against Suffolk that of murdering ‘that nobylle prynce the Duke of Gloucester’ was one.[1030] Whatever the words of the impeachment may imply to us, it is plain that they bore but one meaning to the men of the time, and in view of the coming disgrace of the Queen’s favourite, public opinion was beginning to assert itself, for it is to be noticed that, when recording the death of Humphrey, Gregory ignored any question of murder.[1031]

We may well suspect that the murder of Suffolk by the sailors of the Kentish coast had for its prompting some thought of revenge for the death of the man who had held the command of Dover and the Cinque Ports. The people were beginning to find their voices, and when the Kentish men followed Jack Cade in his march on London, they invoked the wrongs of Duke Humphrey, as one of the reasons of their rebellion. They demanded the punishment of the false traitors ‘which counterfetyd and imagyned’ Gloucester’s death, and they declared the charges which had been brought against him at Bury to be false.[1032] Moreover, in one of the popular songs connected with this rising there is distinct mention of ‘two traitors ... Pulford and Hanley that drownyd ye Duke of Glocester,’[1033] a possible allusion to the two yeomen of the guard who were Humphrey’s custodians after his arrest, and who may have been more than suspected of being the instruments of his enemies’ treachery. It was at this time also that Lord Saye de Sele met his violent end at the hands of the mob, who accused him of many acts of treason ‘of whyche he knowlachyd of the dethe’ of Gloucester.[1034] As hostility to the existing regime increased, the belief in the murder grew proportionately, and became complete assurance on the triumph of the Yorkist party. Thus one of the political poems which paved the way for this turn of events declared roundly that ‘This Fox (Suffolk) at Bury slowe our grete gandere’ (Gloucester),[1035] and the manifesto which the Duke of York issued from Calais referred to ‘the pytyous shamefulle and sorrowfulle murther to all Englonde, of that noble werthy and Crystyn prince Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, the Kynges trew uncle, at Bury.’[1036]

A few years later a political song stated that

and the general acceptance of the fact of murder was so universal that under the year 1446 (O.S.) a compiler of historical notes, writing in the latter days of the fifteenth century, put down without comment or hesitation ‘interfectio ducis Gloucestriae.’[1038] Fabyan, another writer of this period,[1039] mentions the theory that Humphrey had been put to death as an accepted fact, adding that ‘dyverse reportes ar made, which I passe over.’[1040] Subsequent writers and historians have all followed this opinion,[1041] till within recent years some doubts have been cast on this universally accepted reading of the events.

We cannot accept the verdict of murder as conclusive without an examination into the facts of the case. Obviously it may have been more a political move than a firm conviction of the murder that induced the Yorkist party to throw out these accusations with regard to Gloucester’s end, but in this respect it cannot have been very fruitful, and it is stated in a manner which implies that the facts of the case were common property. To support the theory there is the strong hint of the Latin chronicler of Henry VI.’s reign, and the suspiciously judicial attitude of the author of the English Chronicle. The testimony of Wheathampsted as the friend of Gloucester deserves attention, yet we must remember that the late Abbot of St. Albans had passed entirely into private life in 1447, and did not emerge therefrom till four years later when he resumed the Abbacy. Moreover, his information was probably gained from Richard Fox of the House of St. Albans, a man who brought no critical power to bear on his narrative, and who merely recorded the official account of the Duke’s last illness; all personal access to the prisoner had been forbidden save to the royal officials, who had him in charge, and at the best Fox must have recorded what he was told at the time by those who had the care of his master. Evidence of a more definite and less refutable kind is the statement of John Hardyng. By him the illness is given a definite name, and allusion is made to earlier attacks. This is supported by a report on the Duke’s health made some twenty-three years earlier by his physician, which describes him in a weak state of health, though the details of the report do no more than point to certain excesses in his manner of living, and a temporary lack of health, and do not in any way suggest a hopelessly decayed constitution, which some would deduce therefrom.[1042] Only once do we hear of the Duke suffering from illness, and the activity of his life, in which he combined the avocations of a soldier, a politician, and a man of letters, in itself refutes the suggestion. Humphrey showed no signs of bodily decay; he was perfectly well, and able to make a long journey on the eve of his imprisonment, and if his health was so undermined at the age of thirty-four, how was it that he survived to more than complete his fifty-seventh year, no mean age at that time? He survived all his brothers; one died in battle, Henry at the age of thirty-six succumbed to an attack of camp fever, Bedford only attained his forty-sixth year, while his grandfather, John of Gaunt, who was looked on as an old man for his time, lived but one year longer than himself, and his father only reached the age of forty-seven. Indeed of all his relations Cardinal Beaufort alone lived to be really old, though his exact age is uncertain. The statement of Hardyng must not, therefore, be considered as entirely corroborated by the physician’s report, and by itself it stands as a statement of no more value than those which roundly assert that Gloucester was murdered, for the chronicle was written about the year 1463 by a man who had served the House of Lancaster from the battle of Shrewsbury onward. Perhaps the strangest of all evidences on this point is that given by Chastellain, the Burgundian chronicler, who wrote Le Temple de Bocace for Margaret of Anjou when in 1463 she retired into exile in the county of Bar. In this collection of stories dealing with the sad fate of many famous people, a sort of continuation of Boccaccio’s Latin work which was introduced to English readers by John Lydgate’s The Falls of Princes, a terrible picture of Humphrey’s violent end is drawn, and the methods used to give the appearance of a natural death are described. When we remember that Margaret was a prominent member of the faction at whose bidding such a deed must have been performed, the version of the story here given is the more startling.[1043]

Apart from all statements of chroniclers, whether contemporary or otherwise, there lies the probability of the case. Gloucester was in the way of the plans of Suffolk and Margaret; he had already been accused of treason, an accusation which might be hard to prove; armed preparations had been made against him; he was under arrest at the time of his death. More important than this is the way he was isolated from his followers; his chief retainers were arrested, and his personal servants were removed from attendance on him,[1044] and thus the officers appointed by his enemies could arrange what they liked. The way his body was exposed after death to prove that no violence had cut short his days was itself an invitation to suspicion, and this negative method of proof was not unknown in the cases of other royal victims of political murder. The whole story of the case supports the supposition that some kind of slow poison was used, a method of assassination quite possible under the circumstances, and for which it would almost seem that provision had been made. Murder, therefore, is the most probable explanation of the Duke’s sudden demise, his relapse into a comatose state might very well be the result of a poison taken with his food, and when an unscrupulous party so desired his death, the conclusion is obvious.