Whatever opinion is held with regard to the immediate cause of Humphrey’s death, it is beyond doubt that his destruction was planned, if not carried out. On Suffolk and Lord Saye de Sele falls the chief suspicion, and in the latter’s case the count is strengthened by the fact that he received on the very next day after the death of the Duke some of the offices which the victim had held.[1046] ‘Pole’ that ‘fals traytur’ was openly accused of part responsibility,[1047] and Fabyan says, ‘The grudge and murmour of ye people ceased not agayne the Marquis of Suffolke, for the deth of the good duke of Gloucester, of whos murdre he was specially susspected.‘[1048] Foreign chroniclers all attribute the murder to the ‘faction of Suffolk,’[1049] and in this indictment the Queen cannot be excepted. She, together with Suffolk and Lord Saye de Sele, shared in the lands and emoluments which reverted to the King on his uncle’s demise,[1050] and girl though she was, she had a predominating influence among those who had allied themselves against Gloucester. One more fact both points to the existence of a determination to make away with their rival on the part of the dominant party of the Court, and strengthens the suggestion of murder; so complete were the preparations in view of the death, that on the very day that Gloucester died, a grant was made of his property to Henry’s foundation of King’s College, Cambridge,[1051] and further grants of the same kind were made on the following day.[1052]

Final proof of the care with which Gloucester’s death was organised is to be found in the treatment meted out to his followers, of whom in all forty-two were arrested and imprisoned in thirteen different castles.[1053] On July 8[1054] five of these men, including the Duke’s natural son Arthur, were arraigned before Suffolk at Deptford and condemned to be drawn to Tyburn, hanged, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered for plotting treason against the King. The charge against them was that they had held a seditious meeting at Greenwich on February 7 last, where they had agreed to kill King Henry VI., and place Gloucester and his imprisoned wife upon the throne. Four days later, having collected a large body of men, they had marched out towards Bury, hoping that the country would join them.[1055] Besides this definite charge, rumours were spread abroad that Humphrey had been organising a rebellion in his own favour in Wales,[1056] a legend based on nothing more substantial than the fact that many of the imprisoned retainers bore Welsh names,[1057] but sufficiently elaborated to induce the Parliament at Bury to re-enact ‘all statutes made against Welshmen.’[1058]

The absurdity of the whole story is obvious. A great army this escort of eighty men to start a rebellion of all England, and to bring about the removal of the King! There is not one shred of evidence to prove even the likelihood of such a plot. We are definitely told that Humphrey came to Bury with a clear conscience,[1059] and had his intentions been treasonable he would not have entered the town after the warning he received from the King’s message. He made not the slightest show of resistance, save, if we can except the statement of a foreign chronicler, that he used strong language to his jailers about those who dominated the King.[1060] If the plot had been hatched on February 7, why was it that Suffolk had collected an army of 60,000 men at Bury some time before the opening of Parliament on February 10, and had gone through the form of taking elaborate precautions for the safety of the King on his way thither? The details of the trial of these retainers also give cause for suspicion, for no office that Suffolk held entitled him to sit as judge at Deptford, and he was probably acting under a special writ, issued to ensure the condemnation of the prisoners. The whole proceeding was meant to throw dust in the eyes of those who might question the manner of Gloucester’s death, and to remove the possibility of any one championing the fallen Duke, who was thus proved to have died with the guilt of treason on his conscience. Having established his case, Suffolk tried to win favour with the people by appearing at the execution and producing a reprieve from the King. Though already strung up at Tyburn, when the reprieve was read they were promptly cut down, and their lives were saved.[1061] They and the rest of the prisoners were set at large, and their goods were returned to them.[1062] Had there been any truth in the charge for which they were condemned, the men would certainly not have been reprieved, and this bid for popularity proved fruitless, for in spite of it ‘the grudge and murmur of ye people ceased not agayne the Marquys of Suffolke.’[1063] Violence was not one of Humphrey’s crimes; he had appealed to force of arms once only, and then it was merely to act on the defensive. This imagined plot was totally at variance with all his former conduct. Plot there was, but it was formed by Suffolk and his partisans to destroy their rival, whose death becomes still more suspicious in the light of their vain attempt at justification.

With Gloucester dead, and his memory tainted by an accusation of treason, Margaret and Suffolk thought they had secured safety for their plans and security for the House of Lancaster. But this was far from being the case. Besides casting an indelible slur on the dynasty which had connived at the disgrace and removal of one of its own representatives, they had inaugurated a period of strife and disaster that ended only with the triumph of the rival claimants to the throne of England. A foreign observer of English politics dated all the disturbances which followed from the time of Gloucester’s death,[1064] and an English chronicler wrote: ‘Thus began the trouble of Engelonge for the deth of this noble duke. All the comyns of this reame began for to murmure, and were not content.’[1065] A political ballad writer, too, saw how things had gone when he wrote, that since the tragedy of Bury

The government of Henry VI., or rather that of those who had his ear, was already unpopular, and we have seen how still more hostile to it the nation became after 1447, and how Humphrey’s reputation increased as that of his opponent’s diminished. Jack Cade invoked the name of Gloucester as one of the justifications of his hostility to the Government, and it is a significant fact that the three men who were suspected of complicity in the murder, namely Suffolk, Adam Moleyns, and Lord Saye de Sele, all met violent deaths at the hands of the people.

But mere unpopularity was not the worst danger which the Government had to fear, as a result of Gloucester’s death, and to understand this aspect of the matter we must recall the history of the two parties in the State since the death of Henry V. The reign of Henry VI. had opened with a declaration of party war. From the first there had been two distinct parties in the kingdom, each fighting to secure the supreme control, the one headed by Gloucester, the other by Cardinal Beaufort, both of whom were members of the House of Lancaster, though the latter’s family was excluded from succession to the throne. Gloucester’s position as ‘lymyted protector,’ as a contemporary ballad writer calls it,[1067] had been at once a source of some strength to him and a point of attack for his enemies. Throughout the period of the King’s minority the struggle had been for the control of the Council of Regency, Gloucester asserting his privileges as Protector, Beaufort denying them and trying to secure further limitations of his power. So the struggle had worn on with varying success, till with Henry’s coronation in 1429 the Protectorate had come to an end. Thenceforward the contest had been between the same parties on a somewhat different field. Henry, as he gradually increased in understanding and knowledge, had been besieged by Gloucester and Beaufort, each trying to influence him in his own favour, and so it had continued till the great triumph of the Beaufort policy in the release of the Duke of Orleans and the marriage of the King to Margaret of Anjou. Hereafter the scene had changed. The Bishop of Winchester had passed out of public life,[1068] leaving the control of his party to his two nephews, John and Edmund, successively Dukes of Somerset. The Earl of Suffolk, apart from the fact that he was the ablest member of the Beaufort faction, is a negligible quantity in this history of party division. On the other hand, the Duke of York had come to the front as the opponent of the Beauforts and as a follower of Duke Humphrey, though he never came anywhere near to supplanting the latter as leader of the opposition to the existing state of government.

Throughout this long struggle, hostile as it was to the peace of the kingdom and to the good government of either party, there had never been on either side any suggestion of hostility to the House of Lancaster as such. Were not both leaders members of that House, and were not their best interests bound up with the preservation of the throne to Henry VI.? The fall of the King would have meant annihilation for both of them, and not for a moment had the possibility of such a thing occurred to the rivals. They had forgotten the shakiness of the Lancastrian House; they had forgotten the claims of York; they had forgotten that the present Duke of York was the son of a condemned plotter against the throne. Their rivalry had been merely one of ambitious men who strove for the mastery, the one with the claim of seniority, the other with the claim of a personal stake in the welfare of the kingdom. The story of that long-protracted struggle is not creditable to either Beaufort or Gloucester, though we must remember that the challenge had come from the former, who was excluded from the succession and had no such claim to have a preponderating influence in the kingdom as had the brother of Henry V. The Cardinal Bishop of Winchester has appealed to the sympathy of posterity by reason of his supposed constitutional attitude, but his pose cannot be taken seriously. Keen to see his own advantage, he had supported the rights of the Council merely as a means to curtail the power of the Protector, and thereby increase his own, but whether we take his constitutional attitude seriously or not, we must condemn his policy. On the other hand, Gloucester inadvertently had stumbled on a policy, which was the only possible one that could save England from internal disorder. In claiming the fullest powers as Protector he had probably no idea beyond asserting what he considered to be his just and legal rights, and obtaining a position which would satisfy his ambitious nature; but his policy was sound. The one hope for England was a government concentrated in the hands of one man, who would not be hampered by opposition at the very fountainhead of justice, who would be able to deal out summary retribution to the wrong-doer. Under these conditions the government of Henry VI.’s favourites would not have become a byword in the country, and have given a handle to the rival House of York.

Thus the rivalry of Beaufort and Gloucester was more personal than political, in no sense was it dynastic, and though it weakened the hold of the House of Lancaster on the country, yet in itself it did not threaten the throne of Henry VI. Still less was this the case when the Beaufort faction had won their final victory, and had definitely placed Gloucester in permanent opposition, where he acted as safety-valve to the reigning dynasty. Just as so many years later the House of Hanover was strengthened by the opposition of successive Princes of Wales, so did Gloucester’s opposition secure the House of Lancaster. He, it must be remembered, was heir to the throne, for the marriage of Henry VI. had not yet produced a son who would supplant him. Round him the discontented elements in the nation circled, the Duke of York and his following owned him as their leader. In the country at large he was still popular, and no faction could rise to drive Henry from his throne with any prospect of success if it had not the support of ‘the good Duke Humphrey.’ On the other hand, the Duke of York and his claim had to be kept in the background so long as Gloucester stood as heir to the throne and leader of the opposition to the maladministration of the governing clique. Moreover, the adhesion of York to Gloucester’s party was a guarantee against civil war, for those two men who worked together had totally antagonistic claims to the throne of England.

We have here the chief reason why the death of Humphrey was at the same time the death-blow to the House of Lancaster. The Duke of York was not dangerous so long as Humphrey lived, for though their interests in the kingdom were divergent, they had acted together through the last years of Beaufort’s domination. Both alike had been excluded from the Council of the King, and both alike had made common cause in the name of order and a different policy. We have seen the various shifts which had been used to minimise Gloucester’s influence with the King, York had been intrigued against by the Beauforts whilst in command in France, and finally he had been sent off to Ireland, so that he could not make his voice felt in the councils of the nation.[1069] His connection with the King’s uncle was of long standing. Gloucester had held the guardianship of the lands that he inherited from the Earl of March, he had supported him in 1437, when it was proposed to put the Earl of Warwick in his place as Commander-in-Chief of the army in France,[1070] and he had complained bitterly in his indictment of Cardinal Beaufort that the Duke of York had been alienated from the King.[1071] In return for this the Yorkist party had supported Gloucester in opposition; after his death they helped to bring home the guilt of his murder to those who had contrived it, and as soon as they obtained the ascendency they vindicated his memory by a public act. In the Parliament which met after the first battle of St. Albans, under the auspices of the Duke of York, the question of Humphrey’s good fame, which had often been unsuccessfully mooted before, was again raised; a petition was framed by the Commons asking the King, in remembrance of his uncle’s services to the Crown, and of the fact that he had been accused of treason by certain wicked persons, to declare the aspersions cast on his good name to be unfounded. This petition, quite spontaneous on the part of the Commons, was taken up by the Duke of York, and by his help and favour it was granted.[1072] This attitude on the part of York has its significance. It was a declaration that the policy which he espoused, the policy of good government and justice, was the policy of Humphrey; it was a party cry too, an appeal to the favour of the people, who believed that the good Duke had done his utmost for the good government of the kingdom.

When we come to examine the facts of the case, and the right which Gloucester had to the reputation for good government, we must confess that, though the adulation of the seventeenth-century chroniclers may seem excessive, it is no more exaggerated than the obloquy which has been heaped on his memory by more recent historians. His campaign in Hainault and his whole policy in that matter, quite apart from his behaviour to Jacqueline, is worthy of the heaviest censure. Blind to the effects of his actions, he did nothing to minimise them when he had tardily realised the possible alienation of Burgundy from the English Alliance. He had allowed his personal interests and ambition to take precedence of the advantage of his native country. Yet even here we must reflect before we ascribe all the failures of the English in France to his action. Signs are not wanting after the death of Henry that the Duke of Burgundy was not the warm supporter of his English allies that he had been in the past; the English also were not devoted to the Burgundian alliance, the Earl Marshal made no objection to leading the Hainault expedition, and the Earl of Salisbury, enraged by an outrage offered to his wife, came over to offer his services to Gloucester.[1073] Nor did the Council treat the matter very seriously. Humphrey on his return received no reprimand, despite the statement to this effect by certain foreign chroniclers. If Gloucester erred, he did so along with much of the public opinion of his time, and had he proved more faithful to the course he had undertaken, one might be inclined to judge his line of action in Hainault less hardly. Nevertheless, apart from all matters of foreign policy, he must be condemned for leaving his infant nephew at home unguarded save by a man whom he most profoundly distrusted. This, far more than the more obvious count of alienating Burgundy, must condemn him in our eyes, if we look at the matter from his point of view.

Apart from this lapse from honour and wisdom in his government of the country as Protector, what shall we say of Gloucester’s action in home policy? To deny the evil effects of the struggle for power between himself and the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester would be to blind ourselves to a clear historical truth, but we must remember—and in the light of the modern judgment on Humphrey it cannot too often be reiterated—that the struggle did not originate with him. He claimed the Protectorate as his right, even as Bedford did, and it cannot be said to have been a more ambitious move on the part of the one brother than on that of the other. It was the late King’s wish that he should be Protector, and it was a wise arrangement. He distrusted Humphrey’s capacity as a general with an independent command, but he had reason to believe that the man who had governed England quietly and well for him, was the proper person to whom to confide the kingdom during his son’s minority. Apart from that disastrous struggle for supremacy over his uncle the Cardinal and his party, how did Humphrey comport himself as Protector, and later as chief Councillor?

The details of Gloucester’s home government are hard to extract from the central theme of party strife, but more than once we find him the fearless supporter of the arm of the law. The kingdom was in a state of potential upheaval all through the period of his power. Henry IV. might say to his son, when speaking of the crown of England:

But this was not true of Henry IV.’s grandson. ‘De male acquisitis non gaudebit tertius heres,’ quotes an old chronicler,[1075] and leaving the ethics of the case aside, this was undoubtedly true of poor misguided Henry VI. Ever since the feudal barriers which restrained the great lords had begun to disappear, the too powerful subject had been a problem to be faced. Henry IV. had found this when confronted with the insurrection of the men who had helped to place him on the throne. The wars of Henry V. had aggravated the danger by increasing the wealth of the nobles, who made fortunes by means of the armed men they provided for the King. With a minor on the throne this development became still more dangerous, and Humphrey had to meet it. He did his best. The pretensions of the Earl of March were nipped in the bud by his dismissal to Ireland: later the quarrel which almost grew into a private war between Norfolk and Huntingdon was interrupted by his action, and his appearance in the neighbourhood doubtless restrained these lords. He issued warnings against the use of retinues of unnecessary strength, and took a personal interest in the precautions which were to ensure peace between the lords who accompanied the King to France. His reputation as an enforcer of the King’s peace must have been great, for at the time when power was slipping from his hands, his enemies agreed to his appointment as Chief-Justice in South Wales, a difficult and unsettled district, and he held the same office at Chester[1076] on the border-land, where the work of the Justice can have been no sinecure. In minor breaches of the peace, such as those of 1427, he showed himself eager to put down all kinds of lawlessness, and by his prompt action he nipped the movement of Jack Sharp in the bud, a movement which, in spite of its insignificant appearance in the pages of history, might well have developed into a rebellion against the House of Lancaster. In all these instances it was by no deputed power that Humphrey enforced the majesty of the law, but by personal exertions and visits to the centres of disturbance.

Nothing bears greater testimony to the success of Gloucester’s rule than the change which came over the state of the country as soon as he was driven from power. Under his government there had been disturbances, but nearly always for some definite reason. When Beaufort became supreme, however, the country degenerated steadily into anarchy, not on account of personal claims or dynastic troubles, but simply because the central government had lost all control over the people. In the west a private war of some magnitude raged between the Earl of Devon and Sir William Bonville, Wales was in revolt, York and Norwich were the scenes of considerable disturbances, Northampton was at war with Lord Grey of Ruthyn, riots occurred in London, Salisbury, and Derbyshire. Beaufort’s firm ally, Archbishop Kemp, was attacked by the men of his diocese and the Earl of Northumberland, whilst to still further complicate affairs, the finances were in an even worse state than when Gloucester was in power.[1077] If Gloucester was not an ideal ruler, Beaufort and his faction fell still further short of that ideal, and if we judge by results, we must conclude that England was happier and better governed under the ex-Protector, than under the party which supplanted him.

Stern represser of revolt, and enforcer of the law, was Gloucester himself a defaulter in these respects? Accusations to this effect there are, but few and of doubtful importance. In Parliament, together with other lords, he was complained of as illegally exacting the royal right of purveyance,[1078] but his position as heir to the throne may form some excuse for his action, and the complaint was made at a time when his enemies were closing their coils around him. More detailed and circumstantial is an account of how one John Withorne had his lands seized by Gloucester, who claimed him as nativus suus, and was taken off to spend the remaining seven years of his pretended master’s life in prison in Wales. At the end of that time, blind, decrepit, a wreck of humanity, he was released by the order of the King.[1079] The story may be true, but it dates from immediately after the death of Gloucester, and looks suspiciously like an attempt by his enemies to justify their opposition to him, a theory supported by the mention of Wales, that wild land whence he was to lead his mythical hordes to dethrone the King, and establish himself in his nephew’s place. Further there are the charges of undue severity imposed on prisoners recorded as part of his indictment by some later chroniclers,[1080] but the strongest argument against this and all other charges is to be found in the fact that there are not the slightest signs of a genuine detailed indictment of the Duke by his enemies, who had to rest content with poisoning the King’s mind with regard to his uncle. Nevertheless some truth may be found in the story of the imprisoned villein, for rapacity was a vice which Humphrey shared with his uncle of Winchester, and an anonymous chronicler tells us how his wife Eleanor wrongfully deprived the Hospital of St. John of Pontefract of certain lands belonging to them.[1081] This fact is attested by a grant dated February 27, 1447, whereby certain lands in Norfolk, including the Manor of Sculthorpe, lately belonging to Gloucester, were given to the Hospital of St. John,[1082] and when we remember that Sir Robert Knollys, the founder of this institution, lived and died at the manor-house of Sculthorpe, the probability of the charge becomes a certainty.

Only one other complaint do we find of Gloucester’s behaviour, and that is by the unknown continuator of the Croyland chronicle, who complains that, when interviewing the Protector on several occasions with regard to a lawsuit with the men of Spalding, the Abbot of that monastery was harshly and unjustly treated by him.[1083] That this means anything more than that the Abbot failed to substantiate his case we may well doubt; at all events, even were all these charges true, they are but a mild indictment of a man who lived in the first half of the fifteenth century amidst so many temptations to excess, a man, too, against whom any accusations would have been welcomed by the faction in power during the last few years of his life.

Before concluding this estimate of his public character as Protector and heir to the throne, let us remember that, when issuing an edict forbidding certain lords to come to Parliament with too extensive retinues, he named Huntingdon among the number, a man who supported him, and consequently found himself neglected and estranged from the King in the days when Humphrey made his famous protest against the administration of the Bishop of Winchester. Personal motives, therefore, did not always overrule his sense of justice; it cannot be for nothing that Gloucester earned the title of the ‘Good Duke,’[1084] and it is impossible to believe that he would have been so popular with the people, if he had been guilty of frequent acts of oppression. Taken with the facts of his career, it is more likely that this popularity sprang not from a mere charm of manner, but from the fact that he alone of the great men of his time tried to curb the licence of the nobles and the depredations of the lawless. He was not the inspirer of disturbances, nor the author of the Wars of the Roses. By his very existence he was what Sandford calls ‘a grand prop of the Red Rose tree,’[1085] and this—strange paradox—by reason of his alliance with the leader of the White Rose cause. Gloucester was not the first Yorkist—his instincts and his interests alike prevented this; he was not the subverter of the Lancastrian dynasty. On the contrary, it was his death that created the Yorkist party, and paved the way for the downfall of his nephew.

Humphrey was no traitor to his King, nor enemy of his father’s House, quite the reverse. He had done services to his country, which are forgotten amid the factious surroundings of his career. Biassed though they may be, there is much to be said for the truth of the statements made in the lament put into the mouths of his followers, when they had buried their master. ‘Now,’ they cried, ‘the right hand of the King has gone, the right arm of his strength has withered, he has lost him, who in the day of his necessity was both wall and rampart to him. Who but his uncle put down internal risings against the throne when they occurred, or went forth to fight, when enemies from without threatened him? He at last has laid aside his arms, and has retired to that region where there is peace and rest, and sorrow is no more. Who but the Duke of Gloucester, during the King’s infancy, drove the Duke of Burgundy from Picardy? Who but that Duke, during the same King’s boyhood, brought the enemies of the Cross of Christ to destruction? Who but he, in the King’s full age, gave peace to the people in every quarter? Who but he, in a word, throughout the King’s nonage, was his faithful foster-father and foster-mother alike? And now he is said to be a traitor, he who in the past had so many opportunities to do that which he is accused of doing in the present. Nay, that accusation is a lie most false, devised by those greedy devourers, who kill virtue when it is exalted, and who seek occasion to suffocate the innocent, that they may increase their plunder! Wherefore shall we his servants, who moved in the same surroundings as he, who were cognisant of all his secrets, who knew all his actions, shall we then allow a prince so illustrious, a duke so tireless in doing his duty, a soldier so trusty and prudent, one too guiltless of any crime, to be thus torn by dogs, thus stung by scorpions? Be this thought far from us and from those who favour justice and piety, for the great Duke himself both loved, nurtured, and enforced justice, and it is a pious work to champion one who can no longer defend himself.’[1086]

Such is the one estimate of Gloucester’s services to the body politic, but we must not look merely on one side of the picture. Humphrey claimed to guide the ship of state, and in many cases his policy was right, and his actions were just, but he lacked that touch of greatness which might have lifted him above the wrangles of party politics. His statesmanship was at fault. He had no power of gauging a man’s worth, or weighing a policy in the balance. He rushed blindly into a compromising war at Hainault, a position from which there was no retreat, and he cut but a sorry figure when he abandoned the whole enterprise. He could not sustain a definite line of action, and drive steadily to the end he had in view. He complicated his policy with too many endeavours, and brought none of them to good effect. He could not keep an unswerving course, as Protector, or disassociate himself from the tricks of party warfare; in opposition he could not maintain a steady attack, but contented himself with fitful outbursts of impotent wrath.

Yet, apart from this, his policy had a consistency which his actions lacked. When the second stage of the Hundred Years’ War was about to begin, he adopted an attitude which he maintained throughout his life. He then voted against the Burgundian alliance; at St. Omer he showed his dislike of such an alliance in the scant courtesy with which he treated the Count of Charolais; he defied the same Count when Duke of Burgundy with an animosity both personal and political; he encouraged the defiance which England flung at this same Duke after the congress of Arras; he resisted the release of Orleans partly because it was a Burgundian suggestion. Again, in 1415, he favoured an Armagnac alliance, and we find him voicing the same principle when it was a question of a marriage for Henry VI. with a daughter of the Armagnac or Angevin House. In the matter of the war, too, he was consistent to the extent of folly. His active life had begun in the French wars; he had accompanied his brother Henry V. on his expeditions to France. Henceforth he accepted the war as part of his political creed, and would not move one hair’s-breadth therefrom. At a time when no useful advantage could be gained by the prolongation of hostilities, he opposed the wise, pacific movement of Cardinal Beaufort, and did much to defame his political character with posterity by this dogged persistence of principle. Yet he could not devise a scheme for carrying on the war, and though he offered to undertake the command, he did not persist in his suggestion.

There is a possible view of Gloucester’s war policy, which may explain, if not justify, his attitude. In a political poem of the period, well known as the ‘Libel of English Policy,’ the principle, that command of the narrow seas was necessary for the safety of English commerce, is insisted on at some length.[1087] This command, it is to be presumed, was only to be maintained by a secure hold on both sides of the Channel, and the continuance of the war was considered necessary for this purpose. Calais, however, even in those days, was a sufficient guarantee for the openness of the Channel; but the supposition that trade considerations had their influence on Gloucester’s war policy is strengthened by his well-known connection with trade interests in the country. His popularity with the Londoners must have taken its origin from this side of the Duke’s policy, and from certain discussions at the Parliament at Leicester in 1426 it seems likely that the riotous tendencies in London, that led to the garrisoning of the Tower in 1425, had some connection with a movement against foreign traders in the capital.[1088] Gloucester, it will be remembered, had supported the Londoners in their objections to the garrison, and we may perhaps deduce from this a tendency to, what we may call, an ‘All British Policy,’ a trace of the modern Jingo politician. Humphrey had other connections besides this with the trading interests in the country. He had some intercourse with the weavers of York,[1089] and his wife was interested at one time in a petition from one of the glovers of that city.[1090] We also find a letter addressed to Gloucester during the reign of Henry VI. from an English merchant at Amiens, asking for his protection in matters commercial.[1091] The Duke had realised the strength of that new power which was arising in England, the power of the middle classes, the traders, and herein he foreshadowed the subsequent commercial policy of the first Yorkist King.

Gloucester began life as a soldier, he ended it as a politician. In the first capacity he showed ability to adapt himself to the new methods of warfare. His military skill was greater than subsequent historians have realised; he was a trusted Captain of Henry V.’s army, and was specially skilful in the management of a siege—the story of his attack on Cherbourg is a sufficient guarantee of his power in this sphere. But again his lack of persistency marred an otherwise promising talent, and as an independent general, save in short, detached expeditions, he was a dismal failure, coming near to be suspected of downright cowardice. But it is as a politician that he will be remembered, as the man who struggled with Cardinal Beaufort, the man whose ambition led him to demand what his fellows would not grant him. The world of politics was the scene of Gloucester’s greatest failure, for a failure his life certainly was. A man with more strength of character would have risen triumphant over the difficulties placed in his way, he would have secured the substance, if not the appearance of power. As it was, his ambition, his craft, his domineering instincts were called into play, and all the petty weaknesses of his character came to the front. We follow him from one poor shift to another, all aimed at satisfying his desire to be supreme over his rival. Herein lies the tragedy of his life. A man of great abilities, and destined by birth to take a prominent part in the affairs of his country, he nevertheless wasted his life in an endeavour to satisfy his personal ambitions. He cast aside the splendid opportunity to rise triumphant over opposition, and in a world of pigmies he failed to dominate them by his personality. He was not that great man who ‘aiming at a million misses an unit’; he was not even that low man who ‘goes on adding one to one.’ He spent his life and his abilities in aiming at the petty gratification of his lust for power, and in so doing failed to grasp the grand opportunity of being the saviour of the Lancastrian dynasty.

No comprehensive view of Gloucester’s policy can be attained without some reference to his relations with the various ecclesiastical bodies and the church problems of his time. Above all things, through thick and thin, in the midst of the vagaries of a lax life, and the uncanonical marriage that he made with Jacqueline, he was essentially orthodox. His seventeenth-century biographer spends much time in combating this opinion, and states that from his youth up he ‘favoured those that hold the opinion of Wickliff’;[1092] indeed at the end of the treatise it is evident, that its main object is to prove that its hero was the morning star of the Reformation. This contention is obviously absurd. ‘Amator virtuties et rei publicæ, sed principue clericorum promotor singularis’[1093] is the character given to Humphrey by a contemporary, who therein gave utterance to the opinion of his day. It could hardly be otherwise. As a boy the future Duke of Gloucester had been surrounded by those whose orthodoxy was part of their political programme. Henry IV. had snatched his crown from the head of Richard, who was strongly suspected of Lollardy, and he resolutely refused to comply with the movement in favour of remitting the statutes passed against the Lollards.[1094] His successor had adopted the rôle of God’s messenger to the wicked Frenchmen, and had kept up his part all through his campaign, so much so that in 1418 he had retired to Bayeux to keep Lent, whilst his brothers fought his battles for him. In earlier years, too, as Prince of Wales, he had played the missionary to heretical criminals.[1095] No wonder, then, that Humphrey adopted the orthodox attitude of his House, and was punctilious in the performance of his religious duties.[1096]

Gloucester was not only orthodox himself, but also a stern opponent of the Lollards, and more than once we have seen him following the example of his brother Bedford, who as Regent condemned Oldcastle to death, and executing summary justice on those who attacked the Church. In this he doubtless looked to the political as well as the religious side of the Lollard movement, but this only confirms the fact, that his private opinion and the interests of the dynasty alike impelled him to adopt a strictly orthodox attitude. The story of the condemnation of his wife may seem to some to contradict this statement, but whether Gloucester had any part in the witchcraft or not, it was not in those days impossible to combine the grossest superstition with the strictest orthodoxy. That Humphrey dabbled in alchemy and astrology there is no doubt, but he did so in company with the monks of the strictly orthodox House of St. Albans.[1097] It was after the disgrace of Eleanor Cobham that the University of Oxford wrote, that the greatest splendour attaching to his name came from his persistent suppressions of the enemies of Holy Church,[1098] and when dedicating his Commentary on Genesis to his patron, Capgrave did not hesitate to call him ‘the most glorious defender of the Faith and diligent extirpator of heresies.’[1099] Moreover, it was not only in England that Gloucester owned a reputation for orthodoxy, for when writing to him on behalf of Pier Candido Decembrio, the Archbishop of Milan, devoted about half his letter to bewailing the strife and dissension within the Church, ending with a fervent appeal that his correspondent would use his influence to restore peace, since he was known everywhere as the chiefest friend and preserver of Holy Church.[1100]

With regard to Humphrey’s marriage to a lady who already possessed a husband, we must remember that a very plausible and strictly legal case was made out against the legality of her earlier marriage. We have no evidence that an answer to Gloucester’s argument was ever filed, and the history of the proceedings at Rome, where Robert Sutton and Vincent Clement represented his interests,[1101] points to the fact that the legal aspect of the case was never given a thought, and that the whole matter was decided by intrigue and personal considerations. The long delay in giving a decision convicts Martin V. of neglecting the rights and wrongs of the case, for had it been a mere matter of law, no such delay was necessary.