A letter came from him three weeks later—a doubtful, uneasy letter, showing that the mind of the writer was by no means at rest concerning the future. The King had received him most graciously, and every one at Court was kind to him; but the sky was lowering ominously over the struggling Church of God—that little section of the Holy Catholic Church, on which the “mother and mistress of all churches” looked down with such supreme contempt. The waves of persecution were rising higher now than to the level of poor tailors like John Badby, or even of priestly graduates like William Sautre.
“Lady, I do you to wit,” wrote young Richard, “that as this day, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was put to his trial, and being convinced (convicted), was cast (sentenced); the beginning and end of whose offence is that he is a Lollard confessed, and hath harboured other men of the like opinions. And the said Lord is now close prisoner in the Tower of London, nor any of his kin ne lovers (friends) suffered to come anigh him. And at the Court it is rumoured that Sir William Hankeford (whom your Ladyship shall well remember) should be sent into our parts of South Wales, there to put down both heresy and sedition: which sedition, methinks, your Ladyship’s favour allowing, shall point at Sir Owain Glendordy (the name is usually spelt thus in contemporary records); and the heresy so called, both your Ladyship and I, your humble son and servant, do well know what it doth signify. So no more at this present writing; but praying our Lord that He would have your Ladyship in His good keeping, and that all we may do His good pleasure, I rest.”
Twelve days later came another letter, written in a strange hand. It was dated from Merton Abbey, in Surrey, was attested by the Abbot’s official cross and seal, and contained only a few lines. But never throughout her troubled life had any letter so wrung the heart of Constance Le Despenser. For those few formal lines brought the news that never again would her eyes be gladdened by her heart’s dearest treasure—that the Angel of Death had claimed for his own her bright, loving, fair-haired Richard.
No details have been handed down concerning that early and lamented death of the last Lord Le Despenser. We do not even know how the boy died—whether by the visitation of God in sudden illness, or by the fiat of Thomas de Arundel, making the twelfth murder which lay upon that black, seared soul. He was buried where he died, in the Abbey of Merton—far from his home, far from his mother’s tears and his father’s grave. It was always the lot of the hapless buds of the White Rose to be scattered in death.
There was only one person at Cardiff who did not mourn bitterly for its young Lord. To his sister Isabel, the inheritance to which she now became sole heiress—the change of her title from “Lady Isabel de Beauchamp” to “The Lady Le Despenser”—were amply sufficient compensation to outweigh the loss of a brother. But little Alianora wept bitterly.
“Ay me! what a break is this in our Lady’s line!” lamented Maude to Bertram. “God grant it the last, if His will is!”
It was only one funeral of a long procession.
The Issue Roll for Michaelmas, 1413 to 1414, bears two terribly significant entries—the expenses for the custody of Katherine Mortimer and her daughters, who were “in the King’s keeping”—and the costs of the funerals of the same persons, buried in Saint Swithin’s Church, London. This was the hapless daughter of Owain Glyndwr, the wife of Edmund Mortimer, uncle of the Earl of March. A mother and two or more daughters do not usually require burial together, unless they die of contagious disease. Of course that may have been the case; but the entry looks miserably like a judicial murder.
Stirring events followed in rapid succession. Lord Cobham escaped mysteriously from the Tower, and as mysteriously from an armed band sent to apprehend him by Abbot Heyworth of Saint Albans. Old Judge Hankeford made his anticipated visit to South Wales, and ceremoniously paid his respects to the Lady of Cardiff, whose associations with his name were not of the most agreeable order. With the new year came the unfortunate insurrection of the political Lollards, goaded to revolt partly by the fierce persecution, partly by a chivalrous desire to restore the beloved King Richard, whom many of them believed to be still living in Scotland. Wales and its Marches were their head-quarters. Thomas Earl of Arundel—son of a persecutor—was sent to the Principality at the head of an army, to “subdue the rebels;” Sir Roger Acton and Sir John Beverley, two of the foremost Lollards of the new generation, were put to death; and strict watch was set in every quarter for Lord Cobham, once more escaped as if by miracle.
And then suddenly came another death—this time by the distinct and awful sentence of God Almighty. He stooped to disconcert for a moment the puny plans of men who had set themselves in array against the Lord and His Christ. On the chief of all the persecutors, Sir Thomas de Arundel himself, the angel of God’s vengeance laid his irresistible hand. Cut off in the blossom of his sin—struck down in a moment by paralysis of the throat, which deprived him of all power of speech or swallowing—the dreaded Archbishop passed to that awful tribunal where his earthly eloquence was changed to silence and shame. He died, probably, not unabsolved; they could still lay the consecrated wafer upon the silent tongue, and touch with the chrism the furrowed brow and brilliant eyes: but he must have died unconfessed—a terrible thing to him, if he really believed himself the doctrines which he spent his life in forcing upon others.