With this view, a parliament was summoned to meet at Bury St. Edmunds; and Gloucester, suspecting no snare, rode thither, with a small retinue, from the castle of Devizes. At first, nothing occurred to raise his apprehension; but, in a few days, to his surprise, he found himself arrested by the Constable of England, on the charge of conspiracy to murder the king and seize the crown.
Gloucester was never brought to trial; and it was said that Suffolk and the cardinal, finding that every body ridiculed the charge of conspiracy, caused "The Good Duke" to be assassinated. Appearances rather strengthened the popular suspicion. One evening, about the close of February, Gloucester was in perfect health: next morning he was found dead in bed. The indecent haste with which Suffolk seized upon the duke's estates was commented on with severity; and Margaret of Anjou shared the suspicion that had been excited.
The cardinal did not long survive the man who was believed to have been his victim. Early in the month of April, Beaufort died in despair, bitterly reproaching his riches, that they could not prolong his life; and Suffolk, now without a rival, so conducted himself as to incur the perfect hatred of the nation. The English people had a peculiar aversion to favorites, and remembered that while weak sovereigns, like the third Henry and the second Edward, had been ruined by such creatures, great kings, like the first and third Edward, had done excellently well without them. Suffolk was every day more and more disliked; and in 1449 his unpopularity reached the highest point.
The position of Suffolk now became perilous. Impatient at their Continental reverses, and exasperated at the loss of Rouen, the people exhibited a degree of indignation that was overwhelming, and the duke, after being attacked in both houses of Parliament, found himself committed to the Tower. When brought to the bar of the Lords, Suffolk, aware of his favor at court, threw himself on the mercy of the king; and, every thing having been arranged, the lord chancellor, in Henry's name, sentenced him to five years' banishment. The peers protested against this proceeding as unconstitutional; and the populace were so furious at the idea of the traitor escaping, that, on the day of his liberation, they assembled in St. Giles's Fields to the number of two thousand, with the intention of bringing him to justice. But Suffolk evaded their vigilance, and, at Ipswich, embarked for the Continent.
On the 2d of May, 1450, however, as the banished duke was sailing between Dover and Calais, he was stopped by an English man-of-war, described as the Nicholas of the Tower, and ordered to come immediately on board. As soon as Suffolk set foot on deck, the master of the Nicholas exclaimed, "Welcome, traitor;" and, for two days, kept his captive in suspense. On the third day, however, the duke was handed into a cock-boat, in which appeared an executioner, an axe, and a block; and the death's-man, having without delay cut off the head of the disgraced minister, contemptuously cast the headless trunk on the sand.
While England's sufferings, from disasters abroad and discord at home, were thus avenged on the queen's favorite, the king was regarded with pity and compassion. Henry, in fact, was looked upon as the victim of fate; and a prophecy, supposed to have been uttered by his father, was cited to account for all his misfortunes. The hero-king, according to rumor, had, on hearing of his son's birth at Windsor, shaken his head, and remarked prophetically, "I, Henry of Monmouth, have gained much in my short reign; Henry of Windsor shall reign much longer, and lose all. But God's will be done."
Margaret of Anjou shared her favorite's unpopularity; and, when she reached the age of twenty, the crown which had been placed on her head amid so much applause became a crown of thorns. Exasperated at the loss of their Continental conquests, Englishmen recalled to mind that she was a kinswoman and protégée of the King of France; and when it was known that, to secure her hand for their sovereign, Maine and Anjou had been surrendered, sturdy patriots described her as the cause of a humiliating peace, and, with bitter emphasis, denounced her as "The Foreign Woman."
These men were not altogether unreasonable. In fact, the case proved much worse for England than even they anticipated; and, ere long, France was gratified with a thorough revenge on the foe by whom she had been humbled to the dust, from having placed on the Plantagenets' throne a princess capable, by pride and indiscretion, of rousing a civil war that ruined the Plantagenets' monarchy.