417 f. Kent and Salisbury were put to death by the populace at Cirencester, and Despenser at Bristol. The earl of Huntingdon was captured and irregularly executed in Essex.
420 ff. For the feeling in London cp. Chronique de la Traïson, pp. 92, 93.
432 ff. The statement here is not that Richard deliberately starved himself to death on hearing of the failure of the rising and the death of his associates, but that he lost hope and courage and could not eat, ‘quod vix si prandia sumit, Aut si sponte bibit vinum,’ and that he desired the death which came to him. This is not an incredible account, and it is fairly in accordance with the best evidence. Most of the contemporary authorities give starvation as the cause, or one of the causes, of death, and the account of it given in our text agrees with that of Walsingham (ii. 245), Annales Henrici IV, p. 330, Eulog. Hist. contin. iii. 387. The Monk of Evesham mentions this commonly accepted story, but thinks it more probable that he was starved involuntarily: ‘Aliter tamen dicitur et verius, quod ibidem fame miserabiliter interiit,’ and this is also the assertion of the Percies’ proclamation (Harding’s Chronicle, ed. Ellis, p. 352). Creton says,
‘Apres le roy de ces nouvelles,
Qui ne furent bonnes ne belles,
En son cuer print de courroux tant,
Que depuis celle heure en avant
Oncques ne menga ne ne but,
Ains covint que la mort recut,
Comme ilz dient; maiz vrayement