Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester: A Biography

by Kenneth Hotham Vickers

Though defeated in the matter of foreign policy, Gloucester was still a power to be considered, for he was an active member of the King’s Council,[923] and possessed no inconsiderable following in the country. To pacify his anger at his reverse he had been made Chief-Justice of South Wales in February,[924] a post which was no sinecure owing to the disturbed state of that district, and which necessitated a visit thither in August and September, when assizes were held in Cardigan and Carmarthen. Even when most in disfavour at Court, use was made of Humphrey’s well-known ability in the suppressing of disturbances, and a special grant of two hundred marks for his exertions in this direction was given him.[925] At this time, too, his influence was instrumental in procuring the renewal of the charter to St. Albans Abbey,[926] and there was even some idea of employing him in the French wars. At any rate, the Council of Rouen was informed that he was shortly to be sent over to France, and his non-appearance created great discontent in the Duchy of Normandy.[927] That the Council ever seriously contemplated such a step must remain very doubtful, especially when we find that in the beginning of the next year he was superseded in his Calais command by his namesake Humphrey, Earl of Stafford.[928] Nevertheless his influence was sufficient to secure the appointment of his friend the Duke of York to be Lieutenant-General of France and Normandy for five years, though no steps were taken to enable him to take up his command immediately.[929] Humphrey therefore, in spite of his decreased importance, had some share in the management of the kingdom, but his lack of perseverance and his impetuous nature had caused him to throw away the natural advantages of his position. His power had appreciably diminished in the four years which had passed since his invasion of Flanders. The fire had gone out of his life, and he was now to receive the most severe check he had ever experienced. His wife Eleanor had never been a help to him in his political ambitions, now she was to expose him to the barbed shafts of his enemies.

The old order was passing away in fifteenth-century England, yet there was very little of the modern spirit in the mental attitude of the majority of Englishmen. It came, therefore, as no surprise when it was rumoured abroad that proceedings were to be taken against certain practisers of the Black Art, who had been conspiring to kill the young King by means of incantations and witchcraft. The age was superstitious, and only a year earlier than this crowds had surrounded the scene of a Lollard burning, and the people had offered money and waxen images before the ashes of the victim, Richard Wyche, whom they considered to be a saint.[930] The monkish chronicler Walsingham, writing a few years later, gravely describes the appearance of the Devil in a church in Essex, and the thunderbolt which struck the building while the evil spirit was there,[931] whilst still more circumstantial is a story told by the St. Albans chronicler. A Lollard tiler was burnt at Waldon in 1430, and afterwards a neighbour picked up one of his bones, which had not been consumed by the flames. With this bone he accidentally pricked his finger; his hand and arm immediately swelled up, and his life was only saved by the prompt removal of the limb—a sign of remarkable vindictiveness on the part of that Lollard, says our chronicler.[932] Public opinion was therefore quite prepared to turn the full force of its indignation on those who had invoked the powers of darkness to procure the death of the young King, who had won his way to the hearts of his subjects, though he was never able to command their respect.

The accused were two clerks, Roger Bolingbroke, an Oxford priest, and Thomas Southwell, canon of St. Stephen’s, Westminster. The accusation of using the ‘crafte of egremauncey’ against the life of the King was prepared against Roger as the principal, and Thomas as the assister and abettor. Both men were cast into the Tower, and on Sunday, July 16,[933] the former was brought out, and placed in the midst of his instruments of magic on a platform erected in St. Paul’s Churchyard, where, after the sermon, he abjured the Black Art. Such a public penance drew men’s attention to the matter, but the real interest in the case was not revealed till three days later the news got abroad that Roger, under examination before the King’s Council, had confessed that he had been instigated to the course of action in which he had been discovered by no less a person than the Duchess of Gloucester, who that same day had fled to sanctuary at Westminster.[934] At once the matter assumed a political importance it would never have reached had the accusation been confined to two insignificant priests. Roger was known to have some connection with the household of Gloucester, and his statement that the Duchess had instructed him to find by divination ‘to what estate in life she should come,’ together with the consequent implication that she had sought to procure the death of the King by witchcraft, and thus procure for her husband the crown which she desired to share with him, gained ready credence.

1441] DISGRACE OF DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER

Steps were immediately taken to bring Eleanor to justice, for sanctuary was no protection for the crimes of heresy and witchcraft of which she was now accused. On July 22 she was cited to appear before the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishops of Winchester and Salisbury, and though she essayed to find safety in flight down the river, she was captured while making the attempt, and brought before her judges on the 25th in the Chapel of St. Stephen at Westminster. Many charges of heresy and witchcraft were laid against her, and Roger, brought from the Tower for the purpose, gave evidence. The charges were considered so serious that a remand was ordered till October 21, when she was to appear again before the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the meanwhile she was committed to the Castle of Leeds in Kent under the care of Sir John Stiward and Sir John Stanley, whither she was removed on August 11.[935]

While active proceedings were thus postponed, a special commission, on which the Earls of Stafford, Suffolk, and Huntingdon, together with Lords Cromwell, Fanhope, and Hungerford, and certain judges of both benches served, was appointed to inquire into all matters of sorcery; and before them Bolingbroke and Southwell were arraigned together with Eleanor as an accomplice. Herein we may trace an effort on the part of Gloucester’s enemies to bring his wife into the clutches of a secular court.

At this trial yet another accomplice was produced in the person of the ‘Witch of Eye,’ whose sorceries Eleanor had long used, and from whom, it was said, she had procured love-potions wherewith to ensnare the affections of Humphrey. Before this court had come to any decision, interest shifted to the Ecclesiastical Court, before which Eleanor was brought to stand an independent trial on October 21. Her judges here were the Bishops of London, Lincoln, and Norwich, commissioned thereto by Archbishop Chichele, who excused himself from further participation in the trial; the prosecution was in the hands of Adam Moleyns, the clerk of the King’s Council. Moleyns read out an exhaustive list of accusations, to the gravest of which the Duchess returned an uncompromising denial, without, however, denying her guilt on all the counts, that is, she acknowledged recourse to the Black Art, but denied the treasonable encompassing of the King’s death. The trial was prorogued to the 23rd, when witnesses were heard and the verdict of guilty returned, since she refused to contradict the evidence brought against her, and ‘submitted only to the correction of the Bishops.’ Four days later she abjured her heresies and witchcraft before the Bishops, who ordered her to appear before them on November 9, when sentence would be passed.[936]

The punishment that was ordered was no light one, and consisted of public penances through London on three different days. On Monday, November 13, she came down the river on her barge to Temple Stairs, and thence, by way of Temple Bar, she walked on foot to St. Paul’s, ‘openly barehede with a Keverchef on her hede beryng,’ and ‘with a meke and a demure countenance’—so the Bishops ordained—bearing in her hand a taper of two pounds in weight, which she offered at the High Altar. On two subsequent days similar pilgrimages were made to different churches. On the following Wednesday she landed at Swan Stairs in Upper Thames Street, and by way of Bridge Street, Gracechurch Street, and Leadenhall she came to Christchurch, Aldgate, whilst on the Friday she landed at Queenhithe, ‘and so forth she went unto Chepe, and so to Seynt Mighell in Cornhull.’ On each occasion the Mayor of London with the Sheriffs and craftes of the City met her at the place of landing, and escorted her along the road of penance.[937] Of her companions in misfortune, ‘Margery Jourdemain,’ known as the ‘Witch of Eye,’ was burnt at Smithfield; Bolingbroke underwent the full sentence of hanging, beheading, and quartering; whilst Southwell found a mercifully early death in prison.[938] On the completion of her penance, Eleanor was committed to prison for life under the care of Sir Thomas Stanley[939] and Sir John Stiward. At first she was confined in her original place of detention, Leeds Castle in Kent,[940] but early in the New Year she was removed to Chester,[941] whence she was taken in October or December 1443 to Kenilworth.[942] In July 1446 Sir Thomas Stanley was directed to take her to the Isle of Man,[943] and in the following year we find her a prisoner somewhere in Wales,[944] probably in Flint Castle, where she died after eighteen long years’ imprisonment.[945] Her confinement was probably no more than honourable detention, for she was provided with a large number of personal servants, and with a private allowance of one hundred marks a year.[946] Her relations with her jailers seem to have been quite cordial, and to at least one of them she made a present of one of her trinkets,[947] but as a personality she had passed from history, and as an individual her rank was not recognised, for she is described in all official documents as ‘Eleanor, lately called Duchess of Gloucester.’[948]

The disgrace of Gloucester’s wife is a strange story, and in spite of the ample evidence to be found in contemporary chroniclers, it must be accepted with some reserve. It was the cause célèbre, of the period, and even chroniclers who pass over the years with the scantiest summary of events pause awhile to tell of the fall of a great lady. Yet not once is Humphrey mentioned, and it is only a sixteenth-century historian who tells us that ‘the Duke of Gloucester toke all these thyngs paciently and said little.’[949] Nevertheless there is a strong presumption that Humphrey did make some efforts to save his second wife, in spite of his base desertion of Jacqueline, a presumption which is fortified by an edict forbidding interference with the proceedings against Eleanor,[950] and by the abstention of Chichele—Gloucester’s friend and ally—from taking part in the later proceedings. Moreover, the greatest care was taken to guard the prisoner on her way to the scene of her confinement, as though some effort at rescue was feared.[951]