We may well suspect that the murder of Suffolk by the sailors of the Kentish coast had for its prompting some thought of revenge for the death of the man who had held the command of Dover and the Cinque Ports. The people were beginning to find their voices, and when the Kentish men followed Jack Cade in his march on London, they invoked the wrongs of Duke Humphrey, as one of the reasons of their rebellion. They demanded the punishment of the false traitors ‘which counterfetyd and imagyned’ Gloucester’s death, and they declared the charges which had been brought against him at Bury to be false.[1032] Moreover, in one of the popular songs connected with this rising there is distinct mention of ‘two traitors ... Pulford and Hanley that drownyd ye Duke of Glocester,’[1033] a possible allusion to the two yeomen of the guard who were Humphrey’s custodians after his arrest, and who may have been more than suspected of being the instruments of his enemies’ treachery. It was at this time also that Lord Saye de Sele met his violent end at the hands of the mob, who accused him of many acts of treason ‘of whyche he knowlachyd of the dethe’ of Gloucester.[1034] As hostility to the existing regime increased, the belief in the murder grew proportionately, and became complete assurance on the triumph of the Yorkist party. Thus one of the political poems which paved the way for this turn of events declared roundly that ‘This Fox (Suffolk) at Bury slowe our grete gandere’ (Gloucester),[1035] and the manifesto which the Duke of York issued from Calais referred to ‘the pytyous shamefulle and sorrowfulle murther to all Englonde, of that noble werthy and Crystyn prince Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, the Kynges trew uncle, at Bury.’[1036]
A few years later a political song stated that
‘The good duc of Gloucestre, in the season
Of the Parlement at Bury beyng,
Was put to dethe,’[1037]
and the general acceptance of the fact of murder was so universal that under the year 1446 (O.S.) a compiler of historical notes, writing in the latter days of the fifteenth century, put down without comment or hesitation ‘interfectio ducis Gloucestriae.’[1038] Fabyan, another writer of this period,[1039] mentions the theory that Humphrey had been put to death as an accepted fact, adding that ‘dyverse reportes ar made, which I passe over.’[1040] Subsequent writers and historians have all followed this opinion,[1041] till within recent years some doubts have been cast on this universally accepted reading of the events.
We cannot accept the verdict of murder as conclusive without an examination into the facts of the case. Obviously it may have been more a political move than a firm conviction of the murder that induced the Yorkist party to throw out these accusations with regard to Gloucester’s end, but in this respect it cannot have been very fruitful, and it is stated in a manner which implies that the facts of the case were common property. To support the theory there is the strong hint of the Latin chronicler of Henry VI.’s reign, and the suspiciously judicial attitude of the author of the English Chronicle. The testimony of Wheathampsted as the friend of Gloucester deserves attention, yet we must remember that the late Abbot of St. Albans had passed entirely into private life in 1447, and did not emerge therefrom till four years later when he resumed the Abbacy. Moreover, his information was probably gained from Richard Fox of the House of St. Albans, a man who brought no critical power to bear on his narrative, and who merely recorded the official account of the Duke’s last illness; all personal access to the prisoner had been forbidden save to the royal officials, who had him in charge, and at the best Fox must have recorded what he was told at the time by those who had the care of his master. Evidence of a more definite and less refutable kind is the statement of John Hardyng. By him the illness is given a definite name, and allusion is made to earlier attacks. This is supported by a report on the Duke’s health made some twenty-three years earlier by his physician, which describes him in a weak state of health, though the details of the report do no more than point to certain excesses in his manner of living, and a temporary lack of health, and do not in any way suggest a hopelessly decayed constitution, which some would deduce therefrom.[1042] Only once do we hear of the Duke suffering from illness, and the activity of his life, in which he combined the avocations of a soldier, a politician, and a man of letters, in itself refutes the suggestion. Humphrey showed no signs of bodily decay; he was perfectly well, and able to make a long journey on the eve of his imprisonment, and if his health was so undermined at the age of thirty-four, how was it that he survived to more than complete his fifty-seventh year, no mean age at that time? He survived all his brothers; one died in battle, Henry at the age of thirty-six succumbed to an attack of camp fever, Bedford only attained his forty-sixth year, while his grandfather, John of Gaunt, who was looked on as an old man for his time, lived but one year longer than himself, and his father only reached the age of forty-seven. Indeed of all his relations Cardinal Beaufort alone lived to be really old, though his exact age is uncertain. The statement of Hardyng must not, therefore, be considered as entirely corroborated by the physician’s report, and by itself it stands as a statement of no more value than those which roundly assert that Gloucester was murdered, for the chronicle was written about the year 1463 by a man who had served the House of Lancaster from the battle of Shrewsbury onward. Perhaps the strangest of all evidences on this point is that given by Chastellain, the Burgundian chronicler, who wrote Le Temple de Bocace for Margaret of Anjou when in 1463 she retired into exile in the county of Bar. In this collection of stories dealing with the sad fate of many famous people, a sort of continuation of Boccaccio’s Latin work which was introduced to English readers by John Lydgate’s The Falls of Princes, a terrible picture of Humphrey’s violent end is drawn, and the methods used to give the appearance of a natural death are described. When we remember that Margaret was a prominent member of the faction at whose bidding such a deed must have been performed, the version of the story here given is the more startling.[1043]
Apart from all statements of chroniclers, whether contemporary or otherwise, there lies the probability of the case. Gloucester was in the way of the plans of Suffolk and Margaret; he had already been accused of treason, an accusation which might be hard to prove; armed preparations had been made against him; he was under arrest at the time of his death. More important than this is the way he was isolated from his followers; his chief retainers were arrested, and his personal servants were removed from attendance on him,[1044] and thus the officers appointed by his enemies could arrange what they liked. The way his body was exposed after death to prove that no violence had cut short his days was itself an invitation to suspicion, and this negative method of proof was not unknown in the cases of other royal victims of political murder. The whole story of the case supports the supposition that some kind of slow poison was used, a method of assassination quite possible under the circumstances, and for which it would almost seem that provision had been made. Murder, therefore, is the most probable explanation of the Duke’s sudden demise, his relapse into a comatose state might very well be the result of a poison taken with his food, and when an unscrupulous party so desired his death, the conclusion is obvious.
‘Who finds the partridge in the puttock’s nest,