But may imagine now the bird was dead,
Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?
Even so suspicious is this tragedy.’[1045]
Whatever opinion is held with regard to the immediate cause of Humphrey’s death, it is beyond doubt that his destruction was planned, if not carried out. On Suffolk and Lord Saye de Sele falls the chief suspicion, and in the latter’s case the count is strengthened by the fact that he received on the very next day after the death of the Duke some of the offices which the victim had held.[1046] ‘Pole’ that ‘fals traytur’ was openly accused of part responsibility,[1047] and Fabyan says, ‘The grudge and murmour of ye people ceased not agayne the Marquis of Suffolke, for the deth of the good duke of Gloucester, of whos murdre he was specially susspected.‘[1048] Foreign chroniclers all attribute the murder to the ‘faction of Suffolk,’[1049] and in this indictment the Queen cannot be excepted. She, together with Suffolk and Lord Saye de Sele, shared in the lands and emoluments which reverted to the King on his uncle’s demise,[1050] and girl though she was, she had a predominating influence among those who had allied themselves against Gloucester. One more fact both points to the existence of a determination to make away with their rival on the part of the dominant party of the Court, and strengthens the suggestion of murder; so complete were the preparations in view of the death, that on the very day that Gloucester died, a grant was made of his property to Henry’s foundation of King’s College, Cambridge,[1051] and further grants of the same kind were made on the following day.[1052]
Final proof of the care with which Gloucester’s death was organised is to be found in the treatment meted out to his followers, of whom in all forty-two were arrested and imprisoned in thirteen different castles.[1053] On July 8[1054] five of these men, including the Duke’s natural son Arthur, were arraigned before Suffolk at Deptford and condemned to be drawn to Tyburn, hanged, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered for plotting treason against the King. The charge against them was that they had held a seditious meeting at Greenwich on February 7 last, where they had agreed to kill King Henry VI., and place Gloucester and his imprisoned wife upon the throne. Four days later, having collected a large body of men, they had marched out towards Bury, hoping that the country would join them.[1055] Besides this definite charge, rumours were spread abroad that Humphrey had been organising a rebellion in his own favour in Wales,[1056] a legend based on nothing more substantial than the fact that many of the imprisoned retainers bore Welsh names,[1057] but sufficiently elaborated to induce the Parliament at Bury to re-enact ‘all statutes made against Welshmen.’[1058]
The absurdity of the whole story is obvious. A great army this escort of eighty men to start a rebellion of all England, and to bring about the removal of the King! There is not one shred of evidence to prove even the likelihood of such a plot. We are definitely told that Humphrey came to Bury with a clear conscience,[1059] and had his intentions been treasonable he would not have entered the town after the warning he received from the King’s message. He made not the slightest show of resistance, save, if we can except the statement of a foreign chronicler, that he used strong language to his jailers about those who dominated the King.[1060] If the plot had been hatched on February 7, why was it that Suffolk had collected an army of 60,000 men at Bury some time before the opening of Parliament on February 10, and had gone through the form of taking elaborate precautions for the safety of the King on his way thither? The details of the trial of these retainers also give cause for suspicion, for no office that Suffolk held entitled him to sit as judge at Deptford, and he was probably acting under a special writ, issued to ensure the condemnation of the prisoners. The whole proceeding was meant to throw dust in the eyes of those who might question the manner of Gloucester’s death, and to remove the possibility of any one championing the fallen Duke, who was thus proved to have died with the guilt of treason on his conscience. Having established his case, Suffolk tried to win favour with the people by appearing at the execution and producing a reprieve from the King. Though already strung up at Tyburn, when the reprieve was read they were promptly cut down, and their lives were saved.[1061] They and the rest of the prisoners were set at large, and their goods were returned to them.[1062] Had there been any truth in the charge for which they were condemned, the men would certainly not have been reprieved, and this bid for popularity proved fruitless, for in spite of it ‘the grudge and murmur of ye people ceased not agayne the Marquys of Suffolke.’[1063] Violence was not one of Humphrey’s crimes; he had appealed to force of arms once only, and then it was merely to act on the defensive. This imagined plot was totally at variance with all his former conduct. Plot there was, but it was formed by Suffolk and his partisans to destroy their rival, whose death becomes still more suspicious in the light of their vain attempt at justification.
EFFECTS OF GLOUCESTER’S DEATH
With Gloucester dead, and his memory tainted by an accusation of treason, Margaret and Suffolk thought they had secured safety for their plans and security for the House of Lancaster. But this was far from being the case. Besides casting an indelible slur on the dynasty which had connived at the disgrace and removal of one of its own representatives, they had inaugurated a period of strife and disaster that ended only with the triumph of the rival claimants to the throne of England. A foreign observer of English politics dated all the disturbances which followed from the time of Gloucester’s death,[1064] and an English chronicler wrote: ‘Thus began the trouble of Engelonge for the deth of this noble duke. All the comyns of this reame began for to murmure, and were not content.’[1065] A political ballad writer, too, saw how things had gone when he wrote, that since the tragedy of Bury
‘Hath been in Engeland, gret mornyng with many a scharp schoure