Failloit qu’estranglé fust
Cuidant par celle estuve
Que la morte n’y parust.’
(Introduction to Georges Chastellain, Chronique (ed. Buchon), p. xlviii). The rhyming chronicle in which this is found is not extant in manuscript, but in a printed form bearing the date 1528; and appended to it a continuation by Jacques Le Bouvier. Chastellain died at least three years before Clarence, so that he could not have borrowed the idea from the latter event. Nevertheless, it seems too obvious that the circumstances of the two deaths have been confused with one another to lightly dismiss its possibility. Bouvier mentions the death of Clarence and the well-known legend, putting it quaintly as follows:
‘Le roi le fist noyer
Dedans mallevisee
Pours le moins ennuyer.’
(Introduction to Georges Chastellain, Chronique (ed. Buchon), p. liii), but none the less he may have interpolated the passage about Gloucester into his predecessor’s poem.
The theory of drowning, however, finds some support from an English authority. In a popular poem called ‘The Dyrge of the Commons of Kent,’ sung by the rebellious followers of Jack Cade in 1450, the following passage occurs:
‘Arrys up Thorp and Cantelowe, stand ye together