And synge dies illa dies ire,
Pulford and Hanley that drownyd ye Duke of Glocestar
As two traitors shall synge ardentes anime.’
(Three Fifteenth-century Chronicles, Camden Series p. 103.) It is possible that from these two legends we can get an indication of what nature Humphrey’s end really was. The story of Clarence’s drowning can have no share in suggesting the earlier poem of Jack Cade’s followers, and here may be the solution of the problem which has puzzled modern historians. It must be remembered, however, that in another work, already cited in the text, Chastellain gives the more usual story of Gloucester’s murder, when he describes his death to a red-hot spit thrust into his body. (Chastellain, Œuvres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, vii. 87.) In both cases, however, he lays stress on the fact that the manner of death was devised so as to prevent the appearance of murder.
APPENDIX G
GLOUCESTER’S ARMS, BADGES, AND SEALS
I. ARMS
Like his brothers, the Duke of Gloucester adopted the arms of England and France quarterly, but whereas their arms were differentiated with various labels, his own were surmounted with a border argent (Garter Types, College of Arms). At this period the arms of France, as borne by the English Kings, were changed from ‘azure semée of fleur de lys or’ to ‘azure three fleur de lys or,’ and this is the only difference which marks Humphrey’s arms from those of a predecessor in the Gloucester title, Thomas of Woodstock. Nicholas Upton, a follower and friend of Humphrey, describes his arms as follows: ‘Portat Integra Arma Francie et Anglie Quarteriata, Cum Una Bordura Gobonata De Argento et Nigro ... Il port lez Armes de Fraunce et D’engleterre quarterlez ovesque ung bordure gobone d’argent et d’asor’ (Nicholaus Uptonus, De Studio Militari, London, 1654, p. 238). This is not strictly accurate, as the border was argent only. These arms were carved on the Duke’s tomb at St. Albans with their supporters, antelopes gorged and chained, and the shields were alternately ‘ensigned’ with his ducal coronet on his cap of estate, and with his crest, ‘a Lyon passant guardant crowned and accolled.’ This part of the tomb is so mutilated that all the crests are gone; and only fragments of the other heraldic adornments remain (cf. Sandford, Genealogical History, p. 307; Gough, Sepulchral Monuments (London, 1776), vol. ii. part III. p. 142).
Gloucester does not seem to have altered his armorial bearings after his marriage to Jacqueline of Hainault, for a seal attached to a charter in the archives of Mons seems to be the same one he had hitherto used (Cartulaire, iv. 440). After his marriage with Eleanor Cobham, however, he impaled the Cobham arms with his own, of which we have two recorded instances. In the east window of the church of Cobham in Kent there stood his arms ‘in two several places, dimediated with those of the Duchess Eleanor Cobham’ (Sandford, Genealogical History, p. 308), and they appeared in a similar form in a window of Greenwich Church before its destruction. A reproduction of this east window is to be found as the headpiece to the preface of the old catalogue of manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Catalogi Librorum Manuscriptorum, Oxford, 1697), and the following description thereof was written in 1695: ‘An Helmet and crest with Mantles, and the Antelopes holding it up with Humphrey Duke of Gloucester kneeling, and his Arms, scilt. quarterly France and England within a bordure argent on one side, and the same arms impaling Cobham, viz., Gules on a Cheveron or, three Estoils sable, on the other side, a good distance from him; stand all in one of the south windows near the Belfry of Greenwich Church’ (Tanner MS., 24, f. 107). The manuscript also contains a rough drawing of the window, as is also the case in an Ashmole record written about 1659, which gives the same information, though at less length (Ashmole MS., 1121, f. 228). Humphrey, it will be noticed, used as one of his supporters an antelope, which had been borne by Henry IV., and had appeared on the trappings of his horse in the Lists of Coventry (Tyler, Henry of Monmouth, p. 30). It appears from a manuscript in the Heralds’ College that his supporters were to the Dexter a Greyhound argent collared and leashed or, to the Sinister an Heraldic Antelope argent Ducally gorged and chained or (Heralds’ College MS., 14, f. 105, B.).