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who knew that he had intended to marry his son to a daughter of the earl of Warwick. For the cession of Anjou and Maine, if it were a crime, he was not more responsible than the other lords of the council, or the other peers of the parliament: since the first had authorized, the second had approved the measure. The remaining charges, he contended, were frivolous and vexatious, resting on no other proof than the reports raised by his enemies, or on acts of the council, emanating from many of his judges equally with himself. The second impeachment he did not notice. '

nished.

But whatever might be the guilt or innocence of He is baSuffolk, it was evident that his enemies thirsted for his blood: nor would the commons grant any supply till their cry for vengeance had been appeased. It became therefore the policy of the court to devise the means of satisfying them without endangering his life. He was again called before the king and lords; and the March 17. chancellor, observing that he had not claimed the privilege of the peerage, asked if he had any thing more to say in his defence. It was his hope, he replied, that he had sufficiently established his innocence he had shewn that the charges against him were false, and some of them impossible : he had denied the facts, the times, the places, and the conversations: he repeated that he was as ignorant of them as « the child still in « the mother's womb;» and therefore threw himself without reserve on the will of his sovereign. The chancellor immediately resumed : « Sir, since you do not put yourself on your peerage for trial, the king will << not hold you either guilty or innocent of the treasons with which you have been charged: but with respect

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Rot. Parl. v. 182.

Leaves the kingdom.

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<< to the second impeachment, not as a judge advised by the lords, but as one to whose controul you have voluntarily submitted, he commands you to quit this « land before the first of May, and forbids you ever to « set your foot during the five next years on his domi«< nions either in this kingdom or beyond the sea. » The lords immediately protested by the mouth of the constable, the viscount Beaumont, that this was the act of the king alone, and should form no precedent to bar them or their heirs of the privilege of the peerage. The parliament was soon after prorogued, to meet again in a month's time in the city of Leicester. '

During these proceedings the public mind had been kept in a continual ferment: and, as soon as the king's decision was published, the most incredible reports were circulated, inflammatory libels were affixed to the doors of the churches, and the life of the duke was March 18. openly threatened. To intercept him on his discharge from confinement two thousand persons assembled in

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St. Giles's but though they surprised his servants, the object of their hatred fortunately escaped, and April 30. proceeded to his estates in the county of Suffolk 3. On the day fixed for his departure, he assembled the knights and esquires of the neighbourhood, and in their presence swore on the sacrament that he

I

Ibid. 182, 183. If the king ordered this judgment to be pronounced of his own authority, it was certainly illegal: but it appears to have been in consequence of a compromise between the two parties. Wyrcest. says it was with the consent of parliament (p. 468): and the continuator of the history of Croyland hints, that Suffolk's enemies intended to make away with him before he could leave the realm. Insidias ei ponentes ad tempus, p. 525.

2

Rym. xi. 268...

3 Will. Wyrcest. 468.

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was innocent of the crimes with which he had been charged by his enemies'. At the same time he wrote to his son a most eloquent and affectionate letter, laying down rules for his conduct, and inculcating in the most forcible terms the duty of piety towards God, loyalty to the king, and obedience to his mother. Whoever has read this affecting composition, will find it difficult to persuade himself that the writer could have been either a false subject or a bad man. He sailed from Ipswich with two small vessels; and sent a pinnace before him to inquire, whether he might be permitted to land in the harbour of Calais. But the pinnace April 30. was captured by a squadron of men of war: and immediately the Nicholas of the Tower, one of the largest ships in the navy, bore down on the duke's vessels. He was ordered on board, and received on deck by the Andis murcaptain with the ominous salutation of « Welcome, « traitor ». It is probable that a messenger was sent on shore to announce his capture, and require instructions: for the duke remained two nights in the Nicholas, during which he spent much of his time in conversation with his confessor, wrote a long letter to the king, and underwent a mock trial before the sailors, by whom he was condemned to suffer death. On the second morning May 2. a small boat came alongside, in which were a block, a rusty sword, and an executioner: the duke was lowered into it and the man, telling him that he should die like a knight, at the sixth stroke smote of his head. His remains were placed on the sands near Dover, and watched by the sheriff of Kent, till the king ordered them to be delivered to his widow, by whom they were

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'Will. Wyrcest. 469.

It is published among Fenn's original Letters, i. 33.

dered at sea.

Insurrec

tion.

interred in the collegiate church of Wingfield in Suffolk.'

From the preceding narrative it is evident that there existed a party, which had sworn the destruction of this unfortunate nobleman. Not deterred by the failure of the prosecution in parliament, nor by the escape of their victim from St. Giles's, they even dispatched an armed force to assassinate him at sea. But of the leaders of this party we know no more than that they were persons of the first consideration in the state and of their immediate, motives we are entirely ignorant. By some writers the murder has been attributed to disappointed ambition, which could not brook the ascendency of the favourite in the councils of his sovereign : by others to the policy of the duke of York, who deemed it necessary to remove so faithful a minister, before he should openly take any measures to place himself on the throne. The last hypothesis has been thought to derive confirmation from the fact, that some of the noblemen, who afterwards espoused his interests, came to the parliament at Leicester, accompanied by hundreds of armed

2 men.

The news of this tragical event plunged the king and queen into the deepest distress: in a few days they were awakened from their sorrow by the danger which threatened themselves. Whether the men who had taken the life of Suffolk had any part in kindling the flame

'Will. Wyrcest. 469. 477. Croyl. cont. 525. Two letters, apud Fenn, i. 38-45. It may be observed that there are many mistakes in the remarks of the editor on these letters.

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Upon the iiiith day of this monthe the erle of Deveneschire

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my lord of Warrewyke wt. iiiic. and moo. Leycestr the vi. day of May. » Fenn's Letters, i. 44. 46.

which now burst forth, or whether it sprung spontaneously from the irritation of the public mind, it is difficult to determine. Intelligence had just arrived of the defeat of sir Thomas Kyriel; the commons in several counties threatened to rise and reform the government; and the people of Kent were goaded to madness by repeated rumours of the signal vengeance which Henry had determined to inflict on them, for having furnished the ships which intercepted his friend. It was a crisis most favourable to the views of artful and designing May 28. men and an Irish adventurer, whose real name was John Cade, but who had assumed that of Mortimer, cousin to the duke of York, seized the moment to unfurl the standard of insurrection. At the head of twenty June 17. thousand men he marched to Blackheath. Henry instantly dissolved the parliament, and summoning his forces advanced to London'. Many messages passed between June 20. the king, and the feigned Mortimer, who delivered the wishes of his followers in two papers, entitled << the

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complaints of the commons of Kent», and « the re<< quest by the captain of the great assembly in Kent ». The complaints stated that the king proposed to punish Complaints the men of Kent for a murder of which they were not mands of guilty that he the revenues of the gave away and took for his own maintenance the goods of the people that he excluded from his council the lords of his own blood, to make place for men of low rank, who oppressed his subjects: that the sheriffs, undersheriffs, and collectors of taxes, were guilty of intolerable extortions: that in the election of knights of the shire, the free choice of the people were superseded by the influence of the lords: and that numerous delays 'Will. Wyrcest. 469, 470.

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