On Bramham Moor, Yorkshire, on Sunday, February 19th, 1408, Sir Thomas
Rokeby, high sheriff of the county, fighting for Henry IV., completely
defeated an army raised by the Earl of Northumberland, and other nobles
who had revolted against the king. The Earl was slain on the field, and
his chief associate, Lord Bardolf, was mortally wounded and taken
prisoner, but died before he could be removed from the scene of the
battle. The heads of these two noblemen were cut off, and that of the Earl
placed upon a hedge-stake, and carried in a mock procession through the
chief towns on the route to London, and finally found a resting-place on
London Bridge. He was popular amongst his friends, and they greatly
grieved at his death. It was indeed a sore trial to those who had loved
him well to see his mutilated head, full of silver hairs, carried
through the streets of London, a gruesome exhibition for a heartless
public. The head of Lord Bardolf was also spiked on London Bridge.
Some passages in the life of Eleanor Cobham, first mistress and afterwards
wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, furnish an insight into the
superstitions of the period. She was tried in 1441 for treason and
witchcraft. The chief charge against her was that she and her accomplices
had made a waxen image of the reigning monarch, Henry VI., and placed it
before a slow fire, believing that as the wax melted the king's life would
waste away. She was found guilty and had to do public penance in the
streets of London, and was imprisoned for life in the Isle of Man. Three
persons who had assisted her crimes suffered death. One Margaret Jourdain,
of Eye, near Westminster, was burned in Smithfield. Southwell, a priest,
died before execution in the Tower, and Sir Roger Bolinbroke, a priest,
and reputed necromancer, was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, and
his head was fixed on London Bridge. The Duchess, in the event of Henry's
death, expected that the Duke of Gloucester, as nearest heir of the
house of Lancaster, would be crowned king.
The details of Jack Cade's insurrection are well-known, and perhaps a copy
of an inscription on a roadside monument at Heathfield, near Cuckfield in
Sussex, will answer our present purpose:--
Near this spot was slain the notorious rebel
JACK CADE,
By Alexander Iden, Sheriff of Kent, A.D. 1450.
His body was carried to London, and his head
fixed on London Bridge.
This is the success of all rebels, and this
fortune chanceth even to traitors.
_Hall's Chronicle._
In 1496 two heads were placed on London Bridge; one was Flammock's, a
lawyer, and the other that of a farmer's who had suffered death at Tyburn,
for taking a leading part in a great Cornish insurrection.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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