Mediæval London, Volume 1: Historical & SocialBesant, Walter
History
Mediæval London, Volume 1: Historical & Social
Besant, Walter
London (England) -- History -- To 1500; London (England) -- Social life and customs -- To 1500
It is not stated whether they
accompanied her in her dolorous walk afoot. The Duchess was taken to
Chester, where she lived in retirement for the rest of her life.
Six years later, the King being now in the hands of William de la Pole,
Earl of Suffolk, the Duke of Gloucester met his end. He was arrested
at St. Edmundsbury on a charge of treason, and on the morrow was found
dead in his bed. People were frequently found dead in their beds in
these circumstances. To give some colour to the charge of treason five
of his people were accused of complicity, and condemned to the usual
mode of death. They were drawn to Tyburn, hanged for a few moments,
cut down alive, stripped naked and “marked with a knife in order to be
quartered.” That is to say, slight incisions were made all about the
body in order to guide the executioner’s hand. They were then, having
experienced nearly all the agonies of death by violence and torture,
unexpectedly pardoned by the Earl of Suffolk. Did the conductor of the
proceedings keep the pardon in his pocket and produce it just at the
critical moment when the knife had drawn those diagrams in lines of
blood round the victims’ naked bodies? or did the Earl send off the
pardon by special messenger who arrived just in time to save them? If
so, then the situation is one of the most dramatic in all the annals
of Tyburn. It is said that their clothes were kept by the hangman, and
that they all had to return, naked and bleeding as they were, to the
City, where they were received with great joy.
[Illustration: HENRY VI. (1421-1461)
From a portrait in Eton College.]
The popularity of the Duke in the City is attested by the memory of his
name which long survived in a proverb, “to dine with Duke Humphrey,”
_i.e._ to have no dinner at all. The name of the “Good Duke,” who was
buried at St. Albans, was given to a certain tomb in St. Paul’s, that
of Sir John Beauchamp, warden of the Cinque Ports, who died in 1358.
It became a custom for certain citizens—probably they were a club or
association of some kind—to meet at this tomb on St. Andrew’s Day in
the morning, and there, under pretence of holding offices under Duke
Humphrey, to conclude with a feast. Also, on Mayday, watermen, bearers
of tankards, and others, came to the tomb and strewed it with nuts
and sprinkled water upon it as if they too were the servants of Duke
Humphrey. This custom perished in the Great Fire, which burned up not
only tombs and churches and great houses but the memory of great men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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