Sentence being passed, the prisoner was remanded to the Tower. Edward seems, after all, to have shrunk from the open and public execution of the sentence which he had caused to be pronounced against his brother. No public execution took place, but in a short time it was announced that Clarence had died in prison. It was understood that assassins were employed to go privately into the room where he was confined and put him to death; and it is universally believed, though there is no positive proof of the fact, that Richard was the person who made the arrangements for the performance of this deed.[I] [Footnote I: There was a strange story in respect to the manner of Clarence's death, which was very current at the time, namely, that he was drowned by his brothers in a butt of Malmsey wine. But there is no evidence whatever that this story was true.] After Clarence was dead, and the excitement and anger of the quarrel had subsided in Edward's mind, he was overwhelmed with remorse and anguish at what he had done. He attempted to drown these painful thoughts by dissipation and vice. He neglected the affairs of his government, and his duties to his wife and family, and spent his time in gay pleasures with the ladies of his court, and in guilty carousings with wicked men. In these pleasures he spent large sums of money, wasting his patrimony and all his resources in extravagance and folly. Among other amusements, he used to form hunting-parties, in which the ladies of his court were accustomed to join, and he used to set up gay silken tents for their accommodation on the hunting-ground. He spent vast sums, too, upon his dress, being very vain of his personal attractions, and of the favor in which he was held by the ladies around him. The most conspicuous of his various female favorites was the celebrated Jane Shore. She was the wife of a respectable citizen of London. Edward enticed her away from her husband, and induced her to come and live at court with him. The opposite engraving, which is taken from an ancient portrait, gives undoubtedly a correct representation both of her features and of her dress. We shall hear more of this person in the sequel. [Illustration: JANE SHORE.] Things went on in this way for about two years, when at length war broke out on the frontiers of Scotland. Edward was too much engrossed with his gallantries and pleasures to march himself to meet the enemy, and so he commissioned Richard to go. Richard was very well pleased that his brother Edward should remain at home, and waste away in effeminacy and vice his character and his influence in the kingdom, while he went forth in command of the army, to acquire, by the vigor and success of his military career, that ascendency that Edward was losing. So he took the command of the army and went forth to the war.