The Duke of Clarence, by all his services in deserting Warwick, had never been able to regain the King's friendship, which he had forfeited by his former confederacy with that nobleman. He was still regarded at court as a man of a dangerous and a fickle character; and the imprudent openness and violence of his temper, though they rendered him much less dangerous, tended extremely to multiply his enemies and to incense them against him. Among others, he had had the misfortune to give displeasure to the Queen herself, as well as to his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, a prince of the deepest policy, of the most unrelenting ambition, and the least scrupulous in the means which he employed for the attainment of his ends. A combination between these potent adversaries being secretly formed against Clarence, it was determined to begin by attacking his friends. He was alarmed when he found acts of tyranny exercised on all around him; but, instead of securing his own life against the present danger by silence and reserve, he was open and loud in justifying the innocence of his friends and in exclaiming against the iniquity of their prosecutors. The King, highly offended with his freedom, or using that pretence against him, committed him to the Tower, 1478, summoned a parliament, and tried him for his life. Clarence was pronounced guilty by the peers. The House of Commons was no less slavish and unjust; they both petitioned for the execution of the Duke and afterward passed a bill of attainder against him. The only favor which the King granted him after his condemnation was to leave him the choice of his death; and he was privately drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Tower--a whimsical choice, which implies that he had an extraordinary passion for that liquor. The Duke left two children by the elder daughter of the Earl of Warwick: a son, created an earl by his grandfather's title, and a daughter, afterward Countess of Salisbury. Both this Prince and Princess were also unfortunate in their end, and died violent deaths--a fate which, for many years, attended almost all the descendants of the royal blood of England. There prevails a report that a chief source of the violent prosecution of the Duke of Clarence, whose name was George, was a current prophecy that the King's son should be murdered by one the initial letter of whose name was G. It is not impossible but, in those ignorant times, such a silly reason might have some influence; but it is more probable that the whole story is the invention of a subsequent period, and founded on the murder of these children by the Duke of Gloucester.