Then said Sir John, being thus urged at last after deliberation taken, he said, It is the least thing that I account of to be judged by you as of man's judgment, and again he began to talk, but nothing to the purpose until the Chief Justice commanded him again to answer finally, and to answer them if he could, why he should not suffer death according to his desert. To which he stoutly answered that he had no judge amongst them, so long as his liege Lord King Richard was alive and in his realm of Scotland, which answer when he had made, because there needed no further witness, he was then presently censured to be drawn and hanged on a gallows and then to be burnt hanging upon the same, which judgment was executed upon him the thirtieth day of December in St. Gyles's Fields, where many honourable persons were present, and the last words that he spake were to Sir Thomas Upingham, adjuring him that if he saw him rise from death to life again the third day he would procure that his sect which he had raised might be in peace and quiet. He was hanged by the neck in a chain of iron and after consumed by fire. Moreover it is recorded that in the time of this worthy pretor Sir Richard Whittington the glorious city of Constantinople was taken by Mahomet the Second, Prince of the Turks, whose souldiers sacked it with all extremity and omitted no manners of cruelty by violence to either virgins, aged women, or sucking babes. This Sir Richard Whittington had traffick from thence by his factors which there abode, and were then taken prisoners, so that he lost near upon fifteen thousand pounds, which when he heard of never was so much as cast down or dismayed, but said God will send more; yea such was the incessant practice of the Turkish tyranny upon this imperial city, as it exceeded the damage, rapes and spoyls of other cities. They also beheaded at the same time Constantine, sticking his head upon a launce, and with derision caused it to be carried thorow the Turkish camp. In the space of a week after, there hapned a horrible tempest of thunder and lightning which burned almost eight hundred houses and spoiled three thousand people at the sacking of the aforesaid city by the said Mahomet. The Turks found therein so much treasure that they wondred that the citizens would not spend it in souldiers for their own defence, but so dotingly to spare the true spending thereof to become an enticing prey for their irreconcileable enemies, for indeed it was thought that if the State would have hired souldiers, and given them good pay they might have raised the siege of the Turks. It is an old and true saying, Covetousness is the mother of ruine and mischief.