In _King Henry VI_ (Part II) the Duchess of Gloucester employs John Hume and John Southwell, two priests; Bolingbroke, a conjurer; and Margery Jourdemain, a witch, to raise a spirit who shall reveal the several destinies of the King, and the Dukes of Suffolk and Somerset. The scene is written with extraordinary power and has not a little of awe and terror. Just as the demon is dismissed ’mid thunder and lightning the Duke of York with his guards rush in and arrest the sorcerers. Later the two priests and Bolingbroke are condemned to the gallows, the witch in Smithfield is “burn’d to ashes,” whilst the Duchess of Gloucester after three days’ public penance is banished for life to the Isle of Man. The incidents as employed by Shakespeare are fairly correct. It is certain that the Duchess of Gloucester, an ambitious and licentious woman, called to her counsels Margery Jourdemain, commonly known as the Witch of Eye, Roger Bolingbroke an astrologer, Thomas Southwell, Canon of S. Stephen’s, a priest named Sir John Hume or Hun, and a certain William Wodham. These persons frequently met in secret, and it was discovered that they had fashioned according to the usual mode a wax image of the King which they melted before a slow fire. Bolingbroke confessed, and Hume also turned informer; and in 1441 Bolingbroke was placed on a high scaffold before Paul’s Cross together with a chair curiously carved and painted, found at his lodging, which was supposed to be an instrument of necromancy, and in the presence of Cardinal Beaufort of Winchester, Henry Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, and an imposing array of bishops, he was compelled to make abjuration of his wicked arts. The Duchess of Gloucester, being refused sanctuary at Westminster, was arrested and confined in Leeds Castle, near Maidstone. She was brought to trial with her accomplices in October, when sentence was passed upon her as has been related above. Margery Jourdemain perished at the stake as a witch and relapsed heretic; Thomas Southwell died in prison; and Bolingbroke was hanged at Tyburn, 18 November.