Part 7

[Sidenote: A.D. 1450.] At the beginning of the New Year, an incident occurred which served still further to precipitate his ruin. [Sidenote: Murder of the Bishop of Chichester.] Adam de Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, keeper of the Privy Seal, who, as we have seen, had been sent over to France in the beginning of 1448, to arrange the peaceful cession of Le Mans, was at this time sent to Portsmouth to pay the wages of certain soldiers and sailors. He was a scholar as well as a statesman, and corresponded occasionally with the celebrated Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II.[58-1] But, like Suffolk, he was believed to make his own advantage out of public affairs. He had the reputation of being very covetous; the king’s treasury was ill supplied with money, and he endeavoured to force the men to be satisfied with less than their due. On this they broke out into open mutiny, cried out that he was one of those who had sold Normandy, and thereupon put him to death.[58-2] This was on the 9th day of January 1450. During the altercation he let fall some words, probably in justification of his own conduct, which were considered to reflect most seriously upon that of the Duke of Suffolk,[58-3] and a cry arose for the duke’s impeachment in Parliament.

[Footnote 58-1: _Æneæ Sylvii Epp._ 80, 186.]

[Footnote 58-2: According to his friend, Æneas Sylvius, the mode of death inflicted on him was decapitation. (_Opera_, 443.)]

[Footnote 58-3: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 176.]

It must certainly be acknowledged by any candid student of history that the state of the English Constitution in early times did not admit of true and impartial justice being done to an accused minister. So long as a man in Suffolk’s position was upheld by the power of the Crown, it was to the last degree dangerous to say anything against him; but when the voice of complaint could no longer be restrained, the protection he had before received ceased to be of any use to him. It became then quite as dangerous to say anything in his favour as it had been formerly to accuse him. The Crown could not make common cause with one whose conduct was under suspicion; for the king could do no wrong, and the minister must be the scapegoat. The party, therefore, which would insist on any inquiry into the conduct of a minister, knew well that they must succeed in getting him condemned, or be branded as traitors themselves. Such proceedings accordingly began inevitably with intrigue. Lord Cromwell was Suffolk’s enemy at the council-table, and used his influence secretly with members of the House of Commons, to get them to bring forward an impeachment in that chamber. That he was a dangerous opponent Suffolk himself was very well aware. A little before Christmas, William Tailboys, one of the duke’s principal supporters, had set a number of armed men in wait for him at the door of the Star Chamber, where the council met, and Lord Cromwell narrowly escaped being killed. The attempt, however, failed, and Tailboys was committed to the Tower; from which it would seem that he must soon afterwards have been released. Cromwell then brought an action against him in the Court of Exchequer to recover damages for the assault, and was awarded £3000; on which Tailboys was committed to the Sheriff of London’s prison; and this was all the redress obtained by Cromwell till, by a special Act in the ensuing Parliament, Tailboys was removed from that place of confinement, and lodged in the Tower once more, for a period of twelve months. Owing to the king’s protection he was not brought to trial.[59-1]

[Footnote 59-1: W. Worc. _Rolls of Parl._ v. 200. I find by an entry in the _Controlment Roll_, 30 Hen. VI., that on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1451, William Tailboys and nineteen other persons belonging to South Kyme, in Lincolnshire, were outlawed at the suit of Elizabeth, widow of John Saunderson, for the murder of her husband.]

An evil day, nevertheless, had arrived for the Duke of Suffolk, which not all the influence of the king, nor the still greater influence of Margaret of Anjou, who owed to him her proud position as Henry’s consort, was able to avert. On the 22nd of January the duke presented a petition to the king that he might be allowed to clear himself before Parliament of the imputations which had been cast on him in consequence of the dying words of Bishop Moleyns. He begged the king to remember how his father had died in the service of King Henry V. at Harfleur--how his elder brother had been with that king at Agincourt--how two other brothers had fallen in the king’s own days at Jargeau, when he himself was taken prisoner and had to pay £20,000 for his ransom--how his fourth brother had been a hostage for him in the enemies’ hands and died there. He also reminded the king that he had borne arms for four-and-thirty years, had been thirty years a Knight of the Garter, and had served in the wars abroad for seventeen years at a time, without ever coming home. Since then he had been fifteen years in England about the king’s person, and he prayed God that if ever he died otherwise than in his bed, it might be in maintaining the quarrel that he had been at all times true to Henry.[60-1]

[Footnote 60-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 176.]

Four days after this a deputation from the Commons waited on the Lord Chancellor, desiring that as Suffolk had confessed the prevalence of injurious reports against him, he might be committed to custody. This request was laid by the Chancellor before the king and council on the following day, and the opinion of the judges being taken as to the legality of the proposed arrest, he was allowed to remain at liberty until a definite charge should be brought against him. Such a charge was accordingly declared two days later by the Speaker, who did not hesitate to tell the Lord Chancellor, in the name of the Commons, that Suffolk was believed to be in league with the French king to promote an invasion of England, and had fortified the castle of Wallingford with a view of assisting the invaders. The duke, on this, was committed to the Tower.

[Sidenote: Suffolk impeached.] On the 7th of February he was formally impeached by the Commons. A copy of the articles of impeachment will be found in the Paston Letters (No. 76). Nothing was said in them of the fortification of Wallingford Castle, but a number of specific charges were made, many of them authenticated by the exact day and place when the alleged treasonable acts were committed, tending to show that in his communications with the French he had been invariably opposed to the interests of his own country. It was alleged that he had been bribed to deliver Anjou and Maine, and that as long ago as the year 1440 he was influenced by corrupt motives to promote the liberation of the Duke of Orleans; that he had disclosed the secrets of the English council-chamber to the French king’s ambassadors; that he had even given information by which France had profited in the war, and that he had rendered peace negotiations nugatory by letting the French know beforehand the instructions given to the English envoys. Further, in the midst of invasion and national disgrace, he had hoped to gratify his own ambition. The king, who was still childless, was to be deposed; and the duke had actually hoped to make his own son king in his place. It seems that he had obtained some time before a grant of the wardship of Margaret Beaufort, daughter of the late Duke of Somerset, who was the nearest heir to the Crown in the Lancastrian line, and since his arrest he had caused her to be married to his own son, Lord John De la Pole.[61-1] Such was the foundation on which the worst charge rested.

[Footnote 61-1: So it is stated in the impeachment. According to the inquisition on Suffolk’s death, his son was born on the 27th September 1442, and was therefore at this time only in his eighth year.--Napier’s _Historical Notices of Swyncombe and Ewelme_, 108.]

A month passed before he was heard in his own defence. The Commons impeached, but it was for the Lords to try him. Meanwhile, another bill of indictment had been prepared by the malice of his enemies, in which all the failures of his policy were visited upon him as crimes, and attributed to the worst and most selfish motives. For his own private gain, he had caused the Crown to be prodigal of grants to other persons, till it was so impoverished that the wages of the household were unpaid, and the royal manors left to fall into decay. He had granted the earldom of Kendal, with large possessions both in England and in Guienne, to a Gascon, who ultimately sided with the French, but had happened to marry his niece. He had weakened the king’s power in Guienne, alienated the Count of Armagnac, and caused a band of English to attack the king’s German allies; he had disposed of offices to unworthy persons without consulting the council, granted important possessions in Normandy to the French king’s councillors, given to the French queen £13,000 of the revenues of England, appropriated and misapplied the king’s treasure and the subsidies granted by Parliament for the keeping of the sea. These and some minor charges formed the contents of the second bill of indictment.[61-2]

[Footnote 61-2: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 179-182.]

He was brought from the Tower on the 9th day of March, and required to make answer before the Lords to the contents of both bills. He requested of the king that he might have copies, which were allowed him; and that he might prepare his answer more at ease, he was removed for a few days to a tower within the king’s palace at Westminster. [Sidenote: His defence.] On the 13th he was sent for to make his answer before the king and lords. Kneeling before the throne, he replied to each of the eight articles in the first bill separately. He denied their truth entirely, and offered to prove them false in whatever manner the king would direct. He declared it absurd to consider Margaret Beaufort as heir-presumptive to the Crown, and used other arguments to show the improbability of his designs on the succession. In all else he showed that the other lords of the council were quite as much committed as he; and as to the delivery of Anjou and Maine, he laid the responsibility entirely upon the murdered Bishop of Chichester.[62-1]

[Footnote 62-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 182.]

Next day, the Chief Justice, by the king’s command, asked the Lords what advice they would give the king in the matter. It was a Saturday, and the Lords deferred their answer till the following Monday; but on the Monday nothing was done. On the Tuesday the king sent for all the Lords then in London to attend him in his own palace, where they met in an inner chamber. When they were assembled, Suffolk was sent for, and kneeling down, was addressed briefly by the Lord Chancellor. He was reminded that he had made answer to the first bill of the Commons without claiming the right of being tried by the peers; and he was asked if he had anything further to say upon the subject. He replied that the accusations were too horrible to be further spoken of, and he hoped he had sufficiently answered all that touched the king’s person, and the state of his kingdom. Nevertheless, he submitted himself entirely to the king, to do with him whatever he thought good.[62-2]

[Footnote 62-2: _Ibid._]

On this an answer was returned to him in the king’s name by the Lord Chancellor. A miserably weak and evasive answer it was, showing clearly that the king desired to protect his favourite, but had not the manliness to avow he thought him worthy of protection. The Lord Chancellor was commissioned to say, that as to the very serious charges contained in the first bill, the king regarded Suffolk as not having been proved either guilty or innocent; but touching those contained in the second bill, which amounted only to misprisions, as Suffolk did not put himself upon his peerage, but submitted entirely to the king, the latter had determined, without consulting the Lords, and not in the way of judgment (for he was not sitting in tribunal), but merely in virtue of the duke’s own submission, [Sidenote: He is ordered to leave England.] to bid him absent himself from England for five years, from the first day of May ensuing.[63-1]

[Footnote 63-1: _Rolls of Parl._ v. 183.]

It is clear upon the face of the matter, that although the king was made to take the sole responsibility of this decision, it was really a thing arranged, and not arranged without difficulty, between the friends of Suffolk and some of the leading members of the House of Lords. Immediately after it was pronounced, Viscount Beaumont, who was one of Suffolk’s principal allies, made a protest on behalf of the Lords, that what the king had just done, he had done by his own authority, without their advice and counsel. He accordingly besought the king that their protest might be recorded in the rolls of Parliament, for their protection, so that the case might not henceforth be made a precedent in derogation of the privileges of the peerage.[63-2] Thus it was clearly hoped on all sides a great crisis had been averted. Suffolk was got rid of, but not condemned. A victim was given over to popular resentment, but the rights of the Peers for the future were to be maintained. And though the Crown lowered itself by an avowed dereliction of duty, it was not severely censured for preferring expediency to justice.

[Footnote 63-2: _Ibid._]

On the following night the duke left Westminster for Suffolk. The people of London were intensely excited, and about two thousand persons sallied out to St. Giles’ hoping to intercept his departure, but they succeeded only in capturing his horse and some of his servants, whom they maltreated, as might have been expected. Even after this the excitement was scarcely diminished. Seditious manifestoes were thrown about in public and secretly posted on church doors.[64-1] The duke had more than a month to prepare for leaving England, and seems to have spent the time in the county of Suffolk. [Sidenote: He embarks for Flanders.] On Thursday the 30th of April he embarked at Ipswich for Flanders; but before going he assembled the gentlemen of the county, and, taking the sacrament, swore he was innocent of the sale of Normandy and of the other treasons imputed to him.[64-2] He also wrote an interesting letter of general admonitions for the use of his young son, at that time not eight years old, whom he was not to see again for at least five years, and too probably not at all. This letter, which is known to us only by a copy preserved in the Paston correspondence (No. 117), can hardly fail to awaken sympathy with the writer. As an evidence of unaffected piety to God and sincere loyalty to his king, it will probably outweigh with most readers all the aspersions cast by Parliament on the purity of his intentions.

[Footnote 64-1: Rymer, xi. 268.]

[Footnote 64-2: W. Worc. 468, 469.]

Two ships and a little pinnace conveyed him from the Suffolk coast southwards till he stood off Dover, when he despatched the small vessel with letters to certain persons in Calais to ascertain how he should be received if he landed there. The pinnace was intercepted by some ships which seem to have been lying in wait for his passage; and when it was ascertained where the duke actually was, they immediately bore down upon him. Foremost among the pursuers was a ship called the _Nicholas of the Tower_, the master of which, on nearing Suffolk’s vessel, sent out a boat to ask who they were. Suffolk made answer in person, and said that he was going by the king’s command to Calais; on which they told him he must speak with their master. They accordingly conveyed him and two or three others in their boat to the _Nicholas_. When he came on board the master saluted him with the words, ‘Welcome, traitor!’ and sent to know if the shipmen meant to take part with the duke, which they at once disowned all intention of doing. The duke was then informed that he must die, but was allowed the whole of the next day and night to confess himself and prepare for the event.[64-3] On Monday the 2nd of May the rovers consummated their design. In sight of all his men Suffolk was drawn out of the _Nicholas_ into a boat in which an axe and block were prepared. [Sidenote: Is murdered at sea.] One of the crew, an Irish churl, then bade him lay down his head, telling him in cruel mockery that he should be fairly dealt with and die upon a sword. A rusty sword was brought out accordingly, and with nearly half a dozen strokes the fellow clumsily cut off his head. He was then stripped of his russet gown and velvet doublet. His body was brought to land and thrown upon the sands at Dover; and his men were at the same time allowed to disembark.[65-1]

[Footnote 64-3: _English Chronicle_, ed. Davies, p. 69.]

[Footnote 65-1: _Paston Letters_, Nos. 120, 121.]

The source from which we learn most of these particulars is a letter of William Lomner to John Paston written when the news was fresh. The writer seems to have been quite overpowered by the tragic character of the event, and declares he had so blurred the writing with tears that he fears it would not be easy to decipher. Indications of genuine human feeling like this are so rare in letters of an early date that we are in danger of attributing to the men of those days a coldness and brutality which were by no means so universal as we are apt to suppose. The truth is that when men related facts they regarded their own feelings as an impertinence having nothing whatever to do with the matter in hand.[65-2] The art of letter-writing, besides, had not yet acquired the freedom of later days. It was used, in the main, for business purposes only. We shall meet, it is true, in this very correspondence, with one or two early specimens of jesting epistles; but, on the whole, I suspect paper was too valuable a commodity and writing too great a labour to be wasted on things irrelevant.

[Footnote 65-2: Even the passage above referred to would probably be an illustration of this if the original letter were examined. As we have reprinted it from Fenn, it stands thus: ‘Right worshipful Sir, I recommend me to you, and am right sorry of that I shall say, _and have so wesshe this little bill with sorrowful tears that uneathes ye shall read it_.’ The words in italics would probably be found to be an interlineation in the original, for though they stand at the beginning of the letter, they were clearly written after it was penned, and the only reason why they were inserted was to excuse the illegibility of the writing.]

But whatever feeling may have been excited by the news of Suffolk’s murder in men like William Lomner, who possibly may have known the duke personally, we may well believe that the nation at large was neither afflicted nor very greatly shocked at the event. Even the prior of Croyland, the head of a great religious community in Lincolnshire, speaks of it as the just punishment of a traitor, and has not a word to say in reprobation.[66-1] Mocking dirges were composed and spread abroad, in which his partisans were represented as chanting his funeral service, and a blessing was invoked on the heads of his murderers. These were but the last of a host of satires in which the public indignation had for months past found a vent.[66-2] Suffolk had been represented on his imprisonment as a fox driven into his hole, who must on no account be let out again. He had been rhymed at as the Ape with his Clog who had tied Talbot our good dog, in allusion to the fact of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, having been given up as a hostage to the French after the surrender of Rouen.[66-3] He had been reviled as an upstart who had usurped the place of better men, and who systematically thwarted and neutralised all that better men could do. If any one wept for the fall of such a man, it was not on public grounds.

[Footnote 66-1: _Contin. of Croyland Chronicle_, p. 525.]

[Footnote 66-2: Wright’s _Political Poems_ (in Rolls series), ii. 232.]

[Footnote 66-3: _Ibid._ 222, 224.]

As a specimen of these political satires we cannot resist the temptation to quote a short poem which must have been composed towards the close of the year 1449, after the surrender of Rouen and before Suffolk’s fall. It is far less personal than the others, being not so much an invective against Suffolk as a wail over the loss of England’s great men, and the decay of her fortunes. The leading statesmen and warriors of that and the former age are here spoken of by their badges, which the reader will find interpreted in the margin:--

‘The Root[a] is dead, the Swan[b] is gone, The fiery Cresset[c] hath lost his light. Therefore England may make great moan Were not the help of God Almight’. The Castle[d] is won where care begun, The Portè-cullis[e] is laid adown; Yclosèd we have our Velvet Hat[f] That covered us from many stormes brown. The White Lion[g] is laid to sleep, Thorough the envy of th’ Apè[h] Clog; And he is bounden that our door should keep; That is Talbot, our good dog. The Fisher[i] has lost his angle hook; Get them again when it will be. Our Millè-sail[k] will not about, It hath so long gone empty. The Bear[l] is bound that was so wild, For he hath lost his Ragged Staff. The Carte-nathe[m] is spoke-less For the counsel that he gaf. The Lily[n] is both fair and green; The Conduit[o] runneth not, I wean. The Cornish Chough[p] oft with his train Hath made our Eagle[q] blind. The White Hart[r] is put out of mind Because he will not to them consent; Therefore, the Commons saith, is both true and kind, Both in Sussex and in Kent. The Water Bouge[s] and the Wine Botell With the Fetterlock’s[t] chain bene fast. The Wheat Ear[u] will them sustain As long as he may endure and last. The Boar[w] is far into the West, That should us help with shield and spear. The Falcon[x] fleeth and hath no rest Till he wit where to bigg his nest.’

[Footnote a: The Regent Bedford.]

[Footnote b: Humphrey, Duke of Glo’ster.]

[Footnote c: The last Duke of Exeter.]

[Footnote d: Rouen Castle.]

[Footnote e: The Duke of Somerset.]

[Footnote f: The Cardinal Beaufort.]

[Footnote g: The Duke of Norfolk, who had gone on pilgrimage to Rome in 1447. (Dugdale.)]

[Footnote h: The Duke of Suffolk.]

[Footnote i: Lord Fauconberg who was taken prisoner by the French at the capture of Pont-de-l’Arche.]

[Footnote k: Robert, Lord Willoughby.]

[Footnote l: The Earl of Warwick.]

[Footnote m: The Duke of Buckingham.]

[Footnote n: Thomas Daniel. He and the two next are courtiers.]

[Footnote o: John Norris.]

[Footnote p: John Trevilian.]