Humphrey Duke of Gloucester Part 34

[1009] From a pardon to one of Gloucester's servants of a later date it seems that the Duke came to Bury straight from Greenwich (Rymer, V. i. 179). Stow, 386, followed by Holkham MS., p.

59, says he came from 'his Castle of Devizes in Wiltshire.'

_Brief Notes_, 150, says he came from Wales.

[1010] Ramsay, ii. 73, says, 'Gloucester made a show of resistance, a crowning act of folly, of which his adversaries made the most.' I can find no authority to justify this statement.

[1011] _Chron. Henry VI._, 33; _Lond. Chron._, 135, says 'he mekely obeied' when put under arrest.

[1012] _Brief Notes_, 150.

[1013] _Chron. Henry VI._, 33.

[1014] Richard Fox, 116.

[1015] _Rot. Parl._, v. 128.

[1016] The ruins of St. Saviour's Hospital can still be seen on the road leading from Bury to Thetford.

[1017] Richard Fox, 116, 117; _Eng. Chron._, 62, 63; Gregory, 188; _Chron. Henry VI._, 33, 34; Hardyng, 400; William of Worcester, 464; _Lond. Chron._, 135; _Brief Notes_, 150; Stow, 386; _Hist. Croyland. Contin._, i. 521; _Short Eng.

Chron._, 65. An entry on the verso of the last folio of Lincoln MS., 106, records the death of Gloucester. Holinshed, iii. 211.

[1018] _Brief Notes_, 150; Fabyan, 619.

[1019] _Brief Notes_, 150, erroneously states that he was buried here. The site of this Franciscan monastery can still be traced about half a mile outside Bury St. Edmunds on the Thetford road. Lewis, _Topographical Dictionary_, i. 659.

[1020] Richard Fox, 117, 118.

[1021] Mathieu de Coussy, 31, is the only contemporary writer to lay stress on this.

CHAPTER VIII

SOME ASPECTS OF GLOUCESTER'S CAREER

In spite of the circ.u.mstantial story which records the events of the last few days of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, there hangs over the manner of his death a cloud which no existing evidence can entirely remove. Was he murdered, or was his death the result of natural causes?

Such is the question to which the circ.u.mstances surrounding his last days give rise. Of contemporary chroniclers who give their opinion the Englishmen mostly agree in a quiet acceptance of the idea that arrest and disgrace so worked on an already weakened frame, that some kind of seizure was followed by collapse and death. Richard Fox, who gives the most detailed account of the tragedy of Bury, never for a moment suggests foul play, whilst Wheathampsted, the friend and follower of the dead man, clearly states that he died of sickness brought on by grief at his arrest.[1022] Hardyng carries this theory still further by describing the disease of which the Duke died as a sort of 'parlesey,'

stating that he had been similarly attacked before,[1023] but an anonymous chronicler of Henry VI.'s reign, while describing the illness much in the same way as Fox and Hardyng--a paralysis of both mind and body--does not hesitate to hint fairly broadly that the disease did not take its origin from the natural state of the Duke's health.[1024] The author of the _English Chronicle_ reserves judgment. The truth about Gloucester's death, he declares, is not yet known, but he quotes the Gospel to prove that there is nothing hid which shall not be made manifest;[1025] the London chronicler declares darkly that he was treacherously treated.[1026] Foreign contemporary writers go still further, and with one voice proclaim that Gloucester was murdered.

Waurin states this as a bare fact, but his statements are not beyond dispute, for he adopts the same version as the continuator of the _Historia Croylandensis_, who says that the Duke was found dead in bed on the morning after his arrest.[1027] Mathieu de Coussy and Basin, both of whom were alive at the time, aver that it was a case of murder, and so it was generally believed on the Continent.[1028]

NATURE OF GLOUCESTER'S DEATH

As time pa.s.sed on, the growing unpopularity of Suffolk unloosed men's tongues, and the idea that Gloucester had been murdered gradually arose, and became a firm belief. It was obvious to all that the Duke's death had been desired by Suffolk to increase his power, and within three years of the Parliament at Bury another Parliament was clamouring for the disgrace of this upstart, who with the help of the Queen had monopolised the government of the kingdom, and it was but a very thinly veiled accusation of murder which lay behind the articles of impeachment that he 'wase the cause and laborer of the arrest, emprisonyng and fynall destruction of the most n.o.ble valliant true Prince, your right obeisant uncle the Duke of Gloucester.'[1029] That this was no more than an accusation of complicity in Humphrey's disgrace which indirectly produced his last illness is an interpretation which the words cannot bear when we consider the facts of the case, for at the same time Gregory records that among the charges brought against Suffolk that of murdering 'that n.o.bylle prynce the Duke of Gloucester' was one.[1030] Whatever the words of the impeachment may imply to us, it is plain that they bore but one meaning to the men of the time, and in view of the coming disgrace of the Queen's favourite, public opinion was beginning to a.s.sert itself, for it is to be noticed that, when recording the death of Humphrey, Gregory ignored any question of murder.[1031]

We may well suspect that the murder of Suffolk by the sailors of the Kentish coast had for its prompting some thought of revenge for the death of the man who had held the command of Dover and the Cinque Ports.

The people were beginning to find their voices, and when the Kentish men followed Jack Cade in his march on London, they invoked the wrongs of Duke Humphrey, as one of the reasons of their rebellion. They demanded the punishment of the false traitors 'which counterfetyd and imagyned'

Gloucester's death, and they declared the charges which had been brought against him at Bury to be false.[1032] Moreover, in one of the popular songs connected with this rising there is distinct mention of 'two traitors ... Pulford and Hanley that drownyd ye Duke of Glocester,'[1033] a possible allusion to the two yeomen of the guard who were Humphrey's custodians after his arrest, and who may have been more than suspected of being the instruments of his enemies' treachery. It was at this time also that Lord Saye de Sele met his violent end at the hands of the mob, who accused him of many acts of treason 'of whyche he knowlachyd of the dethe' of Gloucester.[1034] As hostility to the existing regime increased, the belief in the murder grew proportionately, and became complete a.s.surance on the triumph of the Yorkist party. Thus one of the political poems which paved the way for this turn of events declared roundly that 'This Fox (Suffolk) at Bury slowe our grete gandere' (Gloucester),[1035] and the manifesto which the Duke of York issued from Calais referred to 'the pytyous shamefulle and sorrowfulle murther to all Englonde, of that n.o.ble werthy and Crystyn prince Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, the Kynges trew uncle, at Bury.'[1036]

A few years later a political song stated that

'The good duc of Gloucestre, in the season Of the Parlement at Bury beyng, Was put to dethe,'[1037]

and the general acceptance of the fact of murder was so universal that under the year 1446 (O.S.) a compiler of historical notes, writing in the latter days of the fifteenth century, put down without comment or hesitation 'interfectio ducis Gloucestriae.'[1038] Fabyan, another writer of this period,[1039] mentions the theory that Humphrey had been put to death as an accepted fact, adding that 'dyverse reportes ar made, which I pa.s.se over.'[1040] Subsequent writers and historians have all followed this opinion,[1041] till within recent years some doubts have been cast on this universally accepted reading of the events.

We cannot accept the verdict of murder as conclusive without an examination into the facts of the case. Obviously it may have been more a political move than a firm conviction of the murder that induced the Yorkist party to throw out these accusations with regard to Gloucester's end, but in this respect it cannot have been very fruitful, and it is stated in a manner which implies that the facts of the case were common property. To support the theory there is the strong hint of the Latin chronicler of Henry VI.'s reign, and the suspiciously judicial att.i.tude of the author of the _English Chronicle_. The testimony of Wheathampsted as the friend of Gloucester deserves attention, yet we must remember that the late Abbot of St. Albans had pa.s.sed entirely into private life in 1447, and did not emerge therefrom till four years later when he resumed the Abbacy. Moreover, his information was probably gained from Richard Fox of the House of St. Albans, a man who brought no critical power to bear on his narrative, and who merely recorded the official account of the Duke's last illness; all personal access to the prisoner had been forbidden save to the royal officials, who had him in charge, and at the best Fox must have recorded what he was told at the time by those who had the care of his master. Evidence of a more definite and less refutable kind is the statement of John Hardyng. By him the illness is given a definite name, and allusion is made to earlier attacks. This is supported by a report on the Duke's health made some twenty-three years earlier by his physician, which describes him in a weak state of health, though the details of the report do no more than point to certain excesses in his manner of living, and a temporary lack of health, and do not in any way suggest a hopelessly decayed const.i.tution, which some would deduce therefrom.[1042] Only once do we hear of the Duke suffering from illness, and the activity of his life, in which he combined the avocations of a soldier, a politician, and a man of letters, in itself refutes the suggestion. Humphrey showed no signs of bodily decay; he was perfectly well, and able to make a long journey on the eve of his imprisonment, and if his health was so undermined at the age of thirty-four, how was it that he survived to more than complete his fifty-seventh year, no mean age at that time? He survived all his brothers; one died in battle, Henry at the age of thirty-six succ.u.mbed to an attack of camp fever, Bedford only attained his forty-sixth year, while his grandfather, John of Gaunt, who was looked on as an old man for his time, lived but one year longer than himself, and his father only reached the age of forty-seven. Indeed of all his relations Cardinal Beaufort alone lived to be really old, though his exact age is uncertain. The statement of Hardyng must not, therefore, be considered as entirely corroborated by the physician's report, and by itself it stands as a statement of no more value than those which roundly a.s.sert that Gloucester was murdered, for the chronicle was written about the year 1463 by a man who had served the House of Lancaster from the battle of Shrewsbury onward. Perhaps the strangest of all evidences on this point is that given by Chastellain, the Burgundian chronicler, who wrote _Le Temple de Bocace_ for Margaret of Anjou when in 1463 she retired into exile in the county of Bar. In this collection of stories dealing with the sad fate of many famous people, a sort of continuation of Boccaccio's Latin work which was introduced to English readers by John Lydgate's _The Falls of Princes_, a terrible picture of Humphrey's violent end is drawn, and the methods used to give the appearance of a natural death are described. When we remember that Margaret was a prominent member of the faction at whose bidding such a deed must have been performed, the version of the story here given is the more startling.[1043]

Apart from all statements of chroniclers, whether contemporary or otherwise, there lies the probability of the case. Gloucester was in the way of the plans of Suffolk and Margaret; he had already been accused of treason, an accusation which might be hard to prove; armed preparations had been made against him; he was under arrest at the time of his death.

More important than this is the way he was isolated from his followers; his chief retainers were arrested, and his personal servants were removed from attendance on him,[1044] and thus the officers appointed by his enemies could arrange what they liked. The way his body was exposed after death to prove that no violence had cut short his days was itself an invitation to suspicion, and this negative method of proof was not unknown in the cases of other royal victims of political murder. The whole story of the case supports the supposition that some kind of slow poison was used, a method of a.s.sa.s.sination quite possible under the circ.u.mstances, and for which it would almost seem that provision had been made. Murder, therefore, is the most probable explanation of the Duke's sudden demise, his relapse into a comatose state might very well be the result of a poison taken with his food, and when an unscrupulous party so desired his death, the conclusion is obvious.

'Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest, But may imagine now the bird was dead, Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?

Even so suspicious is this tragedy.'[1045]

Whatever opinion is held with regard to the immediate cause of Humphrey's death, it is beyond doubt that his destruction was planned, if not carried out. On Suffolk and Lord Saye de Sele falls the chief suspicion, and in the latter's case the count is strengthened by the fact that he received on the very next day after the death of the Duke some of the offices which the victim had held.[1046] 'Pole' that 'fals traytur' was openly accused of part responsibility,[1047] and Fabyan says, 'The grudge and murmour of ye people ceased not agayne the Marquis of Suffolke, for the deth of the good duke of Gloucester, of whos murdre he was specially susspected.'[1048] Foreign chroniclers all attribute the murder to the 'faction of Suffolk,'[1049] and in this indictment the Queen cannot be excepted. She, together with Suffolk and Lord Saye de Sele, shared in the lands and emoluments which reverted to the King on his uncle's demise,[1050] and girl though she was, she had a predominating influence among those who had allied themselves against Gloucester. One more fact both points to the existence of a determination to make away with their rival on the part of the dominant party of the Court, and strengthens the suggestion of murder; so complete were the preparations in view of the death, that on the very day that Gloucester died, a grant was made of his property to Henry's foundation of King's College, Cambridge,[1051] and further grants of the same kind were made on the following day.[1052]

Final proof of the care with which Gloucester's death was organised is to be found in the treatment meted out to his followers, of whom in all forty-two were arrested and imprisoned in thirteen different castles.[1053] On July 8[1054] five of these men, including the Duke's natural son Arthur, were arraigned before Suffolk at Deptford and condemned to be drawn to Tyburn, hanged, disembowelled, beheaded, and quartered for plotting treason against the King. The charge against them was that they had held a seditious meeting at Greenwich on February 7 last, where they had agreed to kill King Henry VI., and place Gloucester and his imprisoned wife upon the throne. Four days later, having collected a large body of men, they had marched out towards Bury, hoping that the country would join them.[1055] Besides this definite charge, rumours were spread abroad that Humphrey had been organising a rebellion in his own favour in Wales,[1056] a legend based on nothing more substantial than the fact that many of the imprisoned retainers bore Welsh names,[1057] but sufficiently elaborated to induce the Parliament at Bury to re-enact 'all statutes made against Welshmen.'[1058]

The absurdity of the whole story is obvious. A great army this escort of eighty men to start a rebellion of all England, and to bring about the removal of the King! There is not one shred of evidence to prove even the likelihood of such a plot. We are definitely told that Humphrey came to Bury with a clear conscience,[1059] and had his intentions been treasonable he would not have entered the town after the warning he received from the King's message. He made not the slightest show of resistance, save, if we can except the statement of a foreign chronicler, that he used strong language to his jailers about those who dominated the King.[1060] If the plot had been hatched on February 7, why was it that Suffolk had collected an army of 60,000 men at Bury some time before the opening of Parliament on February 10, and had gone through the form of taking elaborate precautions for the safety of the King on his way thither? The details of the trial of these retainers also give cause for suspicion, for no office that Suffolk held ent.i.tled him to sit as judge at Deptford, and he was probably acting under a special writ, issued to ensure the condemnation of the prisoners. The whole proceeding was meant to throw dust in the eyes of those who might question the manner of Gloucester's death, and to remove the possibility of any one championing the fallen Duke, who was thus proved to have died with the guilt of treason on his conscience. Having established his case, Suffolk tried to win favour with the people by appearing at the execution and producing a reprieve from the King. Though already strung up at Tyburn, when the reprieve was read they were promptly cut down, and their lives were saved.[1061] They and the rest of the prisoners were set at large, and their goods were returned to them.[1062] Had there been any truth in the charge for which they were condemned, the men would certainly not have been reprieved, and this bid for popularity proved fruitless, for in spite of it 'the grudge and murmur of ye people ceased not agayne the Marquys of Suffolke.'[1063] Violence was not one of Humphrey's crimes; he had appealed to force of arms once only, and then it was merely to act on the defensive. This imagined plot was totally at variance with all his former conduct. Plot there was, but it was formed by Suffolk and his partisans to destroy their rival, whose death becomes still more suspicious in the light of their vain attempt at justification.

EFFECTS OF GLOUCESTER'S DEATH

With Gloucester dead, and his memory tainted by an accusation of treason, Margaret and Suffolk thought they had secured safety for their plans and security for the House of Lancaster. But this was far from being the case. Besides casting an indelible slur on the dynasty which had connived at the disgrace and removal of one of its own representatives, they had inaugurated a period of strife and disaster that ended only with the triumph of the rival claimants to the throne of England. A foreign observer of English politics dated all the disturbances which followed from the time of Gloucester's death,[1064]

and an English chronicler wrote: 'Thus began the trouble of Engelonge for the deth of this n.o.ble duke. All the comyns of this reame began for to murmure, and were not content.'[1065] A political ballad writer, too, saw how things had gone when he wrote, that since the tragedy of Bury

'Hath been in Engeland, gret mornyng with many a scharp schoure Falshode, myschef, secret synne upholdyng, Whiche hathe caused in Engeland endeley langoure.'[1066]

The government of Henry VI., or rather that of those who had his ear, was already unpopular, and we have seen how still more hostile to it the nation became after 1447, and how Humphrey's reputation increased as that of his opponent's diminished. Jack Cade invoked the name of Gloucester as one of the justifications of his hostility to the Government, and it is a significant fact that the three men who were suspected of complicity in the murder, namely Suffolk, Adam Moleyns, and Lord Saye de Sele, all met violent deaths at the hands of the people.

But mere unpopularity was not the worst danger which the Government had to fear, as a result of Gloucester's death, and to understand this aspect of the matter we must recall the history of the two parties in the State since the death of Henry V. The reign of Henry VI. had opened with a declaration of party war. From the first there had been two distinct parties in the kingdom, each fighting to secure the supreme control, the one headed by Gloucester, the other by Cardinal Beaufort, both of whom were members of the House of Lancaster, though the latter's family was excluded from succession to the throne. Gloucester's position as 'lymyted protector,' as a contemporary ballad writer calls it,[1067]

had been at once a source of some strength to him and a point of attack for his enemies. Throughout the period of the King's minority the struggle had been for the control of the Council of Regency, Gloucester a.s.serting his privileges as Protector, Beaufort denying them and trying to secure further limitations of his power. So the struggle had worn on with varying success, till with Henry's coronation in 1429 the Protectorate had come to an end. Thenceforward the contest had been between the same parties on a somewhat different field. Henry, as he gradually increased in understanding and knowledge, had been besieged by Gloucester and Beaufort, each trying to influence him in his own favour, and so it had continued till the great triumph of the Beaufort policy in the release of the Duke of Orleans and the marriage of the King to Margaret of Anjou. Hereafter the scene had changed. The Bishop of Winchester had pa.s.sed out of public life,[1068] leaving the control of his party to his two nephews, John and Edmund, successively Dukes of Somerset. The Earl of Suffolk, apart from the fact that he was the ablest member of the Beaufort faction, is a negligible quant.i.ty in this history of party division. On the other hand, the Duke of York had come to the front as the opponent of the Beauforts and as a follower of Duke Humphrey, though he never came anywhere near to supplanting the latter as leader of the opposition to the existing state of government.

Throughout this long struggle, hostile as it was to the peace of the kingdom and to the good government of either party, there had never been on either side any suggestion of hostility to the House of Lancaster as such. Were not both leaders members of that House, and were not their best interests bound up with the preservation of the throne to Henry VI.? The fall of the King would have meant annihilation for both of them, and not for a moment had the possibility of such a thing occurred to the rivals. They had forgotten the shakiness of the Lancastrian House; they had forgotten the claims of York; they had forgotten that the present Duke of York was the son of a condemned plotter against the throne. Their rivalry had been merely one of ambitious men who strove for the mastery, the one with the claim of seniority, the other with the claim of a personal stake in the welfare of the kingdom. The story of that long-protracted struggle is not creditable to either Beaufort or Gloucester, though we must remember that the challenge had come from the former, who was excluded from the succession and had no such claim to have a preponderating influence in the kingdom as had the brother of Henry V. The Cardinal Bishop of Winchester has appealed to the sympathy of posterity by reason of his supposed const.i.tutional att.i.tude, but his pose cannot be taken seriously. Keen to see his own advantage, he had supported the rights of the Council merely as a means to curtail the power of the Protector, and thereby increase his own, but whether we take his const.i.tutional att.i.tude seriously or not, we must condemn his policy. On the other hand, Gloucester inadvertently had stumbled on a policy, which was the only possible one that could save England from internal disorder. In claiming the fullest powers as Protector he had probably no idea beyond a.s.serting what he considered to be his just and legal rights, and obtaining a position which would satisfy his ambitious nature; but his policy was sound. The one hope for England was a government concentrated in the hands of one man, who would not be hampered by opposition at the very fountainhead of justice, who would be able to deal out summary retribution to the wrong-doer. Under these conditions the government of Henry VI.'s favourites would not have become a byword in the country, and have given a handle to the rival House of York.

Thus the rivalry of Beaufort and Gloucester was more personal than political, in no sense was it dynastic, and though it weakened the hold of the House of Lancaster on the country, yet in itself it did not threaten the throne of Henry VI. Still less was this the case when the Beaufort faction had won their final victory, and had definitely placed Gloucester in permanent opposition, where he acted as safety-valve to the reigning dynasty. Just as so many years later the House of Hanover was strengthened by the opposition of successive Princes of Wales, so did Gloucester's opposition secure the House of Lancaster. He, it must be remembered, was heir to the throne, for the marriage of Henry VI. had not yet produced a son who would supplant him. Round him the discontented elements in the nation circled, the Duke of York and his following owned him as their leader. In the country at large he was still popular, and no faction could rise to drive Henry from his throne with any prospect of success if it had not the support of 'the good Duke Humphrey.' On the other hand, the Duke of York and his claim had to be kept in the background so long as Gloucester stood as heir to the throne and leader of the opposition to the maladministration of the governing clique. Moreover, the adhesion of York to Gloucester's party was a guarantee against civil war, for those two men who worked together had totally antagonistic claims to the throne of England.

We have here the chief reason why the death of Humphrey was at the same time the death-blow to the House of Lancaster. The Duke of York was not dangerous so long as Humphrey lived, for though their interests in the kingdom were divergent, they had acted together through the last years of Beaufort's domination. Both alike had been excluded from the Council of the King, and both alike had made common cause in the name of order and a different policy. We have seen the various shifts which had been used to minimise Gloucester's influence with the King, York had been intrigued against by the Beauforts whilst in command in France, and finally he had been sent off to Ireland, so that he could not make his voice felt in the councils of the nation.[1069] His connection with the King's uncle was of long standing. Gloucester had held the guardianship of the lands that he inherited from the Earl of March, he had supported him in 1437, when it was proposed to put the Earl of Warwick in his place as Commander-in-Chief of the army in France,[1070] and he had complained bitterly in his indictment of Cardinal Beaufort that the Duke of York had been alienated from the King.[1071] In return for this the Yorkist party had supported Gloucester in opposition; after his death they helped to bring home the guilt of his murder to those who had contrived it, and as soon as they obtained the ascendency they vindicated his memory by a public act. In the Parliament which met after the first battle of St. Albans, under the auspices of the Duke of York, the question of Humphrey's good fame, which had often been unsuccessfully mooted before, was again raised; a pet.i.tion was framed by the Commons asking the King, in remembrance of his uncle's services to the Crown, and of the fact that he had been accused of treason by certain wicked persons, to declare the aspersions cast on his good name to be unfounded. This pet.i.tion, quite spontaneous on the part of the Commons, was taken up by the Duke of York, and by his help and favour it was granted.[1072] This att.i.tude on the part of York has its significance. It was a declaration that the policy which he espoused, the policy of good government and justice, was the policy of Humphrey; it was a party cry too, an appeal to the favour of the people, who believed that the good Duke had done his utmost for the good government of the kingdom.

HAINAULT POLICY

When we come to examine the facts of the case, and the right which Gloucester had to the reputation for good government, we must confess that, though the adulation of the seventeenth-century chroniclers may seem excessive, it is no more exaggerated than the obloquy which has been heaped on his memory by more recent historians. His campaign in Hainault and his whole policy in that matter, quite apart from his behaviour to Jacqueline, is worthy of the heaviest censure. Blind to the effects of his actions, he did nothing to minimise them when he had tardily realised the possible alienation of Burgundy from the English Alliance. He had allowed his personal interests and ambition to take precedence of the advantage of his native country. Yet even here we must reflect before we ascribe all the failures of the English in France to his action. Signs are not wanting after the death of Henry that the Duke of Burgundy was not the warm supporter of his English allies that he had been in the past; the English also were not devoted to the Burgundian alliance, the Earl Marshal made no objection to leading the Hainault expedition, and the Earl of Salisbury, enraged by an outrage offered to his wife, came over to offer his services to Gloucester.[1073] Nor did the Council treat the matter very seriously. Humphrey on his return received no reprimand, despite the statement to this effect by certain foreign chroniclers. If Gloucester erred, he did so along with much of the public opinion of his time, and had he proved more faithful to the course he had undertaken, one might be inclined to judge his line of action in Hainault less hardly. Nevertheless, apart from all matters of foreign policy, he must be condemned for leaving his infant nephew at home unguarded save by a man whom he most profoundly distrusted. This, far more than the more obvious count of alienating Burgundy, must condemn him in our eyes, if we look at the matter from his point of view.

Apart from this lapse from honour and wisdom in his government of the country as Protector, what shall we say of Gloucester's action in home policy? To deny the evil effects of the struggle for power between himself and the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester would be to blind ourselves to a clear historical truth, but we must remember--and in the light of the modern judgment on Humphrey it cannot too often be reiterated--that the struggle did not originate with him. He claimed the Protectorate as his right, even as Bedford did, and it cannot be said to have been a more ambitious move on the part of the one brother than on that of the other. It was the late King's wish that he should be Protector, and it was a wise arrangement. He distrusted Humphrey's capacity as a general with an independent command, but he had reason to believe that the man who had governed England quietly and well for him, was the proper person to whom to confide the kingdom during his son's minority. Apart from that disastrous struggle for supremacy over his uncle the Cardinal and his party, how did Humphrey comport himself as Protector, and later as chief Councillor?

HOME POLICY

The details of Gloucester's home government are hard to extract from the central theme of party strife, but more than once we find him the fearless supporter of the arm of the law. The kingdom was in a state of potential upheaval all through the period of his power. Henry IV. might say to his son, when speaking of the crown of England: