u
that they _have_ so done, and I will make it good upon thy body, thou
traitor!'

With that, he struck the table a great blow with his fist. This was a
signal to some of his people outside to cry 'Treason!' They immediately
did so, and there was a rush into the chamber of so many armed men that
it was filled in a moment.

'First,' said the Duke of Gloucester to Lord Hastings, 'I arrest thee,
traitor! And let him,' he added to the armed men who took him, 'have a
priest at once, for by St. Paul I will not dine until I have seen his
head of!'

Lord Hastings was hurried to the green by the Tower chapel, and there
beheaded on a log of wood that happened to be lying on the ground. Then,
the Duke dined with a good appetite, and after dinner summoning the
principal citizens to attend him, told them that Lord Hastings and the
rest had designed to murder both himself and the Duke if Buckingham, who
stood by his side, if he had not providentially discovered their design.
He requested them to be so obliging as to inform their fellow-citizens of
the truth of what he said, and issued a proclamation (prepared and neatly
copied out beforehand) to the same effect.

On the same day that the Duke did these things in the Tower, Sir Richard
Ratcliffe, the boldest and most undaunted of his men, went down to
Pontefract; arrested Lord Rivers, Lord Gray, and two other gentlemen; and
publicly executed them on the scaffold, without any trial, for having
intended the Duke's death. Three days afterwards the Duke, not to lose
time, went down the river to Westminster in his barge, attended by divers
bishops, lords, and soldiers, and demanded that the Queen should deliver
her second son, the Duke of York, into his safe keeping. The Queen,
being obliged to comply, resigned the child after she had wept over him;
and Richard of Gloucester placed him with his brother in the Tower. Then,
he seized Jane Shore, and, because she had been the lover of the late
King, confiscated her property, and got her sentenced to do public
penance in the streets by walking in a scanty dress, with bare feet, and
carrying a lighted candle, to St. Paul's Cathedral, through the most
crowded part of the City.

Having now all things ready for his own advancement, he caused a friar to
preach a sermon at the cross which stood in front of St. Paul's
Cathedral, in which he dwelt upon the profligate manners of the late
King, and upon the late shame of Jane Shore, and hin