regarded, but that they
imagined his public trial and execution would have been more invidious
than his private murder which they pretended to deny. Some gentlemen of
his retinue were afterwards tried as accomplices in his treasons, and
were condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, They were hanged and
cut down; but just as the executioner was proceeding to quarter them,
their pardon was produced, and they were recovered to life;[*] the most
barbarous kind of mercy that can possibly be imagined!

This prince is said to have received a better education than was
usual in his age, to have founded one of the first public libraries in
England, and to have been a great patron of learned men. Among other
advantages which he reaped from this turn of mind, it tended much to
cure him of credulity of which the following instance is given by Sir
Thomas More. There was a man who pretended that, though he was born
blind, he had recovered his sight by touching the shrine of St. Albans.
The duke, happening soon after to pass that way, questioned the man, and
seeming to doubt of his sight, asked him the colors of several cloaks,
worn by persons of his retinue. The man told them very readily. "You are
a knave," cried the prince; "had you been born blind, you could not so
soon have learned to distinguish colors;" and immediately ordered him to
be set in the stocks as an impostor.[**]

* Fabian, Chron. anno 1447.

** Grafton, p. 597.

The cardinal of Winchester died six weeks after his nephew whose murder
was universally ascribed to him as well as to the duke of Suffolk, and
which, it is said, gave him more remorse in his last moments than could
naturally be expected from a man hardened, during the course of a long
life, in falsehood and in politics. What share the queen had in this
guilt is uncertain; her usual activity and spirit made the public
conclude, with some reason, that the duke's enemies durst not have
ventured on such a deed without her privity. But there happened, soon
after, an event of which she and her favorite, the duke of Suffolk, bore
incontestably the whole odium.

That article of the marriage treaty by which the province of Maine was
to be ceded to Charles of Anjou, the queen's unele, had probably been
hitherto kept secret; and during the lifetime of the duke of Glocester,
it might have been dangerous to venture on the execution of it. But as
the court of France strenuously insisted on performance,