otector, the "good duke
Humphrey" of Gloucester, and who was convicted of dire misdemeanours.
Edward Hall, the old historian, writing of 1441, tells the story:--

"For first this yere, Dame Elyanour Cobham, wife of the said duke,
was accused of treason, for that she, by sorcery and enchantment
entended to destroy the kyng, to thentent to aduance and to promote
her husbande to the crowne: upon thys she was examined in St.
Stephen's Chappel before the Bisshop of Canterbury; and there by
examinacion convict and judged to do open penance, in iij open
places, within the city of London, and after that adjudged to
perpetuall prisone in the Isle of Man, under the kepyng of Sir Jhon
Stanley, Knyght. At the same season were arrested, as ayders and
counsailers to the sayde duchesse, Thomas Southwel, preiste and
chanon of St. Stephen's, in Westminster, Jhon Hum, preist, Roger
Bolyngbroke, a conyng nycromancier, and Margerie Jourdayne, surnamed
the witche of Eye, to whose charge it was laied y^t thei, at the
request of the duchesse, had devised an image of waxe, representing
the kyng, which by their sorcery, a litle and litle consumed,
entendyng thereby in conclusion to waist, and destroy the kynges
person, and so to bring him to death; for the which treison they
wer adjudged to dye, and so Margery Jourdayne was brent in
Smithfelde, and Roger Bolyngbroke was drawn and quartered at
Tiborne, takyng upon his death, that there was neuer no such thing
by theim ymagined; Jhon Hum had his pardon, and Southwel died in the
toure before execution."

The beautiful duchess's penance is in all the history books. But it is
Shakespeare, and not the historians, who makes her walk through the town
in a white sheet and barefoot.

Three miles north of Lingfield is Crowhurst, one of a noble pair of
names. Crowhurst in Sussex and Crowhurst in Surrey each has its
immemorial yew, a tree of trees. But the yew of the Surrey
churchyard--is there no better way of honouring a tree than the
Crowhurst way? Who is to look at a tree like this without unhappiness?
From the road the first impression to be had of it is nothing very
imposing; a mass of deep and shining green, of no great stature, with
strong, springy branches brushing the church walls--that is all. But the
nearer view! You expect, and find, an enormous gnarled trunk, and
then--Your first idea is that someone has