e gibbets rose at the street corners and a bloody
vengeance fell upon the rioters. Dozens were hanged, drawn, and quartered
with atrocious cruelty; and under the ruthless Duke of Norfolk four
hundred more were condemned to death for treason to the King, who, it was
bitterly said in London, loved outlanders better than his own folk. It is
unlikely that Henry really meant to plunge all his capital in mourning by
hanging the flower of its youth, but he loved, for vanity's sake, that
his clemency should be publicly sought, and to act the part of a deity in
restoring to life those legally dead. In any case, Katharine's spontaneous
and determined intercession for the 'prentice lads would take no denial,
and she pleaded with effect. Her intercession, nevertheless, could hardly
have been so successful as it was if Wolsey had been opposed to it; and
the subsequent comedy in the great Hall at Westminster on the 22nd May was
doubtless planned to afford Henry an opportunity of appearing in his
favourite character. Seated upon a canopied throne high upon a dais of
brocade, surrounded by his prelates and nobles and with Wolsey by his
side, Henry frowned in crimson velvet whilst the "poore younglings and
olde false knaves" trooped in, a sorry procession, stripped to their
shirts, with halters around their necks. Wolsey in stern words rebuked
their crime, and scolded the Lord Mayor and Aldermen for their laxity;
ending by saying they all deserved to hang. "Mercy! gracious lord, mercy!"
cried the terrified boys and their distracted mothers behind; and the
Cardinal and the peers knelt before the throne to beg the life of the
offenders, which the King granted, and with a great shout of joy halters
were stripped from many a callow neck, and cast into the rafters of the
Hall for very joy. But all men knew, and the mothers too, that Wolsey's
intercession was only make-believe, and that what they saw was but the
ceremonial act of grace. The Queen they thanked in their hearts and not
the haughty Cardinal, for the King had pardoned the 'prentices privately
days before, when Katharine and her two sisters-in-law, the widowed Queens
of France and Scotland, had knelt before the King in unfeigned tears, and
had clamoured for the lives of the Londoners. To the day of the Queen's
unhappy death this debt was never forgotten by the citizens, who loved her
faithfully to the end far better than any of her successors.

The sweating sickness in the autumn of