IV. CHAP. Duke of Suffolk, the Bishop of Sarum, and the Lord Say, as principally concerned in this matter. On which the King, finding that the Commons would not be satisfied, sequestered the Lord Say, who was Lord High Treasurer, and the other friends of the Duke from their offices and employments, and banished the Duke himself for the term of five years, hoping that in that time the rage of his enemies would be somewhat appeased, so that he might be safely recalled. But all these designs were not suffered to take effect; for the Duke taking ship at Ipswich in SufW. Wyr- folk, to transport himself into Flanders, was met the next day by a ship of war belonging to the Duke of Exeter, Constable of the Tower of London, called the Nicholas of the Tower, and others which lay in wait for him; the captain of which boarding the Duke's ship, and finding the Duke there, brought him into Dover road, where he caused his head to be cut off by the sailors on the gunnel or side of the long-boat, and left his body with the head on the sands hard by, which was taken up, together with his head, by Robert and buried in the collegiate cester. May 2. church of Wingfield in Suffolk. 6. The Duke was a nobleman of very considerable abilities, and one to whom his Prince and country were not a little indebted. He had warred in France forty-four years without intermission, in seventeen of which he never once saw his own country. In 1420 he was made a Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, and in 1446 a Marquis, and two years after advanced to the honour of a Duke. But after all, suffering himself to be governed by a prodigious ambition, he was the unhappy adviser of the King's dishonourable match, and a contributor towards the worthy Duke of Gloucester's murder, and upon these accounts universally hated, as the occasion of all the kingdom's misfortunes, in which it was so terribly involved after that great patriot's death. In the fall of this great d Tunc in Anglia occisi fuerunt per Anglicos Dux Suffolcia Will. Poole, et Jacobus vocatus Dominus Say, et Dominus Will. Ayscough Episc. Sarum, &c. Gascoigne, Dict. Theol. MS. man, it is intimated as if our Bishop was not a little concerned, as thereby losing all the interest he once had with the temporal lords, as we shall see hereafter. CHAP. IV. 7. The Duke of York had very soon after the Duke of A. D. 1448. Gloucester's death begun to whisper among his friends his right and title to the crown, and was so far suspected e of making an attempt to assert and claim it, as to be sent into Ireland to be out of the way. But, as is observed, though he was there as a prisoner, he had a great influence on the affairs of this kingdom, his friends, kinsmen, and allies being so many and very numerous. The Duke of Suffolk now falling under the displeasure of the Parliament, and having been taken and beheaded as he was going into France, as has been said before, the Duke of York's friends thought it a proper time to sound the inclinations of the people towards him. For this purpose they enticed a young man of good parts, and who made a handsome appearance, whose name was John Cade, to take upon himself the name of Mortimer, as supposing by that stratagem to make the family of the Earl of March, which was very large, to favour and adhere to him, and to conceal the Duke of York's having any hand in this sudden rebellion. The better to succeed in this attempt, it was ordered to be first made in Kent, the inhabitants of that county having been observed to be very impatient of Hall. wrongs, disdaining what they thought oppression, and ever desirous of changing. Here Cade raised a good num- In Whitsun Week, ber of men fit for his purpose, calling himself Captain w. Wyrces ter, Anna • Richard Duke of York was in pryson (as the Kynge's deputie) in the les. realme of Ireland continually resiaunt there. Hall's Chron. Circa festum nativitatis beatæ Mariæ, [Sept. viii. 1460,] reversus est Dux Eboraci de Hibernia, et arrivavit apud Redbanke prope Cestriam, et ibidem cum paucis meavit ad castrum de Ludlowe. Die vii. Octobris inceptum est Parliamentum-Tercio die Parliamenti Dux Eboraci cum 500 armatis intravit palacium Westmonasterii, et sic in camera Parliamenti ubi proprio ore suo declaravit se fore heredem regium coronæ Angliæ. Et illo die pauci dominorum sibi favebant, sed solummodo absentabant. In vigilia Omnium Sanctorum concordati sunt Rex et Dux Eboraci auctoritate Parliamenti. W. Wyrcester, Annales Rerum Anglic. IV. CHAP. Mendall, and them the public petitioners for public justice, and with them, very well appointed, marched to Blackheath, where he lay encamped about a month, sending for whom and what he pleased. Gascoigne tells us, that they plundered several Rectors and Vicars in Kent, whom, I suppose, they knew, or suspected not to be in the Duke of York's interest. Nor were these attempts in favour of the Duke of York confined to Kent; care had been taken by the Duke's agents, by popular insinuations to the prejudice of the government, to inflame the minds of the people in other parts of the kingdom, and set them against it. In those dioceses, the Bishops of which were either in favour at court, or any ways retainers to it, arts were used to prejudice the people against them and their clergy, who were in the same interest, and continued steady in their duty and loyalty to the King. And, because people are commonly most affected with what relates to their worldly advantage, therefore was it industriously suggested to them, how great losers they were by their Bishops not residing on their dioceses, not living among them, nor doing their alms, nor keeping any hospitality with them, but spending all their revenue elsewhere. Thus in the diocese of Sarum, Aiscough. Dr. William Asku, Bishop of that see, and the King's f Die Junii communitas Kanciæ, cum Johanne Cade capitaneo eorum, venerunt usque Blakheth, et ibi fixerunt campum. W. Wyrcester, Annales. g Dominus Wilielmus Ayscough, Episcopus Sarum, et tunc Confessor R. Henrico VI. occisus fuit per ipsos suos diocesanos post missam suam, quam celebravit in die sanctorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli. Et devote accepit mortem suam, ut dicebatur, et male tractabatur a suis diocesanis propriis, qui eum occidebant, et bona sua multa rapiebant, dicentes, Iste mansit semper cum Rege, et fuit ejus Confessor, et non mansit in sua diocesi Sarum nobiscum, nec tenuit hospitalitatem, ideo occidetur. Et sic verberabant eum, et percutiebant eum, cum instrumentis horribilibus ipsum vulnerantes tyrannice, et occidentes post extractionem ejus extra ecclesiam, et ipsum nudum jacere in campo fecerunt. Gascoigne, Dict. Theol. MS. The 29th of June, William Ascoth, Bishop of Salisbury, after he had said mass at Edington, was by his own tenants drawn from the altar in his albe, with his stole about his neck, to the top of an hill, and there by them shame IV. Confessor, was murdered by the mob, who forced him CHAP. from the altar, where he was celebrating mass on the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul, and dragged him out of the church, thus insulting and reproaching him; That fellow was always with the King, and was his Confessor, and never lived in his diocese with us, nor kept any hospitality; therefore shall he be killed. Accordingly they never left beating and wounding him till he was dead, when they stript him of his episcopal robes, and left him naked in the open field, and plundered his episcopal palace. Not content with this cruel revenge on the Bishop, they likewise, we are told, plundered several Rectors and Vicars in the same diocese near Salisbury, and about Hungerford. William Boothe, Bishop of Coventry, and Chancellor to the Queen, and Dr. Walter Lyherd, or Le Hart, the Queen's Confessor, were both, we are told, pursued by the rabble on their flying to avoid their fury. 8. Gascoigne h, in his zeal against our Bishop, tells us, that he was the cause of the several mobs who committed these cruelties and did so much mischief, and reckons them as a judgment of God, occasioned by his, and other Bishops promoted by the King, preaching that Bishops are not obliged to preach themselves. The same is very fully murdered. And the day before his chariot was robbed to the value of ten thousand marks. Stow's Summary of English Chronicles, p. 371. xxx die [Junii] Wyllelmus Ascough, tunc Episcopus Sarum, apud Edyngtone, Wiltesire, ab insurrectoribus ejusdem comitatus interimitur. W. Wyrcester, Annales Rerum Anglic. b Causa fuit Reginaldus Pecock, quod plurimi in populo surrexerunt et occiderunt Episcopum Cicestrensem Adam Molens, et Episcopum Sarum Will. Asku; et persecuti sunt Episcopum Cestriæ Buthe nomine, et Episcopum Norwicensem Walterum Lyart; et Rectores et Vicarios diversos in Cantia, et juxta Sarum, et circa Hungerford spoliaverunt. Et eodem anno intravit Dux Eboraci in Angliam ab Hibernia, in qua tunc fuerat contra voluntatem suam, ex mandato Regis Angliæ, Henrici VI. Et revera ex quo prædictus Episcopus Reginaldus Pecock, et alii Episcopi per Regem intrantes, dixerint, quod Episcopi non tenentur prædicare per se ipsos vocaliter, Deus omnipotens prædicavit in Anglia realiter, puniendo realiter, et puniri permittendo, Episcopos, &c. in Anglia. Dict. Theol. MS. K 4 Collier's Eccles. Hist. vol. i. CHAP. confidently affirmed by a late ecclesiastical historian, who IV. is pleased to assure us, that, " for about two years after "our Bishop's maintaining the seven propositions above" mentioned, he declaimed against the Bishops in the pulpit in very warm intemperate expressions, railed on them "for their titles and revenues, for appearing with a splen"did equipage; and notwithstanding he had lately dis"charged them from the exercises of the pulpit, he now "reproaches them for their omissions of this kind; is so "hardy as to affirm, that it was either their ignorance, or "their luxury, that occasioned this negligence; and, that "if they would do any good in preaching, they must de"claim against their own practice, and recommend those "good qualities they had not the honesty to be masters "of. This satire upon the hierarchy, the historian tells us, 56 proved popular, inflamed the mob to a tumult, and car"ried them to such a pitch of distraction, that they mur"dered Molens and Asku, Bishops of Chichester and Sa"lisbury, and pulled down their palaces. They likewise "drove the Bishops of Litchfield and Norwich from their "sees, and pursued them through the country, plundered Jurisperiti and killed several advocates and judges belonging to Ac Episco❝ the spiritual courts, and harassed the inferior Clergy in "Kent and Wiltshire at a barbarous rate." To such lengths will men go, who are slaves to their own prejudices, and write history for no other end than to captivate men's affections, and serve a cause. porum Offi ciarii. 9. Gascoigne, it is plain, imputed these calamities of the public to our Bishop, and others promoted by the King, out of prejudice to the court, and to our Bishop in particular, whom he reckoned an heretic. As to the other Wood, Hist. account, the author of it was so blinded with zeal against et Antiq. Oxon.pars i. our Bishop, as not to read even his own voucher right; p. 222, col. who is so far from saying, that the Bishop declaimed against his colleagues in the pulpit, and made a satire upon the hierarchy; that he only tells us, that his sermons in defence of the Prelates of that time were so far from sa |