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To fly the boar✶ before the boar pursues,
Were to incense the boar to follow us."

More says, that

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The protector and the duke, after they had sent the lord cardinal, the Archbishop of York, then lord chancellor, the Bishop of Ely, the Lord Stanley, and the Lord Hastings, with many other noblemen, to commune and devise about the coronation, in one place, as fast were they in another place contriving the contrary, and to make the protector king. To which council, albeit, there were admitted very few, and they were secret; yet began there, here and thereabouts, some manner of muttering among the people, as though all should not long be well. . . . By little and little all folk withdrew from the Tower, and drew unto Crosby's in Bishopsgate-street, where the protector kept his household. The protector had the resort, the king in manner desolate.. The Lord Stanley, that was after Earl of Derby, wisely mistrusted it, and said unto the Lord Hastings, that he much misliked these two several councils. For while we (quoth he) talk of one matter in one place, little wot we whereof they talk in the tother place. My lord (quoth the Lord Hastings), on my life never doubt you; for while one man is there which is never thence, never can there be any thing once moved that should sound amiss towards me, but it should be in my ears ere it were well out of their mouths. This

* Gloucester, so called from his badge.

meant he by Catesby, which was of his near secret council, and whom he very familiarly used, and in his most weighty matters put no man in so special trust; reckoning himself to no man so lief, since he well wist there was no man so much to him beholden as was this Catesby, which was a man well learned in the laws of this land, and by the special favour of the lord chamberlain in good authority, and much rule bare in all the county of Leicester, where the lord chamberlain's power chiefly lay."

The contemporary Chronicle says, that the council was divided by the singular cunning of the protector: a part being to meet in the Tower, and a part at Westminster. And this separation was, apparently, for the express purpose of facilitating the proceedings against Hastings.†

In the play, as in the Chronicle, Catesby proposes the elevation of Richard; congratulating Lord Hastings upon the destruction of Rivers and his other adversaries, at Pomfret. But Hastings refuses to take part against the young king.

* Hol., 378.

+ Croyl. Cont., 566; Lingard, 242. It must be observed that three places of meeting are mentioned-the Tower, Westminster, and Crosby-square. I take the last to have been the scene of private consultations only, and that portions of the council met at the other two. See a contemporary letter on Hastings's death in Excerpt. Hist., p. 16.

A council is now held at the Tower,* Gloucester enters, having heard of Hastings's refusal, and having communed with Buckingham, he addresses the counsellors,

"I pray you all tell me what they deserve,

That do conspire my death with devilish plots
Of damned witchcraft, and that have prevail'd
Upon my body with their hellish charms."

Hastings answers, that they deserve death. Gloucester exhibits his arm, " wither'd up," and imputes this, which was in truth no new calamity, to the Queen and Jane Shore, the well-known mistress of Edward (a rather unlikely combination) :

"Hastings. If they have done this deed, my noble lord

Glou. If! thou protector of this damned strumpet, Talk'st thou to me of ifs? Thou art a traitor,— Off with his head! Now, by St. Paul, I swear, I will not dine until I see the same."

And execution is now done, Hastings's head is produced on the stage, and afterwards a scrivener appears with the indictment against this unfortunate lord, which he has been ordered to draw in the utmost haste.

> The whole of this, even to the smaller incidents,

* Buckingham, Stanley, Hastings, Bishop of Ely, Catesby, Lovel, and others.

including Gloucester's sending to the garden of Ely Palace for a dish of strawberries, is taken from Sir Thomas More. That slight incident confirms the probability, that More's history was derived from Bishop Morton, if not written (as Sir Henry Ellis conjectures) by that prelate himself.

Except that Sir Thomas More is fuller, and nothing is said in the Continuation of Croyland* of the Queen's reluctance to part with her son Richard, that contemporary register agrees as to facts with More's narrative. No author, nor any record that is extant, gives reason to doubt of the summary nature of the process by which the execution of Hastings, and of the prisoners of Pomfret, was effected. But More, and Shakspeare after him, place the withdrawal of the young prince from the sanctuary, before the execution of Hastings. According to the more credible history, it occurred a few days afterwards.‡

Hastings was not the only person whom Gloucester, or his friends, attacked at this council in the Tower. More says that

"Another let fly at the Lord Stanley, which shrunk at the stroke, and fell under the table, or else his head had been cleft to the teeth, for as shortly as he shrunk, yet ran the blood about his ears."

P. 556.

+ Hol., 374.

‡ June 16th. Hastings was beheaded on the 13th.

And we are told that the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of Ely, were only saved from capital punishment out of respect to their order, and that they were sent as prisoners into Wales.*

Walpole attempts a sort of justification of Richard; alleging not only, which is true, that the punishment of state offences was in those times conducted with little of judicial trial, but that the Queen and her friends were the aggressors; having endeavoured to surround the young king with a large force, and also assembled armed men in the neighbourhood of the sanctuary in which Elizabeth had taken refuge;-all which hostile demonstrations were in order to maintain the custody of the king's person, and to exclude from all share in the government, during the minority, the Dukes of Gloucester and Buckingham, one of them the first prince of the blood, and the other nearly allied to the throne. Richard wrote on the 10th of June a letter, commanding the men of the north

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to rise and come to London, under the Earl of Northumberland and the Lord Nevil, to assist in subduing, correcting, and punishing the Queen, her blood, and other her adherents, who intended to murder and destroy the Protector and his cousin, the Duke of Buckingham, and the old royal blood of the realm.”‡

* Croyl. Cont., 566.

+ Works, ii. 128.

Turner, iii. 405; from Drake's Eboracum, p. 115; and see Lingard, 244.

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