Reply of the
council.
Jlischief
done by
Gloucester.
Eleanor
Cobham,
Gloucester’s
Mife, tried
for witch-
craft, 1441.
130 Constitutional History. [chap.
The duke’s protest, which must have been very mischievous, *
was answered by a letter of the council1, in which, not caring
to notice the personal charges, they defended the policy of the
act : the release of Orleans was an act of the king himself,
done from the desire of peace ; a desire fully justified by the
great post of bloodshed, the heavy charges, the exhaustion of
both countries : it was a bad example to doom a prisoner of
war to perpetual incarceration, or, by vindictively retaining
him, to lose all the benefit of his co-operation in the obtaining
of peace. The answer is full of good sense and good feeling,
but it could never have commanded the same success as the
manifesto of duke Humfrey obtained. That document helped
to substitute in the mind of the nation, for the wholesome
desire of peace which had been gradually growing, a vicious,
sturdy, and unintelligent hatred to the men who were seeking
peace : a feeling which prejudiced the people in general against
Margaret of Anjou, and which, after having helped to destroy
Gloucester himself, caused the outbreak of disturbances which
led to civil war. It is curious to note how Gloucester tries
to represent the duke of York and the earl of Huntingdon
as sharers in his feelings of resentment. Either he was too
much blinded by spite to see the real drift of the cardinal’s
policy, or else those deeper grudges of the royal house, which
had cost and were still to cost so much bloodshed, were at
the time altogether forgotten in the personal dislike of the
Beauforts. Notwithstanding the protest, the duke of Orleans
obtained his freedom2.
The next year witnessed a miserable incident that served to
show that Gloucester was either powerless or contemptibly
pusillanimous3. After his separation from the unfortunate
Jacqueline, which was followed by a papal bull declaring the
nullity of their marriage, he had consoled himself with the
society of one of her ladies, Eleanor Cobham, whom he had
subsequently married. Eleanor Cobham, early in 1441, was
1 Stevenson, Wars in France, ii. 451.
2 Nov. 12, 1440 ; Rymer, x. 829.
3 Chron. Lond. pp. 129, 130; Engl. Chron. (ed. Davies), pp. 57-60;
Stow, p. 381 ; Fabyan, p. 614; Rot. Parl. v. 445.
:s*
XVIIi.] Eleanor Cobham. 131
suspected of treasonable sorcery, and took sanctuary at West-
minster. After appearing before the two archbishops, cardinal
Beaufort, and bishop Ascough of Salisbury, she was imprisoned
in Leeds castle ; and subsequently, on the report of a special
commission, consisting of the earls of Huntingdon and Suffolk
and several judges, she was indicted for treason. After several Hertriai and
hearings, she declined to defend herself, submitted to the cor- ment"°n
rection of the bishops, and did penance ; she was then
committed to the charge of Sir Thomas Stanley and kept
during the remainder of her life a prisoner. The object of
her necromantic studies was no doubt to secure a speedy
succession to the crown for her husband. He does not seem
to have ventured to act overtly on her behalf; whether from
cowardice or from a conviction of her guilt. It was not
forgotten that queen Johanna had in the same way conspired
against the life of Henry V ; and, when both accusers and
accused fully believed in the science by wτhich such treasonable
designs were to be compassed, it is as difficult to condemn
the prosecutor as it is to acquit the accused. The people, we
are told, pitied the duchess. If the prosecution were dictated
by hostility to her husband, the story is disgraceful to both
factions alike.
During the years 1441 and 1442 the duke of York won
some credit in the north of France ; the power of Charles VII
was increasing in the south. The English parliament met on Parliament
the 25th of January in the latter year1; granted the subsidies, 44
tunnage and poundage, for two years, a fifteenth and tenth,
and the alien tax. The vote of security for £ 100,000 had
now become an annual act. A petition, connected doubtless Triaisof
■with the duchess of Gloucester’s trial, that ladies of great regulated
estate, duchesses, countesses, or baronesses, should, under the hy statate∙
1 Kot. Paι∙l. v. 35; William Tresham was again speaker; the grants
L
were made March 27; ib. pp. 37-40. ‘At which parliament it was
ordained that the sea should be kept half a year at the king’s cost,
and therefore to pay a whole fifteenth, and London to lend him £3000 ; ’
Chr. Lend. p. 130; Kot. Karl. v. 59. Convocation granted a tenth, April
16 ; Wilk. Cone. iii. 536. A general pardon was granted at Easter 1442,
from which remunerative ɪeturns were expected; Ordinances, v. 185.
K 2