were faithful to the young King nevertheless,
quickly resolved to strike a blow for himself.
Accordingly, while those lords met in council
at the Tower, he and those who were in his
interest met in separate council at his own
residence, Crosby Palace, in Bishopsgate Street.
Being at last quite prepared, he one day
appeared unexpectedly at the council in the
Tower, and appeared to be very jocular and
merry. He was particularly gay with the
Bishop of Ely: praising the strawberries that
grew in his garden on Holborn Hill, and
asking him to have some gathered that he
might eat them at dinner. The Bishop, quite
proud of the honor, sent one of his men to
fetch some; and the Duke, still very jocular
and gay, went out; and the council all said
what a very agreeable duke he was!  In a
little time, however, he came back quite
altered—not at all jocular—frowning and
fierce—and suddenly said,

"What do those persons deserve who have
compassed my destruction; I being the King's
lawful, as well as natural, protector?"

To this strange question, Lord Hastings
replied, that they deserved death, whosoever
they were.

"Then," said the Duke, "I tell you that
they are that sorceress my brother's wife;"
meaning the Queen; "and that other
sorceress, Jane Shore. Who, by witchcraft, have
withered my body, and caused my arm to
shrink as I now show you."

He then pulled up his sleeve and showed
them his arm, which was shrunken, it is true,
but which had been so, as they all very well
knew, from the hour of his birth.

Jane Shore, being then the lover of Lord
Hastings, as she had formerly been of the
late King, that lord knew that he himself
was attacked. So, he said, in some confusion,
"Certainly, my Lord, if they have done this,
they be worthy of punishment."

"If?" said the Duke of Gloucester; "do you
talk to me of ifs?  I tell you, that they have
so done, and I will make it good upon thy
body, thou traitor!"

With that, he struck the table a great blow
with his fist. This was no doubt a signal to
some of his people outside, to cry "Treason!"
They immediately did so, and there was a
rush into the chamber of so many armed
men that it was filled in a moment.

"First," said the Duke of Gloucester to
Lord Hastings, "I arrest thee, traitor! And
let him," he added to the armed men who
took him, "have a priest at once, for by
St. Paul I will not dine until I have seen his
head off!"

He was hurried to the green by the Tower
chapel, and there beheaded on a log of wood
that happened to be lying on the ground.
Then the Duke dined with a sufficiently good
appetite, and after dinner summoning the
principal citizens to attend him, told them
that Lord Hastings and the rest had designed
to murder both himself and the Duke of
Buckingham, who stood by his side, if he had
not providentially discovered their design.
He requested them to be so obliging as to
inform their fellow-citizens of the truth of
what he said, and issued a proclamation
(prepared and neatly copied out beforehand)
to the same effect.

On the same day that the Duke did these
things in the Tower, Sir Richard Ratcliffe,
the boldest and most undaunted of his men,
went down to Pontefract; arrested Lord
Rivers, Lord Gray, and two other gentlemen;
and publicly executed them on the scaffold,
without any trial, for having intended the
Duke's death. Three days afterwards the
Duke, not to lose time, went down the river to
Westminster in his barge, attended by divers
bishops, lords and soldiers, and demanded
that the Queen should deliver her second
son, the Duke of York, into his safe keeping.
The Queen, being obliged to comply,
resigned the child after she had wept over
him; and Richard of Gloucester placed him
with his brother in the Tower. Then, he
seized Jane Shore, and, because she had been
the lover of the late King, confiscated her
property, and got her sentenced to do public
penance in the streets by walking in a scanty
dress, with bare feet, and carrying a lighted
candle, to St. Paul's Cathedral through the
most crowded part of the City.

Having now all things ready for his own
advancement, he caused one of the numerous
friars who were always prepared to do any
wrong thing, to preach a sermon at the cross
which stood in front of St. Paul's Cathedral,
in which he dwelt upon the profligate manners
of the late King, and upon the late shame of
Jane Shore, and hinted that the princes were
not his children. "Whereas, good people,"
said the friar, whose name was SHAW, "my
Lord the Protector, the noble Duke of
Gloucester, that sweet prince, the pattern of all
the noblest virtues, is the perfect image and
express likeness of his father." There had
been a little plot between the Duke and the
friar, that the Duke should appear in. the
crowd at this moment, when it was expected
that the people would cry " long live King
Richard! " But, either through the friar
saying the words too soon, or through the
Duke's coming too late, the Duke and the
words did not come together, and the people
only laughed, and the friar sneaked off
ashamed.

The Duke of Buckingham was a better
hand at such business than the friar, so
he went to the Guildhall next day, and
addressed the citizens in the Lord Protector's
behalf. A few dirty men, who had been
hired and stationed there for the purpose,
crying when he had done, " God save King
Richard!" he made them a grave bow, and
thanked them with all his heart. Next day,
to make an end of it, he went with the mayor
and some lords and citizens to Baynard Castle,
by the river, where Richard then was, and