Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/608

594 notorious offenders, supported iniquitous causes, and tilled the offices of state with his vilest creatures. The powerful party which prosecuted the revenge of Gloucester's injuries, and now allied itself to the ambitious Duke of York, were the more numerously backed by the nobility, who regarded Suffolk with envy, as a man who, being but the grandson of a merchant, had risen over their heads, and made himself all but monarch.

This universal clamour against him compelled him to rise in his place immediately on the opening of Parliament, and endeavour to defend himself. He alluded to the report, industriously circulated, that he intended to marry his son to a daughter of Somerset, and through that alliance to aspire to the crown. He treated the rumour as most ridiculous, as no doubt it was, reminding the House of the deaths of his father and three brothers in the service of the country, at Azincourt, Jargeau, &c., and of his own long and severe service there. But his appeal had no other result than to induce the Commons to demand that, as on his own showing he lay under suspicions of treason, he should be impeached and committed to the Tower, in order to his trial. They asserted that he had invited the King of France to come over and make himself master of this country, and had furnished the castle of Wallingford with stores and provisions for the purpose of aiding him.

Probably Suffolk had made some such preparation in anticipation of some popular outbreak—an event which ere long took place; but the idea of his deliberate betrayal of his country to France was too absurd for anything but a party cry. It did its work, however. On that ludicrous charge he was committed to the Tower; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had shown himself a servile partisan of Suffolk, and presided at the scandalous trial of Gloucester's wife, surrendered the seals of the chancellorship in trepidation.

The Tower of London

In the course of the trial the Commons appear to have grown sensible of the futility of the bulk of these charges against the favourite, and a month after its commencement concentrated the force of their complaints on the waste and embezzlement of the public revenue, and the odious means to which he had resorted for its replenishment. This was an accusation which would be echoed by every class and person almost in the nation. It was a very sore subject indeed. During the minority of the king, the rapacity of the courtiers bad been, as usual in such cases, unbounded. The king's uncles had been utterly helpless to restrain it. It had crippled the resources for the war, and consequently led to its opprobrious termination. The royal demesnes were dissipated, and there was a debt against the king of £372,000, equal to nearly £4,000,000 of present money. This the Parliament protested that it neither could nor would pay. The consequence of this bankruptcy of the crown was, that all the old horrors and outrages of purveyance, in direct breach of Magna Charta, had been renewed. The country groaned under a system of universal robbery, which the public endured with an impatience and an outcry which menaced revolution; and all these offences were now, as is wont in such impeachments, heaped on the devoted head of Suffolk.

When Suffolk was called on for his defence, he fell on his knees before the king, and solemnly asserted his innocence. He declared that, as to the surrender of