Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/172

158 great astonishment and grief of the people, width whom he was highly popular.

A court was formed for his trial, consisting of the Duke of Norfolk, as lord high steward, and seventeen other peers. On the 13th of May, 1521, he was brought to trial, and accused of having entertained traitorous designs against the king's crown and life; of having induced, by solicitations and promises, Hopkins to prophesy in his favour; of debauching the minds of the king's yeoman of the guard, and his servants, by bribes and hopes of benefit; of even threatening the king with death. Buckingham denied all the charges with great indignation, and declared nothing whatever in the indictment amounted to an overt act; but Fineux, the chief justice, replied that the crime consisted in imagining the king's death, and that the words he had spoken were evidence of such imagining. The duke proceeded, however, to examine and refute the charges, one after another, with great eloquence and vehemence of denial, and demanded that his own servants should be called to confront him. This was done «t once. Hopkins, Delacourt, and Perk were made to witness against him; but Knevet was the most fatal of his opponents. He declared that, on the 14th of November, at East Greenwich, he had said to him that when the king had reproved him for retaining Sir William Bulmer in his service, if he had perceived that he could be sent to the Tower, as he once suspected, he would have requested an audience of the king, and, when admitted, would have run him through the body with his dagger, as his father intended to have done to Richard III., at Salisbury, if he had come into his presence. It was added, that had he succeeded in killing the king, he would have cut off the head of the cardinal, and of some others, and then seized the throne.

Words on such trials wore useless; the seventeen peers found him guilty of everything, as they knew they were expected to do; and the Duke of Norfolk, deeply affected, and shedding many tears, for that dirty work was wofully unbefitting the brave victor of Flodden, pronounced sentence against him. Buckingham replied in the same manly manner which had marked him through the whole trial:—"My Lord of Norfolk, you have said to me as a traitor should be said unto; but I was never none. Still, my lords, I nothing malign you for that you have done unto me. May the eternal God forgive you my death, as I do! I shall never sue the king for life; howbeit, he is a gracious prince, and more grace may come from him than I desire. I entreat you, my lords, and all my fellows, to pray for me."

The edge of the axe was then turned towards him, as was the custom towards condemned traitors, and he was conducted by Sir Thomas Lovell to his barge. Sir Thomas requested him to take his seat on the cushions and the carpet prepared for him in the boat, but he declined, saying. "When I came to Westminster I was the Duke of Buckingham, but now I am nothing but Edward Stafford, and the poorest man alive." Persisting in his resolution not to solicit the king's mercy, for, no doubt, he was well convinced that he had an enemy who meant to have his blood, he was brought out of his dungeon to a scaffold on Tower Hill, on the 17th of May, four days after his trial, and there beheaded. His behaviour at the place of execution was of the same lofty character, but more sedate; he died like a brave and an innocent man, and when his head fell the people gave a groan. "God have mercy on his soul!" says the reporter of his trial, "for he was a most wise and noble prince, and the mirror of all courtesy."

The various causes of antipathy betwixt Francis I. and Charles V., which had been long fomenting, now reached that degree of activity when they must burst all restraint. War was inevitable. The first breach was made by Francis. He empowered the Marshal de Fleuranges to raise a small force, and march to the assistance of his father, the Prince of Sedan, who complained of injuries from the emperor, and had sent him a defiance. By the treaty of 1518 betwixt France, England, the Emperor Maximilian, and Charles, then King of Spain, it was stipulated that in case any one of the parties made war on another, the rest of the confederates should call upon him to desist, and if he refused, to declare hostilities against him. Charles now, therefore, appealed to Henry, who sent an ambassador to Francis to admonish him not to break the league by aiding the enemies of the emperor. Francis, who was afraid of giving cause for Henry to join the emperor, at once complied, and ordered Fleuranges to disband his army. But this concession did not prevent Charles from sending a powerful force to chastise the Prince of Sedan, which again roused Francis to oppose this aggression; and to take more effectual means of checking Charles, he seized the opportunity of an insurrection in his Spanish territories to unite with the expelled King of Navarre, Henry D'Albret, for the recovery of his patrimony. The French army rushed across the Pyrenees, and in fifteen days they were in possession of the whole of Navarre. The Spanish insurgents took no part in this invasion, but, on the contrary, when the French, not content with the liberation of Navarre, passed the frontiers of Castile, and were approaching Logrono, Spaniards of all parties united to repel the invaders with such impetuosity, that they not only drove them back from Castile, but expelled them again from Navarre in less time than it had taken to win it.

Whilst Francis made this sudden attack in the south, he had induced De La Marque, Duke of Bouillon, to revolt from Charles, and to invade the Netherlands at the head of a French army. At this crisis Charles appealed to Henry to act as mediator, according to the provisions of the treaty of 1518. Henry at once accepted the office, and entered upon it with high professions of impartiality and of his sincere desire to promote justice and amity, but really with about the same amount of sincerity as was displayed by each of the contending parties. Francis had certainly been the aggressor, and Charles having intercepted some of his letters, had already convinced Henry, to whom he had shown them, that the invasion of both Spain and Flanders was planned in the French cabinet. Henry's mind, therefore, was already made up before he assumed the duty of deciding; and Charles, from being aware of this, proposed his arbitration. Henry, moreover, was anxious to invade France on his own account, spite of treaties and the dallyings of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, but he had not yet the funds necessary. With these feelings and secrets in his own heart, Henry opened his proposal of arbitration to Francis by declarations of the extraordinary affection which he had contracted for him at the late interview.