Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/418

 p. 177;, p. 221). On 31 Jan. 1464 he was appointed chancellor of Ireland. He was with the king in Yorkshire in the spring and summer, and as constable tried and condemned to death Sir Ralph Grey, and doubtless also the rest of the large number of the Lancastrian party executed at that time (, ii. 304). At the serjeants' feast in that year the earl was given precedence of the mayor of London, though the dinner was held within the city; the mayor in consequence left the hall with his officers, and an apology was made to him (, p. 222). On 12 Aug. he was appointed commissioner to treat with the Duke of Brittany (Fœdera, xi. 531). In 1467, during the lieutenancy of the Duke of Clarence, he was appointed deputy of Ireland in place of Thomas Fitzgerald, eighth earl of Desmond [q. v.] He held a parliament at Drogheda in which Desmond and Thomas Fitzgerald, seventh earl of Kildare [q. v.], were attainted. Desmond was executed, and Worcester is accused of having cruelly put to death two of his infant sons; though this has, with some reason, been doubted [see, eighth ], the truth of the charge seems established by the reference to it in the account of Worcester's death given by his contemporary, Vespasiano. In revenge for Desmond's death the Fitzgeralds of Munster ravaged Meath and Kildare. The Earl of Kildare was respited, and his pardon was ratified by Worcester's second parliament. In return Kildare joined Worcester and his countess in founding a chantry in the church of St. Secundinus at Dunslaughlin, Meath. Worcester received the island of Lambay by vote of the Irish parliament, to fortify it against Breton, French, and Spanish plunderers. He returned to England before the end of 1468.

The Lincolnshire rising of 1470 brought a fresh crop of executions. Worcester, who was with the king in his campaign, was again appointed constable on 14 March at Stamford (Fœdera, xi. 654), and at once resumed his old work of carrying out the royal vengeance. On the 23rd he received the lieutenancy of Ireland, of which Clarence was deprived. He marched south with the king, and twenty of the party of Clarence and the Earl of Warwick, who were then escaping to France, having been taken in a naval engagement at Southampton, Worcester, at the king's command, judged and condemned them, and after they were hanged, drawn, and quartered, caused their heads and bodies to be impaled, ‘for the whiche the peple of the londe were gretely displesyd, and evere afterwarde the Erle of Wurcestre was gretely behatede emonge the peple, for ther dysordinate deth that he used contrarye to the lawe of the lond’ (, p. 9). On 30 April he was appointed chamberlain of the exchequer. In October Edward fled from England, and Henry was restored. It is said that Worcester took refuge among some herdsmen in the forest of Weybridge, Huntingdonshire, and disguised himself as one of them; that he sent a countryman to buy him food with a larger piece of money than such a man would generally have, and that this led to the discovery of his hiding-place. The soldiers sent after him found him concealed in a high tree. He was lodged in the Tower, and taken thence to Westminster, where on the 15th he was tried in the constable's court, John de Vere, thirteenth earl of Oxford [q. v.], whose father and brother he had sentenced to death, being appointed constable specially for his trial. His execution was to take place on Monday the 17th, but as he was being led from Westminster to Tower Hill so great a crowd pressed round to see him that the sheriffs were forced to lodge him in the Fleet prison until the next day. Several ecclesiastics are said to have accompanied him to his death in the afternoon of the 18th, and among them an Italian friar, who reproached him for his cruelties, and specially for the deaths of two youths, evidently the young Fitzgeralds. He met his death with patience and dignity, and is said to have bidden the headsman strike him three blows in honour of the Trinity. He was buried in the Blackfriars church, and, according to Fabyan, in a chapel that he had himself built, though Leland, probably more correctly, says that the chapel was built by one of his sisters, between two columns on the south side. Hated for his cruelty, he was called ‘the butcher of England,’ and is described as ‘the fierce executioner and beheader of men.’ Though his master was primarily responsible for most of his cruelties, Worcester was evidently a willing instrument of Edward's bloodthirsty vengeance; it is said that the king disapproved of the execution of Desmond; the slaughter of Desmond's two sons, and the impalements, which specially shocked public sentiment, were probably his unprompted acts. Some part of the popular hatred of him may have arisen from an abhorrence of the abuses of the constable's court over which he presided; for he seems to have been regarded as the introducer of a foreign and tyrannical system contrary to the laws and liberties of the kingdom, which was bitterly