“It was, you will recollect, in 1397, that Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, and uncle to Richard II., being charged with disaffection and conspiracy, was suddenly carried to Calais; in which confinement and exile he died, on the 24th of September in the same year, of an apoplectic fit, as some Historians relate, although the greater number charge Richard with his murder, and assert that he was smothered, or strangled: for he was rude and overbearing in his disposition, and usually opposed the King in most of his measures; censured his extravagant expenditure, and on several occasions is said to have reproached and upbraided him with great severity of language. On these accounts is the Duke’s death charged upon the King, and his favourites; and you have a very curious and interesting examination of the circumstance, in Richard Gough’s ‘_History and Antiquities of Pleshy, in the County of Essex_,’ London, 1803, quarto, pages 85-123. The reign of this unfortunate Monarch was, however, nearly at a close; for, on the 29th of September, 1399, he resigned the ensigns of Royalty to the Duke of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV., and in the formal accusation, consisting of 33 Articles, drawn up for his deposition, in the fourth he is charged with having caused the murder of the Duke of Gloucester. When these accusations were read over to Richard, and he had named his principal advisers in each action, it was Henry of Lancaster’s care to discover the four Knights who actually strangled the Duke of Gloucester in the Castle of Calais; and having done so, he confined them in four separate prisons in London, ‘and would not,’ says Sir John Froissart, ‘have taken twenty thousand nobles for their deliverance.’ Sir Thomas Knolles, the Mayor, and the Citizens of London, were next acquainted with the Articles of Deposition, and the King’s confession concerning the four Knights; when the crowds, which had assembled in the Guildhall, cried out with execrations against them, and loudly demanded their immediate condemnation. This very speedily followed, and old London Bridge, which has in its days witnessed so many scenes of blood, was appointed the place for the exhibition of their heads; but in giving you a short narrative of this execution, we can go to no better authority than to the Herodotus of his time, Sir John Froissart, who, as you will doubtless recollect, was born at Valenciennes in 1337, and was Priest, Canon, and Treasurer of the Collegiate Church of Chimay; he died about 1401, and his Chronicles of his own time were compiled from the most authentic sources.