Many conjectures were immediately afloat, as to the cause and perpetrator of this dreadful act, and, as is ever usual in such cases, many more absurd and irrational than just:—there was no apparent possibility of tracing the fact; it appeared to mock all the art and all the power of justice. He had not been robbed—murder alone had been intended, and had alone been perpetrated; so that one fact at least was clear, that this deed had been the work of an enemy: no common one, it was presumed, if the appearance of the corpse might weigh any thing in evidence; it was mangled fearfully, and the frightful distension of the muscles, the grim and rigid expression of the features, the many deep and bloody wounds upon the body, and the firm and powerful grasp with which the strained fingers of one hand clenched a dark lock of human hair, while those of the other as firmly closed over the hilt of a broken dagger, gave tokens that a fierce and terrible struggle had preceded his unexpected destruction. It was hoped, that some corresponding token of wounds and fierce exertion might lead to a discovery of the murderer; for none deemed, after beholding the body, and calling to mind the noble courage of the victim when in life, that the destroyer could pass from that gripe unharmed.
He who had thus fallen, was one for whom every eye had a tear and every heart a genuine sigh; he had been the friend of all, the enemy of none; he was young, beautiful, and brave; and his native town had looked up to him as one who was to add new glory to her venerable name, and new lustre to his own princely blood; and cut off in the beginning of his career, the very high day of his happiness and beauty, and so cut off—who was there that did not lament for John de la Pole? But, though all Winchester, and the county in whose bosom it lies, sorrowed over the corpse of John de la Pole, the agony borne from his death was to be found in his family alone; there he had been adored, and there most truly and deeply was his sad destiny accused. His young and lovely wife, scarce past her bridal year,—she who had, long before his marriage, been the secret object of his ardent love, and who, upon the death of his father, became the object of his choice—of her grief it was scarcely possible to think without affright; for, in that convulsion of soul into which, in the first horror of eternal separation from all we love, we invariably fall, she had withdrawn herself from all consolation of her friends—all succour of her attendants; and report whispered that she was using means, though quietly, (in order to avoid public shame,) to shorten a life which was now become odious and burthensome. To this cruel resolution she had been driven by a terrible incident; on the morning of the discovery of the body, she had, believing him to be on his road towards his home, ascended her carriage in order to meet him, and was driving cheerfully through the town, when her progress was arrested by the appearance of the crowd bearing the corpse of her husband. She recognized it at a glance, and, before they were aware of their imprudence, a piercing shriek announced to the people that she did so. She took another searching, distracted look at the body, and shrunk into the arms of her attendants, insensible and silent. _They_ thought she was dead—it would not have been wonderful if she had been; the husband of her soul was lying before her, a deep gash across his throat, another had disfigured his snowy brow, and almost divided his once lofty head, while the bosom upon which she had been accustomed to repose was mangled and rent by stabs and blows too many to number—what an object for a young and loving wife! Remembrance was terrible to her, and the inability of justice to discover the murderer added despair to her grief, and thus compelled her to seek for consolation only in the prospect of death.