[Sidenote: July. Aske and Constable are sent down to Yorkshire.]
[Sidenote: Constable is executed at Hull.]
At the beginning of July the two remaining prisoners were placed in the custody of Sir Thomas Wentworth. They were paraded in formal state through the eastern counties, and at each town a few words of warning were addressed on the occasion to the people. Wentworth brought them thus to Lincoln, where they were delivered over to the Duke of Norfolk. Constable suffered first. He was taken to Hull,[267] and there hanged in chains.[268] Before his death he said that, although he had declared on his examination that he had revealed everything of importance which he knew, yet he had concealed some matter connected with Lord Darcy for fear of doing him an injury. "He was in doubt whether he had offended God in receiving the sacrament in such manner, concealing the truth upon a good purpose."[269] This secret, whatever it was, he carried with him from the world. His own offences he admitted freely, protesting, however, that he had added nothing to them since the pardon.
A fuller account remains of the end of Aske. He, too, like Constable, had some mystery on his conscience which he would not reveal. In a conversation with his confessor he alluded to Darcy's connexion with the Spanish ambassador; he spoke of the intention of sending for help to Flanders, and acknowledged his treason, while he shrunk from the name of traitor. He complained that Cromwell had several times promised him his life if he would make a full confession, and once he said he had a token of pardon from the king; but his bearing was quiet and brave, and if he believed himself hardly dealt with, he said so only in private to a single person.
[Sidenote: Aske is drawn upon a hurdle through the streets of York,]
York was chosen as his place of execution. He was drawn through the streets upon a hurdle, to be hanged afterwards from the top of a tower. On his way he told the people that he had grievously offended God, the king, and the world. God he had offended in breaking his commandments many ways; the King's Majesty he had greatly offended in breaking his laws, to which every subject was bound; and the world he had offended, "for so much as he was the occasion that many a one had lost their lives, lands, and goods." At the scaffold he begged the people to pray for him, "and divers times asking the King's Highness' forgiveness, the lord chancellor, the Lord of Norfolk, the lord privy seal, the Lord of Sussex, and all the world, after certain orisons he commended his soul to God."[270]