Six years later, the King being now in the hands of William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, the Duke of Gloucester met his end. He was arrested at St. Edmundsbury on a charge of treason, and on the morrow was found dead in his bed. People were frequently found dead in their beds in these circumstances. To give some colour to the charge of treason five of his people were accused of complicity, and condemned to the usual mode of death. They were drawn to Tyburn, hanged for a few moments, cut down alive, stripped naked and “marked with a knife in order to be quartered.” That is to say, slight incisions were made all about the body in order to guide the executioner’s hand. They were then, having experienced nearly all the agonies of death by violence and torture, unexpectedly pardoned by the Earl of Suffolk. Did the conductor of the proceedings keep the pardon in his pocket and produce it just at the critical moment when the knife had drawn those diagrams in lines of blood round the victims’ naked bodies? or did the Earl send off the pardon by special messenger who arrived just in time to save them? If so, then the situation is one of the most dramatic in all the annals of Tyburn. It is said that their clothes were kept by the hangman, and that they all had to return, naked and bleeding as they were, to the City, where they were received with great joy.
The popularity of the Duke in the City is attested by the memory of his name which long survived in a proverb, “to dine with Duke Humphrey,” _i.e._ to have no dinner at all. The name of the “Good Duke,” who was buried at St. Albans, was given to a certain tomb in St. Paul’s, that of Sir John Beauchamp, warden of the Cinque Ports, who died in 1358. It became a custom for certain citizens—probably they were a club or association of some kind—to meet at this tomb on St. Andrew’s Day in the morning, and there, under pretence of holding offices under Duke Humphrey, to conclude with a feast. Also, on Mayday, watermen, bearers of tankards, and others, came to the tomb and strewed it with nuts and sprinkled water upon it as if they too were the servants of Duke Humphrey. This custom perished in the Great Fire, which burned up not only tombs and churches and great houses but the memory of great men.