rst day some
ordinary business was transacted, and on the second, suddenly, and
without any previous warning, the duke was arrested by the public
officer, who was attended and aided in this service by a strong force,
and immediately taken away to the Tower.

This event, of course, produced great excitement. The news of it
spread rapidly throughout the kingdom, and it awakened universal
astonishment and alarm.

[Sidenote: Discontents of the people.]

It was expected that charges would be immediately brought against
him, and that he would be at once arraigned for trial. But the
excitement which the affair had created was increased to a ten-fold
degree by the tidings which were circulated a few days afterward that
he was dead. The story was that he was found dead one morning in his
prison. People, however, were slow to believe this statement. They
thought that he had been poisoned, or put to death in some other
violent manner. The officers of the government declared that it was
not so; and, in order to convince the people that the duke had died a
natural death, they caused the body to be exposed to public view for
several days before they allowed it to be interred, in order that all
might see that it bore no marks of violence.

The people were, however, not satisfied. They thought that there were
many ways by which death might be produced without leaving any outward
indications of violence upon the person. They persisted in believing
that their favorite had been murdered.

[Sidenote: 1449.]

[Sidenote: Supposed mode of his death.]

One account which was given of the mode of death was that Somerset
went to visit him in his prison in the Tower, in order to see whether
he could not come to some terms with him but that Gloucester rejected
his advances with so much pride and scorn that a furious altercation
arose, in the course of which Somerset, with the assistance of men
whom he had brought with him, strangled or suffocated the unhappy
prisoner on his couch, and then, after arranging his limbs and closing
his eyes, so as to give him the appearance of being in a state of
slumber, his murderers went away and left him, to be found in that
condition by the jailer when he should come to bring him his food.

CHAPTER XI.

THE FALL OF SUFFOLK.

[Sidenote: Two years pass away.]

After the death of the Duke of Gloucester, Queen Margaret was plunged
in a perfect sea of plots, schemes, manoeuvres, and machinations