ering himself to be worked
upon by these representations, sacrificed his friend Sir John Oldcastle,
the Lord Cobham, to them, after trying in vain to convert him by
arguments. He was declared guilty, as the head of the sect, and
sentenced to the flames; but he escaped from the Tower before the day of
execution (postponed for fifty days by the King himself), and summoned
the Lollards to meet him near London on a certain day. So the priests
told the King, at least. I doubt whether there was any conspiracy beyond
such as was got up by their agents. On the day appointed, instead of
five-and-twenty thousand men, under the command of Sir John Oldcastle, in
the meadows of St. Giles, the King found only eighty men, and no Sir John
at all. There was, in another place, an addle-headed brewer, who had
gold trappings to his horses, and a pair of gilt spurs in his
breast--expecting to be made a knight next day by Sir John, and so to
gain the right to wear them--but there was no Sir John, nor did anybody
give information respecting him, though the King offered great rewards
for such intelligence. Thirty of these unfortunate Lollards were hanged
and drawn immediately, and were then burnt, gallows and all; and the
various prisons in and around London were crammed full of others. Some
of these unfortunate men made various confessions of treasonable designs;
but, such confessions were easily got, under torture and the fear of
fire, and are very little to be trusted. To finish the sad story of Sir
John Oldcastle at once, I may mention that he escaped into Wales, and
remained there safely, for four years. When discovered by Lord Powis, it
is very doubtful if he would have been taken alive--so great was the old
soldier's bravery--if a miserable old woman had not come behind him and
broken his legs with a stool. He was carried to London in a
horse-litter, was fastened by an iron chain to a gibbet, and so roasted
to death.

To make the state of France as plain as I can in a few words, I should
tell you that the Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of Burgundy, commonly
called 'John without fear,' had had a grand reconciliation of their
quarrel in the last reign, and had appeared to be quite in a heavenly
state of mind. Immediately after which, on a Sunday, in the public
streets of Paris, the Duke of Orleans was murdered by a party of twenty
men, set on by the Duke of Burgundy--according to his own deliberate
confession. The widow of King