xious to
get him married. The Duke of Gloucester wanted him to marry a daughter
of the Count of Armagnac; but, the Cardinal and the Earl of Suffolk were
all for MARGARET, the daughter of the King of Sicily, who they knew was a
resolute, ambitious woman and would govern the King as she chose. To
make friends with this lady, the Earl of Suffolk, who went over to
arrange the match, consented to accept her for the King's wife without
any fortune, and even to give up the two most valuable possessions
England then had in France. So, the marriage was arranged, on terms very
advantageous to the lady; and Lord Suffolk brought her to England, and
she was married at Westminster. On what pretence this queen and her
party charged the Duke of Gloucester with high treason within a couple of
years, it is impossible to make out, the matter is so confused; but, they
pretended that the King's life was in danger, and they took the duke
prisoner. A fortnight afterwards, he was found dead in bed (they said),
and his body was shown to the people, and Lord Suffolk came in for the
best part of his estates. You know by this time how strangely liable
state prisoners were to sudden death.

If Cardinal Beaufort had any hand in this matter, it did him no good, for
he died within six weeks; thinking it very hard and curious--at eighty
years old!--that he could not live to be Pope.

This was the time when England had completed her loss of all her great
French conquests. The people charged the loss principally upon the Earl
of Suffolk, now a duke, who had made those easy terms about the Royal
Marriage, and who, they believed, had even been bought by France. So he
was impeached as a traitor, on a great number of charges, but chiefly on
accusations of having aided the French King, and of designing to make his
own son King of England. The Commons and the people being violent
against him, the King was made (by his friends) to interpose to save him,
by banishing him for five years, and proroguing the Parliament. The duke
had much ado to escape from a London mob, two thousand strong, who lay in
wait for him in St. Giles's fields; but, he got down to his own estates
in Suffolk, and sailed away from Ipswich. Sailing across the Channel, he
sent into Calais to know if he might land there; but, they kept his boat
and men in the harbour, until an English ship, carrying a hundred and
fifty men and called the Nicholas of the Tower, came alongside his litt