Taylor & Son's Northamptonshire Handbook.
the men of Coventry to cause the death of Edward II. and his favourite Despensers by enchantments; and in the reign of Henry VI. a very similar charge was brought against Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester; her intended victim, as it was stated, being the King. An unfortunate priest, accused as one of her accomplices, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, and the Duchess had to do penance and suffer a long imprisonment. These were the most remarkable cases of alleged witchcraft up to the middle of the fifteenth century; but an illustration quite as striking of the way in which popular superstition could be made an instrument of private malice or political animosity occurs in the attempt to prosecute the Duchess of Bedford, mother of Edward IV.'s queen. This story has so strong a local bearing that it will be incumbent upon us to give it in fuller detail. The marriage of Edward with Elizabeth Woodville is generally looked upon as one of impulsive affection as against policy—of romance instead of the cold calculation which too generally influences the choice of kings even in their matrimonial alliances. Brought up amid the turbulence of civil war, Edward was distinguished by a rough generosity, a hearty frankness of disposition, and withal an unthinking readiness in yielding to his softer passions, which was often as great a recommendation to his subjects as it proved an embarrassment to his sager councillors. It was while he had yet had little experience of the troubles and difficulties of governing that he "fell in love," as the phrase goes, with Elizabeth Woodville. "You all know," says Mr. Becke, in his excellent Lectures on Witchcraft,[1] "the romantic story—how, in the shady groves of Whittlebury, there stands an oak, now called the Queen's Oak, and how tradition tells us that, under that oak, the gallant young king, by accident, no doubt, met the fair Elizabeth. If it were not too grave a slander against such august personages, I should be tempted to say that a very crafty mother, with a very pretty, demure, and sly little daughter, had set a trap, and caught there a very green young king." No doubt it was a great "catch" to secure the hand of an English monarch, but still the social position of the Queen was not so low as the exaggerated histories of the day would lead us to believe. "Her birth could not be called mean," says Charles Knight,[2] "whose mother was a duchess, and whose maternal uncle was a Prince of Luxemburgh, who attended her coronation with a retinue of a hundred knights and gentlemen." On the side of her father, too, the family was at least respectable. It could be traced back to the twelfth century, and its history from that period was one of gradually rising importance. Richard de Widevill served the office of High Sheriff of the county no less than eight times in the reign of Edward III., and was one of its representatives in seven Parliaments. The same distinctions were almost as frequently conferred on his son, John Widevill, and grandson, Thomas Widevill, who became Lord of Grafton.[3] Richard, the grandfather of the Queen, was Constable of the Tower and Lieutenant of Calais—posts of no mean importance. But the shower of honours which Edward subsequently bestowed on her relatives led to the bitterest jealousy among the courtiers-jealousy which showed itself, not only in efforts to depreciate the dignity of her family, but in successful attempts to incite the people to rebellion, and in private persecutions of every imaginable kind. "I'll tell you what," says Shakspere's Gloster—
"I think it is our way,
If we will keep in favour with the king,
To be her men, and wear her livery;
The jealous o'er-worn widow, and herself,
Since that our brother dubb'd them gentlewomen,
Are mighty gossips in this monarchy."
Among the means employed to vent their malice was this of accusing the Queen's mother of having, through the agency of witchcraft, fixed the King's love upon her daughter. The charge appears to have been brought by a certain "Thomas Wake, squier," (of Blisworth) who seized the opportunity of the King's being at Warwick to present before him and his attendant lords "a image of lede made lyke a man of armes, conteynyng the lengthe of a mannes fynger, and broken in the myddes, and made fast with a wyre, sayying it was made by the Duchess' to use with wichcraft and sorsory." These images of lead, or, as they were more frequently made, of wax, figured conspicuously in the witch superstitions. The image was held before a slow fire, and, as it melted, so the person
60
