reasonable than his proposals, and that he would do his best to get the king to adopt them. The little party then shook hands over this happy ending, and the earl proposed that they should drink together in order to advertise their followers of their concord. This done, he suggested that as all was now over, Scrope could send and dismiss his wearied men to their homes. Nothing loth, they at once began to disperse. Scrope did not realise that he had been duped until Westmorland laid hands on his shoulder and formally arrested him. This remarkable story is related by writers absolutely contemporary with the events; but Otterbourne (i. 256), who wrote under Henry V, represents the surrender as voluntary. Another version, based on the report of an eyewitness, ascribed the treachery to Lord Fitzhugh and the king's son John of Lancaster, duke of Bedford [q. v.] (Historians of York, iii. 288). Scrope and his companions were sent to Pontefract to await the decision of the king, who was hurrying up from Wales. On his arrival Scrope requested an interview, which Henry refused, sending Sir Thomas Beaufort to take away his crozier, which he only relinquished after a stiff tussle, declaring that none could deprive him of it but the pope, who had given it (Annales Henrici, p. 407; cf. Walsingham, ii. 423). Determined that York should witness the punishment of those who had incited her to treason, Henry carried his prisoners (6 June) to Scrope's manor of Bishopthorpe, some three miles south of the city. Before leaving Pontefract he had appointed a commission, including Beaufort and Chief-justice Gascoigne, to try the rebels, to which the Earl of Arundel and five other peers were now added (Wylie, ii. 230). Arundel and Beaufort received power to act as deputies of the absent constable and marshal. The trial was fixed for Monday, 8 June. The archbishop of Canterbury, who arrived in hot haste early that morning, to deprecate any summary treatment of a great prelate of the church, was persuaded by the king to take some rest on the understanding that nothing should be done without his co-operation. But Henry was deeply incensed against Scrope, and Lord Arundel and Beaufort took care his anger did not cool. He called upon Gascoigne to pass sentence upon Scrope and his fellow-traitors. The chief justice, who knew the law, refused to sit in judgment on a prelate (Gascoigne, p. 226). Another member of the commission, Sir William Fulthorpe, a man learned in the law, though not a judge, was then instructed to act as president. While the king and Archbishop Arundel were breakfasting the three prisoners were brought before Fulthorpe, Arundel, Beaufort, and Sir Ralph Euer, and Fulthorpe at once declared them guilty of treason, and by the royal order sentenced them to death (ib., but cf. Annales Henrici, p. 409).
Scrope repudiated any intention of injuring the king or the realm, and besought the bystanders to pray that God's vengeance for his death should not fall upon King Henry and his house. No time was lost in carrying out this hasty and irregular sentence. Attired in a scarlet cloak and hood, and mounted on a bare-backed collier's horse ‘scarcely worth forty pence,’ Scrope was conducted towards York with his two companions in misfortune. He indulged in no threats or excommunications, but as he went he sang the psalm ‘Exaudi.’ He cheered the sinking courage of young Mowbray, and rallied the king's physician, an old acquaintance, on his having no further need for his medicine (Chron. ed. Giles, p. 46). Just under the walls of York the procession turned into a field belonging to the nunnery of Clementhorpe. It was the feast of St. William, the patron saint of York, and the people thronged from the city to the place of execution and trod down the young corn, in spite of the protests of the husbandmen and Scrope's vain request that the scene might be removed to the high road. While his companions met their death he prayed and remarked to the bystanders that he died for the laws and good government of England. When his turn came he begged the headsman to deal five blows at his neck in memory of the five sacred wounds, kissed him thrice, and, commending his spirit to God, bent his neck for the fatal stroke (Gascoigne, p. 227). As his head fell at the fifth stroke a faint smile, some thought, still played over his features (Annales, p. 410).
With the king's permission, his remains were carried by four of the vicars choral to the lady-chapel of the minster, where they were interred behind the last column on the north-east in the spot which became the burial-place of his family (Wylie, ii. 284). A more injudicious piece of complaisance it would be hard to imagine. It gave a local centre to the natural tendency of the discontented Yorkshiremen to elevate their fallen leader, the first archbishop to die a traitor's death, into a sainted martyr. Miracles began to be worked at his tomb, the concourse at which grew so dangerous that after three months the government had it covered with logs of wood and heavy stones to keep the people off. This only gave rise to a new legend that an aged man,
