SOURCE: Pratt, Samuel M. “Shakespeare and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester: A Study in Myth.” Shakespeare Quarterly 16, no. 2 (spring 1965): 201-16.

[In the following essay, Pratt asserts that Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, achieves the status of myth through Shakespeare's careful depiction of Humphrey's loyalty to his king in Henry VI, Parts 1 and 2.]

Running through much of Henry VI, Parts 1 and 2, is the story of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, the uncle of Henry VI and the Protector of the realm during the King's minority. To the ordinary reader (or playgoer) Humphrey's story will probably not appear more dramatic or more incredible than other stories incorporated in Shakespeare's trilogy. And indeed it may not be. But Humphrey's story as Shakespeare presents it has elements of myth and symbol that differentiate it from the other stories. Research indicates that the noble and good Duke Humphrey of Shakespeare's Henry VI evolved over a period of a century and a half, not simply in Shakespeare's—or Holinshed's—imagination. That is to say, Humphrey is not merely an historical figure caught in the dramatist's words; he is also a mythic¹ figure whose story symbolizes the perilous path the good public servant has to travel in this evil world. Shakespeare's version of the story, while not the last to appear in the Renaissance, is the most complex. It is the result of the apotheosis of the Duke through the numerous tellings of the story, chiefly by chroniclers, before Shakespeare.

In this study I propose to examine Shakespeare's version of the story, with special reference to mythic elements, and then to trace the development of the story before Shakespeare. To complete my examination I propose to consider two works published after Henry VI. These, I trust, will serve a twofold purpose: they will reinforce conclusions reached on the basis of earlier works, and they will attest the impact that Duke Humphrey had on the Elizabethan consciousness.

Humphrey, who was born in 1391, became an appealing figure to the chroniclers almost immediately after his mysterious death in 1447 and subsequently to imaginative writers. Without attempting to give exhaustive citations of treatments of the story, I should note its appearance in several works, to indicate the extent of its appeal. Beginning with Richard Fox, a monk of St. Albans, who wrote a circumstantial account of Humphrey's last days soon after they passed, the English historians present the story in similar and sometimes identical terms. These include the unknown author of the continuation of the Polychronicon,² Fabyan, Polydore Vergil, Hall, Grafton, Holinshed, and John Foxe.³ Among the imaginative writers, the range of treatment goes from popular ballads⁴ by unknown writers to Shakespeare's extensive treatment in Henry VI. Between these extremes are, among other versions, the tragedies of both Humphrey and his second wife, Eleanor Cobham, in The Mirror for Magistrates, two works by Michael Drayton, Englands Heroicall Epistles and The Miseries of Queene Margarite, and the lengthy narrative poem by Christopher Middleton, The Legend of Humphrey Duke of Glocester.

Only parts of the long and complex story of Duke Humphrey are relevant to my purpose because only parts of it fell subject to the refining measures of the myth-makers. Humphrey was the youngest of the four sons of the usurping Lancastrian king, Henry IV. Born in 1391, he bore great responsibilities during the reign of his brother, Henry V, and even greater during the reign of his nephew, Henry VI. The latter was not quite nine months old when he succeeded his father in 1422, and the two surviving sons of Henry IV were bound to play important roles in the new regime, since long years would pass before the King could assume his powers. Though the verdict of recent scholars at times differs from that of Renaissance writers, particularly on the score of the Duke's abilities and accomplishments as Protector, in the Renaissance he was universally acclaimed as Protector, and from his own time he was known as the “good Duke”. Still, the Duke would not have impressed the Renaissance as he did impress it had it not been for two complex centers of interest that his life afforded: (1) his character, including his important role as a scholar and patron, and (2) his death (Was it murder? If so, by whom and how?).

Upon the untimely death of Henry V in 1422, Humphrey, who became Protector, found that during the minority of Henry VI he would have to share power with his older brother—John, Duke of Bedford—and with his uncle, the Bishop of Winchester, who subsequently became Cardinal Beaufort. With the former, Humphrey had relatively few problems, since Bedford, as Regent of France, was on the continent most of the time and was concerned with England's foreign affairs, so to speak. But with Beaufort, Humphrey had almost constant difficulties for the last twenty-five years of his life. The two men struggled for the dominant voice in the affairs of England, with Humphrey winning the popular support and Beaufort, more often than not, the political power.

Another rivalry also developed, that between Humphrey and William de la Pole, who was first the Earl and then the Duke of Suffolk. This second rivalry became in the end more serious to Humphrey than the first because Suffolk gained a powerful ally in Henry's queen, Margaret of Anjou. The alliance was inevitable once Margaret had married Henry, since Suffolk had been chiefly responsible for the marriage. The rivalry was also inevitable since Humphrey had been foremost in the sizable party opposing the marriage. He thought he had a better prospect for Henry's queen—and probably he was right—but at any rate, he thought, the price England had to pay for Margaret was too high. Upon her marriage England ceded to her father, the titular king of Sicily and Jerusalem, the province of Maine. This loss of English continental territory eventually hurt the man responsible for it, Suffolk, though not until Gloucester had been removed from the scene.

Concerning Humphrey's character, we need to cite two points before examining the works about him. First, shortly after his death the view of his nobility of mind and deed was such as to invite the use of the term “apotheosis” to describe what was happening. Secondly, Humphrey was far from being merely another power-hungry feudal baron. He was, in fact, a highly literate humanist. Mr. Vickers makes of him a genuine pioneer in the history of English culture, as the following passage indicates:

One or two finer minds had grasped the intellectual possibilities of the modern world. That unsuccessful politician, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, devoted himself wholeheartedly to the cult of letters, and was the first Englishman to look to Italy for the message of a new intellectual gospel. He corresponded with Italian Humanists, employing them to translate the works of Greek authors and to collect books for him. Some scholars he brought to England to enrich his growing library, and throughout he showed himself a keen patron of learning. … Gloucester sowed the seed of the English literary revival of the next century.⁵

Concerning Humphrey's death, we need to cite only a few facts for the present. In February 1447, he, whose power had steadily declined since the king's marriage, was proceeding with friends to the “parliament of Bury” (present-day Bury St. Edmunds), to which he had been summoned, ostensibly by the King but actually by his enemy Suffolk. Upon reaching their destination, he and his party were arrested by forces of the King. Isolated from friends, Humphrey was dead within five days. Though his body was exposed to public view, as if to prove that no foul play had been done, the suspicion gradually developed that somehow he had been murdered.

Not only is there adequate stuff for the development of myth in this story; there is also reason to feel that Duke Humphrey's death decisively affected English history. Scholars have asserted that the removal of Humphrey from the political scene opened the door to the Yorkist pretender and thereby played a key part in precipitating the Wars of the Roses. With both sensationalism and historical importance working for it, it is no wonder that Humphrey's story captured the imagination of writers for years and years after his death.

The treatment Shakespeare gives the story in 1 and 2 Henry VI testifies to the steady growth of the myth in the century and a half after Humphrey's death. Before fifty lines of Part 1 have been spoken, Humphrey and Cardinal Beaufort are quarreling, and Bedford feels compelled to intervene: “Cease, cease these jars and rest your minds in peace!” (I.i.54). Scene i ends with Beaufort making a sinister speech about his ambitions. Scene iii is exclusively concerned with the fighting before the Tower engaged in by Humphrey's and Beaufort's men. It is clear that Shakespeare felt that the rivalry between the Duke and the Cardinal was a matter to emphasize. But Shakespeare, let us not forget, was writing drama, not history, and, if he stretched the truth, he was exercising his prerogative as a dramatist. The Duke and the Cardinal provided the conflict on which drama thrives. Historically it appears that Beaufort could not have had anything to do, at least directly, with the death of Humphrey. He had been retired from active participation in politics for more than three years.⁶

At this point I should like to make some distinctions. Not only are we concerned with history and literary creation; we are also concerned with the images made, with the effects on those exposed to the history or the literary creation. In their treatment of Duke Humphrey's story, the first two parts of Henry VI do much to sharpen the popular image of the Duke and of those around him. Shakespeare uses a clear-cut hero-villain pattern. To be sure, he did not invent the pattern that has the virtuous Duke besieged by villains, notably by Cardinal Beaufort, but a drama effectively staged and acted probably could do more to fix in the popular mind the artist's view of character than could nondramatic works. It is not that Humphrey acts like a spotless hero, though he acts virtuously enough; it is rather the view of him that is reported from time to time, making him the “good duke”, that elevates his status. Numerous brief characterizations in the same vein are bound to have an effect. As Eleanor Cobham in her lament in The Mirror for Magistrates refers to her husband as the “Duke, for vertu cald (the good)”⁷ and “such a noble man” (p. 441), so Shakespeare has characters acknowledge Humphrey's public image. When Cardinal Beaufort himself testifies to this image, we feel that there must be something to it; the mythopoeic process is operating. These are the Cardinal's words in Part 2:

What though the common people favour him,
Calling him, ‘Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester’;
Clapping their hands, and crying with loud voice,
‘Jesu maintain your royal excellence!’
With ‘God preserve the good Duke Humphrey!’

(I.i.156-160)

Shortly thereafter the Earl of Salisbury supplies perhaps an even better instance of myth-making by contrasting the Duke and the Cardinal:

I never saw but Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,
Did bear him like a noble gentleman.
Oft have I seen the haughty cardinal
More like a soldier than a man o' the church,
As stout and proud as he were lord of all,
Swear like a ruffian and demean himself
Unlike the ruler of a commonweal.

(I.i.181-187)

These two passages are not unusual but representative. Shakespeare sprinkles his text with enough such passages to make his contribution to the myth substantial on their strength alone. At the same time he employs two other means to achieve what to him was dramatic effectiveness but what becomes additionally the myth of the good Duke. The first of these is the development of Humphrey the unselfish pillar of the law, and the second is the development of the murder of the Duke. Both of these means depend on departures from historical fact, sometimes great departures.

Here it would be useful to note some historical facts of relevance to the action of the play. With the coronation of Henry VI in 1429, Duke Humphrey's Protectorate came formally to an end. In 1441 the Duke's wife, Eleanor, was convicted of witchcraft and did penance in the streets of London. In 1447 Humphrey died, and in 1450 the Duke of Suffolk was executed at sea off Dover. These events spanning twenty-one years Shakespeare telescopes into a new and tight cause-and-effect sequence requiring but a few days. In Part 2, Act III, scene i, because of the conviction of the Duchess, Humphrey feels compelled to resign the Protectorate. In the next scene, during which the Duchess performs her public penance, he is summoned to the parliament at Bury, where subsequently he is murdered. Soon after his death is reported to the King, the commons begin their clamor for the punishment of Suffolk, whom they consider the prime mover in Humphrey's murder, and in a few days he is banished and dead.

In this tight sequence, Shakespeare finds numerous opportunities to heighten the character of Duke Humphrey. Probably most important in the development of the image that Shakespeare's audience had was the representation of Humphrey as at once the pillar of the law and the selfless man who could give up anything, including wife, high office, and even life itself, if England would benefit thereby. Thus, after hearing the charges of his enemies, he says,

As for your spiteful false objections,
Prove them, and I lie open to the law.

(Part 2, I. iii. 153-154)

When he learns of the apprehension of his wife, he says:

Noble she is, but if she have forgot
Honour and virtue, and convers'd with such
As, like to pitch, defile nobility,
I banish her my bed and company,
And give her, as a prey, to law and shame,
That hath dishonour'd Gloucester's honest name.

(Part 2, II. i. 188-193)

Soon afterwards, King Henry sentences her, citing the law as his guide. Then Humphrey addresses her, citing the law too but also expressing his desire to withdraw from public life.

Eleanor, the law, thou seest, hath judged thee:
I cannot justify whom the law condemns.

(Part 2, II. iii. 15-16)

I beseech your Majesty, give me leave to go.

(Part 2, II. iii. 20)

In his next speech Humphrey resigns his staff of office to the King:

As willingly do I the same resign
As e'er thy father Henry made it mine;
And even as willingly at thy feet I leave it
As others would ambitiously receive it.

(Part 2, II. iii. 33-36)

When Eleanor walks a London street in penance, a servingman of Humphrey's offers his own and others' efforts to take her from the sheriff, but Gloucester says, “No, stir not, for your lives; let her pass by” (Part 2, II. iv. 18). He means that since the law has spoken he must not interfere. Later he clarifies his position when speaking directly to his wife:

Wouldst have me rescue thee from this reproach?
Why, yet thy scandal were not wip'd away,
But I in danger for the breach of law.

(Part 2, II. iv. 64-66)

Finally, when accused before the King at Bury, the Duke says:

I know their complot is to have my life;
And if my death might make this island happy,
And prove the period of their tyranny,
I would expend it with all willingness.

(Part 2, III. i. 147-150)

And so he goes to his death, a political martyr in the eyes of many in his own time and of others for generations to come. To such people Humphrey symbolized all that was good in a ruler. In Shakespeare's hands Humphrey became the kind of rational man, in both thought and behavior, that sixteenth-century humanism was so much concerned with.

Turning now to my second general point about Shakespeare's contribution to the myth of Humphrey in dramatically effective passages, we must consider the death—or, as Shakespeare would have it, the murder—of Humphrey. The known facts in the case offer two significant contrasts with Shakespeare's presentation: (1) historically the King, whose mind had been influenced by the Duke's enemies, probably most effectively by the Queen, lost confidence in the Duke, and (2) the death has never finally been established as murder. Clearly one way to create a martyr is to align the candidate with the undoubted center of virtue in the environment. Such a center was King Henry, a virtuous man, however weak, naive, and incompetent he may have been. Conversely, if a prospect for murder finds himself alone among his associates, he stands a fair chance of dying unlamented. Historically, Humphrey was isolated at Bury. Peers capable of helping him were not present, and the commons were powerless to prevent Humphrey's enemies from doing with him as they would. An outstanding difference between the fact at Bury and Shakespeare's treatment is the latter's development of a strongly sympathetic but helpless King Henry, thereby producing the idea that a virtuous man, Humphrey, had been wronged. To express the matter in another way, without the favor of Henry or a comparable figure, it might appear that Humphrey deserved his fate—hence, no martyrdom.

In presenting the actual situation, Mr. Vickers makes much of Henry's alienation from Humphrey in the latter's last days. Thus, “Gloucester, he came to believe, was plotting against his life from fear that an heir to the throne would be born. … The one menace to the peace of the kingdom was Humphrey Duke of Gloucester. … Any lingering regard for his uncle in the mind of the King had passed. … The King was entirely alienated from his uncle, and he delighted to show his contempt for his former adviser's counsel. …”⁸

Contrasting with such views of the historian are those of Shakespeare the myth-maker. Thus (we must remember how Shakespeare has telescoped time) after sentencing the Duchess and accepting the Duke's resignation of the Protectorate, Henry says:

And go in peace, Humphrey; no less belov'd
Than when thou wert protector to thy king.

(Part 2, II. iii. 26-27)

After Suffolk arrests Humphrey at Bury, Henry says:

My Lord of Gloucester, 'tis my special hope
That you will clear yourself from all suspect:
My conscience tells me you are innocent.

(Part 2, III. i. 139-141)

When Gloucester is led away to confinement, the King says:

Ah, uncle Humphrey, in thy face I see
The map of honour, truth, and loyalty. …
His fortunes I will weep; and, 'twixt each groan,
Say ‘Who's a traitor, Gloucester he is none.’

(Part 2, III. i. 202-203; 221-222)

We have, then, in Shakespeare's eyes, the sacrifice of a leading, loyal, and accomplished subject of the King and one, furthermore, loved by the King. Not only does Shakespeare advance the myth of the good Duke in this way; he also furthers it by his unequivocal stand on the question of murder. In his view Humphrey was murdered by two agents of the Duke of Suffolk, who was supported by the Queen, the Cardinal, and the Duke of York. The final touch in Shakespeare's apotheosis of Humphrey is the destruction of Suffolk in a prompt and simple, unhistorical, cause-and-effect relationship: because he murdered Humphrey, Suffolk is murdered.

Shakespeare, then, told Humphrey's story with imagination and force. He shaped his version out of the materials, historical and interpretative, that the chroniclers had developed. Turning now to these materials, I shall not present every chronicler's version of Humphrey's story, because of the chronicler's habit of borrowing conceptions and often the very words of their predecessors. Rather, I shall cite representative and significant versions, starting with the English continuation of Ranulph Higden's Polychronicon.⁹ This fifteenth-century account makes, I should say, three noteworthy points in the following passages:

Here may men marke what this world is. This duk was a noble man and a grete clerke, and hadde worshipfully ruled this Royamme to the kynges behoef, and never coude be founde fawte with hym: but envye of them that were governours and hadde promysed to delyver the Duchye of Angeo & the Erldome of Mayn, caused the destruction of this noble man. … Thus beganne the trouble in Englond for the deth of this noble duke. Alle the comons of the royamme beganne for to murmure, and were not content.¹⁰

(1) The writer approves highly of the duke, attesting his nobility and his scholarly interests (“grete clerke”), as well as attributing to him flawless rule.

(2) The writer clearly holds Humphrey's enemies responsible for his death. The reference to the promised deliverance of the Duchy of Anjou and the Earldom of Maine has to do with the agreement, as the writer understands it, by which Henry VI married Margaret of Anjou, Humphrey having earned the lasting enmity of Margaret and her supporters by his opposition to that marriage.

(3) The writer found that the death of Humphrey had serious consequences. In a passage laden with overtones of the dynastic struggles to come, the chronicler concludes, “Thus beganne the trouble in Englond for the deth of this noble duke.”¹¹

Clearly, I think, the process of apotheosis is under way. Without wasting words, the chronicler finds that his ideal man was destroyed by evil opponents. He had seemed more than human: “never coude be founde fawte with hym”. From such ingredients are heroes made.

Another fifteenth-century chronicler, Robert Fabyan,¹² writes circumstantially of the death of Humphrey, but it is his comment following the account that I would stress:

… within vi dayes after the duke was arrestid, he was founde deed in his bedde, beynge the xxiiii daye of February; of whose murdre dyuerse reports ar made, which I passe ouer. Than his corps, whiche was layde opyn that all men myght se hym, but no wounde was founde on hym. Of that honourable fame of this man, a longe style I myght make, of the good rule that he kept this lande in, duringe the none age of the kynge, and of his honourable housholde & lybertie, which passyd all other before his tyme, and trewe of his allegeaunce, that no man cowde with ryght accuse, but malycious persones, whiche envyed his glorious honour & fame. … This for his honourable & lyberall demeanure was surnamed the good duke of Glouceter.¹³

Granting some change in details, we see that Fabyan's views of the death and of the character of Humphrey are substantially the same as the preceding writer's. Noteworthy is the unquestioned assumption that Humphrey was murdered. To Fabyan, apparently, the only uncertainties are who murdered the duke and how; at least he refers to “dyuerse reports”. Also noteworthy is the eulogy of Humphrey's character in such terms as to sustain the apotheosis found in the Polychronicon. Or, to put the matter in another way, the mythopoeic process is operating. The scholarly investigations of recent times, notably those by Kenneth H. Vickers, have revealed in Duke Humphrey a man who was thoroughly human, a man whose faults vied constantly with his virtues. But, in the two chronicles examined so far, Humphrey is presented as faultless. The gap between history and myth is apparent, and it is the latter that our writers are developing.¹⁴

As we come to sixteenth-century accounts, we see that the views already established of Humphrey's character, death, and the consequences thereof continue to prevail. First is the account by Polydore Vergil in his English History, first published in 1534. Polydore's version is not long. He seems interested only in outlining the story. Thus Duke Humphrey was the victim of conspirators, who “were affeared least it [the murder] should cause some uprore amongst the people, if that a man so well beloved of the comminaltie should be put to death openlye, and therefore determined to execute him unawares.”¹⁵ Thus “surely the common wealth sustained thereby most losse, the stay whereof depended upon no man so much at that very time as upon him alone, which was apparent by the event of matters following: for surely after the shameful slaughter of this duke good men forsooke the court, in whose places succeeded such for the most part as, seeking themselves for the soveraintie, opened the gate easily to newe factions and division” (p. 73).

It is apparent that to Polydore there was no question about whether Humphrey was murdered or how. Arriving at Bury, writes Polydore, Humphrey “was taken sodenly the night folowing and stranguled, the woorst example that ever was hearde of” (pp. 72-73). Like other Renaissance writers Polydore stresses both the goodness of Humphrey and his importance. The last part of the second quotation preceding refers to the rise in influence of the Yorkist party when the restraining hand of Humphrey was removed from it. Like other writers Polydore sees nothing less than the fall of the House of Lancaster in the fall of its heir-presumptive, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester.

Following Polydore came the group of writers, Hall, Grafton, Stow, and Holinshed, whose histories first appeared in 1548, 1562, 1565, and 1577 respectively. Being earliest in this group, Hall became the source of most of the passages about Humphrey that the other three incorporated into their histories. Their indebtedness includes even the wording in most instances. To Hall there was no question about the general nature of Humphrey's death. To him Humphrey was murdered (“all indifferent persons well knewe, that he died of no natural death but of some violent force”¹⁶), and he reports the rumors about the means: “some iudged him to be strangled: some affirme, that a hote spitte was put in at his foundement: other write, that he was stiffeled or smoldered betwene two fetherbeddes” (p. 209). Such grim details did nothing to lessen the martyrdom of Humphrey.

Echoing Polydore Vergil, Hall finds the gravest consequences in the murder of Humphrey:

But the publique wealth of the realme of Englande, by the vnworthy death of this pollitique prince, susteined greate losse, & ran into ruyne, for surely the whole waight and burden of the realme, rested and depended vpon him, as the experience afterward did declare. For after his death, good & sage men fearing them selfes, fled out of the flatteryng court, into whose places entered suche, as desiryng their awne promocion, set open the gates to new faccions, whiche could neuer be extinct till all the seignories beyond the sea (except Caleice & the marches) were lost, & kyng Henry in conclusion spoyled of hys Realme & lyfe.

(P. 210)

Not all of Grafton's account derives from Hall. In viewing Humphrey's character, Grafton does not borrow from Hall, and he does place himself squarely in the front rank of those apotheosizing the Duke:

This Humffrey Duke of Gloucester, descending of the blood royal, was not onely noble and valyant in all his actes and doings, but sage, pollitique, and notably well learned in the Civile lawe. … [There follows a long anecdote illustrative of the Duke's perspicacity.] And thus much for the noble prowesse and vertue, ioyned with lyke Ornamentes of knowledge and learning shyning in this Duke: For the which as before hath appered, he was both loued of the commons, and well spoken of of all men, and no lesse deseruing the same, being called the good Duke of Gloucester.¹⁷

This is high praise indeed. In part it stems from the sense of loss which blinds one to the faults of the lost, clearing the way for that exaltation of character which is a manifestation of myth. In developing their views of Humphrey, the chroniclers were fully aware of the forty years of chaos in England following his death. Feeling that his death was nothing less than a major turning-point in English history, they quite naturally looked back at him with that combined sense of anguish over his murder and awe at his importance that made him their symbol of true nobility grievously wronged.

In the famous work by John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments, some space is devoted to Humphrey's story, perhaps surprisingly in view of the religious martyrdoms that Foxe normally recounts. Like other sixteenth-century historians, he plagiarizes freely, a good example being his theft of the passage I have quoted from Grafton, beginning “And thus much for the noble prowesse and vertue”.¹⁸ Still, Foxe does contribute to the story in two ways: (1) he points to “haughty prelates” as the cause of Humphrey's undoing, and (2) he stresses the role of Humphrey as a learned man and as a patron of learning. Foxe does nothing to diminish the stature of the Duke; in fact, he writes in a reverential tone appropriate to his subject, the Duke who has come to seem more than mortal:

Of manners he seemed meek and gentle, loving the commonwealth, a supporter of the poor commons, of wit and wisdom, discreet and studious, well affected to religion and a friend to verity; and no less enemy to pride and ambition, especially in haughty prelates, which was his undoing in this present evil world. And, which is seldom and rare in such princes of that calling, he was both learned himself, and no less given to study, and also a singular favourer and patron to those who were studious and learned.¹⁹

And the encomium goes on and on. If I were more of a symbol-hunter than I am, I might say that Foxe develops a Christ-figure in his first sentence above. What should be noted, I think, is that, without wrenching the facts of the case, Humphrey could be made to serve the English Protestant Renaissance at its high tide. Humphrey could be considered the victim of a haughty prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, or the virtuous prince (so much in evidence in Renaissance thought) antagonized unto death by a powerful, foreign church through its appropriate representative—in this case, Cardinal Beaufort. And undoubtedly Humphrey was both a scholar himself and a patron of other scholars. Thus the myth becomes more than that of personal tragedy and of the loss of good government. It becomes, in the hands of a leader of the English sixteenth century, John Foxe, the archetype of what the English Renaissance in its political, religious, and humanistic concerns was all about.

Turning now to the literary treatments of the story, or, rather, resuming the study of them after considering the historical treatments, we may begin with the complaints of both Humphrey and his wife in The Mirror for Magistrates.²⁰ Because of the conception governing the Mirror, these complaints, particularly Humphrey's, advance the myth only moderately. After all, Humphrey should be made to show restraint in speaking of himself. The Duchess, on the other hand, though she has the opportunity to discuss her husband, chooses, for the most part, to review her own troubles. In an introduction to these two complaints, George Ferrers, who is credited with their authorship, says that the actual tragedies of the Duke and Duchess were “two of the most memorable matters fortuning in that time” (p. 431).

Emerging clearly from the Duke's lament are (1) the assurance that he was murdered and (2) the identity of the conspirators responsible for the murder. Unfortunately for us who would like to know, Humphrey chooses not to reveal the method of murder used. To Baldwin, the editor of the Mirror, who has presided over the assembly of ghosts who speak the laments, the Duke says:

Thou lookest now, that of my secret murther,
I should at large the maner how declare,
I pray thee Baldwin, aske of me no further,
For speaking playne, it came so at vnware,
As I myselfe, which caught was in the snare,
Scarcely am able the circumstance to shew,
Which was kept close, and knowen but vnto few.

(Pp. 458-459)

The names of the conspirators include one surprise, the Duke of York, a surprise because, as Mr. Vickers points out, York was on Gloucester's side and not against him.²¹ But it is helpful to have the conspirators' reasons presented as clearly as generally they are, however inaccurate they may be historically. Thus Cardinal Beaufort, several times called a “proud prelate”, “could not abyde a Peere, / Within the land to rule the state by lawes” (p. 452), and the Duke of York felt that Humphrey was the chief “stay” of the House of Lancaster, which York wished to replace. The Queen viewed Humphrey as the obstacle in her path to complete domination of her weak husband, the King, and thereby to domination of the state. Finally, though Suffolk is twice designated the leader of the conspiracy, his reasons do not appear in the lament.²² Lesser figures in the conspiracy are also named.

On the whole, the impression Humphrey gives is that of a pathetic figure. He presents himself as the well-meaning man who, after years of good service, is unequal to the machinations of his foes. Still, it should be noted, I think, that this impression is sympathetic. So often in the Mirror the downfall of the speaker is cause for rejoicing; not so in the case of Duke Humphrey. It should also be noted that Humphrey attributes the malice of his enemies to his being the heir presumptive; historically his public stature and policies were probably of more concern to his enemies than his place in the succession. Altogether, if the myth of the good Duke is not greatly advanced, surely it is not lessened.

In the companion lament, Humphrey's wife, the former Eleanor Cobham, has a great story of her own to tell, which I intend to deal with in another study, but, since she does cast some illumination on the fate of Humphrey, I cannot ignore her completely here. From the position of first lady of the realm (King Henry did not marry until 1445) she plunged (in 1441) into disgrace “for practising of witchcraft and Sorcery” (p. 432), as the Mirror says. Convicted, she was made to do public penance in the London streets, was banished to the Isle of Man for a time and imprisoned for life.

This story of Eleanor's seems incredible only if one forgets her husband and his difficulties. In the Mirror Eleanor accounts for her fate in these words:

That vnto God, with al my hart I pray,
Vengeance may light on him that caused all,
Beaufort I meane, that cursed Cardinall.

(P. 438)

And she goes on to castigate Beaufort at length, developing the idea that the Cardinal had struck at her innocent husband through her. The career of Humphrey in the little more than five years of life remaining to him indicates that the blow had been effective. Both his power and prestige declined measurably.

Certain elements in Humphrey's story appear in two other complaints published in the Mirror, Suffolk's and Somerset's. That Humphrey was the strongest prop of the Lancastrian house is acknowledged by Somerset:

So long as he [Humphrey] was Englandes dyrectour,
Kyng Henries tytle to the crowne was good.
This prynce as a pyller most stedfastly stood:
Or like to a proppe set vnder a vyne,
In state to vpholde al Lancasters line.

(P. 390)

And subsequently:

So long as the Duke bare the stroke and swaye,
So long no Rebelles quarelles durst begin,
But when that the post was once pulled awaye,
Which stoode to vpholde the king and his kyn,
Yorke and his banders proudly preased in.

(P. 391)

That Humphrey's enemies murdered him is acknowledged by both Suffolk and Somerset. The former stresses the Duke's opposition to the marriage of Henry and Margaret as the basic reason, and the latter stresses Humphrey's alleged ambition for the throne as his fatal flaw. But the specific points Suffolk and Somerset make are not as important as the fact that in the mid-sixteenth century they were attributed to Suffolk and Somerset. That is to say, the relations of these noblemen with the good Duke were essentials in their stories, so it was thought. Duke Humphrey loomed large in the Tudor consciousness of the English past, and the reason was the effectiveness of his apotheosis.²³

In Englands Heroicall Epistles,²⁴ the underlying conception of Michael Drayton is that at some interesting point in the relationship of famous lovers a pair of letters are written. For Duke Humphrey and Eleanor Cobham, whose epistles first appeared in the edition of 1598, Drayton chooses a time during Eleanor's banishment to the Isle of Man. Though like Shakespeare Drayton has his own chronology of events, he confines his alterations to advancing the timetable for Margaret of Anjou. Thus, as in Henry VI, Margaret can share responsibility for Eleanor's downfall and can be the object, together with Suffolk, of Eleanor's hatred. Cardinal Beaufort she castigates as a villainous foe. Finally, that, like most other writers, Eleanor (or Drayton) should emphasize the characterization of Humphrey as the “good Duke” is not surprising, but it is useful further evidence of the image of Humphrey. On the whole, Eleanor's letter is more notable in the illumination of her own story than of Humphrey's. Obviously an exchange of letters rules out any discussion of Humphrey's death, thereby eliminating a primary center of the myth.

When Humphrey has his turn as a letter-writer, he labors under the same difficulties that beset him in The Mirror for Magistrates, plus the handicap of being alive rather than dead as he was in the Mirror. As the virtuous nobleman he must show restraint in writing of his own affairs. Actually he shows more than restraint; he shows his awareness of the plight of his beloved wife, a plight worse than his own for the time being at least. Hence his letter reveals a man who can get outside himself to become genuinely concerned about another. Therein, I should say, lies Drayton's major contribution to the myth.

Drayton also wrote a pair of letters for Queen Margaret and the Duke of Suffolk, the exchange presumably taking place upon the Duke's being banished from England in 1450. Though Suffolk acknowledges the suspicion with which he has been regarded for the murder of Duke Humphrey, he does not admit his responsibility. However, that the good Duke did not die a natural death Suffolk attests when he says, “If they would know who rob'd him of his Life” (II, 231), and he needs to say no more. Furthermore, Drayton wrote the following note concerning Humphrey's death:

Humphrey, Duke of Glocester, and Lord Protector, in the five and twentieth yeere of Henry the sixt, by the meanes of the Queene, and the Duke of Suffolke, was arrested by the Lord Beaumont, at the Parliament holden at Berry, and the same Night after murthered in his Bed.

(II, 236)

In the year 1600 there was published in London a lengthy poem, The Legend of Humphrey Duke of Glocester, by Christopher Middleton, of small merit from the literary standpoint but of some value to the cultural historian. In pedestrian poetry Middleton pursues the course long charted in the career of the Duke. He develops the hero-villain pattern with the usual characters, the centers of opposition to Humphrey being first Cardinal Beaufort and then the Queen Margaret-Duke of Suffolk combination. He undertakes a tremendous buildup of Humphrey's character, citing his “holy life” and “vertuous deedes”,²⁵ and, all in all, he is not to be outdone in apotheosizing the Duke. Middleton is unsure about the cause of Humphrey's death. Perhaps it was murder. If so, his enemies succeeded in dispossessing “the world of her chiefe good”.²⁶

Now to be considered are the interrelated matters of the epithet, “the good Duke”, and the status of Humphrey as both learned man and patron of learning. Two strong statements on these subjects may prove helpful as starting points. In the Dictionary of National Biography Mr. Thomas Frederick Tout writes: “His title of the ‘good duke’ is due, not to his moral virtues, but to the applause of the men of letters whom he patronised and the popular notion that he was a patriot.” In his biography of Humphrey, Mr. Vickers writes: “Whence was it that he drew the inspiration which enabled him to begin a new era in the development of the human intellect in England? … stage by stage he outgrew the teaching of the ancient schoolmen, and reached out to pick the fairest flowers of Greek learning. … With no promptings from the scholars of the new methods, he devoted himself to their patronage. … As an apostle of progress Humphrey stands alone among his fellow-countrymen.”²⁷

Mr. Tout does not supply evidence for his assertion about the reason for the title, the “good duke”. His view runs counter to that of every writer on the subject whom I have checked for the two centuries following Humphrey's death. In their eyes, it is clear, Humphrey's title was due to his virtuous character and not to something else, as Mr. Tout would have it. At the same time, if we may make this distinction, it is clear that some of the early writers included among Humphrey's virtues his learning and his patronage of learning. The image of the duke so revered by the Renaissance was, therefore, broad and deep. One of the finest characterizations of Humphrey in his role of humanist was written as part of the prose link between the two tragedies in The Mirror for Magistrates. The passage calls Humphrey “a Prince so excellently learned, as the like of his degree was no where to be founde, And not onely so, but was also a Patron to Poetes & orators muche lyke as Mecenas was in the tyme of Augustus Cesar This Duke was foundor of the Diuinite Schole in Oxforde, whereas he caused Aristotles workes to be translated out of Greeke into Latin, and caused many other things to be done for aduauncement of lerning, hauing alwaies lerned men near about him” (444).

As one would expect, this portrait derives from the accounts of the historians. The Polychronicon referred to the duke as “a grete clerke”, and Grafton cited the “Ornaments of knowledge and learning shyning in this Duke”, which passages I quoted previously. These early estimates are confirmed by Mr. Vickers, Mr. Tout, and the authors of two recent studies.²⁸

It should be clear, I think, that the bases for the twofold image of Humphrey differ. On the one hand, his standing as moral being, political leader, and finally martyr has resulted, to a considerable extent, from myth-making. On the other hand, his standing as a humanist, particularly in his role of patron, rests on a firm foundation of historical fact. In the two centuries following his death writers were unaware of this difference, presenting the first image as unquestioningly as the second.

To Shakespeare must go the credit of developing the image of Humphrey in the greatest detail. Some of this credit is due to his use of dramatic form, which gave him a distinct advantage in characterization over Ferrers, using the complaint, and Drayton, using the epistle. In Henry VI the clash of character, together with the compression of time, develops Humphrey as the unselfish pillar of the law to a degree not approached by either Ferrers or Drayton, though these last two writers did much, surely, to keep the myth alive.

The Duke of Gloucester, then, became to the English nation at the high tide of the Renaissance a mythic figure of heroic proportions. Writers having a great impact on the English consciousness—Ferrers in The Mirror for Magistrates, Shakespeare in Henry VI, and Drayton in Englands Heroicall Epistles and The Miseries of Queene Margarite—presented him in such ways as to elevate him, morally and intellectually, above the normal level of the English nobility. Lesser writers did the same, and all of them found their models in the histories which, from the second half of the fifteenth century, had tended to apotheosize the Duke. That he symbolized the virtuous governor, at last mortally trapped in a power struggle, is clear enough; that to many he also symbolized the ultimate in a cultivated man is less obvious but fully as noteworthy since the symbol became most sharply etched in an age of high culture, the late English Renaissance.

Notes

1. In this study I use the term “myth” in the sense of a story rich in meaning whose characters and actions, though possible and even based in history, seem improbable. See M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (New York, 1957), p. 54, and William Flint Thrall, Addison Hibbard, and C. Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature (New York, 1960), pp. 298-300.

2. For some light on the question of authorship see K. H. Vickers, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (London, 1907), p. 463.

3. Early but in no way striking material on Humphrey is found in James Gairdner, ed., Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, Camden Society, N.S., 28 (1880).

4. Actually the ballads focus on the Duchess rather than the Duke of Gloucester, but the material is such as to invite attention to the Duke. See Thomas Evans, ed., Old Ballads, 2d ed. (London, 1784), I, 317-323, and Thomas Wright, ed., Political Poems and Songs (London, 1861), II, 205-208.

5. Kenneth H. Vickers, England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1950), p. 498.

6. Vickers, Humphrey, p. 307.

7. The Mirror for Magistrates, ed. Lily B. Campbell (New York, 1960), p. 432. All quotations of the Mirror are from this edition. Hereafter I shall give page references in my text instead of in footnotes.

8. Vickers, Humphrey, pp. 289-290.

9. The account by Richard Fox seems to be an objective rendering of the events at Bury and is particularly useful in establishing the chronology. Fox's failure to evaluate the character and death of Humphrey limits his value to me in this study. For Fox see the Rev. John Silvester Davies, ed., An English Chronicle, Camden Society, No. 64 (1856), pp. 111-118.

10. Ranulph Higden, Polychronicon, ed. Joseph Rawson Lumby (London, 1882), p. 570. The same passage, almost word for word, appears in a continuation of the chronicle, The Brut. Both continuations were written in the later fifteenth century, and I suppose that it is impossible to determine who copied whom. See The Brut, ed. Friedrich W. D. Brie, EETS, Original Series, 131 (London, 1906), p. 513.

11. This is a theme picked up by most writers on the Duke for the next two centuries. Consider, for example, Michael Drayton writing in 1627—“The Miseries of Queene Margarite”, Works, ed. J. William Hebel (Oxford), Vol. III (1932). Humphrey, he writes, “Lost his deare life, within a little space, / Which overthrewe the whole Lancastrian race” (p. 79). And for marginal glosses he writes, “The death of the Duke was the utter overthrow of the house of Lancaster”, and “The affairs of England fall to ruine upon the death of the Duke” (p. 80).

12. Though he lived till approximately 1511, he had probably “finished his chronicle in 1493”. See Vickers, Humphrey, p. 298.

13. Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France (London, 1811), p. 619.

14. In England in the Later Middle Ages, Kenneth H. Vickers, writing about the fall of one of Humphrey's enemies, the Duke of Suffolk, after Humphrey's death, says: “Public opinion was already beginning to attribute imaginary virtues to the ‘Good Duke,’ and making his name a watchword with those who complained of Lancastrian rule” (p. 433). Again the development of myth is evident. To its believers the myth symbolized the good government of a great and noble man.

15. Polydore Vergil, English History, ed. Sir Henry Ellis, Camden Society (London, 1844), p. 72. Subsequent references to this volume will be by page in the text.

16. Edward Hall, Chronicle (London 1809), p. 209. Subsequent references to this volume will be by page in the text.

17. Richard Grafton, Chronicle (London, 1809), I, 630. Raphaell Holinshed also writes glowingly of Humphrey. Sample passage: “But to conclude of this noble duke: he was an vpright and politike gouernour, bending all his indeuours to the aduancement of the common-wealth, verie louing to the poore commons, and so beloued of them againe; learned, wise, full of courtesie, void of pride and ambition (a vertue rare in personages of such high estate) but where it is most commendable.” Chronicles (London, 1807), III, 211-212.

18. John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments (London, 1844), III, 713.

19. Foxe, III, 712.

20. These two complaints first appeared in the edition of 1578.

21. Vickers, Humphrey, pp. 309-310.

22. In the prose passage linking the two tragedies (p. 444) he is credited with desiring honor and promotion, which he felt he could gain by working with and flattering the Queen.

23. Lily B. Campbell has written at some length about the tragedies of Duke Humphrey and Eleanor Cobham in the Mirror, but her interest has been different from mine. She has been specially concerned with the tragedies as disguised representations of sixteenth-century events. See her edition of The Mirror for Magistrates, cited above, and her article, “Humphrey Duke of Gloucester and Elianor Cobham His Wife in the Mirror for Magistrates”, The Huntington Library Bulletin, V (April, 1934), 119-155.

24. Michael Drayton, Works, ed. J. William Hebel (Oxford), II (1932). Hereafter I shall give volume and page references in the text instead of in footnotes.

25. The Legend of Humphrey Duke of Glocester (London, 1600), stanza 11.

26. The Legend, stanza 182.

27. Vickers, Humphrey, p. 348.

28. Vern L. Bullough, “Duke Humphrey and His Medical Collections”, Renaissance News, XIV, 87, and R. Weiss, Humanism in England, Second Edition (Oxford, 1957), pp. 69-70.