The next year Mr. Philips introduced another tragedy on the stage called Humfrey Duke of Gloucester, acted 1721.  The plot of this play is founded on history.  During the minority of Henry VI. his uncle, the duke of Gloucester, was raised to the dignity of Regent of the Realm.  This high station could not but procure him many enemies, amongst whom was the duke of Suffolk, who, in order to restrain his power, and to inspire the mind of young Henry with a love of independence, effected a marriage between that Prince, and Margaret of Anjou, a Lady of the most consummate beauty, and what is very rare amongst her sex, of the most approved courage.  This lady entertained an aversion for the duke of Gloucester, because he opposed her marriage with the King, and accordingly resolves upon his ruin.

She draws over to her party cardinal Beaufort, the Regent’s uncle, a supercilious proud churchman.  They fell upon a very odd scheme to shake the power of Gloucester, and as it is very singular, and absolutely fact, we shall here insert it.

The duke of Gloucester had kept Eleanor Cobham, daughter to the lord Cobham, as his concubine, and after the dissolution of his marriage with the countess of Hainault, he made her his wife; but this did not restore her reputation:  she was, however, too young to pass in common repute for a witch, yet was arrested for high treason, founded on a pretended piece of witchcraft, and after doing public penance several days, by sentence of convocation, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment in the Isle of Man, but afterwards removed to Killingworth-castle.  The fact charged upon her, was the making an image of wax resembling the King, and treated in such a manner by incantations, and sorceries, as to make him waste away, as the image gradually consumed.  John Hume, her chaplain, Thomas Southwell, a canon of St. Stephen’s Westminster, Roger Bolingbroke, a clergyman highly esteemed, and eminent for his uncommon learning, and merit, and perhaps on that account, reputed to have great skill in necromancy, and Margery Jourdemain, commonly called The Witch of Eye, were tried as her accomplices, and condemned, the woman to be burnt, the others to be drawn, hanged, and quartered at Tyburn[2].  This hellish contrivance against the wife of the duke of Gloucester, was meant to shake the influence of her husband, which in reality it did, as ignorance and credulity cooperated with his enemies to destroy him.  He was arrested for high treason, a charge which could not be supported, and that his enemies might have no further trouble with him, cardinal Beaufort hired assassins to murder him.  The poet acknowledges the hints he has taken from the Second Part of Shakespear’s Henry VI, and in some scenes has copied several lines from him.  In the last scene, that pathetic speech of Eleanor’s to Cardinal Beaufort when he was dying in the agonies of remorse and despair, is literally borrowed.

  WARWICK

  See how the pangs of death work in his features.