To go back to early times, it seems that Edward the Confessor had long indulged a suspicion that Earl Godwin—­who had in the first instance accused Queen Emma of having caused the death of her son—­was himself implicated in that transaction.  It so happened that the King and a large concourse of prelates and nobility were holding a large dinner at Winchester, in honour of the Easter festival, when the butler, in bringing in a dish, slipped, but recovered his balance by making adroit use of his other foot.

“Thus does brother assist brother,” exclaimed Earl Godwin, thinking to be witty at the butler’s expense.

“And thus might I have been now assisted by my Alfred, if Earl Godwin had not prevented it,” replied the King:  for the Earl’s remark had recalled to his mind the suspicion he had long entertained of the Earl having been concerned in Prince Alfred’s death.

Resenting the king’s words, the Earl holding up the morsel which he was about to eat, uttered a great oath, and in the name of God expressed a wish that the morsel might choke him if he had in any way been concerned in that murder.  Accordingly he there and then put the morsel into his mouth, and attempted to swallow it; but his efforts were in vain, it stuck fast in his throat—­immovable upward or downward—­his respiration failed, his eyes became fixed, his countenance convulsed, and in a minute more he fell dead under the table.

Edward, convinced of the Earl’s guilt, and seeing divine justice manifested, and remembering, it is said, with bitterness the days past when he had given a willing ear to the calumnies spread about his innocent mother, cried out, in an indignant voice, “Carry away that dog, and bury him in the high road.”  But the body was deposited by the Earl’s cousin in the cathedral.

Several accounts have been written of that terrible banquet, to which the Earl of Douglas was invited by Sir Alexander Livingstone and the Chancellor Crichton—­who craftily dissembled their intentions—­to sup at the royal table in the Castle of Edinburgh.  The Earl was foolhardy enough to accept the ill-fated invitation, and shortly after he had taken his place at the festive board, the head of a black bull—­the certain omen, in those days in Scotland, of immediate death—­was placed on the table.  The Earl, anticipating treachery, instantly sprang to his feet, and lost no time in making every effort to escape.  But no chance was given him to do so, and with his younger brother he was hurried along into the courtyard of the castle, and after being subjected to a mock trial, he was beheaded “in the back court of the castle that lieth to the west”.  The death of the young earl, and his untimely fate, were the subjects of lament in one of the ballads of the time.

    “Edinburgh castle, town, and tower,
      God grant them sink for sin;
    And that even for the black dinner
      Earl Douglas gat therein.”