2»a S. N" 88., Sept. 20. '56.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



221 



LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20. 1856. 



THE DEATH OF CLARENCE. 



The curious and well-known story of the Duke 

 of Clarence, brother to Edward IV., having been 

 drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine, has been re- 

 ceived with considerable scepticism by some of 

 our historians ; and certainly it would be difficult 

 to conceive a fact d priori more improbable. Cla- 

 rence had rebelled against his brother and been 

 forgiven ; but his discontented spirit made him 

 again obnoxious to Edward's resentment, and he 

 was impeached of treason. The case was tried 

 before the House of Lords, and Clarence was 

 condemned to death. Edward had been his sole 

 accuser; but, after the sentence was passed, there 

 appears to have been a struggle in his mind be- 

 tween the offended majesty of the king and the 

 natural affection of the brother, and some time 

 elapsed before the law was allowed to take its 

 course. At last the Speaker of the Commons 

 went up to the House of Lords, and desired that 

 the sentence might be executed. Edward caused 

 it to be done in secret, not wishing that his bro- 

 ther should suffer the ignominy of a public exe- 

 cution. The method of his punishment was not 

 made known ; but if we may believe the chroni- 

 clers, the general impression of the time was that 

 he underwent the penalty of his treason by being 

 suffocated in a cask of wine ! 



The only contemporary, or nearly contempo- 

 rary, authorities for this extraordinary tale are 

 Fabyan and Comines ; but their testimony would 

 undoubtedly have been held amply sufficient to 

 establish anything a degree more credible. Co- 

 mines, it is true, was a foreigner ; and, though he 

 appears to have credited the story, qualifies his 

 testimony with "comme on disoit." But Fabyan 

 was an Englishman and a Londoner, and had no 

 doubt about it whatever. " The Duke of Cla- 

 rence," he says, "was secretly put to death and 

 drowned in a barrel of Malvesye within the 

 Tower." Nor is there any contradictory testi- 

 mony; the Continuator of the Croyland Chronicle 

 only says, " Factum est id, qualecunque erat, 

 genus supplicii," showing that he himself was not 

 acquainted with the circumstances. What, then, 

 are we to think of the affair ? Are we to believe 

 that this extraordinary mode of punishment was 

 actually had recourse to ? Or, if not, are we to 

 believe that it was the general opinion of the 

 time ? The report must have spread far to reach 

 Comines, and must have appeared to him to rest 

 on tolerably respectable authority, otherwise so 

 intelligent a historian wouM scarcely have men- 

 tioned it in the way he has done. However extra- 



ordinary then it may appear to us, one would 

 think the nineteenth century ought to distrust its 

 judgment of a fact which contemporaries appear 

 to have had so little difficulty in believing. 



A solution of this riddle has occurred to me, 

 the value of which I leave better judges to de- 

 cide. I shall be happy to meet with anything 

 confirmatory of my theory ; but should any of 

 your correspondents see arguments against it, 

 they can do me no greater favour than by demo- 

 lishing my speculations. Meanwhile the follow- 

 ing remarks may, I hope, be not uninteresting. 



If I were to ask. Did they kill him first and 

 drown him afterwards ? I suppose I should be 

 considered guilty of something like an Irish bull. 

 Yet this is exactly what is implied, if the expres- 

 sion of Fabyan above quoted be construed strictly : 

 " The Duke of Clarence was put to death, and 

 drowned in a barrel of Malvesye." Of course we 

 must not look for a rigid adherence to grammar 

 in such a writer ; but if it can be satisfactorily 

 made out that the word "drown" was used in old 

 English authors in such a manner that it would 

 have been no absurdity to talk of drowning a dead 

 body, then Fabyan's grammar is in this instance 

 vindicated, and we have got a new version of the 

 death of Clarence. 



I find in Shakspeare two instances which I 

 think go some way to prove this. The first is in 

 the well-known speech of Prospero in The Tem- 

 pest : 



" I'll break my staff, 

 Bury it certain fathoms in the earth. 

 And, deeper than did ever plummet sound, 

 I'll drown my book." 



Burying and drowning here appear to be quite 

 analogous processes. The thing that is to be 

 drowned has no more life in it than the thing 

 that is to be buried. But it may be thought that 

 the word " drown " is here used by poetic licence, 

 with a slight departure from its strict signifi- 

 cation. The next instance is plain prose. When 

 Parolles, in AlVs Well that Ends Well, having 

 undertaken to recover his drum, is deliberating 

 by what device he shall excuse himself for not 

 accomplishing his task, he says : 



" I would the cutting of my garments would serve my 

 turn ; or the breaking of my Spanish sword .... or, to 

 droion my clothes and say I was stripped." 



If inanimate objects could be " drowned," why 

 not dead bodies ? 



I am the more inclined to this theory because 

 it explains another instance — the only other in- 

 stance I know of — of a death concerning which 

 there was a similar report. In a certain ballad or 

 rhyming history of the " Ladye Bessie," or Prin- 

 cess Elizabeth of York, queen of Henry VII., the 

 heroine alludes to the murder of her brothers, 

 Edward V. and the Duke of York, by their uncle 

 Richard III., in these words : 



