There are many whose sickly existences find health only in the contemplation of the severer agonies of others; many who, without either hatred or malignity, yet love to feed their unnatural and craving appetites for singularities and horrors; and would rather cherish them with the blood of a dear friend, than suffer them to famish for want of sustenance. In small communities and country places, this inclination in the inhabitants is most apparent: here it was cruelly visible. John de la Pole had always been a popular man, and his destiny had afforded them a feast of blood, for which they felt grateful to his memory; from his murderer they could exact it, and they would: the loudest for justice appealed to the king for the application of the torture, and those who pitied the sufferer did not oppose the petition, as curious to behold the result.
The weak and inquisitive prince who then filled the English throne, saw something singular and mysterious in the conduct of the young De la Pole, and therefore unhesitatingly gave his assent to the sentence of his judges. The torture was borne by Eustace without a groan, though a close imprisonment of some weeks might have weakened his spirit and exhausted his bodily strength. He walked calmly and unsupported to the scene of suffering, conversing steadily with Courtenay, who never for an instant forsook him. From any outward tokens of anticipated agony or terror, it would have been difficult to distinguish the criminal from the spectator: he even smiled as he recognised his acquaintances in the crowd assembled to gaze upon his sufferings. There was only one action remarkable in his bearing at this trying juncture; on ascending the scaffold, and while they were binding his arms, his attention was arrested apparently by some object near him, though no one could be seen by the crowd, and during the whole period of the infliction of the “peine forte et dure,” the victim kept his eyes still fastened upon this spot, but without articulating a word. When the accumulated weights pressed so heavily on his sinking breast as to threaten dissolution, he raised his head to look upon his mangled limbs, and surveyed them in silent attention; he then turned his eyes to the spot which had so long occupied their regards, and, pointing with a slow and solemn motion to the load upon his breast, said, in a clear and steady tone, “Thou see’st!”