In the last month of that year, Isabel Duchess of Clarence was summoned before the same Divine tribunal. Her death was a signal misfortune to her husband. Her influence had not been altogether for good, by any means, yet such good as had been in it was sorely missed. Clarence had loved her, and it is doubtful if he ever loved any other creature. After her death he became reckless even beyond his former unscrupulous condition. Gloucester kept his sinister eyes upon him, ready to take advantage of the first political slip which he might make. It came two years after Isabel’s death. Clarence, who had previously quarrelled with his brother Edward, was present at a trial of some old women on the charge of witchcraft, and took the liberty of remonstrating with the judges on too much haste in condemning the prisoners, as it seemed to him, without sufficient evidence. Gloucester took advantage of this circumstance. He adroitly represented to the King that Clarence had interfered with the course of justice, thus taking upon himself a prerogative of the Crown: that there was strong reason to think that he contemplated a journey to Burgundy, with the view of assisting the Duke, then in hostility to King Edward: that he had many times tried to supplant his brother. The intensely superstitious Edward was reminded of an old prediction that "G. shall reign after E.,"—and did not George begin with the fated letter? So did Gloucester, but of course my Lord Duke omitted that suggestion. He succeeded in frightening Edward into a panic. Clarence was arrested, placed before the Council, and condemned unheard. He was sentenced to be hanged: but at the intercession of the Duchess Cicely, mother alike of the King and of the criminal, the sentence was commuted to imprisonment in the Tower. Ten days later, in his dungeon, Clarence was found dead, his head hanging over an open butt of his favourite liquor, malvoisie. Hence arose the popular tradition that he had been allowed to choose the manner of his death, and that he had elected to be drowned in a butt of malmsey. In all probability the open butt had been placed in his cell by order of the brother who so well knew Clarence’s weakness, and hoped by this means to get rid of him without any legal responsibility as to his end. So perished the false and faithless Clarence,—destroyed, like many another, on a mere technical pretext, when on other counts he had previously merited execution a hundred times over.