Humphrey of Gloucester

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was Protector of England during Henry VI's minority, spent twenty years fighting his uncle Cardinal Beaufort for control of the government, and died in custody five days after being arrested for treason. He was the youngest son of Henry IV, fought at Agincourt where he was wounded and his brother the king stood over him, and was left as protector in England in 1422 when Henry V died and the infant Henry VI succeeded. The council limited his powers sharply, and the reign became a long quarrel between his party, which wanted the French war prosecuted, and Beaufort's, which wanted a settlement; twice in the 1420s their retainers came close to fighting in the streets of London. His marriage to Jacqueline of Hainaut, made to claim her lands, wrecked the English alliance with Burgundy and achieved nothing. He then married her lady-in-waiting Eleanor Cobham, who in 1441 was convicted of using astrologers to predict the king's death - a treason charge in effect - and was made to walk barefoot through London and imprisoned for life, which finished him politically. He was arrested at the parliament at Bury St Edmunds in February 1447 and died three days later, probably of a stroke, though murder was widely assumed. He was also the most serious English patron of humanist learning of his century: he collected Latin and Greek manuscripts, commissioned translations, and gave more than two hundred and eighty volumes to Oxford, where the reading room built to hold them is still called Duke Humfrey's Library. The manuscripts he gave Oxford were largely dispersed or burned in the Reformation, and only a handful have been traced back. He was called the good duke by London crowds. Shakespeare treats his death as murder in Henry VI Part 2.

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