‘This King’s mercy was as fatal as his judgements.’
Henry VIII eventually realised the innocence of his beloved uncle and ‘sent him his ring from off his own finger’. However Arthur, ‘receiving so great a pressure of joy, his heart was over-charged therewith, and the night following he yielded up the ghost (died).’ In which Raphael Holinshed observed, ‘that this King’s mercy was as fatal as his judgements.’
Arthur was honourably buried in the Chapel of Saint Peter-ad-Vincula, at the Tower of London.[1]
A. D. Curry
[1] Muriel St. Clare Byrne (ed), The Lisle Letters: An Abridgment (London: Martin Secker & Warburg ltd, 1983), p. 410.
Image: Charles d’Orleans, Poetry; Pseudo-Heloise, Epistles; ‘Les demands d’amours’; ‘Le livre dit grace entiere, c. 1450–99.