His Pitifulness and Patience
Of the patience of this king and his most kind compassion which he showed throughout his life to them that sinned against him, while he was in power, many things may be related with all truth.
First; once when he was coming down from St Albans to London through Cripplegate, he saw over the gate there the quarter of a man on a tall stake, and asked what it was. And when his lords made answer that it was the quarter of a traitor of his, who had been false to the king’s majesty, he said: ‘Take it away. I will not have any Christian man so cruelly handled for my sake.’ And the quarter was removed immediately. He that saw it bears witness.
Again, four nobles of high birth were convicted of treason and of the crime of lèse-majesté and were legally condemned therefor by the judges to suffer a shameful death. These he compassionately released, and delivered from that bitter death, sending the writ of his pardon for their delivery to the place of execution by a swift messenger.
To other three great lords of the realm who conspired the death of this king (or conspired in the king’s troubles) and assembled an innumerable host of armed men, aiming ambitiously to secure the kingly power, as manifestly appeared afterwards, the king showed no less mercy: for he forgave all, both the leaders and the men under them, what they had maliciously designed against him, provided they submitted themselves to him.
Like compassion he showed to many others, and especially to two who were compassing his death; one of whom gave him a severe wound in the neck, and would have brained him, or cut off his head; but the king took it most patiently, saying: ‘Forsothe and forsothe, ye do fouly to smyte a kynge enoynted so.’ The other smote him in the side with a dagger when he was held prisoner in the Tower, and after the deed, believing that he had killed the king with his wicked blow, and fearing to be taken, fled with all speed; but was caught and brought before him, when the king, now recovered, and set free from that prison, and once more by the favour and act of God raised to the kingly dignity without a battle after a long course of exile and imprisonment, pardoned him of his great clemency, as he did also his aforesaid persecutor.
So the former servants of this king declare that he never would that any person, however injurious to him, should ever be punished: and this is plain in the case of many to whom he was exceeding gracious and merciful; for he was become an imitator of Him who saith, ‘I will have mercy’ and ‘I will not the death of a sinner but rather that he should turn and live,’ who also, as the apostle saith, ‘desired the salvation of all men.’ Nor is this to be wondered at: for in his soul there was not even that vain satisfaction which hunters take in capturing beasts,—a misplaced pleasure: he did not care to see the creature, when taken, cruelly defiled with slaughter, nor would he ever take part in the killing of an innocent beast.
But what need of more? It is certain that the men among whom and towards whom the king was so kind and merciful proved at the last wholly ungrateful to him, as the Jews to Christ. For whereas God’s right hand had raised him to so glorious a place, these [murderous ones], as has been said, conspiring together with savage rage, deprived even this most merciful king of his royal power, and drove him from his realm and governance; and after a long time spent in hiding in secret places wherein for safety’s sake he was forced to keep close, he was found and taken, brought as a traitor and criminal to London, and imprisoned in the Tower there; where, like a true follower of Christ, he patiently endured hunger, thirst, mockings, derisions, abuse, and many other hardships, and finally suffered a violent death of the body that others might, as was then the expectation, peaceably possess the kingdom. But his soul, as we piously believe upon the evidence of the long series of miracles done in the place where his body is buried, liveth with God in the heavenly places, where after the troubles of this world he rejoiceth with the just in the eternal contemplation of God and in the stead of this earthly and transitory kingdom whereof he patiently bore the loss, he now possesseth one that endureth for ever.