FREDERICK WILLIAM DAVIS | THE PENANCE OF THE DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER

Harry Lucas, Esq. (by 1928) 

Sale: Christie's, London, November 29, 1985, lot 86, illustrated 

Joseph Hill and William Midgley, The History of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, Birmingham, 1928, n.p., illustrated pl. 47 

The present lot depicts the penance of the beautiful and ambitious Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, which took place in 1441. Eleanor was the second wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of King Henry IV of England and the brother of Henry V. After the deaths of his father and brother, the Duke of Gloucester became Lord Protector to his young nephew King Henry VI and eventually the heir presumptive to the English throne. In an attempt to retain power for her husband the Duke, Eleanor summoned two astrologers to divine the future, resulting in a prediction of King Henry VI’s untimely death and the Duke’s subsequent rise to the throne. The astrologers were charged with treason by necromancy, and Eleanor was named as their instigator and convicted of sorcery. Her punishment before her imprisonment was a public penance throughout London, and she was forced to walk bareheaded and in plain clothes carrying a wax taper.