“Hastings is dead!” The cry rippled out from the Tower down the narrow lanes and alleys of the city and sent the citizens into the streets in alarm. They were used to seeing the genial Hastings alongside the king enjoying an ale at one tavern and a wench at another. “He was one of us,” an innkeeper told his neighbors as they hurried to the standard on the Chepe, where important announcements were made. “What has he done? Better be ready for trouble,” he said, picking up a stout stick. Others brought their tools and weapons with them, shooing children back indoors. They needed answers in these uncertain times. Questions were being asked as to why the queen remained in sanctuary and refused to let her younger son join his brother in the Tower. What was it about the protector that frightened the woman enough to choose to stay at the abbey in relative discomfort? Already he had postponed the much anticipated coronation twice in his six-week term as regent. The most suspicious of them whispered that the king’s uncle might have designs on the throne himself. “Just like his brother Clarence,” they said.

At the standard, a trumpeter silenced the rowdy crowd that was shaking staffs, knives, pikes, and fists. A herald rode forward and read the proclamation from the royal council: “In so much as William, Lord Hastings has been discovered plotting with her grace the queen and others of her affinity to destroy the lord protector and my lord Buckingham so as to rule our sovereign Edward and the king-dom at his own pleasure, the charge of treason warranted his immediate punishment. The said Hastings was also charged, with his co-conspirator and concubine Jane Shore, of bringing about the demise of the late King Edward through their immoral and licentious way of life. Therefore, Lord Hastings was executed in the Tower this day, the thirteenth day of June, by order of the lord protector, his grace the duke of Gloucester.”

The mayor ascended the Chepe Cross steps: “The government, our city, and the kingdom hav-ing thus been secured, you are required to return to your homes and put away your weapons.”

Apprentices, mercers, butchers and bakers, goodwives, weavers, tailors and wherrymen stood for a moment to absorb the extraordinary news before an excited buzz of conversation supplanted the silence as they dispersed. Most accepted the lord protector’s action as necessary—if sudden, but others of a more cynical nature had to ask, if the popular Lord Hastings could be despatched so swiftly, was anyone safe?

When Thomas Grey, marquess of Dorset, escaped from sanctuary the very next day, Richard was further convinced he had been right about the conspiracy.