Gyles's
Fields, where many honourable persons were present, and the last words
that he spake were to Sir Thomas Upingham, adjuring him that if he saw
him rise from death to life again the third day he would procure that
his sect which he had raised might be in peace and quiet. He was hanged
by the neck in a chain of iron and after consumed by fire.
Moreover it is recorded that in the time of this worthy pretor Sir
Richard Whittington the glorious city of Constantinople was taken by
Mahomet the Second, Prince of the Turks, whose souldiers sacked it with
all extremity and omitted no manners of cruelty by violence to either
virgins, aged women, or sucking babes. This Sir Richard Whittington had
traffick from thence by his factors which there abode, and were then
taken prisoners, so that he lost near upon fifteen thousand pounds,
which when he heard of never was so much as cast down or dismayed, but
said God will send more; yea such was the incessant practice of the
Turkish tyranny upon this imperial city, as it exceeded the damage,
rapes and spoyls of other cities. They also beheaded at the same time
Constantine, sticking his head upon a launce, and with derision caused
it to be carried thorow the Turkish camp.
In the space of a week after, there hapned a horrible tempest of thunder
and lightning which burned almost eight hundred houses and spoiled three
thousand people at the sacking of the aforesaid city by the said
Mahomet.
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