湊 Còu

Cou, Crown Prince Huaiyi, was refined and generous from his youth and had a sense of proper bounds. In the first year of Changqing he was first made Prince of Zhang, enfeoffed at the same time as the Prince of An. When Wenzong took the throne he hated Wang Shoucheng for his domineering viciousness and for bringing in his faction to bend the state to their will, and he planned to put them all to death; he secretly brought in the chief minister Song Shenxi to make the plan. Zheng Zhu, a retainer of Shoucheng, spied it out and reported it, and they plotted to strike first and kill Shenxi. And because the prince was able and had a good name inside and outside the court, they wished to draw the great ministers into the case and exterminate their clans. So they had Doulu Zhu, an Inspector of the Inspired Strategy Army, submit an anonymous report of sedition, which said: "The palace clerks Yan Jingze and Zhu Xun, with Wang Shiwen, a clerk close to Shenxi, are plotting treason. Xun once said that His Majesty is often ill and the Heir Apparent is young, and that if the throne passes from elder brother to younger, the Prince of Zhang will surely be set up. Shenxi has secretly presented gold and silk to the prince, and the prince has repaid him generously with precious clothing." At once Xun and the others were arrested, put in the prison of the Inspired Strategy Army, and beaten until their statements were settled. The remonstrance officials prostrated themselves in a body before the palace gate and argued with all their strength, and the prison documents were sent out for a joint trial by the outer court. Zheng Zhu and the others, fearing that the truth would come out, asked for an edict demoting the prince. The emperor did not see through it, and so reduced Cou to Duke of Chao County; this was in the fifth year of Dahe. He had a eunuch take the edict to him at once, with words of comfort: "The law of the state requires this; have no other worry!" Cou died in the eighth year and was posthumously made Prince of Qi. Zheng Zhu was later executed for his crimes, and the emperor, grieving that Cou had died through slander without being able to clear himself, gave him his posthumous title in the third year of Kaicheng. Edit