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given to proper guards, who placed them in the treasury of Westminster-abbey until they should be needed.'

The news of the restraint in which the young queen of England was held had been carried by some merchants of Bruges to the coast of France, together with the account of the deposition of her husband. But when the lady de Coucy arrived, who had been attached to the household of Isabella, the whole truth was known. Directly she alighted at the hotel of her lord at Paris, the king of France sent there to hear news of his daughter: he was so much shocked at the ill tidings she told of Isabella and her husband, that though his health had been good for some time, his agitation, on hearing of his daughter's reverse of fortune, brought back his fits of frenzy. The duke of Burgundy said, "The marriage of king Richard with Isabella was unadvised, and so I declared when it was proposed. Since the English have imprisoned king Richard, they will assuredly put him to death; for they always hated him, because he preferred peace to war. They will as certainly crown Henry of Lancaster." This prediction of the queen's uncle proved true. During the last days of September, Henry of Lancaster was recognised by the majority of the assembled parliament as king; and was magnificently crowned in October, without the slightest recognition of the prior claims of the orphan heirs of the earl of March.

While this revolution was effected, the young queen was removed to Sunning-Hill; there she was kept a state-prisoner, and sedulously misinformed regarding the events that had befallen her husband. The last hopes of king Richard had ended in despair when his cousin Aumerle had yielded the loyal city of Bristol, and his brother-in-law Huntingdon gave up Calais, and swore fealty to Henry IV. This fealty, however, only lasted six weeks. A plot was set on foot, headed by Aumerle, Huntingdon, and Salisbury, for killing Henry IV. at a tournament they were about to give at Windsor. Henry, whose health soon broke under the anxieties which beset the

1 Froissart. This narrative is in perfect unison with the ancient laws and customs of England, which ordained that St. Edward's crown and regalia should be in the keeping of the abbot of Westminster.

crown of thorns he had assumed, was sick at Windsor-castle. There was a spiked instrument concealed in his bed, for the purpose of destroying him when he lay down to rest; its introduction, says the monk of Evesham, "was attributed to one of the young queen's servants.”

He was hurried from

Richard's doom was now sealed. the Tower to Pontefract-castle; meantime, the confederate lords flew to arms, and, dressing up king Richard's chaplain, Maudelain, in royal robes, proclaimed that the deposed king had escaped from his gaolers. The young queen Isabella took an extraordinary part in this movement for the restoration of her husband. When the earls of Kent and Salisbury came with their forces to Sunning-Hill, where she was abiding, they told her "They had driven the usurper Bolingbroke from Windsor to the stronghold of the Tower, and that her hus band had escaped, and was then in full march to meet her at the head of a hundred thousand men." Overjoyed at this news, the young queen put herself at their disposal. She likewise took great pleasure in ordering the badges of Henry IV. to be torn from her household, and replaced by those of her royal husband; in which "harmless spite," says Hayward, "the queen Isabel took the utmost satisfaction." A proclamation was likewise issued in her name, declaring "that she did not recognise Henry of Lancaster as king." The queen then set out with her brother-in-law, the earl of Kent, and his allies, on their march to Wallingford and Abingdon. Full of joyful hope, Isabel expected every hour to meet her king triumphant at the head of a loyal army. She was with the barons when they entered the fatal town of Cirencester; but, amid the mysterious darkness which shrouds the termination of this insurrection, we lose sight of the actual manner in which the young queen was recaptured by Henry IV. Let

1 He was exceedingly like Richard, and supposed to be an illegitimate son of one of the royal family; he was implicated in the illegal execution of the duke of Gloucester. He had adhered to Richard with the utmost fidelity, from his landing in Wales till his capture at Flint.

Guthrie and Froissart. Sir John Hayward, p. 127, edition 1599. He says, "the insurgent lords came to the queen from Colnebrook to Sunning, a place near Reading."

fortune have declared for whatever party it might, disappointment alone was in store for the heart of Isabella, since the Richard, whom she hoped to meet, was but a counterfeit in royal robes to deceive the common people. The chiefs of the insurrection were betrayed by the mayor of Cirencester, and their summary execution followed in a few hours. Isabella was too young to be punished for her share in this rebellion, excepting by close restraint. She was sent, after quiet was restored, strictly guarded, to the palace of Havering-atteBower; and this appears to have been her place of residence during the tragical events that succeeded the insurrection, in which she took a part so decided, considering her tender age.

These transactions took place at the end of January and the beginning of February, 1400, when the insurrection was subdued: it became a favourite topic of conversation between the knights and lords of Henry's bedchamber, who always concluded by observing on the impossibility that Henry IV. should reign peaceably while Richard II. was suffered to exist. The wily king gave no intimation that he heard these colloquies. After an abortive invasion by the count de St. Pol, Richard's brother-in-law, the king's flatterers and tempters beset him more than ever. "Yet," says Froissart, emphatically, "the king of England made no reply; but, leaving them in conversation, went to his falconers, and placing a falcon on his wrist, forgot all in feeding him." Froissart is far too courtly to acknowledge that so accomplished a knight as Henry of Lancaster ordered so foul a murder; but other historians do not allow that Henry forgot all while feeding his falcon.

There are so many circumstantial details in the narrative of old Fabyan concerning the death of Richard II., that there is little doubt of its being the true history of the murder of the unhappy king. Froissart has given the opening or prologue of the tragedy; but the following relation, gathered from Fabyan and others, tells the manner in which it was played out:-King Henry, sitting one day at table, in a sighing manner said, "Have I no faithful friend who will deliver me of one, whose life will be my death, and whose death

my life?" This speech was much noted of the hearers, especially by one sir Piers' of Exton. This knight left the court, and, with eight persons more, went suddenly to Pontefractcastle; whither being come, he called before him the squire who was accustomed to wait on Richard at table, giving him. a charge "that the king should eat as much as he would, for that now he should not long eat." King Richard being set at dinner was served negligently, and without the usual ceremony of tasting the dishes before he commenced his meal. Marvelling at this sudden change, he asked the reason, and was told that new orders had been given by king Henry to that effect."The devil take Henry of Lancaster and thee together!" exclaimed the king in a passion, striking the man with a carving-knife. "On that word, in rushed sir Piers Exton with eight tall men, every man having a weapon in his hand. Richard, perceiving them, put the table back from him, and stepping up to the man next him, wrung the weapon out of his hand, (a brown-bill,) and therewith right valiantly defended himself; so that, in conclusion, four of them he slew outright. Sir Piers, amazed thereat, leaped upon the chair where king Richard usually sat, (some authorities say it was a curiously carved stone-chair); while the king was fiercely striving for conquest with the four surviving ruffians, and chasing them round the chamber, he passed near to the chair whereon sir Piers had gotten, who with a pole-axe smote him on the back of the head, and, withal, ridded him of his life in an instant."

Thus, battling like a champion of proof, in the full exercise of mighty energies awakened by despair, fell the son of the Black Prince, at the early age of thirty-two: he died inThere was a lord mayor, one of Richard's opposers, called sir Thomas Exton. 2 This observation shows that his food had been circumscribed. The very words of Shakspeare, who has merely cast Fabyan's narrative into dalogne. Walsingham only mentions that Richard starved himself, and died on Valentine's-day, 1400. This author is a thorough Lancastrian partisan, while aiderman Fabyan just wrote at that distance from the event in question when the truth has not passed from the memory of man, and yet can be spoken fearlessly. Fabyan lived in the reign of Henry IV.'s grandson. As for gaining an actual exposure of a royal murder from an immediate contemporary, it is not to be expected. Let the reader notice the ominous silence of Froissart on this subject. His words point at murder strongly, but they speak it not.

stantly, in the triumphant flush of victory against fearful odds. The gallantry of his death seems, in the minds of his combative nobles, to have absterged the stain of illegitimacy, with which his rival had foully taunted him. We hear no more, in chronicle, of his being the son of a priest. "Richard of Bourdeaux, when dead, was placed on a litter covered with black cloth, and a canopy of the same. Four black horses were harnessed to it, and four varlets in mourning conducted the litter, followed by four knights, dressed also in mourning," sir Piers being doubtless one of the knights, and the varlets the worthy survivors of Richard's eight assailants. "They thus paraded the streets, at a foot's pace, till they came to the Chepe, which is the greatest thoroughfare in the city, and there they halted for upwards of two hours. More than twenty thousand persons came to see king Richard, who lay in the litter, his head on a black cushion,' and his face uncovered.”:

Thus was queen Isabella left a widow in her thirteenth year. The death of her royal lord was concealed from her a considerable time; but she learned the murderous manner of it soon enough to reject, with horror, all offers of union with the heir of Lancaster. Young as she was, Isabella gave proofs of a resolute and decisive character: traits of firm and faithful

1 Froissart. The black cushion is mentioned by another witness; it was probably to conceal any accidental effusion of blood.

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2 Sir John Hayward adds the remarkable circumstance, (p. 135,) “that Richard's body was not only embalmed and cered, but soldered entirely in lead, all but the face." Thus, although the body was exposed to the view of the populace in all the towns through which it passed, as well as in the metropolis, no one could possibly ascertain what wounds were on the head. These precautions plainly point out the peculiar manner of Richard's death. Traditional evidence may be gathered from the tour of three Norwich gentlemen, in 1643, before the royal castle of Pontefract was dilapidated by Cromwell. We scaled that high, stately, and impregnable castle builded by the Norman on a rock, which for strength, situation, and largeness, may compare with any in the kingdom. In the circuit of this castle are seven famous towers; the highest of them is called 'the round tower,' in which that unfortunate prince, Richard II., fled round a post till his barbarous butchers deprived him of life. Upon that post the cruel hackings and fierce blows do still remain. We viewed the spacious hall which the giants kept, the large fair kitchen with many wide chimneys in it; we went up and saw the chamber of presence, the king and queen's chambers, the chapel, and many other rooms, all fit and suitable for princes."-Brayley's Graphic Illustrator, page 94. The round tower' is by Weever (Funeral Monuments) called the bloody tower,' he says by tradition of the country people in its vicinity, in memory of the murder of Richard II.

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