ls of London began to ring. In the streets adjoining
the palace loud voices were heard. People seemed gathering rapidly. What
did it mean? Were these her humbled citizens of London? Surely there
were threats mingled with those harsh cries! Threats against the queen
who had just entered London in triumph and been received with such
hearty enthusiasm! Were the Londoners mad?

She would have thought so had she been in the streets. From every house
issued a man, armed with the first weapon he could find, his face
inflamed with anger. They flocked out as tumultuously as bees from a
hive, says an old writer. The streets of London, lately quiet, were now
filled with a noisy throng, all hastening towards the palace, all
uttering threats against this haughty foreign woman, who must have lost
every drop of her English blood, they declared.

The palace was filled with alarm. It looked as if the queen's Norman
blood would be lost as well as that from her English sires. She had
men-at-arms around her, but not enough to be of avail against the
clustering citizens in those narrow and crooked streets. Flight, and
that a speedy one, was all that remained. White with terror, the queen
took to horse, and, surrounded by her knights and soldiers, fled from
London with a haste that illy accorded with the stately and deliberate
pride with which she had recently entered that turbulent capital.

She was none too soon. The frightened cortege had not left the palace
far behind it before the maddened citizens burst open its doors,
searched every nook and cranny of the building for the queen and her
body-guard, and, finding they had fled, wreaked their wrath on all that
was left, plundering the apartments of all they contained.

Meanwhile, the queen, wild with fright, was galloping at full speed from
the hostile beehive she had disturbed. Her barons and knights, in a
panic of fear and deeming themselves hotly pursued, dropped off from the
party one by one, hoping for safety by leaving the highway for the
by-ways, and caring little for the queen so that they saved their
frightened selves. The queen rode on in mad terror until Oxford was
reached, only her brother, the Earl of Gloucester, and a few others
keeping her company to that town.

They fled from a shadow. The citizens had not pursued them. These
turbulent tradesmen were content with ridding London of this power-mad
woman, and they went back satisfied to their homes, leaving the city
open