omage to his nephew.

A struggle had been long impending between two rival parties in the
state. On one hand the Queen, with her relations, who had been raised to
wealth and power by her marriage. On the other, Gloucester, with many of
the old nobility, whose jealousy had been roused by the sudden advance
of the Woodville family. The king's death and his successor's tender age
would inevitably bring about a collision. It was now merely a question
which faction could out-manoeuvre the other. Richard of Gloucester
struck the first blow. Rivers was arrested at his inn.

Gloucester and the duke of Buckingham then rode on to Stony Stratford,
where they found the poor little king with his company "ready to leap on
horseback, and depart forward." But it was too late. The dukes arrested
Vaughan and Grey, and brought the frightened boy back to Northampton.
"He wept, and was nothing content, but it booted not."[33] Richard
himself took his nephew to London; and at the young king's public entry
on the fourth of May he bore himself "in open sight most reverently to
the prince, with all semblance of lowliness."[34] The peers also took
the oath of fealty. But it was only "a semblance." Able and
unscrupulous, Richard of Gloucester had long been meditating a scheme of
daring ambition. The first step was accomplished. He had possession of
his young nephew's person. Now he was appointed "Protector of England."
And during poor little King Edward's short reign his signature was used
as an instrument for the ruin of his mother's kindred and friends, and
for the aggrandizement of his uncle Gloucester's party.

The Queen, meanwhile, saw only too clearly whither these events tended.
Terrified at Richard's successful blow, seeing that her own faction was
utterly undone, and fearing for the lives of herself and her children,
she flew again to her well-known refuge. She left the Palace of
Westminster at midnight with her youngest son, Richard Duke of York, and
her five daughters, and lodged in the Abbot's Place.

It was in one of the great chambers of the house, probably
the Dining-hall (now the College Hall) that she was received
by Abbot Esteney.[35]

The Queen sate alow on the rushes all desolate and dismayed,
and all about her much heaviness, rumble, haste and
business; carriage and conveyance of her stuff into
Sanctuary; chests, coffers, packers, fardels, trussed all on
men's backs; no man unoccupied--som