ime.
But I will show you the reason. Your people complain that for the space
of twenty or two-and-twenty years you have ruled them rigorously; but,
if it please God, I will help you to govern better." The King replied,
"Fair cousin, since it pleaseth you, it pleaseth us well." Henry then
addressed himself successively to the Bishop and to the knights, but
refused to notice the Earl. The King's horses were immediately ordered;
and two lean and miserable animals were brought out, on which Richard
and Salisbury mounted, and amid the flourish of trumpets and shouts of
triumph followed the Duke into Chester.

At Chester writs were issued in the King's name for the meeting of
parliament and the preservation of the peace. Henry dismissed the
greater part of his army, and prepared to conduct his prisoner to the
capital. At Lichfield Richard seized a favorable moment to let himself
down from his window, but was retaken in the garden, and from that
moment was constantly guarded by ten or twelve armed men. In the
neighborhood of London they separated. Henry, accompanied by the mayor
and principal citizens, proceeded to St. Paul's, prayed before the high
altar, and wept a few minutes over the tomb of his father. The King was
sent to Westminster, and thence on the following day to the Tower, and,
as he went along, was greeted with curses and the appellation of "the
bastard," a word of ominous import, and prophetic of his approaching
degradation.

When the Duke first landed in England, he had sworn on the Gospels that
his only object was to vindicate his right to the honors and possessions
of the house of Lancaster. If this was the truth, his ambition had grown
with his good-fortune. He now aspired to exchange the coronet of a duke
for the crown of a king. Can we believe that he would meet with
opposition from his associates, the Percy family? Yet so we are assured.
They, however, by their perfidy, had given themselves a master. Their
retainers had been already dismissed; and the friends of Richard
abhorred them as the worst of traitors. They had therefore no resource
but to submit, and to second the design of Lancaster. After several
consultations it was resolved to combine a solemn renunciation of the
royal authority on the part of Richard with an act of deposition on the
part of the two houses of parliament, in the hope that those whose
scruples should not be satisfied with the one, might acquiesce in the
other. To obtain the fi