, and vowed that the careless carpenters
who had constructed the building should instantly be put to death.
Whether he would thus far have stretched the prerogative of an English
sovereign can never be known (says Miss Strickland), for his angelic
partner, scarcely recovered from the terror of her fall, threw herself
on her knees before the incensed king, and so effectually pleaded for
the pardon of the poor men, that Edward became pacified, and forgave
them.

When the young princess, Anne of Bohemia, the first wife of the royal
prodigal, Richard II., entered London, a castle with towers was erected
at the upper end of Cheapside. On the wooden battlements stood fair
maidens, who blew gold leaf on the King, Queen, and retinue, so that the
air seemed filled with golden butterflies. This pretty device was much
admired. The maidens also threw showers of counterfeit gold coins before
the horses' feet of the royal cavalcade, while the two sides of the
tower ran fountains of red wine.

On the great occasion when this same Anne, who had by this time supped
full of troubles, and by whose entreaties the proud, reckless young
king, who had, as it were, excommunicated the City and now forgave it,
came again into Chepe, red and white wine poured in fountains from a
tower opposite the Great Conduit. The King and Queen were served from
golden cups, and at the same place an angel flew down in a cloud, and
presented costly golden circlets to Richard and his young wife.

Two days before the opening of Parliament, in 1423, Katherine of Valois,
widow of Henry V., entered the city in a chair of state, with her child
sitting on her knee. When they arrived at the west door of St. Paul's
Cathedral, the Duke Protector lifted the infant king from his chair and
set him on his feet, and, with the Duke of Exeter, led him between them
up the stairs going into the choir; then, having knelt at the altar for
a time, the child was borne into the churchyard, there set upon a fair
courser, and so conveyed through Cheapside to his own manor of
Kennington.

Time went on, and the weak young king married the fair amazon of France,
the revengeful and resolute Margaret of Anjou. At the marriage pageant
maidens acted, at the Cheapside conduit, a play representing the five
wise and five foolish virgins. Years after, the corpse of the same king
passed along the same street; but no huzzas, no rejoicing now. It was on
the day after the restoration of Edward IV.,