, before anyone could interfere, chopped off
his head on a log of wood that lay there. No one dare do anything, for
they were all afraid of the Duke of Gloucester; and Hastings suffered
simply because he had been loyal to his little King. Richard had no
heart to feel sorry for his victims; he just mowed down the people who
stood between him and his wishes as if they had been daisies.

Now at last he could get his own way, for the two most powerful men who
would have opposed him were out of the way: the King's uncle, Rivers,
was imprisoned at Pontefract in Yorkshire, and Hastings was dead. So
Richard's next idea was to get the little Duke of York and take him to
the Tower to his brother, and then he would have everything in his own
hands.

Even Richard of Gloucester could not go and drag his little nephew
straight out of sanctuary, for the Archbishop would not have allowed it,
and all the people would have been horrified at the sacrilege and risen
against him; so he sent some men to try to persuade the Queen to give
the boy up.

The Archbishop and some nobles went on this errand, and they found Queen
Elizabeth sitting in the midst of her children in the dark Sanctuary,
and when they told her their reason for coming she said never would she
let Richard go. She knew his uncle only wanted him to kill him, and she
said of the Duke of Gloucester, 'He hath so tender a zeal unto him that
he feareth nothing but that he should escape him,' which showed she
guessed his wicked plans. Besides, she added, the boy had been ill, and
he was only a little boy eleven years old, and he was better with his
mother than with men in that gloomy Tower. But they told her Edward was
lonely and wanted his brother to play with; so she answered that there
were many other boys, the sons of nobles, he could play with instead of
his little brother, who still was not well enough to play.

It seems dreadful that these men, who must have known the reason why
Gloucester wanted his little nephew, should have gone on trying to
persuade the poor mother to give him up; but they did, and they said
that sanctuary was not meant for children at all, only for people who
had done wrong, and this boy had done nothing wrong, so he could not
claim the right of sanctuary. Then poor Queen Elizabeth saw that they
would take him whatever she said, and she could do no more. So she gave
him to the Archbishop, and said he must be responsible for him, and if
anything happe