e throne by two nobles of the order
to which he was about to be raised.

"Sir Henry of Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby!" The gentleman whose
unswerving loyalty was about to be recompensed by the gift of a coronet
(!) rose with his customary grace from his seat, third on the right hand
of the King, and was led up by his father of Lancaster and his uncle of
York. He knelt, bareheaded, before the throne. A sword was girt to his
side, a ducal coronet set on his head by the royal hand, and he rose
Duke of Hereford. As old Lancaster resumed his seat, he smiled grimly
under his white beard, and muttered to himself--"_Sans doute_!"

"Sir Edward of Langley, Earl of Rutland!"

Constance's brother was similarly led up by his father and his cousin,
the newly-created Duke, and he resumed his princely seat, Duke of
Aumerle, or Albemarle.

"Sir Thomas de Holand, Earl of Kent, Baron Wake!"

Hereford and Aumerle were the two to lead up the candidate. He was the
son of the King's half-brother, and was reputed the handsomest of the
nobles: a tall, finely-developed man, with the shining golden hair of
his Plantagenet ancestors. He was created Duke of Surrey.

Hereford sat down, and Surrey and Aumerle conducted John Earl of
Huntingdon to the throne. He was half-brother of the King, uncle of
Surrey, and husband of the royal songstress who sat and smiled in
crimson velvet. He had stepped out of the family ranks; for instead of
being tall, fair, and good-looking, like the rest of his house, he was a
little dark-haired man, whom no artist would have selected as a model of
beauty. A strong anti-Lollard was this nobleman, a good hater, a
prejudiced, violent, unprincipled man; possessed of two virtues only--
honesty and loyalty. He had been cajoled for a time by Gloucester, but
his brother knew him too well to doubt his sincerity or affection. He
was made Duke of Exeter.

The next call was for--"Sir Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham!" And
up came the last of the "Lords Appellants," painfully conscious in his
heart of hearts that while he might have been in his right place on the
scaffold in Cheapside, he was very much out of it in Westminster Hall,
kneeling to receive the coronet of Norfolk.

A coronet was now laid aside, for the recipient was not present. She
was an old lady of royal blood, above seventy years of age, the second
cousin of the King, and great-grandmother of Nottingham. Her style and
titles were duly proclaime