Now, the young King, journeying towards London too, with Lord Rivers
and Lord Gray, came to Stony Stratford, as his uncle came to
Northampton, about ten miles distant; and when those two lords heard
that the Duke of Gloucester was so near, they proposed to the young
King that they should go back and greet him in his name. The boy being
very willing that they should do so, they rode off and were received
with great friendliness, and asked by the Duke of Gloucester to stay
and dine with him. In the evening, while they were merry together, up
came the Duke of Buckingham with three hundred horsemen; and next
morning the two lords and the two dukes, and the three hundred
horsemen, rode away together to rejoin the King. Just as they were
entering Stony Stratford, the Duke of Gloucester, checking his horse,
turned suddenly on the two lords, charged them with alienating from him
the affections of his sweet nephew, and caused them to be arrested by
the three hundred horsemen and taken back. Then, he and the Duke of
Buckingham went straight to the King (whom they had now in their
power), to whom they made a show of kneeling down, and offering great
love and submission; and then they ordered his attendants to disperse,
and took him, alone with them, to Northampton.
A few days afterwards they conducted him to London, and lodged him in
the Bishop’s Palace. But, he did not remain there long; for, the Duke
of Buckingham with a tender face made a speech expressing how anxious
he was for the Royal boy’s safety, and how much safer he would be in
the Tower until his coronation, than he could be anywhere else. So, to
the Tower he was taken, very carefully, and the Duke of Gloucester was
named Protector of the State.
Although Gloucester had proceeded thus far with a very smooth
countenance—and although he was a clever man, fair of speech, and not
ill-looking, in spite of one of his shoulders being something higher
than the other—and although he had come into the City riding
bare-headed at the King’s side, and looking very fond of him—he had
made the King’s mother more uneasy yet; and when the Royal boy was
taken to the Tower, she became so alarmed that she took sanctuary in
Westminster with her five daughters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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