destriers of the knights, or carried on the shoulders of the men. Its shaking and jolting soon proved intolerable: “This accursed litter has broken all my bones, and well-nigh killed me,” cried the king in an agony of pain and rage. Matthew Paris quotes a French rime concerning the sons of Henry II. which thus foretold their fate: “Henry, the fairest, shall die at Martel; Richard, the Poitevin, shall die in the Limousin; John shall die, a landless king, in a litter.” The prediction was all but fulfilled; John, however, gathered up strength and spirit enough to avoid a literal fulfilment of its closing words, and to ride “on an ambling nag” into Newark.[1305] For three days {Oct. 16–18}, in the bishop of Lincoln’s castle whose ruins still look down upon the Trent, the king lay dying. The abbot of Croxton, who was skilled in medicine, attended him as his physician,[1306] and also ministered to his soul, for he persuaded him to confess his sins and receive the Holy Communion.[1307] Then the one natural affection traceable in John’s character broke out in anxiety for his two little sons, especially for the elder of them, to whom the crown must devolve. He solemnly declared Henry his heir, made those around him take an oath of fealty to the boy, and sent letters to the sheriffs and the constables of the royal castles, bidding them look to him as their lord.[1308] He had already, on October 15, before leaving Sleaford, dictated a letter entreating for Henry the special protection of the Pope.[1309] He now appointed Peter de Mauley guardian of his younger son Richard, whom he had apparently left under Peter’s charge in Corfe castle. There was but one man in England to whom he could confidently entrust the guardianship of the heir to the throne. “Before he died, he sent word to William the Marshal, the earl of Pembroke, that he placed his eldest son, Henry, in God’s keeping and his, and besought him for God’s sake that he would take thought for Henry’s interest.”[1310]