It is Monday, September 29, 1399. The day, which was overcast in the early morning, has turned out fair and bright, and the Council Chamber and all the approaches to it are crowded with the highest nobles, temporal and spiritual, in the land; steel clad knights, mitred abbots, proud bishops, grave judges in cap and ermine, peers and lackeys, stand on the stairs and in the ante-rooms, to catch a word or get a look at the coming grand historical farce which is to end at last in a terrible tragedy. It is the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, and as the sun streams through the stained glass of the oriel windows, and the shouts of the London prentices at their games of ball, are wafted to the warder on the battlements, who carries his partisan to and fro; a deputation from each house of Parliament, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and other great Nobles, enters the Council Chamber to hold a conference with the reigning Monarch Richard II, now about to resign his Crown to the Protector Bolingbroke, who afterward as Henry IV, will encounter more vicissitudes and suffering than the monarch he is about so cruelly to depose. The nobles seat themselves, the Protector enthrones himself, and a ghastly figure, that of Richard II, stalks moodily into the Chamber, clad in kingly robes, his sceptre in his hand, the Crown upon his head, and there is silence for a moment among all present. Then Richard says in a broken voice, but distinctly, "I have been King of England, Duke of Aquitaine, and Lord of Ireland about twenty-one years, which Seigneury, Royalty, Sceptre, Crown and Heritage, I now clearly resign here to my cousin, Henry of Lancaster, and I desire him here, in this open presence, in entering of the same possession, to take the sceptre;" "and so," says Froissart, "he delivered it to the Duke, who took it," and kept it, also, he might have added. Before a year had elapsed the unfortunate monarch was put to death in Pontefract Castle by order of his successor, Henry IV. On a May day, in 1471, the streets of London resound with music, and the populace are all in holiday attire to welcome Edward IV, who returns victorious from the battle of Barnet, where he has slain, in cold blood, Prince Edward, son to Henry VI, who is a prisoner in the Tower. Next day Henry dies in a suspicious manner, and Edward has leisure for a little while to found the Order of the Garter. Edward dies, and he is not cold in his tomb before Richard III ascends, or rather usurps the throne. Edward has left two boys, the eldest of whom is lawful heir to the Crown, by Elizabeth Wydville, his wife.