“He that has light within his own clear breast, May sit i’ th’ centre and enjoy bright day; But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts, Benighted walks under the mid-day sun-- Himself is his own dungeon.” The sufferings inflicted upon Robert in this dismal prison, are a theme on which the old chronicles dilate with painful minuteness. It would be a relief to imagine that the acts of wanton cruelty practised upon the defenceless victim, may have been, like many other points of history, exaggerated or misrepresented; but, taken in connection with other deeds of the time, there is but too just grounds to conclude that the story of Robert’s imprisonment, and the tortures with which it was accompanied, is no fable, but one of those tragical dramas of real life, to which the force of imagination can impart no additional horror. The subject, although referred to in the previous volume of this work, may justify a few more extracts:-- “But long it was not ere Duke Robert, weary of this unwonted duresse, sought to escape; and having to walke in the Kinge’s meadows, forests, and parkes, brake from his keepers without any assisters, or meanes for security; who being missed was presently pursued and taken in a quagmire, wherein his horse lay fast. Whereupon the King hearing of this attempt, considering that woods were no walls to restrain the fierce lyon, and that to play with his claws was to endanger the state, commanded him not onely a greater restraint and harder durance, but also--a thing unfit for a brother to suffer, and most unworthy for Beauclearke to act--both his eyes to be put out. To effect this truly barbarous act, he caused his head to be held in a burning basin--thereby avoiding the deformity of breaking the eye-balls--until the glassie tunicles had lost the office of retaining their light.” But at last, after twenty-six years’ imprisonment, “through griefe conceived at the putting on of a faire new roabe--(too little for the Kinge himselfe, and therefore, ‘in kindnesse,’ says the Chronicle, ‘sent to Duke Robert to weare’)--he grew weary of his life, as disdaining to be mocked with his brother’s cast cloaths; and cursing the time of his unfortunate nativity, refused thenceforth to take any sustenance, and so pined himselfe to death.”