As Northumberland departed to make arrangements for the interview at
Flint, the King said to him: "I rely, my lord, on your faith. Remember
your oath, and the God who heard it." Soon afterward he followed with
his friends and their servants, to the number of twenty-two. They came
to a steep declivity, to the left of which was the sea, and on the right
a lofty rock overhanging the road. The King dismounted, and was
descending on foot, when he suddenly exclaimed: "I am betrayed. God of
Paradise, assist me! Do you not see banners and pennons in the valley?"
Northumberland with eleven others met them at the moment and affected to
be ignorant of the circumstance. "Earl of Northumberland," said the
King, "if I thought you capable of betraying me, it is not too late to
return." "You cannot return," the Earl replied, seizing the King's
bridle; "I have promised to conduct you to the Duke of Lancaster." By
this time he was joined by a hundred lances, and two hundred archers on
horseback; and Richard, seeing it impossible to escape, exclaimed: "May
the God, on whom you laid your hand, reward you and your accomplices at
the last day!" and then, turning to his friends, added: "We are
betrayed; but remember that our Lord was also sold and delivered into
the hands of his enemies."
They dined at Rhuddlan, and reached Flint in the evening. The King, as
soon as he was left with his friends, abandoned himself to the
reflections which his melancholy situation inspired. He frequently
upbraided himself with his past indulgence to his present opponent:
"Fool that I was!" he exclaimed: "thrice did I save the life of this
Henry of Lancaster. Once my dear uncle his father, on whom the Lord have
mercy! would have put him to death for his treason and villany. God of
Paradise! I rode all night to save him; and his father delivered him to
me, to do with him as I pleased. How true is the saying that we have no
greater enemy than the man whom we have preserved from the gallows!
Another time he drew his sword on me, in the chamber of the Queen, on
whom God have mercy! He was also the accomplice of the Duke of
Gloucester and the Earl of Arundel; he consented to my murder, to that
of his father, and of all my council. By St. John, I forgave him all;
nor would I believe his father, who more than once pronounced him
deserving of death."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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