At Chester writs were issued in the King's name for the meeting of parliament and the preservation of the peace. Henry dismissed the greater part of his army, and prepared to conduct his prisoner to the capital. At Lichfield Richard seized a favorable moment to let himself down from his window, but was retaken in the garden, and from that moment was constantly guarded by ten or twelve armed men. In the neighborhood of London they separated. Henry, accompanied by the mayor and principal citizens, proceeded to St. Paul's, prayed before the high altar, and wept a few minutes over the tomb of his father. The King was sent to Westminster, and thence on the following day to the Tower, and, as he went along, was greeted with curses and the appellation of "the bastard," a word of ominous import, and prophetic of his approaching degradation. When the Duke first landed in England, he had sworn on the Gospels that his only object was to vindicate his right to the honors and possessions of the house of Lancaster. If this was the truth, his ambition had grown with his good-fortune. He now aspired to exchange the coronet of a duke for the crown of a king. Can we believe that he would meet with opposition from his associates, the Percy family? Yet so we are assured. They, however, by their perfidy, had given themselves a master. Their retainers had been already dismissed; and the friends of Richard abhorred them as the worst of traitors. They had therefore no resource but to submit, and to second the design of Lancaster. After several consultations it was resolved to combine a solemn renunciation of the royal authority on the part of Richard with an act of deposition on the part of the two houses of parliament, in the hope that those whose scruples should not be satisfied with the one, might acquiesce in the other. To obtain the first, the royal captive was assailed with promises and threats. Generally he abandoned himself to lamentation and despair; occasionally he exerted that spirit which he had formerly displayed. "Why am I thus guarded?" he asked one day. "Am I your king or your prisoner?" "You are my king, sir," replied the Duke with coolness; "but the council of your realm has thought proper to place a guard about you." [Illustration: Richard II resigns the crown of England to Henry, Duke of Lancaster, son of John of Gaunt, at London. Painting by Sir John Gilbert.]