Shakespeare has dealt leniently with the character of Richard of Bordeaux. Doubtless the tragedy of his life made Shakespeare kinder to his memory than was warranted by sober history, for Richard was one of the worst of our English kings. The son of the heroic Black Prince and the grandson of Edward the Third, with the blood and traditions of Richard the Lion-Hearted, Richard inherited none of their great qualities, and was content to fritter away his life in petty acts of tyranny and oppression. England had been used to victory during the great reigns of the first and third Edwards; under Richard, the only success of the national arms was the defeat of the French fleet by Arundel, and Arundel was put to death by Richard. Proud, passionate, and tyrannical, the Black Prince’s son threw away the love, respect, and loyalty which, for the sake of his father’s memory, he had possessed to the fullest upon his ascent to the throne. And although he was only thirty-four at the time of his death, he had lived long enough to see the heartfelt affection of his people turn to dislike and contempt. But the glamour of his personal beauty, combined with the tragedy of his fall, inspired the greatest of our dramatists to perpetuate his memory in a manner which will ever touch the human heart. “Sunt lacrymae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.” CHAPTER V THE LANCASTRIANS Neither of the succeeding reigns—those of Henry IV. and of Henry V.—have left many traces upon the history of the Tower, although both these sovereigns occasionally lived within its walls, but in those days the fortress had become less of a Palace and more of a State prison. There was a picturesque ceremony, however, in the Tower on the eve of Henry the Fourth’s coronation, when forty-six new knights of the Order of the Bath “watched their arms” throughout the night of the 11th of October (1399) in the Chapel of the White Tower.