At length the day appointed for the ceremony arrived, and Richard prepared to place the crown of St. Edward on his head. "The king, with Queen Anne, his wife," says the chronicler, "came down out of the Whitehall into the great hall at Westminster, and went directly to the King's Bench, and from thence, going upon Ray-cloth, barefooted, went to St. Edward's Shrine; all his nobility going with him, every lord in his degree." A magnificent banquet in Westminster Hall brought the coronation ceremony to a conclusion; and, in the midst of the banquet, Sir Robert Dymoke, as king's champion, rode into the hall and challenged any man to say that Richard was not King of England. No one, of course, ventured to gainsay his title; but from every side rose shouts of "King Richard, King Richard;" and, his inauguration as sovereign of England having been thus formally completed, the usurper retired to consider how he could best secure himself on that throne which he had gained by means so unscrupulous. CHAPTER XLV. THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER. When the sons of the fourth Edward and Elizabeth Woodville had been escorted through London, conducted to the Tower, and given into the keeping of Sir Robert Brackenbury, the populace saw their faces no more. According to the chroniclers who wrote in the age of the Tudors, the young king had, from the time of the arrest of his maternal kinsman at Stony Stratford, been possessed with vague presentiments; and he no sooner heard of the usurpation than he revealed the alarm he felt for his personal safety. "Alas!" exclaimed the boy, on being informed that Richard was to be crowned, "I would mine uncle would let me enjoy my life, though I lose my kingdom and my crown." The lives of the princes might have been spared; but it happened that, after causing his coronation to be celebrated with so much splendor at Westminster, Richard undertook a progress to York, to have the ceremony repeated in the capital of the north. While on his way, Richard learned that the friends of Elizabeth Woodville were conspiring to deliver the princes from the Tower, and to place young Edward on the throne. The usurper, it is said, then resolved on having his nephews put to death ere they could be used by his enemies to disturb his reign. With this view, while at Gloucester, Richard dispatched a messenger, named John Green, to Brackenbury, with instructions to make away with the princes; but Brackenbury, though elevated to office by Richard, declared that he must decline the commission.