Hereford sat down, and Surrey and Aumerle conducted John Earl of Huntingdon to the throne. He was half-brother of the King, uncle of Surrey, and husband of the royal songstress who sat and smiled in crimson velvet. He had stepped out of the family ranks; for instead of being tall, fair, and good-looking, like the rest of his house, he was a little dark-haired man, whom no artist would have selected as a model of beauty. A strong anti-Lollard was this nobleman, a good hater, a prejudiced, violent, unprincipled man; possessed of two virtues only-- honesty and loyalty. He had been cajoled for a time by Gloucester, but his brother knew him too well to doubt his sincerity or affection. He was made Duke of Exeter. The next call was for--"Sir Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham!" And up came the last of the "Lords Appellants," painfully conscious in his heart of hearts that while he might have been in his right place on the scaffold in Cheapside, he was very much out of it in Westminster Hall, kneeling to receive the coronet of Norfolk. A coronet was now laid aside, for the recipient was not present. She was an old lady of royal blood, above seventy years of age, the second cousin of the King, and great-grandmother of Nottingham. Her style and titles were duly proclaimed as Duchess of Norfolk for life. But when "Sir John de Beaufort, Earl of Somerset!" was called for, the peer summoned rose and walked forward alone. He was to be created a marquis--a title of King Richard's own devising, and at that moment borne by no one else. The Earl came reluctantly, for he was very unwilling to be made unlike other people; and he dropped his new title, and returned to the old one, as soon as he conveniently could. He had a tall, fine figure, but not a pleasant face; and his religion, no less than his politics, he wore like a glove--well-fitting when on, but capable of being changed at pleasure. Just now, when Lollardism was "walking in silver slippers," my Lord Marquis of Dorset was a Lollard. Rome rarely persecutes men of this sort, for she makes them useful in preference. And now the herald cried--"Sir Thomas Le Despenser, Baron of Cardiff!" The Earls of Northumberland and Suffolk were the supporters of Le Despenser, who walked forward with a slow, graceful step, to receive from the King's hand an earl's coronet, accompanied by the ominous name of Gloucester--a title stained by its last bearer beyond remedy. In truth, the royal dukedom had been an interpolation of the line, and the King was merely giving Le Despenser back his own--the coronet which had belonged to the grand old family of Clare, whose co-heiress was the great-grandmother of Thomas Le Despenser. The title had been kept as it were in suspense ever since the attainder of her husband, the ill-fated Earl Hugh, though two persons had borne it in the interim without any genuine right.