"Sir Earl," she said, "this is the manner of the governance of this realm of England, that, if the great barons dislike a King they set him down. So they did, for one cause or another, with Edward II and with Richard II and with Henry VI and with Edward V and with Richard III. He, I think, was a very good King; nevertheless you and others betrayed him on Bosworth Field, God keeps the issue. And when we put down Edward II we set up Edward III; misliking his grandson we set up Henry Bolingbroke instead. And that Bolingbroke, called Henry IV, we did not well like when we had set him up. Yet I do not blame anyone either for setting him up nor yet for seeking to force him down again. For somebody must be King. He will make fair promises before we come to it, and if he break them afterwards it must be put to the issue of swords, pull devil, pull baker. So this Henry IV was too strong for Hotspur, God rest his soul... Then came Henry V that was a King after my heart and all good people’s hearts, and so it went on... But that you, a Percy, should cry out before this King has sat in his saddle a year, that you are afraid of the fate of your grandsire Hotspur; that I think is a very filthy thing and so I tell you. And we of the North parts are not like to suffer it." The Percy smiled a red smile in the firelight. "Then you of the North parts," he said, "women and jackanapes, will do what you are held down to do... For I tell you this: this Henry Tudor sitteth so firm in his saddle by my aid that we will break all your necks or ever you raise them from the dust where you belong. And that I say to the North parts, brawling and fighting brother against brother as ye are ever doing... And this I say to you Margaret Eure and my gentle cousin: that your aunt, who has broad lands should be in prison to your cousins of Cullerford and Haltwhistle and to Bastards suits well my case and there she shall stop for me. For she has broad lands and the Lovells have broad lands and so have the Dacres, to whom she belongs, and whilst they are at each other’s throats it is well for the King in London Town and for me at Alnwick. And I wish you were all at each other’s throats more than you are; for the King shall have his pickings by way of fines and amercements, and so will I, and so will lawyers and bailiffs and others, and so ye are weakened the more. And it was for this reason that I gave judgment against your true love, the Young Lovell, in my Warden’s court, though I knew that judgment should not stand... For I think that Young Lovell was a dangerous whelp, with his prating of this and that, and his being a very good knight and commander. And so I would be very willing to pull him down again if the Scots had not hanged him, as I hope they have. And I have written a broad letter to the King in London that these Lovells are a dangerous race with their hearts full of love for Richard Crookback. If the King do not forbid it, and, if