Henry II held his court at Windsor at Easter, 1170, accompanied by William the Lion of Scotland and his brother David; there he held a parliament in 1175, and often resided; he knighted his son, Prince John, within its walls; and it is said that one of the apartments was decorated with a picture of a dying eagle attacked by four eaglets, to represent himself and his rebel sons. When Richard I lay in prison, on his way home from the Crusade, John seized Windsor, but was forced by the barons to give it up. When John succeeded to the kingdom he frequently kept Christmas at the Castle, and there in 1210 he confined William de Braose of Bramber's wife and son, and the son's wife, in chains until they died of hunger and misery. A contemporary says that the captives were shut in a room with a sheaf of wheat and a piece of raw bacon, and that in eleven days the mother was found sitting upright between her son's knees, her head thrown back on his breast, and that she had gnawed his cheek, probably after his death, as he sat with his face bowed. From Windsor John rode out to Runnymede in June, 1215, to sign _Magna Charta_. When he broke his faith soon after, Louis of France and the English barons subdued all the south of England save Dover and Windsor. Windsor they besieged with a great force under the Count de Nevers; but John corrupted him to treachery, and was then free to gather an army from his garrisons and lay waste the eastern counties, in that furious and hasty course which led to his death in 1216. [Illustration: THE HUNDRED STEPS]