implored him to spare his
eyes, and at last Hubert consented, for all the time his heart had been
sick at the cruel deed he had promised to do. Then he took Prince Arthur
away and hid him, and told the King he was dead.

But King John's lords were so angry when they heard that Arthur was
dead, and John seemed so sorry for having given the order to Hubert,
that Hubert thought it best to tell him that Arthur had not been killed
at all, but was still alive and safe. John was now so terrified at the
anger of his lords on Arthur's account that Arthur might from that time
have been safe from him. But the poor boy was so frightened by what he
had gone through that he made up his mind to risk his life in trying to
escape. So he decided to leap down from the top of the tower as his only
means of escape.

Then he thought he could get away in disguise without being recognised.

[Illustration]

"The wall is high, and yet will I leap down," he said. "Good ground, be
pitiful and hurt me not."

So he leaped, but the tower was high, and the fall killed him. And
before he died, he murmured--"Heaven take my soul and England keep my
bones."

That is the story as Shakespeare gives it.

[Illustration]

Almost everyone in England hated King John, even before this dreadful
affair of Prince Arthur's death. The King of France took Normandy away
from him, and his own people would not help him to fight for it.

He was very cruel and revengeful, and often put people in prison or
killed them without giving any reason for it, or having them properly
tried. So the great nobles of England joined together and said that they
would not let John be King any longer in England unless he would give
them a written promise to behave better in future. At first he laughed
at the idea, and said he should do as he chose, and that he would fight
the lords and keep them in their proper place. But he had to give in
when he found that only seven of the lords of England were on his side
and all the rest against him. So then he asked the barons and the
bishops to meet him at Runnymede and there he put his big seal to a
writing, promising what they wished. He did not sign his name to it, but
you can see that very parchment sealed in the British Museum with the
King's big seal to it.

[Sidenote: Magna Charta

A.D. 1215.]

But though he fixed his seal to the paper he did not keep the promises
that were in it, and the barons grew so angry that they asked th