in his little domain, which he ruled wisely and
kindly, without meddling in public matters, or taking part in the
burning questions of the day. To him Edward always was and always
must be a cruel tyrant and usurper; but as none but princes of the
House of York were left to claim the succession to the crown, there
could be no possible object in any renewal of strife.

Paul, in his quiet west-country home, watched the progress of
events, and saw in the tragedies which successively befell the
scions of the House of York the vengeance of Heaven for the foul
murder of the young Lancastrian prince.

The Duke of Clarence, who had been one of the first to strike him,
fell a victim to the displeasure of the king, his brother, and was
secretly put to death in the Tower. Although Edward himself died a
natural death, it was said that vexation at the failure of some of
his most treasured schemes for the advancement of his children cut
him off in the flower of his age. And a darker fate befell his own
young sons than he had inflicted upon the son of the rival monarch:
for Edward of Lancaster had died a soldier's death, openly slain by
the sword in the light of day; whilst the murderer's children were
done to death between the stone walls of a prison, and for years
their fate was shrouded in terrible mystery.

The next death in that ill-omened race was that of King Richard's
own son, in the tenth year of his age. As Duke of Gloucester, he
had stood by to see the death of young Edward, even if his hand had
not been raised to strike him. He had then forced into reluctant
wedlock with himself the betrothed bride of the murdered
prince--the unhappy Lady Anne. He had murdered his brother's
children to raise himself to the throne, and had committed many
other crimes to maintain himself thereon; and his own son--another
Edward, Prince of Wales--was doomed to meet a sudden death, called
by the chroniclers of the time "unhappy," as though some strange or
painful circumstance attached to it, in the absence of both his
parents: and lastly, the lonely monarch, wifeless and childless,
was called upon to reap the fruits of the bitter hostility and
distrust which his cruel and arbitrary rule had awakened in the
breasts of his own nobles and of his subjects in general.

Paul Stukely, now a married man with children of his own growing up
about him, watched with intense interest the course of public
events; and when Henry of Richmond--a lineal des