After John came Henry III. and the three Edwards; and when the third
Edward died, his son Richard II. was heir to the throne. He was,
however, too young at that time to reign, for he was only ten years
old.

The kings in these days were wild and turbulent men, always engaged in
wars with each other and with their nobles, while all the industrial
classes were greatly depressed. The nobles lived in strong castles in
various places about the country, and owned, or claimed to own, very
large estates, which the laboring men were compelled to cultivate for
them. Some of these castles still remain in a habitable state, but
most of them are now in ruins--and very curious objects the ruins are
to see.

[Illustration: RUINS OF AN ANCIENT CASTLE.]

The kings held their kingdoms very much as the nobles did their
estates--they considered them theirs by right. And the people generally
thought so too. The king had a _right_, as they imagined, to live in
luxury and splendor, and to lord it over the country, and compel the
mass of the people to pay him nearly all their earnings in rent and
taxes, and to raise armies, whenever he commanded them, to go and fight
for him in his quarrels with his neighbors, because his father had
done these things before him. And what right had his father to do these
things? Why, because _his_ father had done them before him. Very well;
but to go back to the beginning. What right had the first man to assume
this power, and how did he get possession of it? This was a question
that nobody could answer, for nobody knew then, and nobody knows now,
who were the original founders of these noble families, or by what
means they first came into power. People did not know how to read and
write in the days when kings first began to reign, and so no records
ere made, and no accounts kept of public transactions; and when at
length the countries of Europe in the Middle Ages began to emerge
somewhat into the light of civilization, these royal and noble families
were found every where established. The whole territory of Europe was
divided into a great number of kingdoms, principalities, dukedoms, and
other such sovereignties, over each of which some ancient family was
established in supreme and almost despotic power. Nobody knew how they
originally came by their power.

The people generally submitted to this power very willingly. In the
first place, they had a sort of blind veneration for it on account of
its ancie