had been riding in his company when he received the
wound, King Richard said:

'Take off his chains, give him a hundred shillings, and let him depart.'

He sunk down on his couch, and a dark mist seemed in his weakened eyes to
fill the tent wherein he had so often rested, and he died. His age was
forty-two; he had reigned ten years. His last command was not obeyed;
for the chief officer flayed Bertrand de Gourdon alive, and hanged him.

There is an old tune yet known--a sorrowful air will sometimes outlive
many generations of strong men, and even last longer than battle-axes
with twenty pounds of steel in the head--by which this King is said to
have been discovered in his captivity. BLONDEL, a favourite Minstrel of
King Richard, as the story relates, faithfully seeking his Royal master,
went singing it outside the gloomy walls of many foreign fortresses and
prisons; until at last he heard it echoed from within a dungeon, and knew
the voice, and cried out in ecstasy, 'O Richard, O my King!' You may
believe it, if you like; it would be easy to believe worse things.
Richard was himself a Minstrel and a Poet. If he had not been a Prince
too, he might have been a better man perhaps, and might have gone out of
the world with less bloodshed and waste of life to answer for.

CHAPTER XIV--ENGLAND UNDER KING JOHN, CALLED LACKLAND

At two-and-thirty years of age, JOHN became King of England. His pretty
little nephew ARTHUR had the best claim to the throne; but John seized
the treasure, and made fine promises to the nobility, and got himself
crowned at Westminster within a few weeks after his brother Richard's
death. I doubt whether the crown could possibly have been put upon the
head of a meaner coward, or a more detestable villain, if England had
been searched from end to end to find him out.

The French King, Philip, refused to acknowledge the right of John to his
new dignity, and declared in favour of Arthur. You must not suppose that
he had any generosity of feeling for the fatherless boy; it merely suited
his ambitious schemes to oppose the King of England. So John and the
French King went to war about Arthur.

He was a handsome boy, at that time only twelve years old. He was not
born when his father, Geoffrey, had his brains trampled out at the
tournament; and, besides the misfortune of never having known a father's
guidance and protection, he had the additional misfortune to have a
foolish mother (C