rchitecture of the period
may still be discerned in the archway and machecoulis of the principal
gateway adjoining the Round Tower; the basement chamber of the Devil
Tower, or Edward the Third's Tower; and in the range of groined and
four-centred vaulting, extending along the north side of the upper
quadrangle, from the kitchen gateway to King John's Tower.

In 1359 Queen Philippa, consort of Edward the Third, breathed her last
in Windsor Castle.

Richard the Second, grandson of Edward the Third, frequently kept his
court at Windsor. Here, in 1382, it was determined by council that war
should be declared against France; and here, sixteen years later, on a
scaffold erected within the castle, the famous appeal for high treason
was made by Henry of Lancaster, Duke of Hereford, against Thomas
Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, the latter of whom defied his accuser to
mortal combat. The duel was stopped by the king, and the adversaries
banished; but the Duke of Lancaster afterwards returned to depose his
banisher. About the same time, the citizens of London having refused
Richard a large loan, he summoned the lord mayor, sheriffs, aldermen,
and twenty-four of the principal citizens, to his presence, and after
rating them soundly, ordered them all into custody, imprisoning the lord
mayor in the castle.

In this reign Geoffrey Chaucer, "the father of English poetry," was
appointed clerk to the works of Saint George's Chapel, at a salary of
two shillings per day (a sum equal to 657 pounds per annum of modern
money), with the same arbitrary power as had been granted to previous
surveyors to impress carpenters and masons. Chaucer did not retain his
appointment more than twenty months, and was succeeded by John Gedney.

It was at Windsor that Henry the Fourth, scarcely assured of the crown
he had seized, received intelligence of a conspiracy against his life
from the traitorous Aumerle, who purchased his own safety at the expense
of his confederates. The timely warning enabled the king to baffle the
design. It was in Windsor also that the children of Mortimer, Earl of
March, the rightful successor to the throne, were detained as hostages
for their father. Liberated by the Countess-dowager of Gloucester,
who contrived to open their prison door with false keys, the youthful
captives escaped to the marshes of Wales, where, however, they were
overtaken by the emissaries of Henry, and brought back to their former
place of confinement.

A