, put himself at their head, and
marched with them out of the city; and so the king, against whom the
rebellion was made, became the leader of the rebels. As soon as matters
grew quiet, however, he broke all the promises he had made, and punished
the chief rebels very harshly.

Not long after this one of the king's uncles made himself master of the
kingdom by force, and it was several years before Richard could put him
out of power.

But the greatest of all Richard's troubles were yet to come. His cousin,
Henry Bolingbroke, the son of old John of Gaunt, had misbehaved, and
Richard had sent him out of England, not to return for ten years. But
while Richard was in Ireland putting down a rebellion there, Henry came
back to England, raised an army, and was joined by many of the most
powerful men in the kingdom. When Richard came back from Ireland Henry
made him a prisoner, and not long afterwards the great men made up their
minds to set up Henry as the king instead of Richard. They made Richard
sign a paper giving up his right to the crown, and then, to make the
matter sure, Parliament passed a law that Richard should be king no
longer.

Richard was only thirty-three years old when all this was done, but
after so many troubles he might well have been glad to give up his
kingship, if that had been the end of the matter. But a king who has
been set aside is always a dangerous man to have in the kingdom, and it
would not do to let Richard go free. He might gather his friends around
him and give trouble. So it was decided that the unfortunate man should
be shut up in a prison for the rest of his life.

But even this was not the worst of the matter. Richard had a wife--Queen
Isabella--whom he loved very dearly, and if the two could have gone away
together into some quiet place to live, they might still have been happy
in spite of being under guard all the time. But the new king would not
have it so. He gave orders that Richard should be shut up closely in a
prison, and that Isabella should go back to France, where Richard had
married her.

This was a terrible thing for the young man and his younger wife, who
might have had a long life of happiness still before them if Richard
had never been a king. But Richard had been King of England, and so he
had to give up both his freedom and his wife.

In his play of "King Richard the Second" Shakespeare makes a very
touching scene of their parting. In the play their farewell takes