eived the name
of Elizabeth after the Dowager Lady. But the infant was not many weeks
old, when, to use the beautiful phrase of the chroniclers, she
"journeyed to the Lord." She was taken away from the evil to come.

It was appropriate enough that the last dread year of the fourteenth
century should be ushered in by funeral knells. And he who died on the
third of February in that year, though not a very sure stay, was the
best and last support of the Gospel and the throne. It was with
troubled faces and sad tones that the Lollards who met in the streets of
London told one to another that "old John of Gaunt, time-honoured
Lancaster," was lying dead in the Bishop of Ely's Palace.

But the storm was deferred for a few weeks longer. There were royal
visits to Langley and Cardiff, on the way to Ireland, the Earl of
Gloucester accompanying the King to that country. And then, when
Richard had left the reins of government in the feeble hands of York,
the tempest burst over England which had been lowering for so long.

The Lady Le Despenser and the Countess of Gloucester were seated at
breakfast in Cardiff Castle, on a soft, bright morning in the middle of
July. Breakfast consisted of fresh and salt fish, for it was a
fast-day; plain and fancy bread, different kinds of biscuits (but all
made without eggs or butter); small beer, and claret. Little Richard
was energetically teasing Maude, by whom he sat, for another piece of
red-herring, and the Dowager, deliberate in all her movements, was
slowly helping herself to Gascon wine. The blast of a horn without the
moat announced the arrival of a guest or a letter, and Bertram Lyngern
went out to see what it was. Ten minutes later he returned to the hall,
with letters in his hand, and his face white with some terrible news.

"Ill tidings, noble ladies!"

"Is it Dickon?" cried the Countess.

"Is it Tom?" said the Dowager.

"There be no news of my Lord, nor from Langley," said Bertram. "But my
Lord's Grace of Hereford, and Sir Thomas de Arundel, sometime
Archbishop, be landed at Ravenspur."

"Landed at Ravenspur!--Banished men!"

The loyal soul of Elizabeth Le Despenser could imagine nothing more
atrocious.

"Well, let them land!" she added in a minute. "The Duke's Grace of York
shall wit how to deal with them. Be any gathered to them?"

"Hundreds and thousands," was the ominous answer.

"Ay me!" sighed the Dowager. "Well! `the Lord reigneth.'"

Constance's