large army, his object being the assistance of his ignoble vassal, Robert Baliol, in whose interest he had two years before been at Hallidon Hill. Edward was little more than twenty-three when here, though he had already reigned eight years; but his head was already teeming with great ideas, and though we cannot sympathize with his mission, it must have been a sight worth seeing to have looked on that absorbed visage, as with his great ambitions just budding into determinate deeds—a real man under the gay garniture of person that then prevailed, he rode up and down this antique entrance. His five year old son, the Black Prince, with the good and wise Phillipa, his mother, was then at Windsor, a place which that great man, William of Wykeham, then but eleven years old, was soon to fashion into its present grandeur.
Bolingbroke and his sad captive, Richard II., are also said to have lodged here for a night on their way southward. A king in name and a real king: the man whom everybody blessed and the king whom nobody blessed—the melancholy, misled Richard, and the smiling, gracious Henry. Curious citizens would doubtless watch for these as they quitted at early morn these grey arches, looking with strained eyes after the royal cortege, while they brought up old memories and recounted new tales of the two principal figures in it. Poor Richard! the saddest king undoubtedly that ever passed out here; his sad downcast face mingles with the old vivid fancies of the castle as a pathetic phantom or a sorrowful apparition sent to touch the soft airs and fair stars of to-day with a sense of pity which now, as ever, makes the heart, amid all its vain ambitions, wise and good.
