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daughter of the House of Plantagenet to grace. She was sent by John to the Castle of Bristol, between which and a monastery she passed forty years, musing in sorrow and sadness over the misfortunes of her family.

It was early in April when Arthur was assassinated, and ere the month of May arrived a rumour of the atrocious outrage was bruited about. The perpetrator was regarded with the utmost indignation, and in Britanny nothing was heard but the cry for vengeance. The exasperated inhabitants, rallying round Alice, a halfsister of the murdered Prince, allowed her father, Guy de Tours, to assume the title of Duke of Britanny, and deputed him to demand justice at the hands of Philip Augustus. That politic monarch seized so favourable an opportunity to crush a rival king at one blow, and sent him a formal summons to appear before the Court of the Twelve Peers of France, and, as a vassal of the crown, answer for his crime. John sent an ambassador to say he would obey, if granted a safe-conduct. 'Ay, let him come in peace and security," said Philip. "And so return, my lord?" asked the ambassador. "Yes, if the judgment of his peers so allow." The ambassador then requested a safe-conduct for his king to come and go. "No, by all the saints of France; not unless he is judged innocent of the crime!" exclaimed Philip, with more passion than he was in the habit of manifesting. John, failing to appear, was tried and condemned; and Philip, eagerly taking up arms,

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executed the judgment of the feudal court by depriving him of all the territory that his father Henry had acquired in France, and expelling him with ignominy from continental Europe.

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Nor did the cruel usurper's misfortunes terminate here. The shade of his murdered victim followed him across the Channel, and constantly pursued his steps. A strange fatality urged him on to the accomplishment of his ruin. He was always threatening the powerful, but never dared to strike any but the helpless. feelings of hatred and revenge that had eaten into his heart prompted him to the most vicious and tyrannical courses. At length, after being forced by the barons of England to sign the Great Charter, and compelled, by the threats of the Pope, to resign the English crown to the legate, he died in agony, in bitterness, and in despair, at the Abbey of Swinehead.

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A YOUTH in his teens, with features generally recognised as handsome, and a form not tall but seemly and elegant, arrayed in rich garments, worn with that slovenly negligence not seldom distinguishing those pursuing a career of dissipation such is the picture, by a mighty master, of that Scottish prince of the House of Stuart who, after his ill-starred marriage had involved two kingdoms in war, was starved to death by an unscrupulous uncle and a fierce father-in-law in the prison-vaults of Falkland.

Froissart states that, towards the close of the fourteenth century, hardly any kingdom of Europe was so wretched as that to which Rothsay was born heir. The wars with England had impoverished Scotland to such a degree, that when the Admiral of France arrived with an army to assist the inhabitants against their richer and more powerful neighbours, the knights and gentlemen, accustomed from boyhood to fine houses, splendid chambers, and soft beds, no sooner perceived the state of matters than they laughed in his

face, and said, "We have never known till now what was meant by poverty and hard living." They could not even get so much as iron to shoe their horses, or leather to make saddles and bridles.

The moral state of the court was, it appears, on a par with the material condition of the country; when, in the year 1379, Annabella Drummond, wife of John, Earl of Carrick, the King's eldest son, gave birth to an heir to the crown of that kingdom which the strong hand of Robert Bruce had wrested from the weak grasp of the second Edward. The Prince received the baptismal name of David, acquired a tincture of learning, and as he grew up exhibited some of the qualities that lend grace to the station which he had the prospect of occupying.

When Prince David was in his twelfth year his grandsire, Robert Stuart, King of Scots, departed this life. The Earl of Carrick, before investing himself with the royal robes, remembering that his Christian name had been borne by one of those hapless specimens of humanity, the Baliols, thought it would be unlucky to call himself King John, determined to throw the ill-omened name aside, and ascended the throne with the title of Robert the Third. Before reigning long, the weak, superstitious king found to his cost that fortune is not to be frightened with a name, and that calling himself Robert did not make him quite equal to the hero of Bannockburn.

When Prince David's father thus undertook tho

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