there; and when the warder, or gate-keeper, had looked hard at him, and heard a few low and softspoken words, the new-comer was, with much reverence, admitted.

"Lead me at once to the queen," said he, when he was within the walls; "for my business requires haste."

Accordingly, he was conducted into the interior of the building; and there he found the distressed lady, who was, indeed, none other than the widowed queen of Edward the Fourth, and mother of Edward the Fifth, seated all alone on the rush-covered floor in great trouble, being desolate and dismayed.

The visitor was the Archbishop of York, and also Lord Chancellor of England.

An old

All was confusion around the queen. chronicle writer says, that the archbishop found much heaviness, trouble, haste, business, carriage and conveyance of her stuff into the sanctuary: chests, coffers, packs, trussed all on men's backs, no man unoccupied, some leaving, some going, some unloading, and some coming for more." This was sad work for a queen, who had not been more than two or three weeks in her second widowhood. So the archbishop thought, and he felt very compassionate towards the poor lady.

Indeed, the archbishop was not quite easy in his mind as to his own safety. And it will be as well to explain here how he, as well as the queen, came to be at the Sanctuary so early on that day.

It was the news of what the Duke of Gloucester had been doing at Stoney-Stratford on the preceding day that drove the queen there. That news had very swiftly been conveyed to London, where the messengers arrived about midnight; and was told, not only to the queen in the palace, but to the great lords of the council.

Well, what could the poor queen think when she was told that her son Edward was in the power of the Duke of Gloucester, whom she not only disliked, but feared and mistrusted; and that her brother and her elder son were also prisoners to the duke? Naturally she thought that evil was determined against the rest of her children and herself; and that the only safe place for them was that in which she at once determined to take refuge.

When the lords of the council heard what the duke had done, we may suppose that they thought it of sufficient importance to meet hastily together in the dead of the night. Among them was the archbishop, and a certain Lord Hastings, who had been a busy man in the late king's reign, and who showed so much feeling for the queen, when it was told that she had taken refuge in the Sanctuary, that he urged the archbishop to go to her and comfort her, and assure her that all would be well.

Accordingly, the archbishop went on this errand, as we have seen; but before going, he took the precaution of calling up all his men-servants and arming them, in case of any sudden public disturbance, which shows that he, at any rate, was not quite satisfied of all being well.

He went to the queen, then, and began to speak comfortably to her; and tried to soothe her alarms.

"All will be well, Madam," said he: "my Lord Hastings bade me assure you that all would be well, and that the Duke of Gloucester is most loyal and faithful to the young king and yourself; and that what he has done has been only for the good of the country." And did Lord Hastings say this?" exclaimed the queen, despairingly: "Woe worth him! for he is one of them that go about to destroy me and my whole family!"

"Nay, Madam; be of good cheer," said the archbishop, soothingly; "for I promise you if they crown any other king than your son, whom they have now with them, we shall on the morrow crown his brother, whom you have here with you."

This declaration, however, did not much comfort the queen, but it was the best the archbishop could say; so he soon departed, reaching his palace as the day was dawning; and then, as he sat at his chamberwindow, wondering, perhaps, what would happen next, he saw the river below covered with boats, manned with the Duke of Gloucester's servants, who were watching that no man should go to the Sanctuary, to see the queen; and that none should pass them without being questioned and searched.

IT

CHAPTER III.

A WELCOME TO LONDON.

T was one of the earliest days in May that Master Edmund Shaw, a goldsmith, who was Lord Mayor of London, with William White and John Matthew, who were the two sheriffs, and all the other aldermen, dressed very finely in their scarlet robes, together with five hundred other citizens, clad in violet cloth or velvet, and all gallantly mounted on horseback, rode out of London as far as Hornsey Wood (which was a real wood then), chatting merrily by the way.

Yet not all of them very merrily. For instance, let us fancy ourselves listening to the conversation of two serious-looking men who, in spite of their new violet-coloured coats, are by no means merry; and who, riding a little apart from the rest, talk together in subdued tones.

"And what think you of this evil, Master Skinner?" we may suppose one of these grave citizens to ask. "Truth, neighbour Hewit, I would not give much for young Edward's chances of ever being king in earnest," says the elder of the two.

"Do you suppose, then, that the duke will deal falsely with the young prince?"

GENTLEMAN AND LADY OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

"Hark ye, friend Hewit, in your ear," replies Skinner; and he speaks very low, after looking round to assure himself that no one is within earshot; "you and I understand one another; and I was reading only yesterday in a book you and I wot of, about a certain great general who went to a certain great prophet concerning the king his master.