against him. In the mean time the King had been warned of the plot,
so that, instead of finding him in the royal castle, they discovered
through their scouts that he had hurried to London, whence he was
even then marching against them at the head of a considerable army. So
nothing was left them but flight. Some betook themselves one way, some
another; some sought sanctuary here, some there; but one and another,
they were all of them caught and killed.

The Earl of Kent--one time Duke of Surrey--and the Earl of
Salisbury were beheaded in the market-place at Cirencester; Lord Le
Despencer--once the Earl of Gloucester--and Lord Lumley met the same
fate at Bristol; the Earl of Huntingdon was taken in the Essex fens,
carried to the castle of the Duke of Gloucester, whom he had betrayed
to his death in King Richard's time, and was there killed by the castle
people. Those few who found friends faithful and bold enough to afford
them shelter, dragged those friends down in their own ruin.

Just such a case was that of the father of the boy hero of this
story, the blind Lord Gilbert Reginald Falworth, Baron of Falworth and
Easterbridge, who, though having no part in the plot, suffered through
it ruin, utter and complete.

He had been a faithful counsellor and adviser to King Richard, and
perhaps it was this, as much and more than his roundabout connection
with the plot, that brought upon him the punishment he suffered.



CHAPTER 1