The queen-for good Queen Anne was at this time still living-was so gentle and kind, and she acted her part as peace-maker so well, that she greatly softened and soothed these asperities; but Richard led, nevertheless, a wild and turbulent life, and was continually getting involved in the most serious difficulties. Then there were wars to be carried on, sometimes with France, sometimes with Scotland, and sometimes with Ireland. Richard's uncles, the Dukes of Lancaster and Gloucester, generally went away in command of the armies to carry on these wars. Sometimes Richard himself accompanied the expeditions; but even on these occasions, when he and his knights and nobles were engaged together in a common cause, and apparently at peace with each other, there were so many jealousies and angry heartburnings among them, that deadly quarrels and feuds were continually breaking out.
As an example of these quarrels, I will give an account of one which took place not very long after Richard was married. He was engaged with his uncles in an expedition to Scotland. There was a knight in attendance upon him named Sir Miles. This knight was a friend of the queen. He was a Bohemian, and had come from Bohemia to pay Anne a visit, and to bring the news to her from her native land. The king, out of affection to Anne, paid him great attention. This made the English knights and nobles jealous, and they amused themselves with mimicking and laughing at Sir Miles's foreign peculiarities. The particular friends of the queen, however, took his part, one especially, named the Earl of Stafford, and his son, the young Lord Ralph Stafford. Lord Ralph Stafford was one of the most courteous and popular knights in England.
In the course of the expedition to Scotland the party came to a town called Beverley, which is situated in the northern part of England, near the frontier. One day, two archers belonging to the service of Lord Ralph Stafford, in riding across the fields near Beverley, found two squires engaged in a sort of quarrel with Sir Miles. The cause of the quarrel was something about his lodgings in the town. The squires, it seems, knowing that the knights and nobles generally disliked Sir Miles, were encouraged to be very bold and insolent to him in expressing their ill-will, and when the archers came up they were following him with taunts, and ridicule, and abuse, while Sir Miles was making the best of his way toward the town.
The archers took the Bohemian's part. They remonstrated with the squires for thus abusing and teasing a stranger and a foreigner, a personal friend, too, and guest of the queen.
"What business is it of yours, villainous knave, whether we laugh at him or not?" said the squires. "What right have you to intermeddle? What is it to you?"
"What is it to us?" repeated one of the archers. "It is a great deal to us. This man is the friend of our master, and we will not stand by and see him abused."
Upon hearing this, one of the squires uttered some words of defiance, and advanced as if to strike the archer; but the archer, having his bow and arrow all ready, suddenly let the arrow fly, and the squire was killed on the spot.
Sir Miles had already gone on toward the town. The other squire, seeing his companion dead, immediately made his escape. The two archers, leaving the man whom they had killed on the ground where he had fallen, made the best of their way home, and told their master, Sir Ralph Stafford, what they had done.
Sir Ralph was extremely concerned to hear of the occurrence, and he told the archer who killed the squire that he had done very wrong.
"But, my lord," said the archer, "I could not have done otherwise; for the man was coming up to us with his sword drawn in his hand, and we were obliged either to kill him or to be killed ourselves."
The archers, moreover, told Sir Ralph that the squires were in the service of Sir John Holland. Now Sir John Holland was a half brother of the king, being the child of his mother, the Princess of Wales, by a former husband. When Sir Ralph heard this, he was still more alarmed than before. He told the archers who killed the squire that they must go and hide themselves somewhere until the affair could be arranged.
"I will negotiate with Lord Holland for your pardon," said he, "either through my father or in some other way. But, in the mean time, you must keep yourselves closely concealed."
The Earl of Stafford, Lord Ralph Stafford's father, was a nobleman of the very highest rank, and of great influence.
It is a curious indication of the ideas that prevailed in those days, and of the relations that subsisted between the nobles and their dependants, that the slaughter of a man in an affray of this kind was a matter to be arranged between the masters respectively of the men engaged in it.
The archers went away to hide themselves until Lord Ralph could arrange the matter.
In the mean time, the squire who had escaped in the fray hurried home and related the matter to Lord Holland. Lord Holland was greatly enraged. He uttered dreadful imprecations against Lord Ralph Stafford and against Sir Miles, whom he seemed to consider responsible for the death of his squire, and declared that he would not sleep until he had had his revenge. So he mounted his horse, and, taking some trusty attendants with him, rode into Beverley, and asked where Sir Miles's lodgings were. While he was going toward the place, breathing fury and death, suddenly, in a narrow lane, he came upon Lord Ralph, who was then going to find him, in order to arrange about the murder. It was now, however, late in the evening, and so dark that the parties did not at first know each other.
"Who comes here?" said Lord Holland, when he saw Sir Ralph approaching.
"I am Stafford," replied Sir Ralph.
"You are the very man I want to see," said Lord Holland. "One of your servants has killed my squire-the one that I loved so much."
As he said this, he brought down so heavy a blow upon Sir Ralph's head as to fell him from his horse to the ground. He then rode on. The attendants hurried to the spot and raised Sir Ralph up. They found him faint and bleeding, and in a few moments he died.
As soon as this fact was ascertained, one of the men rode on after Lord Holland, and, coming up to him, said,
"My lord, you have killed Lord Stafford."
"Very well," said Lord Holland; "I am glad of it. I would rather it would be a man of his rank than any body else, for so I am the more completely revenged for the death of my squire."
As fast as the tidings of these events spread, they produced universal excitement. The Earl of Stafford, the father of Sir Ralph, was plunged into the most inconsolable grief at the death of his son. The earl was one of the most powerful nobles in the army, and, if he had undertaken to avenge himself on Lord Holland, the whole expedition would perhaps have been broken up into confusion. On the king's solemn assurance that Holland would be punished, he was appeased for the time; but then the Princess of Wales, Richard's mother, who was Lord Holland's mother too, was thrown into the greatest state of anxiety and distress. She implored Richard to save his brother's life. All the other nobles and knights took sides too in the quarrel, and for a time it seemed that the dissension would never be healed. Lord Holland, in the mean while, fled to the church at Beverley, and took sanctuary there. By the laws and customs of the time, they could not touch him until he came voluntarily out.
Richard resisted all the entreaties of his mother to spare the murderer's life until he found that her anxiety and distress were preying upon her health so much that he feared that she would die. At last, to save his mother's life, he promised that Holland should be spared. But it was too late. His mother fell into a decline, and at length died, as it was said, of a broken heart. What a dreadful death! that of a mother worn out by the agony of long-continued and apparently fruitless efforts to prevent one of her children from being the executioner of another for the crime of murder.