The year 1400 opened with more than usual peacefulness inEngland. Only a few months before, Richard II--weak, wicked, andtreacherous --had been dethroned, and Henry IV declared King inhis stead. But it was only a seeming peacefulness, lasting butfor a little while; for though King Henry proved himself a justand a merciful man--as justice and mercy went with the men ofiron of those days--and though he did not care to shed bloodneedlessly, there were many noble families who had been benefitedby King Richard during his reign, and who had lost somewhat oftheir power and prestige from the coming in of the new King.
Among these were a number of great lords--the Dukes of Albemarle,Surrey, and Exeter, the Marquis of Dorset, the Earl ofGloucester, and others--who had been degraded to their formertitles and estates, from which King Richard had lifted them.
These and others brewed a secret plot to take King Henry's life,which plot might have succeeded had not one of their own numberbetrayed them.
Their plan had been to fall upon the King and his adherents, andto massacre them during a great tournament, to be held at Oxford.
But Henry did not appear at the lists; whereupon, knowing that hehad been lodging at Windsor with only a few attendants, theconspirators marched thither against him. In the mean time theKing had been warned of the plot, so that, instead of finding himin the royal castle, they discovered through their scouts that hehad hurried to London, whence he was even then marching againstthem at the head of a considerable army. So nothing was left thembut flight. Some betook themselves one way, some another; somesought sanctuary here, some there; but one and another, they wereall of them caught and killed.
The Earl of Kent--one time Duke of Surrey-- and the Earl ofSalisbury were beheaded in the market-place at Cirencester; LordLe Despencer --once the Earl of Gloucester--and Lord Lumley metthe same fate at Bristol; the Earl of Huntingdon was taken in theEssex fens, carried to the castle of the Duke of Gloucester, whomhe had betrayed to his death in King Richard's time, and wasthere killed by the castle people. Those few who found friendsfaithful and bold enough to afford them shelter, dragged thosefriends down in their own ruin.
Just such a case was that of the father of the boy hero of thisstory, the blind Lord Gilbert Reginald Falworth, Baron ofFalworth and Easterbridge, who, though having no part in theplot, 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 roundaboutconnection with the plot, that brought upon him the punishment hesuffered.
