Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/338

324 country with their armed vassals, directly refused to obey. The king addressed the marshal, and swore by the everlasting God that he should either go or hang; and the earl repeated the oath, and swore that he would neither go nor hang. With these words the two barons quitted the royal presence together, and 1,500 knights immediately followed them. The king thus found himself deserted by his court, and he knew that at such a moment his crown or oven his life was in imminent danger. With that ability for which he was distinguished, he occupied himself in quelling the storm. He employed all his art to conciliate the clergy, and having in some degree succeeded, he next addressed himself to secure the good-will of the people. The measure which he adopted for this purpose was as singular in design as it was successful in result. He mounted a platform in front of Westminster Hall, attended only by his son, the Prince of Wales, the Earl of Warwick, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and addressed the people assembled below him. The speech which he delivered was charcterised by ability and utter insincerity, and the manner in which it was concluded proves him to have been an excellent actor. After a pathetic allusion to the dangers he was about to encounter for his subjects, and expressing a hope that, in the event of his death, they would preserve the succession to his son, the stern warrior-king shed tears before his audience, the archbishop also wept, and the people, overcome by these extraordinary demonstrations, rent the air with shouts of loyalty.



Edward now appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury to the head of the council of regency, and proceeded to embark on his expedition to Flanders. At Winchester he was met by a deputation, who, in the name of the lords spiritual and temporal of England, tendered him a formal remonstrance. The nobles denied their liability to accompany the king to Flanders, in which country their fathers had never borne arms for the kings of England; and that, moreover, their means were so reduced by the royal exactions, that they could not, if they would, obey his command. They also designated the expedition as