Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/520

 484 Readings in European History whfch contrivances were called the king's nets. However, I have seen many eminent and deserving persons in these prisons, with these nets about their legs, who afterwards came forth with great joy and honor, and received great rewards from the king. This by way of digression. But to return to my principal design. As in his time this barbarous variety of prisons was invented, so before he died he himself was in greater torment and more terrible apprehension than those whom he had imprisoned; which I look upon as a great mercy toward him, and as part of his purgatory. And I have men- tioned it here to show that there is no person, of what station or dignity soever, but suffers some time or other, either publicly or privately, especially if he has caused other people to suffer. The king, toward the latter end of his days, caused his castle of Plessis-les-Tours to be encompassed with great bars of iron in the form of thick grating, and at the four corners of the house four sparrow nests of iron, strong, massy, and thick, were built. The grates were without the wall, on the farther side of the ditch, and sank to the bottom of it. Sev- eral spikes of iron were fastened into the wall, set as thick by one another as was possible, and each furnished with three or four points. He likewise placed ten bowmen in the ditches, to shoot at any man that durst approach the castle before the opening of the gates ; and he ordered that they should lie in the ditches, but retire to the sparrow nests upon occasion. He was sensible enough that this fortification was too weak to keep out an army or any great body of men, but he had no fear of such an attack ; his great apprehension was that some of the nobility of his kingdom, having intelligence within, might attempt to make themselves masters of the castle by night and, having possessed themselves of it, partly by favor and partly by force, might deprive him of the regal authority, and take upon themselves the adminis- tration of public affairs, upon pretense that he was incapable of business and no longer fit to govern.