Page:The Queens of England.djvu/174

148 to a vast amount, so that after riot, bloodshed, imprisonment, and disgrace, the Londoners were glad to spend, ten thousand pounds to purchase the king's forgiveness, when, by the willing loan of one, they would have been saved from all the evils they suffered.

At the entrance of the city, and at Temple Bar, on quitting it, the Lord Mayor earnestly implored the queen to intercede for the citizens, which she graciously promised, by simply saying, "Leave all to me." On arriving at Westminster Hall, she fell with all her ladies on her knees before the king, and sued for pardon of the city ; which was, for her sake, immedi- ately granted.

The following year (1394) Richard resolved to cross over, to quell in person the rebellion that had arisen in Ireland, but was prevented by an event which threw all England into mourn- ing. This was none other than the death of the queen. Speed, after alluding to the demises of the Duchess of Aquitaine, the Countess of Derby, her daughter-in-law, and the Duchess of York, which all occurred the same year, with much pathos says, "But all the griefe for their deaths did in no sort equall that of the king's for the losse of his owne Queene Anne, which about the same time hapned at Sheene in Surrey, whom he loved even to a kinde of madnesse."

The blow was the more severe, as her illness being of but a few hours' duration, Richard was. totally unprepared for it; he gave way to'the most vehement expressions of sorrow, and in the first moments of his grief is said to have ordered that the place of Shene, which had been the favorite retreat of himself and of his lost Anne, should be leveled to the ground. Certain it is that he never approached it afterwards.

The funeral obsequies were performed with extraordinary magnificence, and the king "caused so many torches and tapers to be lighted up, that the like was never seen before." The queen was buried at Westminster, as some historians state, on