heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

THE WAKES. 301
these circumstances, she was responsible for his education. Certainly he was
brought up in the most ruinous personal indulgence and unconstitutional
ideas of his own infallibility; but Hume says* that the Earls of Kent and
Huntingdon, his half-brothers, were his chief confidants and favourites, and
Miss Agnes Strickland mentions as traits of his vivid and enduring affection
for his family, which was the redeeming trait of his character, that " the
" distress and terror to which he saw his mother reduced by the insolence of
"
Wat Tyler, was the chief stimulant of his gallant behaviour when that
" rebel fell beneath the sword of Walworth ;" and that on the occasion of
his marriage, 1382, to Anne of Bohemia, the King's mother accompanied
the bride to Windsor, " where they were very happy together."
However, their happiness was not long to last. In 1385, soon after the
death
of Wycliffe, whom Anne had befriended, and during the absence of
the King in Scotland, Ralph Stafford, eldest son of Hugh second Earl of
Stafford, was murdered by the King's half-brother, Sir John Holland.
Stafford is represented as a peerless chevalier, adored by the English
army, and, for his virtuous conduct, in high favour with Anne, who
called him her knight. He was, moreover, actually on his way to
London, with messages from the King, encamped near Beverley, to the
Queen, when the fatal encounter took place. The ostensible cause of
the murder was likewise connected with the Queen, for Froissart
states that the archers of Lord Stafford, when protecting Sir Meles, a
Bohemian knight then with the army, who was on a visit to Queen Anne,
slew a favourite squire belonging to Sir John Holland, and to revenge a
punishment which this man had brought upon himself, Sir John cut down
Lord Stafford without any personal provocation. Sir John was half-brother
and boon companion of Richard II., but his loving nature was no doubt
wrought upon by the indignation of his wife and the passionate grief of the
old Earl of Stafford, as well as the popular outcry at
the death of a man so
distinguished and highly esteemed and as soon as
;
John Holland emerged
from the shrine of St. John of Beverley, whither he had fled for sanctuary,
the King ordered him to be arrested, and condemned him to death. But
on the other hand the Princess of Wales earnestly pleaded with the King
for the life of her son, and Richard's weak, undecided nature, wrung by
piteous solicitations from both sides, and vexed and pained at what had
taken place, for four days was unable to make up his mind what to do.. On
the fifth day, Joan, unable to endure the suspense any longer, died of a
broken heart at the royal castle of Wallingford, and then, with his
characteristic impulsiveness, Richard, when too late to save his mother,
pardoned the criminal. " Her corpse," says Sandford,
" (embalmed and
P 2
Vol. ii., p. 255.