It was by persuasion of Hotspur’s father that Richard left Conway for Flint, where he was made prisoner, and afterward conveyed to Chester, the English knights of the opposite faction behaving to him with most unchivalric rudeness. The unsceptred monarch was first taken to Pickering, one of the most beautiful spots in England, defaced by scenes of the greatest crimes, of which place knights and nobles were the masters. Thence he passed on to Leeds and Knaresborough Castle, where the king’s chamber is still pointed out to visiters. Finally, he was carried to “bloody Pomfret”—“fatal and ominous to noble peers.” Never, it is said, did man look less like a knight than the unhappy king, when he appeared before the drawbridge of Pontefract Castle. Majestic still he was in feature, but the majesty was depressed by such profound melancholy, that few could look upon the weeping king without themselves shedding tears. If the picture of him at this juncture might be metrically given in outline, the following sketch might feebly render it:—
Who enters now that gate,
With dignity upon his pallid brow?
Who is the man that, bending to his fate,
Comes hither now?
A man of wo he seems,
Whom Sadness deep hath long marked for her own.
Hath such a form as that indulged in dreams
Upon a throne?
Have smiles e’er wreathed that face?