As an example of these quarrels, I will give an account of one which took place not very long after Richard was married. He was engaged with his uncles in an expedition to Scotland. There was a knight in attendance upon him named Sir Miles. This knight was a friend of the queen. He was a Bohemian, and had come from Bohemia to pay Anne a visit, and to bring the news to her from her native land. The king, out of affection to Anne, paid him great attention. This made the English knights and nobles jealous, and they amused themselves with mimicking and laughing at Sir Miles's foreign peculiarities. The particular friends of the queen, however, took his part, one especially, named the Earl of Stafford, and his son, the young Lord Ralph Stafford. Lord Ralph Stafford was one of the most courteous and popular knights in England.
The archers and the squires.
In the course of the expedition to Scotland the party came to a town called Beverley, which is situated in the northern part of England, near the frontier. One day, two archers belonging to the service of Lord Ralph Stafford, in riding across the fields near Beverley, found two squires engaged in a sort of quarrel with Sir Miles. The cause of the quarrel was something about his lodgings in the town. The squires, it seems, knowing that the knights and nobles generally disliked Sir Miles, were encouraged to be very bold and insolent to him in expressing their ill-will, and when the archers came up they were following him with taunts, and ridicule, and abuse, while Sir Miles was making the best of his way toward the town.
The archers took the Bohemian's part. They remonstrated with the squires for thus abusing and teasing a stranger and a foreigner, a personal friend, too, and guest of the queen.
"What business is it of yours, villainous knave, whether we laugh at him or not?" said the squires. "What right have you to intermeddle? What is it to you?"
"What is it to us?" repeated one of the archers. "It is a great deal to us. This man is the friend of our master, and we will not stand by and see him abused."
A squire killed.
Upon hearing this, one of the squires uttered some words of defiance, and advanced as if to strike the archer; but the archer, having his bow and arrow all ready, suddenly let the arrow fly, and the squire was killed on the spot.
Sir Miles had already gone on toward the town. The other squire, seeing his companion dead, immediately made his escape. The two archers, leaving the man whom they had killed on the ground where he had fallen, made the best of their way home, and told their master, Sir Ralph Stafford, what they had done.