As Northumberland departed to make arrangements for the interview at Flint, the King said to him: "I rely, my lord, on your faith. Remember your oath, and the God who heard it." Soon afterward he followed with his friends and their servants, to the number of twenty-two. They came to a steep declivity, to the left of which was the sea, and on the right a lofty rock overhanging the road. The King dismounted, and was descending on foot, when he suddenly exclaimed: "I am betrayed. God of Paradise, assist me! Do you not see banners and pennons in the valley?" Northumberland with eleven others met them at the moment and affected to be ignorant of the circumstance. "Earl of Northumberland," said the King, "if I thought you capable of betraying me, it is not too late to return." "You cannot return," the Earl replied, seizing the King's bridle; "I have promised to conduct you to the Duke of Lancaster." By this time he was joined by a hundred lances, and two hundred archers on horseback; and Richard, seeing it impossible to escape, exclaimed: "May the God, on whom you laid your hand, reward you and your accomplices at the last day!" and then, turning to his friends, added: "We are betrayed; but remember that our Lord was also sold and delivered into the hands of his enemies."
They dined at Rhuddlan, and reached Flint in the evening. The King, as soon as he was left with his friends, abandoned himself to the reflections which his melancholy situation inspired. He frequently upbraided himself with his past indulgence to his present opponent: "Fool that I was!" he exclaimed: "thrice did I save the life of this Henry of Lancaster. Once my dear uncle his father, on whom the Lord have mercy! would have put him to death for his treason and villany. God of Paradise! I rode all night to save him; and his father delivered him to me, to do with him as I pleased. How true is the saying that we have no greater enemy than the man whom we have preserved from the gallows! Another time he drew his sword on me, in the chamber of the Queen, on whom God have mercy! He was also the accomplice of the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Arundel; he consented to my murder, to that of his father, and of all my council. By St. John, I forgave him all; nor would I believe his father, who more than once pronounced him deserving of death."
The unfortunate King rose after a sleepless night, heard mass, and ascended the tower to watch the arrival of his opponent. At length he saw the army, amounting to eighty thousand men, winding along the beach till it reached the castle and surrounded it from sea to sea. He shuddered and wept, and cursed the Earl of Northumberland, but was called down by the arrival of Archbishop Arundel, the Duke of Albemarle, and the Earl of Worcester. They knelt to Richard, who, drawing the prelate apart, held a long conversation with him. After their departure he again mounted the tower, and, surveying the host of his enemies, exclaimed: "Good Lord God! I commend myself into thy holy keeping, and cry thee mercy, that thou wouldst pardon all my sins. If they put me to death I will take it patiently, as thou didst for us all." Northumberland had ordered dinner, and the Earl of Salisbury, the Bishop and the two knights, Sir Stephen Scrope and Sir William Feriby, sat with the King at the same table by his order; for since they were all companions in misfortune, he would allow no distinction among them. While he was eating, unknown persons entered the hall, insulting him with sarcasms and threats. As soon as he rose, he was summoned into the court to receive the Duke of Lancaster. Henry came forward in complete armor, with the exception of his helmet. As soon as he saw the King he bent his knee, and, advancing a few paces, he repeated his obeisance with his cap in his hand.
"Fair cousin of Lancaster," said Richard, uncovering himself, "you are right welcome." "My lord," answered the Duke, "I am come before my time. But I will show you the reason. Your people complain that for the space of twenty or two-and-twenty years you have ruled them rigorously; but, if it please God, I will help you to govern better." The King replied, "Fair cousin, since it pleaseth you, it pleaseth us well." Henry then addressed himself successively to the Bishop and to the knights, but refused to notice the Earl. The King's horses were immediately ordered; and two lean and miserable animals were brought out, on which Richard and Salisbury mounted, and amid the flourish of trumpets and shouts of triumph followed the Duke into Chester.
At Chester writs were issued in the King's name for the meeting of parliament and the preservation of the peace. Henry dismissed the greater part of his army, and prepared to conduct his prisoner to the capital. At Lichfield Richard seized a favorable moment to let himself down from his window, but was retaken in the garden, and from that moment was constantly guarded by ten or twelve armed men. In the neighborhood of London they separated. Henry, accompanied by the mayor and principal citizens, proceeded to St. Paul's, prayed before the high altar, and wept a few minutes over the tomb of his father. The King was sent to Westminster, and thence on the following day to the Tower, and, as he went along, was greeted with curses and the appellation of "the bastard," a word of ominous import, and prophetic of his approaching degradation.
When the Duke first landed in England, he had sworn on the Gospels that his only object was to vindicate his right to the honors and possessions of the house of Lancaster. If this was the truth, his ambition had grown with his good-fortune. He now aspired to exchange the coronet of a duke for the crown of a king. Can we believe that he would meet with opposition from his associates, the Percy family? Yet so we are assured. They, however, by their perfidy, had given themselves a master. Their retainers had been already dismissed; and the friends of Richard abhorred them as the worst of traitors. They had therefore no resource but to submit, and to second the design of Lancaster. After several consultations it was resolved to combine a solemn renunciation of the royal authority on the part of Richard with an act of deposition on the part of the two houses of parliament, in the hope that those whose scruples should not be satisfied with the one, might acquiesce in the other. To obtain the first, the royal captive was assailed with promises and threats. Generally he abandoned himself to lamentation and despair; occasionally he exerted that spirit which he had formerly displayed. "Why am I thus guarded?" he asked one day. "Am I your king or your prisoner?" "You are my king, sir," replied the Duke with coolness; "but the council of your realm has thought proper to place a guard about you."
On the day before the meeting of parliament a deputation of prelates, barons, knights, and lawyers waited on the captive in the Tower, and reminded him that in the castle of Conway, while he was perfectly his own master, he had promised to resign the crown on account of his own incompetency to govern. On his reply that he was ready to perform his promise, a paper was given him to read, in which he was made to absolve all his subjects from their fealty and allegiance, to renounce of his own accord all kingly authority, to acknowledge himself incapable of reigning, and worthy for his past demerits to be deposed, and to swear by the holy Gospels that he would never act, nor, as far as in him lay, suffer any other person to act, in opposition to this resignation. He then added, as from himself, that if it were in his power to name his successor, he would choose his cousin of Lancaster, who was present, and to whom he gave his ring, which he took from his own finger.