conspiracy of the king s sons and their foreign friends took the opportunity of the king being thus employed at home to lay siege to the capital of but the king who was quick and active in all his movements was at too before it was supposed possible that he could have left england and there he so defeated the said earl of that the peace and his bad sons henry and submitted richard resisted for six weeks but being beaten out of castle after castle he at last submitted too and his father forgave him to forgive these unworthy princes was only to afford them breathing time for new they were so false and that they were no more to be trusted than common thieves in the very next year prince henry again and was again forgiven in eight years more prince rich ard against his elder brother and prince said that the brothers could never agree well together unless they were united against their father in the very next year after their reconciliation by the king prince henry again against his father and again submitted swearing to be true and was again forgiven and again with but the end of this prince was come he fell sick at a french town and his conscience terribly him with his he sent henry the second messengers to the king his father imploring him to come and see him and to forgive him for the last time on his of death the generous king who had a royal and mind toward his children always would have gone hut this prince had heen so unnatural that the the king suspected treachery and represented to him that he could not safely trust his life with such a traitor though his own eldest son therefore the king sent him a ring from ofi his finger as a token of forgiveness and when the prince had kissed it with much grief and many tears and had confessed to those around him how had and wicked and a son he had been he said to the attendant priests o tie a rope about my body and draw me out of bed and lay me down upon a bed of ashes that i may die with prayers to in a manner and so he died at twenty seven years old three years afterward prince being at a had his brains trampled out by a crowd of horses passing over him so there only remained prince richard and prince john � who had grown to be a young man now and had solemnly sworn to be faithful to his father richard soon again encouraged by his friend the french king philip the second son of louis who was dead and soon submitted and was again forgiven swearing on the new testament never to rebel again and in another year or so again and in the presence of his father knelt down on his knee before the king of france and did the french king homage and declared that with his aid � child s history of england he would possess himself by force of all his father s french and yet this richard called himself a soldier of our i and yet this richard wore the cross which the kings of france and england had both taken in the previous year at a meeting underneath the old wide spreading elm tree on the plain when they had sworn like him to devote themselves to a new for the love and honor of the truth i sick at heart wearied out by the falsehood of his sons and almost ready to lie down and die the unhappy king who had so long stood firm began to fail but the pope to his honor supported him and obliged the french king and richard though successful in fight to treat for peace richard wanted to be crowned king of england and pretended that he wanted to be married which he really did not to the french king s sister his promised wife whom king henry detained in england king henry wanted on the other hand that the french king s sister should be married to his favorite son john the only one of his sons he said who had never against him at last king henry deserted by his one by one distressed exhausted consented to establish peace one final heavy sorrow was reserved for him even yet when they brought him the proposed treaty of peace in writing as he lay very ill in bed they brought him also the of the from their whom he was required to pardon the first name upon this list was john his favorite son in whom he had trusted to the last henry the second o john child of my heart exclaimed the king in a great agony of mind o john whom i have loved the best i o john for whom i have through these many troubles have you betrayed me too and then he lay down with a heavy groan and said now let the world go as it will i care for nothing more after a time he told his attendants to take him to the french town of � a town he had been fond of during many years but he was fond of no place now it was too true that he could care for nothing more upon this earth he wildly cursed the hour when he was born and cursed the children whom he left behind him and expired as one hundred years before the followers of the court had abandoned the conqueror in the hour of his death so they now abandoned his the very body was stripped in the plunder of the royal chamber and it was not easy to find the means of carrying it for burial to the abbey church of richard was said in after years by way of flattery to 