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<h1> MEN OF IRON </h1>
<h2> by Howard Pyle </h2>
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<h2> INTRODUCTION </h2>
<p>The year 1400 opened with more than usual peacefulness in England. Only a
few months before, Richard II—weak, wicked, and treacherous—had
been dethroned, and Henry IV declared King in his stead. But it was only a
seeming peacefulness, lasting but for a little while; for though King
Henry proved himself a just and a merciful man—as justice and mercy
went with the men of iron of those days—and though he did not care
to shed blood needlessly, there were many noble families who had been
benefited by King Richard during his reign, and who had lost somewhat of
their power and prestige from the coming in of the new King.</p>
<p>Among these were a number of great lords—the Dukes of Albemarle,
Surrey, and Exeter, the Marquis of Dorset, the Earl of Gloucester, and
others—who had been degraded to their former titles and estates,
from which King Richard had lifted them. These and others brewed a secret
plot to take King Henry's life, which plot might have succeeded had not
one of their own number betrayed them.</p>
<p>Their plan had been to fall upon the King and his adherents, and to
massacre them during a great tournament, to be held at Oxford. But Henry
did not appear at the lists; whereupon, knowing that he had been lodging
at Windsor with only a few attendants, the conspirators marched thither
against him. In the mean time the King had been warned of the plot, so
that, instead of finding him in the royal castle, they discovered through
their scouts that he had hurried to London, whence he was even then
marching against them at the head of a considerable army. So nothing was
left them but flight. Some betook themselves one way, some another; some
sought sanctuary here, some there; but one and another, they were all of
them caught and killed.</p>
<p>The Earl of Kent—one time Duke of Surrey—and the Earl of
Salisbury were beheaded in the market-place at Cirencester; Lord Le
Despencer—once the Earl of Gloucester—and Lord Lumley met the
same fate at Bristol; the Earl of Huntingdon was taken in the Essex fens,
carried to the castle of the Duke of Gloucester, whom he had betrayed to
his death in King Richard's time, and was there killed by the castle
people. Those few who found friends faithful and bold enough to afford
them shelter, dragged those friends down in their own ruin.</p>
<p>Just such a case was that of the father of the boy hero of this story, the
blind Lord Gilbert Reginald Falworth, Baron of Falworth and Easterbridge,
who, though having no part in the plot, suffered through it ruin, utter
and complete.</p>
<p>He had been a faithful counsellor and adviser to King Richard, and perhaps
it was this, as much and more than his roundabout connection with the
plot, that brought upon him the punishment he suffered.</p>
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