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A Contest For A Crown
by
From Winchester Maud proceeded to London, after having done her cause as much harm as she well could in the brief time at her disposal. She was looked for in the capital city with sentiments of hope and pride. Her mother had been English, and the English citizens felt a glow of enthusiasm to feel that one whose blood was even half Saxon was coming to rule over them. Their pride quickly changed into anger and desire for revenge.
Maud signalized her entrance into London by laying on the citizens an enormous poll-tax. Stephen had done his utmost to beggar them; famine threatened them; in extreme distress they prayed the queen to give them time to recover from their present miseries before laying fresh taxes on them.
“The king has left us nothing,” said their deputies, humbly.
“I understand,” answered Maud, with haughty disdain, “that you have given all to my adversary and have conspired with him against me; now you expect me to spare you. You shall pay the tax.”
“Then,” pleaded the deputies, “give us something in return. Restore to us the good laws of thy great uncle, Edward, in place of those of thy father, King Henry, which are bad and too harsh for us.”
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. The queen listened to the deputies in a rage, treated them as if they had been guilty of untold insolence in daring to make this request, and with harsh menaces drove them from her presence, bidding them to see that the tax was paid, or London should suffer bitterly for its contumacy.
The deputies withdrew with a show of respect, but with fury in their hearts, and repaired to their council-chamber, whence the news of what had taken place sped rapidly through the city. In her palace Queen Maud waited in proud security, nothing doubting that she had humbled those insolent citizens, and that the deputies would soon return ready to creep on their knees to the foot of her throne and offer a golden recompense for their daring demand for milder laws.
Suddenly the bells of London began to ring. In the streets adjoining the palace loud voices were heard. People seemed gathering rapidly. What did it mean? Were these her humbled citizens of London? Surely there were threats mingled with those harsh cries! Threats against the queen who had just entered London in triumph and been received with such hearty enthusiasm! Were the Londoners mad?
She would have thought so had she been in the streets. From every house issued a man, armed with the first weapon he could find, his face inflamed with anger. They flocked out as tumultuously as bees from a hive, says an old writer. The streets of London, lately quiet, were now filled with a noisy throng, all hastening towards the palace, all uttering threats against this haughty foreign woman, who must have lost every drop of her English blood, they declared.
The palace was filled with alarm. It looked as if the queen’s Norman blood would be lost as well as that from her English sires. She had men-at-arms around her, but not enough to be of avail against the clustering citizens in those narrow and crooked streets. Flight, and that a speedy one, was all that remained. White with terror, the queen took to horse, and, surrounded by her knights and soldiers, fled from London with a haste that illy accorded with the stately and deliberate pride with which she had recently entered that turbulent capital.
She was none too soon. The frightened cortege had not left the palace far behind it before the maddened citizens burst open its doors, searched every nook and cranny of the building for the queen and her body-guard, and, finding they had fled, wreaked their wrath on all that was left, plundering the apartments of all they contained.
Meanwhile, the queen, wild with fright, was galloping at full speed from the hostile beehive she had disturbed. Her barons and knights, in a panic of fear and deeming themselves hotly pursued, dropped off from the party one by one, hoping for safety by leaving the highway for the by-ways, and caring little for the queen so that they saved their frightened selves. The queen rode on in mad terror until Oxford was reached, only her brother, the Earl of Gloucester, and a few others keeping her company to that town.