Book L] IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 25 



Torigni, Marans, Rochelle, with the numerous ports in Sain- 

 tonge, Poictou, and Normandy, were successively compelled 

 to acknowledge the power of his arms. 



It is not within our province to follow the political move- 

 ment of the earl from this date to 1389, when he was dismissed 

 from his offices by the king ; but in the course of the following 

 year he succeeded in effecting his reconciliation at court, and 

 in August, 1390, we find him engaged in a hunting party 

 with the sovereign, on the estate of the Duke of Lancaster, 

 at Leicester. In 1394 he obtained an especial pardon for 

 all his political offences ; and, having become disgusted with 

 public life, procured a particular exemption from all attend- 

 ance in Parliament for the future. 



During five years Arundel continued to enjoy that privacy 

 which the tumultuous scenes of his past life must have rendered 

 more than usually delightful. But on July 12th, 1397, he 

 was suddenly seized, hurried to the Tower, and thence, for 

 greater security, conveyed to Carisbrook Castle, in the Isle 

 of Wight. His arraignment, trial, and execution, for an 

 alleged treason, for which he had already obtained a full 

 pardon, is a matter of history. When the sentence was pro- 

 nounced he turned to his guards, cheerfully resigned himself 

 to their charge, and was instantly hurried from Westminster 

 to Tower Hill, the place appointed for the scene of his last 

 conflict. When he had ascended the platform, he paused for 

 a moment to survey the assembled multitude, took up the 

 axe which lay upon the block before him, and, having felt its 

 edge, playfully remarked that it was sufficiently sharp, and 

 that he hoped the executioner would perform his office ex- 

 peditiously. He then knelt down, and at one stroke his head 

 was severed from his body. Thus was done to death Richard 

 Fitzalan, 14th Earl of Arundel, one of the fathers of the 

 British Turf in the Dark Ages.* 



* "The Hist, and Antq. of the Castle and Town of Arundel," by the 

 Rev. M. A. Tierney (F.S.A. Lend., 1834), pp. 240-276. It is worth 

 noting that the earl bequeathed to his brother, the Archbishop of Canter- 

 bury, a gilt and enamelled cup, " with the stag on its cover," which may 

 have been a prize won at some horse-race. His effects amounted in the 



