CHAPTER VII.
Knights, with a long retinue of their squires, In gaudy liveries march and quaint attires; One laced the helm, another held the lance, A third the shining buckler did advance.
The courser paw'd the ground with restless feet, And snorting foam'd and champ'd the golden bit.
The smiths and armourers on palfreys ride, Files in their hands, and hammers at their side; And nails for loosen'd spears, and thongs for shields provide.
The yeomen guard the streets in seemly bands; And clowns come crowding on, with cudgels in their hands.
-- Palamon and Arcite The condition of the English nation was at this time sufficiently miserable.

King Richard was absent a prisoner, and in the power of the perfidious and cruel Duke of Austria.

Even the very place of his captivity was uncertain, and his fate but very imperfectly known to the generality of his subjects, who were, in the meantime, a prey to every species of subaltern oppression.
Prince John, in league with Philip of France, Coeur-de-Lion's mortal enemy, was using every species of influence with the Duke of Austria, to prolong the captivity of his brother Richard, to whom he stood indebted for so many favours.

In the meantime, he was strengthening his own faction in the kingdom, of which he proposed to dispute the succession, in case of the King's death, with the legitimate heir, Arthur Duke of Brittany, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, the elder brother of John.

This usurpation, it is well known, he afterwards effected.