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.
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