From this time, accordingly, Richard was actually as well as nominally king of England; but still he was often engaged in contentions and quarrels with his uncles, and with the other great nobles who took his uncle's part.
The queen--for good Queen Anne was at this time still living--was so gentle and kind, and she acted her part as peace-maker so well, that she greatly softened and soothed these asperities; but Richard led, nevertheless, a wild and turbulent life, and was continually getting involved in the most serious difficulties. Then there were wars to be carried on, sometimes with France, sometimes with Scotland, and sometimes with Ireland. Richard's uncles, the Dukes of Lancaster and Gloucester, generally went away in command of the armies to carry on these wars. Sometimes Richard himself accompanied the expeditions; but even on these occasions, when he and his knights and nobles were engaged together in a common cause, and apparently at peace with each other, there were so many jealousies and angry heartburnings among them, that deadly quarrels and feuds were continually breaking out.
As an example of these quarrels, I will give an account of one which took place not very long after Richard was married. He was engaged with his uncles in an expedition to Scotland. There was a knight in attendance upon him named Sir Miles. This knight was a friend of the queen. He was a Bohemian, and had come from Bohemia to pay Anne a visit, and to bring the news to her from her native land. The king, out of affection to Anne, paid him great attention. This made the English knights and nobles jealous, and they amused themselves with mimicking and laughing at Sir Miles's foreign peculiarities. The particular friends of the queen, however, took his part, one especially, named the Earl of Stafford, and his son, the young Lord Ralph Stafford. Lord Ralph Stafford was one of the most courteous and popular knights in England.
In the course of the expedition to Scotland the party came to a town called Beverley, which is situated in the northern part of England, near the frontier. One day, two archers belonging to the service of Lord Ralph Stafford, in riding across the fields near Beverley, found two squires engaged in a sort of quarrel with Sir Miles. The cause of the quarrel was something about his lodgings in the town. The squires, it seems, knowing that the knights and nobles generally disliked Sir Miles, were encouraged to be very bold and insolent to him in expressing their ill-will, and when the archers came up they were following him with taunts, and ridicule, and abuse, while Sir Miles was making the best of his way toward the town.