Edgar Rice Burroughs doc The Outlaw of Torn: Original Text

Here is a story that has lain dormant for seven hundred years. At first it was suppressedby one of the Plantagenet kings of England. Later it was forgotten. I happened to dig it upby accident. The accident being the relationship of my wife's cousin to a certain FatherSuperior in a very ancient monastery in Europe.He let me pry about among a quantity of mildewed and musty manuscripts and I cameacross this. It is very interesting-partially since it is a bit of hitherto unrecorded history, but principally from the fact that it records the story of a most remarkable revenge and theadventurous life of its innocent victim-Richard, the lost prince of England.In the retelling of it, I have left out most of the history. What interested me was theunique character about whom the tale revolves-the visored horseman who-but let uswait until we get to him.It all happened in the thirteenth century, and while it was happening, it shook Englandfrom north to south and from east to west; and reached across the channel and shookFrance. It started, directly, in the London palace of Henry III, and was the result of a quarrelbetween the King and his powerful brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.Never mind the quarrel, that's history, and you can read all about it at your leisure. Buton this June day in the year of our Lord 1243, Henry so forgot himself as to very unjustlyaccuse De Montfort of treason in the presence of a number of the King's gentlemen.De Montfort paled. He was a tall, handsome man, and when he drew himself to his fullheight and turned those gray eyes on the victim of his wrath, as he did that day, he was veryimposing. A power in England, second only to the King himself, and with the heart of a lionin him, he answered the King as no other man in all England would have dared answer him."My Lord King," he cried, "that you be my Lord King alone prevents Simon de Montfortfrom demanding satisfaction for such a gross insult. That you take advantage of yourkingship to say what you would never dare say were you not king, brands me not a traitor, though it does brand you a coward