Miles Hendon follows the tracks of the persons he is seeking part of the way through Southwark, but there all traces end. He returns to his lodgings, therefore, to rest so that he can scour the town thoroughly the next day. As he lies in bed, he decides that the prince is likely to have headed toward Hendon Hall, and he resolves to go that way, looking carefully along the way.
In the meantime, the boy who came to fetch the prince leads him through Southwark and onto the road beyond, the ruffian, the fellow who had seemed ready to join them, follows at a distance. When the prince balks at going any farther, he is told that a friend of his lies wounded in a wood ahead, news that speeds him on. He is brought to a decaying barn and the ruffian, who is actually John Canty in disguise, takes charge, making it clear that the prince is once again his prisoner.
While Canty and Hugo, the youth who brought the prince to the barn, confer, the prince withdraws to a pile of hay at the far end of the barn and falls asleep after crying over the death of his father, whom the prince loved very much. As he sleeps, the rest of the vagabonds — a grim and motley group of society's outcasts — come into the barn. Eventually their rowdiness awakens the prince, and he realizes that they have feasted and drunk a good deal. He listens as "John Hobbs," the name John Canty is now using, is brought up to date about the lives of the comrades he once had in this group before he went to live in London. Although he remains quiet, the prince is attentive and serious as he listens to the tales and hears of the ways that the laws of the land affect these people. For example, he hears about a farmer who was turned from his place, reduced to beggary, lashed through three towns, had his wife and children killed, had his ears chopped off, was whipped, and was finally sold as a slave. By this time, the prince is horrified and can keep silent no longer, and he proclaims an end to the law that allows such things to happen. When asked who he is, he answers, "with princely dignity, 'I am Edward, King of England.'"
