CHAPTER VI.

1603 AND 4.

Trial and conviction of Brook, Markham and others,-of Raleigh.-Behaviour of the prisoners.-Conduct of the king.-Reprieve of Cobham, Grey and Markham at the Scaffold.-Hampton-court conference.-Proclamation for conformity.-Deathof archbishop Whitgift.-Bancroft succeeds.-Parliament summoned.-Number of the peers.King's procession through London.-His speech to parliament.--Offence given by it.-Election dispute.-Parliament averse to the union.-Angry letter of the king.-His impiety and arrogance.-Commissioners for the union.Conduct of Bacon.-His speech against purveyors.-His book on the advancement of learning, and further promo

tion.

ON account of the continued ravages of the plague in London, the term was held at Winchester, and thither were Raleigh and the other conspirators conveyed to take their trial. Brook, Markham, and some accomplices, were first put to the bar: no overt acts were charged on these persons; but of a design of seizing the king and imprisoning him in the Tower or in Dover castle, they mostly confessed themselves guilty; and all except sir Edward Parham were convicted of high treason. The priests, Watson and Clarke, with their assistants followed, and experienced the same fate. "They were all," says sir Dudley Carlton, "condemned upon their own confessions,

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fessions, which were set down under their own hands as declarations; and compiled with such labor and care to make the matter they undertook seem very feasible, as if they had feared they should not say enough to hang themselves. Pirra was acquitted, being only drawn in by the priests as an assistant, without knowing the purpose; yet had he gone the same way as the rest, (as it is thought,) save for a word the lord Cecil cast in the way as his cause was in handling; that the king's glory consisted as much in freeing the innocent, as condemning the guilty." A significant trait, it may be remarked, both of the pliant disposition of the juries, and of the prevailing influence of Cecil, who sat as one of the commissioners on these trials.

Sir

Raleigh was next brought to the bar, accused of plotting with Cobham to set Arabella on the throne, and to procure money for this purpose from the king of Spain. Other counts were added in the indictment, but this was the only material one. Edward Coke, as attorney-general, conducted the prosecution in a spirit of rancor against the illustrious prisoner which stains his memory with indelible disgrace. He began with recapitulating the treasons of Brook and his faction, in which Raleigh was not even accused of participating, as if he had been an acknowledged accomplice in the whole. "Prove one of these things wherewith you have charged me," exclaimed the prisoner, “and I will confess the whole indictment, and that I am the horriblest traitor that ever lived, and worthy to be cru

cified with a thousand thousand torments." Attorney. "Nay, I will prove all; thou art a monster; thou hast an English face, but a Spanish heart." And he went on recapitulating the designs which Cobham had confessed himself to have entertained, charging Raleigh as the instigator. "I do not hear yet," said Raleigh as soon as he was permitted to speak for himself, "that you have spoken one word against me; here is no treason of mine done. If my lord Cobham be a traitor, what is that to me?" Attorney. "All that he did was by thy instigation, thou viper; for I thou thee, thou traitor." Raleigh. "It becometh not a man of quality and virtue to call me so; but I take comfort in it; it is all you can do." In this confidence, however, the unfortunate prisoner was fatally deceived; no evidence whatever was adduced against him excepting the accusation of Cobham, taken down by the commissioners who examined him, and not even signed by himself; and even this was invalidated by a written retraction under Cobham's own hand which Raleigh produced; but he was answered that he had procured it by unfair means. He demanded to have Cobham confronted with him; this was refused; "You try me," said he, "by the Spanish inquisition, if you proceed on examinations, not on witnesses." This speech was pronounced treasonable, and the judges had the audacity to affirm that such proceedings were according to the law of England. In vain did the defenceless prisoner reason, plead, protest ;-argue on the vagueness of the charge of Cobham ;-the impres

sion of sudden anger under which it had been advanced; the utter folly and absurdity of the designs imputed to him. In vain did he firmly and impressively assert his innocence of the whole plot; confessing only that Cobham had once promised to procure him money from Aremberg on condition of endeavouring to bring about a peace, to which he had answered evasively, not believing, as he said, that he had any power to make good his offers; all was ineffectual, the court had decreed his fall, and the jury, almost without deliberation, found him guilty of high treason, to the astonishment even of Coke, who said he had only charged him with misprision of treason.

Better men and better patriots than Raleigh have sometimes fallen by that perversion of public justice which disgraces too many periods of the English annals; but none of those victims of iniquity, it may safely be affirmed, over whom the tears of liberty and of virtue have fallen the most copiously, have suffered by a sentence more illegal, more oppressive, more worthy to be branded with the note of infamy, than this extraordinary and memorable person. "I would know," writes sir John Hawles, solicitor-general to king William, "by what law is the deposition of a person who might be brought face to face to the prisoner, read as evidence; I would know by what law it is forbidden that the accuser should be brought face to face to the accused; I would know by what law Brook's deposition of what the lord Cobham told him of Raleigh,

was

was evidence against Raleigh; I would know by what law the story Dyer told of what an unknown man said to him at Lisbon of don Raleigh, was evidence against Raleigh; I would know by what statute the statutes of the twenty-fifth of Edward III. and fifth of Edward VI. are repealed."

The sequel of this disgraceful history is thus narrated in two letters of sir Dudley Carlton, eye and ear witness of what he relates. "After sentence given, his (Raleigh's) request was, to have his answers related to the king, and pardon begged; of which if there were no hope, then that Cobham might die first. He answered with that temper, wit, learning, courage and judgement, that, save that it went with the hazard of his life, it was the happiest day that ever he spent. And so well he shifted all advantages that were taken against him, that were not fama malum gravius quam res, and ́an ill name half-hanged, in the opinion of all men he had been acquitted.

"The two first that brought this news to the king were, Roger Aston and a Scotchman; whereof one affirmed that never any man spoke so well in times past, nor would do in the world to come; and the other said, that whereas when he saw him first, he was so led with the common hatred, that he would have gone a hundred miles to have seen him hanged, he would, ere he parted, have gone a thousand to have saved his life. In one word, never was man so hated and so popular in so short a time."..

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Cobham led the way on Friday, and made such

a fasting