Part 6 (2/2)

The person who undertook to carry on this secret correspondence was no other than young Sir John Peyton, whohted, the son of the late Lieutenant of the Tower Sir George Harvey seereeable, for Raleigh had to hint to Cobhaht be bla Cobhaed colour like a h could not depend on him, nor even influence him Meanwhile Cobham was transferred to the Tower, and now communication between the prisoners see upon Raleigh, a man named Cotterell, undertook to speak to Cobham, and desired him to leave hisin the Wardrobe Tower ajar on a certain night Raleigh had prepared a letter, entreating Cobham to clear him at all costs This letter Cotterell tied round an apple, and at eight o'clock at night threw it dexterously into Cobham's room; half an hour afterwards a second letter, of still more complete retractation, was pushed by Cobhah hid in his pocket and showed to no one

Thus October passed, and during these ten weeks the popular fury against the accused had arisen to a tumultuous pitch On Noveh out of the Tower, and prepare hiue was in London, and the prisoner was therefore taken down to Winchester, to be tried in Wolvesey Castle

So terrible was the popular hatred of Raleigh, that the conveyance of him was attended with difficulty, and had to be constantly delayed 'It was hob or nob whether he should have been brought alive through such ainst hiiven to the transit 'The fury and tureat' that Waad had to set watches, and hasten his prisoner by a stage at a ti hiue for the h to pieces When he had reached Winchester, it was thought well to wait five days ive the popular fury ti's Bench was fitted up in the castle, an old Episcopal palace, not well suited for that purpose

On Thursday, Novean In the centre of the upper part of the court, under a canopy of brocade, sat the Lord Chief Justice of England, Popham, and on either side of him, as special commissioners, Cecil, Waad, the Earls of Suffolk and Devonshi+re, with the judges, Anderson, Gawdy, and Warburton, and other persons of distinction Opposite Popham sat the Attorney-General, Sir Edward coke, who conducted the trial It was actually opened, however, by Hale, the Serjeant, who atteuilty' to the indict that Lady Arabella 'hath no more title to the Crown than I have, which, before God, I utterly renounce' Raleigh was noticed to sine that his irony would be roused by such buffoonery on an occasion so serious There was noof this kind, but the whole trial has remained a type of as uncouth and undesirable in the conduct of cri of the seventeenth century The nation so rapidly increased in sensitiveness and in a perception of legal decency, that one of the very judges who conducted Raleigh's trial, Gawdy, lived to look back upon it with horror, and to say, when he himself lay upon his death-bed, that such a land'

When Hale had ceased his fooling, coke began in earnest He was a h, and of a conceited and violent nature, owing not a little of his exaggerated reputation to the dread that he inspired He was never more rude and brutal than in his treath upon this famous occasion, and even in a court packed with enelance round withoutone look more friendly than that in the cold eyes of Cecil, the needless insolence of coke went too far, and caused a revulsion in Raleigh's favour coke began by praising the cle, who had forbidden the use of torture, and proceeded to charge Sir Walter Raleigh hat he called 'treason of the Main,' to distinguish it froe Brooke and his fellohich was 'of the Bye' He described this latter, and tried to point out that the fornate to it In order tothis successfully on the evidence which he possessed, he wandered off into a long and wordy disquisition on treasonable plots in general, ending abruptly with that of Edmund de la Pole Then, for the first time, coke faced the chief difficulty of the Governh He did not allow, as indeed he could not be expected to do, that Cobha, for the h had actually done or h for coke to insist that Cobhaht conflicting statements suited the prosecution best, was as valuable, in a case of this kind, as 'the inquest of twelve h's reat difficulty, he continued to declai in h's 'Main' with the 'Bye,' in spite of the distinction which he hiainst this once or twice, and at last showed signs of impatience coke then suddenly turned upon him, and cried out, 'To whom, Sir Walter, did you bear malice? To the royal children?' In the altercation that followed, coke lost his teh 'a lish face, but a Spanish heart' He then proceeded to state what the accusation of Sir Walter really amounted to, and in the midst of the inexplicable chaos of this whole affair it round coke's words were:

You would have stirred England and Scotland both You incited the Lord Cobhao to hiht he went, you supped with the Lord Cobhaht you after supper to Durhaht by a back-ith La Renzi to Count Areot froed that the Lord Cobhao to Spain and return by Jersey, where you were to meet him about the distribution of the money; because Cobham had not so much policy or wickedness as you Your intent was to set up the Lady Arabella as a titular Queen, and to depose our present rightful King, the lineal descendant of Edward IV You pretend that this on was 'peace,' which meant Spanish invasion and Scottish subversion

This was plain language, at least; this was the case for the prosecution, stripped of all pedantic juggling; and Raleigh no hiht 'Let me answer,' he said; 'it concerns my life;' and from this point onwards, as Mr Edwards reue

coke refused to let Raleigh speak, and in this was supported by Popham, a very old e than his talents, and as solicitous to be on friendly terue that Raleigh's relations with Cobha surprising or iuilt He then niard to the circu these forward in such a way as to leave on the s proved against Raleigh To this practice, which deserved the very phrases which coke used against the prisoner's dealings, 'devilish and ain that he ought not to be subjected, until coke lost his temper once more, and cried, 'I _thou_ thee, thou traitor, and I will prove thee the rankest traitor in all England' A sort of hubbub now ensued, and the Lord Chief Justice again interfered to silence Raleigh, with a poor show of ih exhausted the slender stock of evidence hich he had started For a few er he tried by sheer bluster to conceal the poverty of the case, and last of all he handed one of Cobham's confessions to the Clerk of the Crown to be read in court It entered into no particulars, which Cobham said their lordshi+ps must not expect from him, for he was so confounded that he had lost his uely asserted that he would never have entered into 'these courses' but for Raleigh's instigation The reading being over, coke at last sat down Raleigh began to address the jury, very quietly at first He pointed out that this solitary accusation, by the er, was absolutely all the evidence that could be brought against him He admitted that he suspected Cobha, but he declared that he knew no details, and that whatever he discovered, Cecil also was privy to He had hitherto spoken softly; he now suddenly raised his voice, and electrified the court by turning upon Sir Edward coke, and pouring forth the eloquent and indignant protest which iven in his oords

Master Attorney, whether to favour or to disable my Lord Cobham you speak as you will of him, yet he is not such a babe as you make him He hath dispositions of such violence, which his best friends could never tee that I, at this ti hi; and, ned a place of my best command in an office I had in Cornwall I was not so bare of sense but I saw that, if ever this State was strong, it was now that we have the Kingdom of Scotland united, whence ont to fear all our troubles--Ireland quieted, where our forces ont to be divided--Denmark assured, whom before ere alont to have in jealousy--the Low Countries our nearest neighbour And, instead of a Lady who, ould be present at his own businesses For me, at this time, to make myself a Robin Hood, a Wat Tyler [in the inadvertence of the moment he seems to have said 'a Tom Tailor,'

by mistake], a Kett, or a Jack Cade! I was not so mad! I knew the state of Spain well, his weakness, his poorness, his humbleness at this time I knew that six times we had repulsed his forces--thrice in Ireland, thrice at sea, once upon our coast and twice upon his own Thrice had I served against him myself at sea--wherein, for my country's sake, I had expended of my own property forty thousand marks I knew that where beforetireat sails, at the least, in his ports, now he hath not past six or seven And for sending to his Indies, he was driven to have strange vessels, a thing contrary to the institutions of his ancestors, who straitly forbade that, even in case of necessity, they should ers I knew that of twenty-five millions which he had from the Indies, he had scarce any left

Nay, I knew his poorness to be such at this tied at his church doors; his pride so abated that, notwithstanding his forratulate his Majesty, and to send creeping unto him for peace

In these fiery words the audience was reh had always shown to Spain, and of the services which he himself, now a prisoner at the bar, had perforland The syan to be h most felt that they had been deceived, and that so noble an Englishht have been, could not by any possibility have intrigued with the worst eneland

But the prisoner had more to do than to rouse the irresponsible part of his audience by his patriotic eloquence The countenances of his judges remained as cold to him as ever, and he turned to the serious business of his defence His quick intelligence saw that the telling point in coke's diatribe had been the eh's intian to try and explain away this intiknoas not exactly true, namely that his 'privateness' with Cobhaht to make use of his experience He dwelt on Cobhaued that so rich a man would not venture to conspire All this part of the defence see another sudden appeal to the senti that he had conspired all these things against Spain, for Arabella, and against the King, I protest before Alhty God I am as clear as whosoever here is freest'

After a futile discussion as to the value of Cobham's evidence, the foreman of the jury asked a plain question: 'I desire to understand the tih's first letter, and of the Lord Cobham's accusation' Upon this Cecil spoke for the first tiible sentence which was to serve the foreman as an answer Before the jury could recover from their bewilderment, this extraordinary trial, which proceeded like an Adventure in Wonderland, was begun once more by coke, who started afresh with voluble denunciation of the defendant, for whom, he said, it would have been better 'to have stayed in Guiana than to be so well acquainted with the state of Spain' coke was still pouring out a torrent of h suddenly interrupted hies, claiht face to face with hi the law, and he brought forward statutes of Edwards III and IV to support his contention that he could not be convicted on Cobha speech he made at this point was athat Dudley Carleton, as in court, wrote to a friend that though when the trial began he would have gone a hundred e he would have gone a thousand to save his life

The judges, however, and Pophah's objection to the evidence of Cobham was overruled coke was so far influenced by it that he now atteainst the prisoner, and tried, very aardly, to e Brooke in the 'Bye' tell against Raleigh in the 'Main' Raleigh's unlucky statement, made at Windsor, to the effect that Cobham had offered hih's friend Captain Keyh during Count Are's stay in London, were then read In the discussion on these docu; in the buzz of voices it was hard to tell as said, until a certain impression was at last h 'had a Spanish heart and was a spider of hell' This produced a lull, and thereupon followed an irrelevant dispute as to whether or no Raleigh had once had in his possession a book containing treasonable allusions to the claih adave hihley's library He added that no book was published towards the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign that did not pass through his hands It would be interesting to knohether he meant that he exercised a private censorshi+p of the press, or that he bought everything that appeared At all events, the point was allowed to drop

Raleigh now gave his attention to the evidence which Keyiven under threat of the rack That this torture had been threatened, in express disobedience to the King's order, staggered some of the commissioners, and covered Sir Willia of this fact seeh's side the most valuable and unexpected help, for, in the discussion that ensued, Cecil suddenly pleaded that Raleigh should be allowed fair play The Attorney then brought forward the case of Arabella Stuart, and a fresh sensation was presented to the audience, who, after listening to Cecil, were suddenly thrilled to hear a voice at the back of the court shout, 'The Lady doth here protest, upon her salvation, that she never dealt in any of these things' It was the voice of the Earl of Nottingha there with Arabella Stuart on his ares; it had been carefully prearranged

The trial dragged on with irrelevant production of evidence by coke, occasional bullying by the Lord Chief Justice, and repeated appeals for fairness from Cecil, who cautiously said that 'but for his fault,' he was still Raleigh's friend Posterity has laughed at one piece of the Attorney's evidence:

There is one Dyer, a pilot, that being in Lisbonof England was crowned yet To whom he answered, 'I think not yet, but he shall be shortly' 'Nay,' said the Portugal, 'that shall he never be, for his throat will be cut by Don Raleigh and Don Cobham before he be crowned'

A prosecution that calls for evidence such as this has simply broken down The whole report of the trial is so puerile, that it can only be understood by bearing in mind that, as Mr Gardiner says, the Governood deal of evidence which they could not produce in court The King wished to spare Arabella, and to accept Are's protestations with the courtesy due to an a forward a letter which Cecil possessed fro to Cobhauilt, however, but to connect Raleigh closely enough with Cobha to do At last he laid a trap for Raleigh He induced hiue on the subject, and then coke triu letter Cobham had written to the commissioners the day before, a letter in which Cobhah had had with him since his imprisonment, and even the picturesque story of the letter that was bound round the apple and thrown into Cobham'sin the Tower

At the production of this docuh fairly lost his self-possession He had no idea that any of these facts were in the hands of the Government His bewilderment and dejection soon, however, left him sufficiently for him to recollect the other letter of Cobham's which he possessed He drew it fro very bad, he could not, froitation, read it; coke desired that it should not be produced, but Cecil interposed once h's last effort He said, when Cecil had finished, 'Now, ainst me is but a voluntary confession This is under oath, and the deepest protestations a Christian man can make Therefore believe which of these hath more force' The jury then retired; and in a quarter of an hour returned with the verdict 'Guilty' Raleigh had, in fact, confessed that Cobha would induce him to admit that he had asked Cobham for a sum of money, or consented to take any active part Still this was enough; and in the face of his unfortunate prevarication about the intervieith Renzi, the jury could hardly act otherwise For a su up of both sides of the vexed question what shadow of truth there was in the general accusation, the reader es

Raleigh had defended hience, and the crowd in court were by no means in syave judgh was condean that reaction in his favour which has been proceeding ever since When the Lord Chief Justice called the noble prisoner a traitor and an atheist, the bystanders, who after all were Englishh lier, and they hissed the judge, as a little before they had hooted coke To coe trial, when sentence had been passed, Raleigh advanced quickly up the court, unprevented, and spoke to Cecil and one or two other co would permit Cobham to die first

Before he was secured by the officers, he had found time for this last protest: 'Cobham is a false and cowardly accuser He can face neitherhis falsehood' He was then led away to gaol

For a h was retained at Winchester He found a friend, almost the only one who dared to speak for him, in Lady Pembroke, the saintly sister of Sir Philip Sidney, who showed _veteris vestigia flah had met with from her brother's fa She did little good, and Raleigh did still less by a letter he norote to James, the first personal appeal he had ing the King to listen to the charitable advice which the English law, 'knowing her own cruelty, doth give to her superior,' to be pitiful ht obsequious and unmanly; but it abates no jot of the author's asseverations that he was innocent of all offence, and, surely, in the very face of death ahu about the knees of Cecil, whose deiven her fresh hopes But neither the King nor Cecil gave any sign, and in the gathering reaction in favour of Raleigh remained apparently firm for punishment The whole body of the accused were by this time convicted, Watson and all his coh on the 17th, Cobham and Gray on the 18th On the 29th Watson and Clarke, the other priest, were executed Next day, the Spanish ah's life, but was repulsed The King desired the clergy who attended the surviving prisoners to prepare theave Raleigh no hope On Decee Brooke was executed And now Jah blood had been spilt He would find out the truth by collecting dying confessions from culprits who, after all, should not die