Part 44 (1/2)
”I marvel that they let the fellow speak so far,” was Cavendish's comment.
”Nay, but is it so?” asked Diccon with startled eyes.
”Hus.h.!.+ you have yet to learn statecraft,” returned his friend.
His father's monitory hand only just saved the boy from bursting out with something that would have rather astonished Westminster Hall, and caused him to be taken out by the ushers. It is not wonderful that no report of the priest's speech has been preserved.
The name of Antony Babington was then called. Probably he had been too much absorbed in the misery of his position to pay attention to the preceding speech, for his reply was quite independent of it. He prayed the Lords to believe, and to represent to her Majesty, that he had received with horror the suggestion of compa.s.sing her death, and had only been brought to believe it a terrible necessity by the persuasions of this Ballard.
On this Hatton broke forth in indignant compa.s.sion,-”O Ballard! Ballard! what hast thou done? A sort of brave youth, otherwise endowed with good gifts, by thy inducement hast thou brought to their utter destruction and confusion!”
This apparently gave some hope to Babington, for he answered-”Yes, I protest that, before I met this Ballard, I never meant nor intended for to kill the Queen; but by his persuasions I was induced to believe that she being excommunicate it was lawful to murder her.”
For the first time Ballard betrayed any pain. ”Yes, Mr. Babington,” he said, ”lay all the blame upon me; but I wish the shedding of my blood might be the saving of your life. Howbeit, say what you will, I will say no more.”
”He is the bravest of them all!” was Diccon's comment.
”Wot you that he was once our spy?” returned Cavendish with a sneer; while Sir Christopher, with the satisfaction of a little nature in uttering reproaches, returned-”Nay, Ballard, you must say more and shall say more, for you must not commit treasons and then huddle them up. Is this your Religio Catholica? Nay, rather it is Diabolica.”
Ballard scorned to answer this, and the Clerk pa.s.sed on to Savage, who retained his soldierly fatalism, and only shook his head. Barnwell again denied any purpose of injuring the Queen, and when Hatton spoke of his appearance in Richmond Park, he said all had been for conscience sake. So said Henry Donne, but with far more piety and dignity, adding, ”fiat voluntas Dei;” and Thomas Salisbury was the only one who made any entreaty for pardon.
Speeches followed from the Attorney-General, and from Sir Christopher Hatton, and then the Lord Chief Justice Anderson p.r.o.nounced the terrible sentence.
Richard Talbot sat with his head bowed between his hands. His son had begun listening with wide-stretched eyes and mouth, as boyhood hearkens to the dreadful, and with the hardness of an unmerciful time, too apt to confound pity with weakness; but when his eye fell on the man he had followed about as an elder playmate, and realised all it conveyed, his cheek blanched, his jaw fell, and he hardly knew how his father got him out of the court.
There was clearly no hope. The form of the trial was such as to leave no chance of escape from the utmost penalty. No witnesses had been examined, no degrees of guilt acknowledged, no palliations admitted. Perhaps men who would have brought the Spanish havoc on their native country, and have murdered their sovereign, were beyond the pale of compa.s.sion. All London clearly thought so; and yet, as Richard Talbot dwelt on their tones and looks, and remembered how they had been deluded and tempted, and made to believe their deed meritorious, he could not but feel exceeding pity for the four younger men. Ballard, Savage, and Barnwell might be justly doomed; even Babington had, by his own admission, entertained a fearfully evil design; but the other three had evidently dipped far less deeply into the plot, and Tichborne had only concealed it out of friends.h.i.+p. Yet the ruthless judgment condemned all alike! And why? To justify a yet more cruel blow! No wonder honest Richard Talbot felt sick at heart.
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
IN THE TOWER.
”Here is a letter from Mr. Secretary to the Lieutenant of the Tower, Master Richard, bidding him admit you to speech of Babington,” said Will Cavendish. ”He was loath to give it, and nothing but my Lord Shrewsbury's interest would have done it, on my oath that you are a prudent and discreet man, who hath been conversant in these matters for many years.”
”Yea, and that long before you were, Master Will,” said Richard, always a little entertained by the young gentleman's airs of patronage. ”However, I am beholden to you.”
”That you may be, for you are the only person who hath obtained admission to the prisoners.”
”Not even their wives?”
”Mrs. Tichborne is in the country-so best for her-and Mrs. Babington hath never demanded it. I trow there is not love enough between them to make them seek such a meeting. It was one of my mother's matches. Mistress Cicely would have cleaved to him more closely, though I am glad you saw through the fellow too well to give her to him. She would be a landless widow, whereas this Ratcliffe wife has a fair portion for her child.”
”Then Dethick will be forfeited?”
”Ay. They say the Queen hath promised it to Raleigh.”
”And there is no hope of mercy?”
”Not a t.i.ttle for any man of them! Nay, so far from it, her Majesty asked if there were no worse nor more extraordinary mode of death for them.”