more and more severe, and to the fears and fana- | but it ceased only in this specious proclamation ticism of her Protestant subjects. Spies and in--in reality it became more active than ever. As formers were let loose till the land swarmed with the vile trade of an informer was a profitable one, them: the adherents to the old faith were in- many ingenious individuals took it up: and there cessantly harrassed, cast into prison on vague was a wonderful increase of intercepted letters, suspicions, ruined in their property and prospects. forged documents, and lists found hid in CathoThe conduct of government towards the Catholic houses-found, we believe, in three cases out lics somewhat resembled the brutal pranks of a of four, by those who had put them there-by the set of boys who drive and torment a dog until he agents of the government. Philip Howard, Earl is mad, and then shoot him for being dangerous. of Arundel, son of the late Duke of Norfolk (one And yet, after all, no dangerous Catholic con- of the poor orphans for whom he had so implored spiracy was ever traced to any great or powerful and prayed), grew up a moody, melancholy man. number of English subjects—was never brought and became a convert to Catholicism. From that home to the doors of any but a few fanatics and moment he had been allowed no rest. To escape inveterate plotters who had caught the infection imprisonments and questionings, and the fate of of the times, when the ordinary proceedings of his father and his grandfather, who had both sufgovernments looked more like plots and intrigues fered on the block, he resolved to quit his counthan state business. Every man was tempted try, and, at the moment of departure, he wrote to work destruction on his personal enemy by an affecting letter, which was to be delivered to the ease of the process with which he could accuse the queen when he should be out of her reach. him of being unsound in religion and disaffected But some of his own servants, and the master of in politics. In this way Arden, a gentleman of the vessel in which he intended to seek an asyan ancient family in Warwickshire, was sacri- lum abroad, were in the pay of Burghley, and on ficed to the revenge of his neighbour, Leicester. their timely information he was seized on the Arden's son-in-law, Somerville, and Hall, a mis- coast of Sussex, brought up to London, and consionary priest, and Arden's wife, were convicted of signed to the Tower, where he died some years a conspiracy upon evidence extracted by the rack. after in a miserable condition. Before his comSomerville strangled himself, or was strangled by mittal, the Earl of Northumberland, the brother others, in Newgate. Arden suffered the horrible of the last earl, beheaded at York, had destroyed death of a traitor. Hall, the priest, who had himself by discharging three pistol-bullets into confessed on the rack, was suffered to live. Before his left breast in order to baulk Queen Elizathis time Campion, an English Jesuit, who had | beth of the forfeiture of his lands. He had been been lurking in England, was put to the rack. accused of conspiring to liberate Queen Mary. He confessed nothing but the writing and dis- Passing over many other victims, we proceed to tributing of works in favour of the Church of the Throckmorton plot, which was detected by Rome, nor does it appear that he was charged the court, or invented by it, in 1584. Francis with any conspiracy, but he was executed with Throckmorton, a gentleman of Cheshire, was arthree priests named Sherwood, Kirby, and Bry-rested on the evidence of an intercepted letter ant. Notwithstanding the prevailing fanaticism written by one Morgan, a supposed adherent of and panic which held in suspense all the gener- the Queen of Scots, though an agent of Burghous feelings of the nation, people began to mur-ley's, who was in France, and who, according to mur at the frequent and increasing use of torture; and Burghley found it expedient to defend himself against public opinion. He protested that the Jesuit Campion had been racked so gently that he was soon after able to walk about and sign his confession.' Elizabeth did more: she proclaimed that torture should cease:

1 Somers' Tracts.

2 An historical doubt may be fairly raised whether this unfortunate Percy committed suicide or was assassinated. A dag or pistol was a sort of instrument not commonly left in the hands of a state prisoner in the Tower. To prove the suicide, government brought forward one Mullan, who affirmed that he had sold a dag to the earl; and another state prisoner, named Panton, who said that he saw it delivered into the hands of the earl by a servant of the name of Price. But this Price, though in custody, was not produced.-Howell's State Trials.

According to Camden, the Catholics did not believe in the suicide, but cast some doubts and suspicion upon a servant of Sir Christopher Hatton, which servant had been charged with

this letter, informed him that Mary's nephew, the Duke of Guise, was now ready to invade England for the purpose of liberating his relative. It was proved beyond a doubt that no such preparation existed in France; but that was nothing. Throckmorton was laid upon the rack: he was silent under the first torture; he was racked

the custody of the Earl of Northumberland just before his death. In a letter an infernal letter-written at a later period, by Sir Walter Raleigh to Burghley's son, Sir Robert Cecil, recom mending him to get the Earl of Essex put out of the way, and not to fear after revenge from the earl's son, Raleigh says, Northumberland that now is thinks not of Hatton's issue Kelloway lives that murdered the brother of Orsay, and Orsay let him go by all his lifetime."—Burghley Paperɛ.

If this be not an assuming as a fact known both to Raleigh and to Sir Robert Cecil that the Earl of Northumberland bad been murdered by the contrivance of Hatton, we are wonder fully mistaken. As we have seen, so foul a deed could find more than one parallel at this period.

mander and others who followed his example had | adopt a more open practice; and though she again been plundering in the West Indies, in Spanish declined the sovereignty or protectorship of the America, and in the Pacific. The right which Soain assumed of considering the New World as treasure-trove, and of excluding from its commerce the ships of all other nations, was indeed monstrous; but, on the other hand, it will be difficult to consider Drake, Hawkins, and the rest, in any other light than that of buccaneers, however much we may admire their daring spirit, and the great contributions they made in the course of their marauding expeditions to the sciences of navigation and geography. Drake, in the course of three expeditions, had plundered the Spanish towns of Nombre de Dios and Carthagena, and nearly all the towns on the coast of Chili and Peru, and had destroyed or taken an immense number of Spanish ships, returning from each voyage with immense booty. Elizabeth insisted that she and other nations had a right to navigate those seas, and to visit the ports which the jealousy of the Spaniards kept closed to all save their own flag, and that it was contrary to the laws of nations to treat intruders as pirates; but

there being no declaration of war, she certainly committed in this way manifold acts of real piracy. Again, in the Netherlands, the King of Spain was everywhere met by English money and English resources, which had enabled those whom he termed his revolted subjects to prolong the struggle year after year. For a long time Elizabeth furnished her aid with all possible secrecy, denying to the Spanish court that she ever abetted rebels. But the course of events forced her to

Drake himself had commanded several marauding expeditions before, but he did not get the queen's commission till 1570.

country, she, in 1585, sent over a royal army of 6000 men, having bargained with the States that they should pay all expenses, and deliver to her, as securities, the town of Brill and Flushing, and Rammekins, a strong and important fort. The queen's passionate regard for Leicester had cooled since the revelation of his secret marriage with the Countess of Essex; and that earl was now permitted to take the command of the army in the Netherlands, where he entertained very ambitious projects, and displayed a woful want both of military and civil ability. Without consulting his mistress, he induced the States to name him Governor-general of the Low Countries, and to declare his authority supreme and absolute, jointly with the council of state. Elizabeth wrote to him in a fury, telling him to remember the dust from which she had raised him, and to do whatever she might command as he valued his neck. The States, who had thought to please the queen by elevating her favourite, were in great 1erplexity, and Leicester soon showed them, in other ways, that they had committed a lamentable mistake in intrusting a sovereign power to such an incapable, arrogant, and insolent man, whose first operations were to cramp the freedom of commerce, which had given life and energy to the insurgents. In the field he was pompous, vainglorious, and inefficient, presenting a wretched contrast to Alexander Farnese, the Prince of Parma, who still prolonged the struggle for Spain with remarkable generalship. He carefully avoided a battle, and his greatest affair of arms was an attack upon Zutphen, which failed, and which would scarcely deserve a mention in history but for the death of the gallant and accomplished Sir Philip Sidney, who perished there in the twenty-fifth year of his age.' The best-managed part of Leicester's campaign was his hunting all Catholics from places of profit and trust, and his captivating the Calvinistic preachers of the Low Countries by such measures, and by a very sanctimonious bearing. When the States ventured to call him to account for his gross misconduct, this noble grandson of a tax-gatherer and extortioner' promised redress, but complained to his creatures that one of his rank should be questioned by shopkeepers and artizans. In the winter of 1586, having pacified the queen, he returned to England, still, however, retaining the power intrusted to him in the Low Countries.

By this time there began to rise a rumour that the King of Spain was preparing to invade Eng

1 Sir Philip Sidney was nephew to Leicester, but as unlike his uncle as light to darkness.

2 For the history of Leicester's grandfather, Dudley, the colleague of Empson, see vol. i., reigns of Henry VII. and Henry

VIII.

3 Grotius.

even

trial were condemned as traitors, and executed
on the 20th, with a scrupulous attention to the
atrocious processes prescribed by law, being all
cut down while life was in them. The other
seven were tried on the 15th, and were all exe-
cuted on the 21st, but, in this more fortunate
than their companions, they were allowed to
hang till they were dead. The place selected for
their execution was Lincoln's Inn Fields,
the place where they had used to meet and con-
fer." With the exception of Babington, it seems
to be extremely doubtful whether any of these
gentlemen contemplated the murder of the queen;
and, with the single exception of Babington, all
of them behaved chivalrously and nobly, endea-
vouring to take blame to themselves rather than
cast it upon their companions. Most of them
maintained that their views were confined to
liberating the captive queen, a project likely to
take firm hold of young and romantic minds.
Bellamy of Harrow appears to have suffered
merely because some of the fugitives were found
in his house. His wife escaped through a mis-
nomer in the indictment. A statute had been
just passed to meet the case, and to bring Mary
to the block;3 and as what was deemed evidence
against her had been secured from the Babing-

land with a tremendous force, and some Catholic plet or other at home was the news of every day. Most-nearly every one-of these conspiracies were conjured up by the imagination, or were altogether obscure and insignificant; but, in the autumn of 1586, a real plot was discovered, at the head of which was Anthony Babington, a young English Catholic of an enthusiastic temper, who was brought to consider that it would be glorious in this world and acceptable in the next if he could assassinate Elizabeth and deliver Queen Mary from a captivity which was now rendered an unceasing torture, physically as well as morally. Babington had several accomplices, and one of these, named Pooley, put himself in direct communication with Walsingham, who was informed of every particular from the first rude arrange ment of the scheme, and who permitted the plot to go on in order to implicate Mary. When he had played with the numerous threads of this intrigue for months, and had woven a complete web round the conspirators, he opened the subject to Elizabeth, and soon after proceeded to act Ballard, a seminary priest, whom Camden calls "a silken priest in a soldier's habit," was suddenly arrested. Babington and the rest, who were all young men of fortune and acquirements, fled; but Babington was taken in a few days, at Harrow-ton conspiracy, Elizabeth's council now proposed on-the-Hill, with Gage, Charnock, Barnwell, and Don, in the house of Bellamy, their common friend. Titchborn, Travers, Abington, Salisbury, Jones, and Tilney were seized in other places, and of the whole number only Edward Windsor, the brother of Lord Windsor, escaped pursuit. These were no base and mercenary conspirators-they were such high-spirited and intellectual young men as could not have been easily matched in the kingdom.

But

an immediate trial of the Scottish queen.
even now Elizabeth hesitated, to the dismay and
secret wrath of Burghley, Walsingham, Sadler,
and the rest of the ministry. At this moment
Leicester. who was abroad, stepped in with what
he considered a master-piece of advice, propos-
ing a little quiet poison. Walsingham, who had
the chief management of the affair, objected to
such a course as being contrary to God's law;
upon which the earl sent him a canting preacher
to prove that such means against such a person
were quite justifiable by Scripture. There was
then a talk of shortening the captive's life by
increasing the rigour of her treatment, which, in
fact, had already been rigorous enough to make
a sickly cripple of that once healthful and beau-

But it appears that they were all put to the rack, or at least threatened with it; a gratuitous atrocity, for Walsingham, Burghley, and the queen knew precisely all that could possibly be known of the business. While this was doing the bells of London rang merrily for their apprehension-bonfires were lit-and on the morrow, banquets were spread in the streets, with sing-tiful woman. At last, giving herself up entirely ing of psalms and praising God for preserving her majesty and people.' The fate of the prisoners, however, on account of their youth, their honourable condition in society, and their previously unimpeached characters, excited some commiseration, and this seems to have been the cause of the government arraigning them not all at once, but in two separate bodies, notwithstanding the great legal objection that their case was one and indivisible. On the 13th of September, certain of them being put upon their

1 Stow. The Protestant people of London were so excited that the French ambassador was afraid they would set upon and massacre all the Catholics and foreigners! 2 Stow.

to the advice of Walsingham, Elizabeth issued a commission to try Mary and pronounce judgment upon her according to the act recently passed. There was no want of high names or of legal

3 Statute 27 Eliz c. 1. By this statute it was enacted that twenty-four or more of the privy council and House of Lords, to be deputed by the queen's commission, should make inquisition after all such as should invade the kingdom, raise rebellion, or attempt to hurt or destroy the queen's person, for or by whomsoever employed that might lay claim to the crown of England; and that the person for whom or by whom they should attempt the same, should be utterly incapable of the crown of England, deprived wholly of all right and title to it, and prosecuted to death by all faithful subjects, if he or she should be judged by those four-and twenty men to be a party to such invasion, rebellion, or treasonable attempt.

for Elizabeth had become so much alarmed, that | of the captive's sufferings. There had been for