Page:A history of the gunpowder plot-The conspiracy and its agents (1904).djvu/140

116 apparently taken by them on account of the manner in which the indictment had been framed, the absent priests (Garnet, Greenway, and Gerard) all being mentioned by name as participators in the plot. When asked, therefore, 'why he pleaded Not Guilty' Faukes only voiced the opinion of his confederates, when he replied, 'That he had done so in respect of certain conferences mentioned in the indictment, which he said that he knew not of: which were answered to have been set down according to course of law, as necessarily presupposed before the resolution of such a design.'

The trial from beginning to end was a mere farce. The prisoners, after having to listen to a very long, by no means truthful, and very violent speech from Sir Edward Coke, and having heard 'their several Examinations, Confessions, and voluntary Declarations, as well of themselves, as of some of their dead Confederates' read out, were merely asked, 'What they could say, wherefore Judgment of Death should not be pronounced against them?' and the trial was virtually over, so far as the hearing of their case was concerned.

Thomas Winter, on being asked what he had to answer for himself, 'only desired that he might be hanged both for his brother and himself.'

Robert Keyes said, 'That his estate and fortune were desperate, and as good now as at another time, and for this cause rather than for another.'