Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/493

] From all that could be brought against him, it did not appear that the duke was guilty of any participation in an attempt to dethrone or even distress Elizabeth, but that his sole object was to many the Queen of Scots. That other parties, of whom Rudolfi was the agent, had designs against the Government of Elizabeth, there exists no doubt; but from the duke's character as an honest and loyal nobleman, it is probable that they kept these ulterior views out of his sight. But his enemies had determined to destroy him, and brought against him a number of his servants and others with prepared charges; and when he denounced them as false and wicked, the counsel for the Crown rudely told him that the evidence of the witnesses on oath was far more deserving of credence than his denial of them. He demanded to have the witnesses brought face to face with him; but this, with one exception, was refused. The exception was ono Richard Candish, or Cavendish, a tool of Leicester's.

When he was brought up, the duke treated him with much ironic severity, saying, "You are an honest man!" reminding him that he had been the bearer of letters betwixt himself, Leicester, and Throckmorton; and that he had intruded himself without invitation to his house in Norfolk, and then gone mysteriously away. The man seemed to shrink under the scornful eye of the duke, and was glad to get away; yet the queen's serjeant pronounced his evidence as good and sufficient. There was next an attempt to get the Bishop of Ross to appear in court, and confirm the evidence drawn from him under terror of the rack: but he steadfastly refused, declaring that he never heard the duke utter a word contrary to his duty and allegiance to his sovereign, and that he would declare this before the whole realm if they brought him up.

A letter said to have been written by the duke to Murray, and one from Murray to the duke, were put in and read, which, if true, certainly criminated Norfolk; but no evidence of the authenticity of these letters was produced, and there is little doubt that they were only a portion of the many forgeries committed for the purpose of destroying the prisoner. As if all this was not enough, the queen interfered in a direct and most unconstitutional manner to secure his condemnation. She sent a message by the solicitor-general that the ambassador of a foreign prince had communicated to her that the whole of the plot had been disclosed by Rudolfi in Flanders, with the duke's participation in it; and that the Lords of the Privy Council had heard it all, and would in secret communicate the particulars to the Peers who sat in judgment, as there were names concerned which must not there be mentioned. These strange judges retired, and heard this new evidence against the prisoner without communicating a word of it to him; and then, after an hour's consultation, gave a verdict of guilty. Amongst the Peers sat Leicester, who had encouraged Norfolk in the project of this marriage, and now voted for his death. The lord steward pronounced sentence that he should be drawn from the Tower to Tyburn, there be hanged till half dead, then taken down, his bowels taken cut, and burnt before his face; his head then to be struck off and his body quartered, the head and quarters to be set wherever Her Majesty pleased.

On hearing this barbarous sentence—more barbarous than most of those of Henry VIII., for he was generally satisfied with beheading his victims—the duke exclaimed.—This, my lord, is the judgment of a traitor; but (striking himself hard upon the breast) I am a true man to God and the queen as any that liveth, and always have been so. I do not now desire to live. I will not desire any of your lordships to make petition for my life. I am at a point; and, my lords, as you have banished me from your company, I trust shortly to be in better company. This only I beseech you, my lords: to be humble suitors to the queen's majesty that it will please her to be good to my poor orphan children, and to take order for the payment of my debts, and to have some consideration for my poor servants. God knows how true heart I bear to Her Majesty and to my country, whatsoever this day hath been falsely objected against me. Farewell, my lords."

He spoke with some passion, as a man incensed at being wrongfully accused and suspected, yet with a certain dignity—in nothing forgetting his station, and his whole bearing that of a man who was a genuine Englishman at heart, who had been fascinated by the charms of the Scottish queen, but had never conceived a treasonable thought against the English one. On his return to the Tower, Elizabeth pressed him by her ministers to confess and disclose the guilt of his colleagues. Norfolk replied in a long letter, which breathes the spirit of a true-hearted and really noble man. Whilst entreating earnestly for his orphan children, he refused to implicate any one else. "The Lord knoweth," he said, "that I myself know no more than I have been charged withal, nor much of that; although, I humbly beseech God and your majesty to forgive me, I know a great deal too much. But if it had pleased your highness, whilst I was a man in law, to have commanded my accusers to have been brought to my face, although of my own knowledge I knew no more than I have particularly confessed, yet there might, perchance, have bolted out somewhat to mine own purgation, and your highness have known that which is now concealed." He then adds, in regard to the queen's desire to draw from him accusations of others, "Now, an if it please your majesty, it is too late for me to come face to face to do you any service; the one being a shameless Scot, and the other an Italianised Englishman (the Bishop of Ross and Barker), their faces will be too brazen to yield to any truth that I shall charge them with. Though the one was my man, yet ho will now count himself my master; and so, indeed, he may, for he hath, God forgive him, mastered me with his untruth." And again—"Alas! an if it please your majesty now to weigh how little I can say for your better service, and how little credit a dead man in law hath, I hope your highness, of your most gracious goodness, will not command me that which cannot, I think, do you any service, and yet may heap more infamy upon me, unhappy wretch! which needs not be, for they will report that, for abjectness of mine, or else thereby to seek pardon of my life, I was contented to accuse by suspicion when I had no other ground thereto."

Failing to draw anything from the staunch-hearted nobleman, on Saturday, the 8th of February, Elizabeth signed the warrant for his execution on the Monday; but late on Sunday night she sent for Cecil—now more commonly called Burleigh—and commanded the execution