Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/75

1616.] has been styled "the greatest wit, scholar, and scoundrel of his age," "that after he is come into the hall, so that he may perceive that he must go to trial, and shall be retired to the place appointed till the court call for him, then the lieutenant shall tell him roundly that, if in his speeches he shall tax the king, that the justice of England is that he shall be taken away, and the evidence go on without him; and then all the people will cry away with him, and then it shall not be in the king's power to save his life, the people will be so set on fire."

The lieutenant had carefully acted on this plan, and had provided two servants, each with a cloak on his arm, to stand behind Somerset, so that if More's representations did not after all prevent Somerset speaking out to the discredit the king, they should throw the cloaks instantly over his head, and drag him from the bar, from all consequence of which proceeding he promised to protect them.



These singular precautions, which betrayed an awful terror on the part of the king of some withering exposure from the exasperated favourite, so far prevailed, that Somerset stood upon his trial with apparent calmness, but refused steadfastly to plead guilty. Bacon, on his part, was careful in stating the charges against him, to do it so mildly that the prisoner should not be excited to any dangerous pitch. Somerset never mentioned the king, but he defended himself resolutely, and with consummate ability. He analysed the whole string of charges brought against him, explained away whatever appeared to tell most forcibly to his disadvantage, and for eleven hours prolonged the trial, and the of intolerable agony and suspense of the king, who, during the whole time, was in the most pitiable condition of terror. "But who had seen," says Sir Anthony Weldon, in a passage which is fully borne out by the letters of More, the lieutenant, "the king's restless motion all that day, sending to every boat landing at the bridge, cureing all that came without tidings, would have easily judged that all was not right, and that there had been some grounds for his fears of Somerset's boldness; but at last, one bringing his word that he was condemned, all was quiet."

In the course of a few weeks James actually granted a pardon to the murder and adultery-stained countess, on the plea that she was not tried as a principal, but as an accessory before the fact; though all the facts of the case go to show that she was the chief instrument and instigator of the murder of Overbury. He also offered the same grace to Somerset; but the proud, though fallen favourite, haughtily refused it, saying that he was an innocent man, who, therefore, needed no pardon, but expected a reversal of his sentence. Time, however, showed him that the favour of the prince had passed on to others, and that his enemies were working for further injury to him; he therefore condescended in the autumn of 1621 to petition for the pardon formerly rejected. It was granted on the 24th of October, with a promise of the restoration of his property. James, meantime, allowed him an income of four thousand pounds a year, and protected him from the infamy attaching to his condemnation. He would not allow him to be expelled from the order of St. George, nor his arms to be reversed in the chapel of that saint at Windsor.