Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/559

 1585-] THE BOND OF ASSOCIATION. 543 ham. He was threatened with the rack, and made a full confession. He told how he had heen received into the Church, how he had been tempted by Morgan in Paris, how he had read books, consulted priests, and been uncertain in conscience. He admitted the Pope's dispensation, and the Cardinal of Como's letter. He said that he had lost it, but it was found among his papers. He acknowledged that he had come to Eng- land meaning to kill the Queen; that he had been counter-advised, had wavered, had made up his mind again. In one breath he said tha,t he had intended to do it, in the next that he had never intended to do it, both stories being probably true, and representing his varying moods. He was no fanatic no monomaniac with a fixed idea, which is converted into a fate by being brooded over. He was a vain fool who had fed his imagination with the conceit of being a European. hero, and had never wrought himself into the silent mood of determination which issues in act. But if he was a fool he was a dangerous one, and in the humour of the country and of Parliament he had small chance of finding the mercy for which he prayed. He appeared as the incarnation of the universal terror. His confession was taken down and published with the Cardinal of Como's letter. He was shut up in the Tower ; Parlia- ment declared his seat vacant ; and Sir Thomas Lucy Shakespeare's Lucy, the original perhaps of Justice Shallow, with an English fierceness at the bottom of his stupid nature having studied the details of the execu- tion of Gerard, proposed in the House of Commons ' that