Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/617

 THE BOND OF ASSOCIA TlOtf. 6ol June. Thus gradually the Catholics were collaps- ing as a formidable party in the State ; and seeing their hopes blighted and their enemies triumph- ant, were now more and more inclined to sit still and wait for the open interference of Spain or France. No weapon formed against the Queen seemed to prosper. The Pope's anathemas had borne fruit only in the rotting quarters of two hundred Jesuits and the skull of Des- mond upon a spike on London Bridge. The great of a letter written many years after by Sir Walter Raleigh to Sir Robert Cecil. ' For after revenge,' Raleigh said, ' fear them not. Humours of men succeed not, but grow by oc- casion and accidents of time and power. Somerset made no revenge on. the Duke of Northumberland's heirs. Northumberland that now is thinks not of Hatton's issue.' These words speak undoubtedly to a belief at the end of the century, that foul play had been used, and perhaps that the belief was shared by Raleigh himself. But Raleigh was not om- niscient, and on the other side there is first a very elaborate inquest upon the Earl's body, conducted by the coroner of the city of London. The jury examined the premises, and satisfied themselves about the bolts. Sir Owen Hop ton described the burst- ing of the door, and the position in which the body was found. The Earl's servant confessed to having bought the pistol at his master's de- sire, and described the manner in which it was carried in; the gun- smith was produced from whom it VOL. XI. was purchased, and the inquiry was accepted as conclusive, by every one to whom charges against the Govern- ment were not credible in proportion to their enormity. No intelligible motive can be suggested for the murder of a prisoner of rank whom it would have been useful to try, and whose estates might have thus re- warded the avarice of courtiers; while to suicide there was the tempt- ation of escaping a public execution, otherwise almost certain, and the practical desire to save the property of the family from confiscation. Forfeiture would have followed, as a matter of course, on a legal convic- tion for high treason ; but to kill an untried nobleman, and afterwards to pass a bill of attainder through the House of Lords, would have been morally impossible. To the Catholics, on the other hand, it was perfectly natural to suspect a Government which they hated, and to spare the memory of one of their own leaders from the reproach of what they looked on as a crime.