Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/414

394 crime for which they suffered; all but one were considered by the spectators to have confessed. Rochford had shown some feeling while in the Tower. Kingston on one occasion found him weeping bitterly. The day of the trial he sent a petition to the King, to what effect I do not learn; and on the Tuesday he begged to see Cromwell, having something on his conscience, as he said, which he wished to tell him. His desire, however, does not seem to have been complied with; he spoke sorrowfully on the scaffold of the shame which he had brought upon the gospel, and died with words which, appeared to the spectators, if not a confession, yet something very nearly resembling it. 'This said lord,' wrote a spectator to the Court at Brussels, 'made a good Catholic address to the people. He said that he had not come there to preach to them, but rather to serve as a mirror and an example. He acknowledged the crimes which he had committed against God, and against the King his sovereign; there was no occasion for him, he said, to repeat the cause for which he was condemned; they would have little pleasure in hearing him tell it. He prayed God, and he prayed the King, to pardon his offences; and all others whom he might have injured he also prayed to forgive him as heartily as he forgave every one. He bade his hearers avoid the vanities of the world, and the flatteries of the Court, which had brought him to the shameful end which had overtaken him. Had he obeyed the lessons of that gospel which