Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/166

146 thrown their weight into the rebel scale. Montague, too, was condemned.

The date of the expressions which were sworn against them is curious. They belong, without exception, to the time when Reginald Pole was in Flanders. That there was nothing later was accounted for by the distrust which Geoffrey said that soon after they had begun to entertain towards him. Evidently they had seen his worthlessness; and as their enterprise had become more critical, they had grown more circumspect. But he remembered enough to destroy them, and to save by his baseness his own miserable life.

He was himself tried, though to receive a pardon after conviction. With Sir Edward Neville and four other persons he was placed at the bar on charges of the same kind as those against Exeter and his brother. Neville had said that he 'would have a day upon the knaves that were about the King;' 'that the King was a beast, and worse than a beast;' 'machinating and conspiring to extinguish the love and affection of the King's subjects.' Sir Geoffrey Pole, beyond comparison the most guilty, had been in command of a company under the Duke of Norfolk at Doncaster; and was proved to have avowed an intention of deserting in the action, if an action was fought—real, bad, black treason. Of the others, two had spoken against the supremacy; one had carried letters to the cardinal; another had said to Lord Montague, that 'the King would hang in hell for the plucking down of abbeys.'

The last case was the hardest. Sir Nicholas Carew