Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/480

460 too little to palliate, or even explain, her death. A murder, though unpremeditated, remains among the few acts to which modern sentiment refuses indulgence.

Lord Dacres of Hurstmonceaux, a young nobleman of high spirit and promise, not more than four-and-twenty years old, was tempted by his own folly, or that of his friends, to join a party to kill deer in the park of an unpopular neighbour. The excitement of a lawless adventure was probably the chief or only inducement for the expedition; but the party were seen by the foresters: a fray ensued in which one of the latter was mortally wounded, and died two days after. The bearings of the case were very simple. Deer- stealing, like cattle-stealing, was felony; and where the commission of one crime leads to another and a worse, the most lenient administration is usually severe. Had Lord Dacres been an ordinary offender, he would have been disposed of summarily. Both he and his friends happened to be general favourites. The privy council hesitated long before they resolved on a prosecution: and at last it is likely they were assisted to a resolution by the King. When the indictment was prepared, the peers by whom Lord Dacres was to be tried held a preliminary meeting to consult on the course which they would pursue. 'I found all the lords at the Star Chamber,' Sir William Paget wrote to Wriothesley, 'assembled for a conference touching the Lord Dacres's case. They had with them present the Chief Justice, with others of the King's learned council, and albeit I was excluded, yet they spake so loud, some of them, that I