Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/481

1541.] might hear them, notwithstanding two doors shut between us. Among the rest that could not agree to wilful murder, the Lord Cobham, as I took him by his voice, was very vehement and stiff.' They adjourned at last to the Court of King's Bench. The Lord Chancellor was appointed High Steward, and the prisoner was brought up to the bar. He pleaded 'not guilty;' he said that he had intended no harm; he was very sorry for the death of the forester, but it had been caused in an accidental scuffle; and 'surely,' said Paget, who was present, 'it was a pitiful sight to see such a young man brought by his own folly into so miserable a state.' But a verdict of acquittal, or any verdict short of murder, was impossible. The lords, therefore, as it seems they had determined among themselves, persuaded him to withdraw his plea, "and trust to the King's clemency. He consented: and they immediately repaired to the Court to intercede for his pardon. Eight persons in all were implicated Lord Dacres and seven companions. The young nobleman was the chief object of commiseration; but the King remained true to his principles of equal justice; the frequency of crimes of violence had required extraordinary measures of repression; and if a poor man was to be sent to the gallows for an act into which he might have been tempted by poverty, thoughtlessness could not be admitted as an adequate excuse because the offender was a peer. Four out of the eight were pardoned. For