Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/326

 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 54. Finding himself in the hands of the enemy, he wrote on being landed, half in irony, to Cecil, that ' as he was old and decrepit, one iron on his sound leg would be sufficient to hold him/ and begging that he might be tolerably lodged, ' that he perished not before his time/ l The ' lodging ' prepared for him was his own Lol- lards' Tower, which had been empty since he and his had lost the power to persecute. He bore his fate with considerable stoicism, 2 but his firmness failed him in the terrible ordeal which followed. He was examined in his cell under the rack as Felton had been. The Catholics prayed that God would support him under it ; 3 but he was seventy years old and feeble for his age, and his dark secrets were wrung from him by his agony. He was then tried for high treason. He said that he was a naturalized subject of Philip, but the plea was not al- lowed. He was sentenced as a traitor, committed to a dungeon in the Tower, and left there waiting for cxe- enterprise by Prestal. In the mean time Story can inform you what practices Prestal hath in hand for Scotland. The rebels here provoke and stir what they may. The chief captain of those which are busy in practices is Prestal. Story was next.' Cobham to Cecil, September 4 : MSS. Flanders. 1 Story to Cecil, from Yarmouth, August 15: MSS. Domestic. 2 < Story seemeth to take little thought for any matter, and is as perverse in mind concerning religion as heretofore he hath been. He plainly saith that what he did in Queen Mary's time, he did it law- fully because he was but a minister of the law; and if it .was the law again he might do the like.' Watts to Cecil, September 4 : MSS. Do- mestic. 3 ' Danle en esta dia tormento y creo lo pasara mal. Dios le ayude que todos los Catolicos ruegan por el.' Don Guerau to Philip, Decem- ber 13.