Weeks, months, and years passed away like a tale that is told; and on their passing we shall not pause, dear reader, for to say truth we should have little to relate, which in a work such as this would be pleasing to your ear. What satisfaction could you derive from pictures of a court full of venality and corruption?--What satisfaction would it be either to the writer or the reader to look into the pruriences of the most disgusting monarch that ever sat upon the English throne? We will not, therefore, attempt to paint him to you, either in his villanous efforts to crush the liberties of his people, and to establish the tyranny of prerogative upon the ruins of the English constitution; or, in his pitiful pedantry, erecting himself into an ecclesiastical judge, and setting himself up as the Pope of Great Britain. We will not represent him in his unjust and illiberal prodigality, stripping the crown of its wealth, robbing his subjects of their property, and despoiling the best servants of the state of their just reward, to bestow with a lavish and a thoughtless hand the plunder of the people upon the unworthy heads of base and ill-deserving favourites. We will not display him in his cold, fanatical cruelties, more horrible than the wildest excesses of passionate tyranny; we will not show him dangling with his upstart minions, in those sickening scenes which have caused not unreasonable suspicions of the most horrible crimes.

We will leave the course of James I. to the page of history, where it remains a foul blot, which not all the blood and horrors of the great rebellion--of which it was the origin and cause--have been able to efface. If ever the sins of the fathers were, according to the unshakeable decree of the Almighty, visited upon the children, such was most strikingly the case in the destiny of the unhappy race which sprang from his loins.

We must, however, touch upon some points affecting the fate of several of those whom we have brought upon the scene; and first we must conclude the sad tale of the conspirators. We shall do so, however, as briefly as possible; for this, too, is a matter of mere history, and only one or two of those personages lived to take part in the succeeding events.

As the plague still raged in London, the judges met at Maidenhead to inquire into the case against the prisoners, and examinations were entered into of a very irregular character, which were succeeded by a special commission, the chief end and object of which seemed to be, to set every principle of law and justice at defiance, to trample out the last sparks of liberty and security, and to show the British people that they were quite at the mercy of a vain and vicious king.

At the head of this special commission were Cecil and the Earl of Suffolk, with two chief justices; but two other judges sat in the court. The trials took place at Winchester, and George Brooke, Sir Griffin Markham, with several of the inferior conspirators, were first put to the bar. They were all found guilty, principally upon their own confessions, which were probably made in the hope of obtaining pardon; and upon all the severe sentence of high treason was pronounced. The two priests, Watson and Clarke, were also condemned; and then Cobham, Grey, and Raleigh were severally brought to trial.

The demeanour of these three gentlemen in court excited not a little attention at the time, the deportment of each being very different from that of the others, and each marked with strong characteristic traits. Lord Cobham displayed nothing but weakness, imbecility, and fear; he trembled violently during the reading of the indictment, endeavoured to excuse himself by casting the blame upon his friends, made a confession more ample, it is generally supposed, than even truth warranted, and ended by begging hard for life, when sentence of death was pronounced upon him.

A very different scene was displayed at the trial of Lord Grey de Wilton. He defended himself with courage, vigour, and eloquence, without the slightest sign of fear or anxiety; showed himself learned in the law of the land, and by his gallant bearing and skilful reasoning both won the favour, and shook the opinion, of many of his judges. Nevertheless, the confessions of George Brooke and Sir Griffin Markham, in which his name was mentioned, were received as conclusive evidence against him, and he likewise was pronounced guilty of high treason. When asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, he replied at first, "Nothing!" but then added, "Non eadem omnibus decora. The house of the Wiltons have spent many lives in their princes' service, and Grey cannot beg his."

Raleigh was the next to undergo the torture of a public trial, and against him there was arrayed the envy of inferior minds, the hatred of a king, the malice of private enemies, the prepossession of his judges, and all the virulence of legal insolence. The conduct of the attorney-general, Sir Edward Coke, stamped him for posterity as one of the greatest villains, as well as one of the greatest lawyers, that ever lived; and his speech against the illustrious prisoner offers a model, too frequently imitated in France, of all that the counsel for the prosecution should not say.

Raleigh displayed upon this terrible occasion all those powers of mind which distinguished him through life; and he also showed much temper and moderation in reply to the virulent abuse of Coke. The evidence upon which he was condemned--namely, a vague and unsatisfactory confession of Lord Cobham, unsigned, taken down from word of mouth, and recanted in the most solemn manner by a letter to Raleigh himself, and the testimony of a man named Dyer, who swore that a stranger in Lisbon had said to him, that the King would never be crowned, for Don Raleigh and Don Cobham would first cut his throat--would of course never be even heard in a court of justice, in the present day; and yet this was all that could be brought against him. But it was found sufficient in the minds of the judges; and, although Raleigh demanded that Lord Cobham should be confronted with him, and urged that no man could be condemned upon the written testimony of only one witness, he was found guilty of high treason, and condemned to death. All that the prisoner required, after the verdict was given, was, that the King should be requested that his death might be an honourable and not an ignominious one. He hinted, however, a desire that his execution should be delayed till after Cobham's, probably in the hope that on the scaffold itself his former friend would do him justice, and declare his innocence with his dying breath.

After the trials, the Court and the country were all eager to know, what would be the conduct of the King, with whom alone the fate of the prisoners now remained; but James, following the usual principles of his kingcraft, kept his determinations to his own bosom, suffering not even his most favourite counsellors to know whether he would show lenity or severity. The crimes proved against George Brooke, and his general bad reputation, decided his fate, and he suffered the full penalties of high treason in the month of November, 1603. He died in the same bold and careless manner in which he had lived, apparently without either fear or regret; and the whole country seems to have approved of the firmness of the King in carrying his sentence into execution.

Different feelings, however, were entertained in regard to the two priests, Watson and Clarke, who suffered nearly at the same time. Neither of them showed the slightest want of courage, and Clarke boldly proclaimed on the scaffold, that he was a martyr to his religious faith. The Roman Catholics of course exalted their virtues and their devotion, and cried out against the severity with which they were treated by a monarch who had flattered the Papists with false hopes of toleration.

These three executions, however, created great alarm amongst the friends of the other prisoners; and various efforts were made to avert their fate by petition and solicitation. Still James remained silent and unmoved, the day appointed for the punishment of Cobham, Grey, and Markham approached rapidly, and at length the death-warrant was sent down to Winchester, and another was signed for the execution of Raleigh on the Monday following, three days after the period appointed for the fate of his fellow-prisoners. Markham received some reason to hope, from private friends at the Court, that his life would be spared, but the two peers and Raleigh were directed to prepare themselves for certain death. The Bishop of Chichester and the Bishop of Winchester remained constantly with Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh, having been instructed by the King not only to give them religious consolation, but to induce them to make a full confession, with a view, it would appear, of reconciling the discrepancy of their statements.

If this was the monarch's object, however, no success was obtained; for while the weak and imbecile Lord Cobham once more varied in his statements, and re-asserted all that he had previously laid to the charge of Raleigh, the knight firmly maintained his innocence, and varied not in the least from his former account.

At length, on the Friday appointed for the execution, Markham was brought out of the castle, at ten o'clock in the morning, to the scaffold erected on the green. Finding all the preparations for the work of death ready, he complained bitterly of having been deluded with false hopes, admitted that he had listened but little to the exhortations of the priests, having been always assured that he would receive a pardon, and added that he was in no degree prepared to die.

Nevertheless, he displayed no want of courage, but calmly took leave of some of his friends who stood near the scaffold; but one of them having given him a handkerchief to cover his eyes, he threw it indignantly from him, saying that he could look death in the face without blushing. He then crossed himself, knelt, and prayed; after which he stripped off his doublet, and turned back the collar of his shirt, that his neck might receive the blow of the axe unimpeded. Whilst he was performing this last sad ceremony, a Scotch gentleman, of the name of John Gibb, groom of the bedchamber to the king, approached the scaffold from the side of the castle, and called the sheriff down to speak with him. Their conversation seemed long to the spectators, and probably not less so to the unfortunate Markham, who remained with his neck and shoulders bare, waiting for the order to lay his head upon the block. At length Sir Benjamin Tichborne, the sheriff, returned, and addressing the prisoner, said, "Sir, since you tell me that you are so ill-prepared for death, having been led by false hopes that your life would be spared, I take upon me, after consultation with a gentleman attached to the king, to grant you two hours' respite, that you may reconcile yourself, if possible, to God before you die.--Follow me."

Hastily covering his throat, and resuming his garments, with his whole brain whirling and his heart full of doubt and uncertainty, Markham followed the sheriff from the scaffold, and was conducted to the wide old stone chamber known in those days as Prince Arthur's Hall, where, the door being locked, he was left to meditate in solitude, without even the presence of a priest to afford him consolation, or encourage him to hope.

In the meanwhile, Lord Grey de Wilton was led to the scaffold, accompanied by a Puritan minister of the name of Field, and a large troop of noble friends. His countenance was gay and smiling, his whole demeanour easy and unaffected; and after Field had prayed for some time, the young lord addressed the people in an eloquent speech, full of deep religious feeling, and confidence in the mercy of God. He looked, says one of the authors of that day, more like a bridegroom than a condemned criminal.

In the midst of his speech, however, he was interrupted by the sheriff, who informed him that he had the king's command to stay the order of the execution, and to behead Lord Cobham first. With much surprise, and with no expression of satisfaction, Lord Grey, whose mind was perfectly made up to his fate, suffered himself to be led back to the castle, where he also was locked up in Prince Arthur's Hall, to converse with Sir Griffin Markham upon their strange situation. Lord Cobham was next brought upon the scene, and he also went through the same ceremony of prayer and preparation for the block. He showed none of that timidity and want of resolution, now that his fate was decided, which he had displayed while it seemed doubtful, but maintained that what he had said of Sir Walter Raleigh was true, though, as some writers have justly observed, no one could tell what he did really wish to impute and what he did not, as, amongst his various confessions and retractions, there was no one part that did not contradict another.

As he was about to kneel down to receive the stroke of the axe, the sheriff stopped him, saying, that he had orders to confront him, even at that last hour, with some of the other conspirators; and a message having been sent into the castle, Lord Grey and Sir Griffin Markham were brought back to the scaffold, where Sir Benjamin Tichborne addressed them in a long speech, inquiring whether they did not confess they were justly condemned, and merited death.

To this they assented, without reserve, and the sheriff announced to them that the king, in his great mercy, had determined to spare their lives. A full pardon, however, was not given; and Lords Cobham and Grey were destined to endure a long and painful imprisonment, terminated in the case of the first by his escape being connived at, and he himself allowed to drag out a few years in the most abject poverty and misery, till a wretched death, hastened by actual want, filth, and wretchedness, terminated the sorrows of a man who not long before had been one of the most wealthy peers of the realm. The proud and eager spirit of Lord Grey brought his career to an earlier close; and that most common of all diseases, which has obtained--why or wherefore I know not--the name of a broken heart, terminated his sufferings a few years after. Markham and several of the inferior conspirators were banished from the realm; and of one of them, at least, we shall have to speak hereafter. Raleigh, as all the world knows, was suffered to languish in prison for many years, with a capital sentence hanging over his head, and destined in the end to be one of the most illustrious victims to the tyranny and injustice of a base and low-minded king.

Thus did James contrive even with mercy to mingle tyranny, to deprive apparent clemency of all real lenity, and to display the pitiful frivolity of his nature in the solemn exercise of his holiest and his highest prerogative. There were not one of those, except Markham, whom he reprieved at Winchester, to whom immediate death would not have been pity, compared with the fate for which he reserved them; and yet the country rang with applause even while the spirit of historic truth stamped the act with the infamous brand it deserves.