near to the prison. Upon his body was to be placed as great a weight of iron as he could bear, which little by little was to be increased. And lastly he was to be preserved with the coarsest bread that could be got and water out of the next sink or puddle to the place of execution, and that day he had water he should have no bread, and that day he had bread he should have no water. In this torment he was to linger till he died or until he pleaded.

Sir Edward paused at the end of this sentence and again asked the prisoner to consider a while whether he would plead in proper form. But the pale-faced wretch in the dock shut his lips firmly and said not a word.

The dilemma was a more difficult affair for Coke than the prisoner knew. Torture was not popular in England, and Coke had no wish to be unpopular. Again, such a sentence, if it ended in the death of the prisoner, robbed Coke of the pleasure and profit and glory of conducting what he had grandiloquently termed his Great Oyer of Poisoning. Moreover, there was the King's attitude to consider. If there was delay in the matter the King might change his mind. He might send for the proofs against Weston and pardon him. As yet Coke was single-handed in the prosecution. The Attorney-General, his rival Bacon, had not appeared for the Crown, deeming it no doubt too early in the day openly to desert Somerset and throw in his interest with Villiers. Sir Lawrence Yelverton, the SolicitorGeneral, was an avowed creature of Somerset, and Coke believed that he had put up Weston to this abominable, stubborn behaviour, knowing what a serious obstacle it would be to the success of the prosecution.

But the Lord Chief was also a man of resource and not easily outwitted and set down. He openly declared in Court that " he was persuaded that Weston had been dealt withal by some great ones guilty of the same fact as accessory. Thereupon, although there was nothing for the Court to try, he called upon the Queen's Attorney,

Sir Lawrence Hyde, as the leading Counsel for the Crown, to manifest to the audience the guilt of Weston, and told him that " if in the declaration thereof they may meet with any great persons whatsoever, as certainly there were great ones confederate in that fact, he should boldly and faithfully open whatsoever was necessary."

Thereupon, although no evidence could as yet legally be put before the jury, since no issue was joined, and although the Earl and Countess were not even as yet charged with any crime, the Judge, to compass their ultimate destruction, permitted Sir Lawrence to pour out a case against absent citizens, in the belief that once this was published the King himself could not go back upon the prosecution, and the Great Oyer on which he had set his heart would take place.

Tactically it was a stroke of genius, and might be defended on the ground that Coke believed that unless he did something of the kind at the moment a wicked conspiracy to murder would go unpunished. Who can indeed be sure of any man's motives, even his own? And there was so much of greatness in Coke and his career that we may desire to assume he acted as he did from public rather than private ends, from a desire to do right and punish wrong rather than out of vanity and ambition. Be that as it may, the course he took was illegal and unjust, and made any honest trial of these delinquents according to the principles of English justice entirely impossible.

Lawrence Hyde, the Queen's Attorney, and Mr. Warr, an old Temple friend of Sir Thomas Overbury, had a chance to immortalise themselves in the hierarchy of English advocates had they asked the Judge to hesitate before he called upon them to step aside from the path of justice to gratify their personal spleen. But they were only too ready to dance like puppets to the tune the Judge had called.

Sir Lawrence rises with a smile of pleasure on his face to tell the public the story of these horrible crimes,

and, as the chronicler says, his "boldness was very observable." He at once charges the Countess of Somerset and the Earl as prime movers in the conspiracy. Mrs. Turner, who has not yet been tried, is the go-between and pay mistress of Weston, and he alludes to the Countess as "a dead and rotten branch which being lopped off, the noble tree would prosper the better."

The whole harangue is really a party attack on the Howards and Somerset by means of portions of Weston's alleged confessions, which are read along with Sir Thomas Overbury's letter to Rochester. The guilt of Weston is taken for granted, but the argument is directed against Somerset.

After this wild, irrelevant discourse by Sir Lawrence comes little Mr. Warr, his learned junior, who pleasantly but equally irrelevantly tells the jury how friendly he and Sir Thomas Overbury were in the old days in the Temple, and how much he used to delight in his singular honest and virtuous conversations, and how he can assure the gentlemen of the jury that Sir Thomas was addicted to no dishonest actions.

These speeches having been breathlessly enjoyed by the good citizens in the audience, Coke selects certain passages from the examinations he has taken to be read out by the Clerk of Arraigns, Mr. Fenshaw.

When this has been done the Lord Chief Justice vaingloriously declares that "he would discharge his duty first to God in giving all glory from the bringing to light of so horrible and wicked a fact; and next to the King, his great master." Then he informed his astonished audience what probably was not yet public knowledge; that His Majesty had committed the Earl of Somerset to the custody of Sir Oliver St. John, and had also committed the Countess to the custody of Alderman Jones.

Once again he turns to the prisoner in the hope that all this may have had an effect on the fellow's mind, but the pale, death-like face remains unmoved with

lips firmly closed, and the sheriff's jailers at a nod from the disappointed Judge, tap him on the shoulder and remove him to his doom.

The Court, it was noticed, did not dismiss the jury, but merely adjourned the case until Monday, October 23rd, at two o'clock in the afternoon.

Into the sun of the City streets the crowd pours out of the Guildhall, dazed with the strange horrors they have heard, eager to repeat them. The lawyers return to the Temple, the men of affairs flock to St. Paul's, the courtiers ride back to St. James's, the citizens gather in the taverns. There is no other topic of talk on the lips of men than the mystery of the Overbury murder, and an eager conflict rages round the guilt or innocence of the great Earl. But for the nonce the clash of tongues rages round the vital point of the moment : "Will Weston stand mute?" For if he does the public will be robbed of their entertainment and the drama of the Great Oyer of Poisoning will never be played out.

Chapter XXV: The Trial of Richard

Weston

HE outcry over Coke's revelations reached far
His conduct was generally con-

demned among his fellow-lawyers. Among the

world at large the Puritans received the evidence of the vice and crime in high places with much complacency, and the Howard faction loudly proclaimed that the whole affair was a conspiracy against Somerset. He himself continued with a stout heart to declare his innocence.

The first excitement was as to whether Weston would continue to stand mute. The wretched man had, with considerable insight, complained to William Goare, the Sheriff who had him in charge, that he feared the law would make a net to catch little birds and let the great ones go. Weston had been persuaded by someone that standing mute was to be a very present help in time of trouble, but when he heard from the Chief Justice the legal incidents of it his mind was troubled.

Meanwhile, the schemes of the great ones were all upset by the stupid obstinacy of this clown. In nothing does the comic spirit reveal itself so pleasantly as in the ironic spectacle of lawyers spiked on their own quillets. Here was Coke's Great Oyer of Poisoning brought to an undignified check by a pig-headed wretch taking advantage of a rule of the game. If he stuck to his decision to remain mute and chose the appropriate form of death for that offence, instead of being hanged for murder, then the whole game was over.

This seems to the practical mind of James to be