dainty cobweb ruff, casting a moment's glance of hatred and contempt towards where the Earl stood as she gathered her cloak about her and spread her fan across her breast. Then as if she had been entering a ballroom in the King's palace at Whitehall, and the executioner was some dainty page preceding her honoured footsteps, she waved her woman aside, and accepting the Lieutenant's hand with a gracious bow, walked proudly through the throng out of the great hall.

That was the last exit of this pitiful beautiful woman and the world knew her no more.

Chapter XXXIII: The Terror of the

King

AROM the very first, as we have seen, the King was in great anxiety as to what Somerset might

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say or do when he was brought to trial. Since Coke had allowed His Majesty to see the depositions upon which the minor characters in the tragedy had been executed, the King had noted to Bacon his view that the evidence was very weak against the Earl of Somerset. In this Bacon concurred, and the delays and adjournments made from time to time at the King's instance, took place in order to bring the Earl to a confession of a crime of which he denied all knowledge and of which there was little or no evidence that he was guilty.

As far back as December Lord Knollys and Lord Hay, as emissaries of James, had visited the Earl in the Tower where he was under custody of Sir George More, to whom His Majesty deigned to send a long apologia to be read or spoken to his prisoner. The Lieutenant was to explain to the Earl that the King was "sorry to see that he continues still to take the wrong course to his own hurt in this business as he hath done since the beginning of it." He is also to assure his prisoner that he had not really dealt rigorously with him in committing him to the Tower, since the accusation against him is "murther of the fowlest kinde," that the proofs against him were very pregnant-which the King did not really believe-and that "there was a great murmur amongst the people that justice was stayed," which was, no doubt, very true. The Lieutenant was therefore to remind him-doubtless to strike fear into his heart

that the common people had expressed their joy for the justice done against Weston, that the church bells had rung merrily throughout the city on the day of his execution, and that the Lord Mayor and Corporation had expressed to the King the great comfort they had received from the judgment against the other prisoners and the great happiness they had " in living under the government of such a King."

Somerset, however, was not moved by these covert threats. He from first to last asserted his innocence, and though he did not see his wife, and had indeed little desire to do so, for he was now assured of her guilt, he did, whilst repeating his protest against his own treatment, petition for his wife that she "might not be brought to an open trial but that she might be kept in some private corner all the days of her life, since she is the mother of a child."

James replied very sensibly to this prayer, pointing out the impossibility of such an arrangement. He added that Somerset must clearly take his trial, too, for if he be innocent all will be well; "but if he be guilty (as God forbid), then must he take a course by his humble confessions to plead for mercy, I being to follow the example of Almighty God who doth not forgive sins until they be confessed and sorrowed for, no more can I show mercy where innocency is stood upon and the offence not made known by confession unto me."

This invitation to confess in hope of the King's mercy was constantly repeated, but the Earl of Somerset knew his royal master and could read his innermost heart, and preferred to stand on his innocence.

Somerset indeed dealt very haughtily with the King throughout his imprisonment, and flatly told his jailer that he was not going to take his trial at all, and that if he was carried to trial by force it would be an evil day for the King. James in his letters seemed to believe there was substance in his threats and was clearly in terror of some exposure. As to what was at the back

of their minds in this strange correspondence between prisoner and King it is easy to guess, but impossible to prove. Some have thought that the King, Somerset, and Mayerne were all concerned in the death of Prince Henry, but modern medical opinion will have none of it and scoffs at Coke's suspicions. Others think that the King feared an exposure of the immoralities of his Court. Others again believe there were Spanish political intrigues, the disclosure of which would be politically inconvenient. But the most extraordinary theory of all is the belief put forward by some serious students of this strange story, that the King himself was actor, art and part in the murder of Overbury, and that that was the reason why Dr. Mayerne retired to Bath during the trials and did not give evidence. As to this, the King in writing to Sir George More with his personal instructions to press the Earl to make a confession seems to think that Somerset will threaten him with "laying an aspersion upon me of being in some sort accessory to his crime," and he is bid to urge him to confession, by reason that I refuse him no favour which I can grant him, without taking upon me the suspicion of being guilty of this crime whereof he is accused." If the King was guilty of conspiring with Somerset to murder Overbury then, of course, Somerset's innocence seems impossible. But there is no evidence of such a thing, and all that we can know to-day is that His Majesty was in great dread of bringing Somerset to trial for fear he should take his revenge upon him by making some scandalous personal charges from the dock.

The correspondence of Bacon and James and Villiers on the subject is full of interest. Bacon indeed bears strong witness to Somerset's constancy in the assertion of his innocence, for when at an examination in the Tower the Lord Chancellor sought to put him in mind. of the danger in which he stood from the charge of empoisoning, Bacon writes to the King that the Earl was little moved with it, and pretended carelessness

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of life, since ignominy had made him unfit for His Majesty's service."

Bacon knew the King's mind and the King's fears, and did all in his power to extort a confession from Somerset. When that was not forthcoming he wrote the King a careful minute, explaining the alternatives as he understood them. The King, he thought, might either stay the trials and so save both the prisoners from public ignominy, or he might let the trials proceed and stay or reprieve the judgment, or there was the third alternative, that both trial and judgment might proceed and then the King could "save the blood only not from corrupting but spilling."

Bacon knew that there was no intention in the King's mind to kill his favourite or his Treasurer's daughter. In his private correspondence with James and Villiers he makes it quite clear that the game to be played is to accept the Countess's plea of guilty first, and then to convict Somerset, so that he shall not trouble His Majesty and his new favourite in the future, and not to allow any aspersion to be made against James personally or the methods of justice of the King.

He finds, therefore, for his royal master many very shrewd excuses for the line of conduct he knows that he wishes to adopt, and among the reasons he sets out for the exercise of mercy is that "the former offenders did none of them make a clear confession." Mr. Attorney did not believe the reassuring nonsense that Coke reiterated every time he appeared on the Bench, that all the prisoners had confessed their crimes to him or to the ubiquitous utility parson, Dr. Whiting. From first to last he treats the evidence Coke has collected so laboriously with the contempt the bulk of it deserves, but he is ready to pick out what is sufficient for his own purposes and to guarantee Villiers a conviction of the man who still stands between him and the King.

A fortnight before the trials he is able to tell the King what will happen. His forecast is wonderfully