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THE TOWER

Owing to the plague then raging in London, the customary procession at the coronation was omitted, although the King rode in state from the Tower to Westminster, preparatory to the opening of his first Parliament on 15th of March 1605, as the Londoners had made their welcome for him ready. In Mr Sidney Lee's "Life of Shakespeare," he states that Shakespeare, with eight other players of the King's company of actors, "walked from the Tower of London to Westminster in the procession which accompanied the King in his formal entry into London. Each actor received four and a half yards of scarlet cloth to wear as a cloak on the occasion, and in the document authorising the grant, Shakespeare's name stands first on the list." This is the only time that we can positively know that Shakespeare was ever at the Tower; but his frequent introduction of the fortress into his historical dramas makes it certain that he must often have visited a place so full of dramatic episodes and historical memories.

Four months earlier, while staying at Wilton, news had reached James of a plot to place the crown upon the head of Lady Arabella Stuart, and a large batch of alleged conspirators were taken to the Tower in consequence. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Cobham, and his brother, George Brooke, Thomas Lord Grey de Wilton, Sir Griffin Maskham, Sir Edward Parham, Bartholomew Brookesby, Anthony Copley, and two priests named Weston and Clarke. This conspiracy, if it deserves the name, and for which Raleigh was for the second time sent to the Tower, owed its existence to the unlucky Arabella, daughter of Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox, younger brother of Darnley, and consequently James's first cousin on the mother's side.

Arabella Stuart was also related to the Tudors, and this double relationship to the reigning sovereign and to the late Queen was her greatest misfortune, and the cause of her untimely death. She appears to have been amiable, refined, virtuous, and good-looking, but of a somewhat frail physique and countenance, to judge by the excellent miniature which Oliver painted of her. That her mind was not a strong one is very evident, and one cannot be surprised that she became insane under the burden of her misfortunes.

Cecil, who had brought Essex to the scaffold, now lost no time in bringing Raleigh, Essex's rival, to the Tower, and on the 20th of July 1603, the prison gates of that fortress once again closed upon the founder of Virginia, on a charge of treason, based on the Arabella Stuart conspiracy, nor did they open for him until twelve years had passed. On the following day Raleigh attempted to stab himself with a table-knife, for he seems to have been maddened by his treatment by James and Cecil. In November the plague was so violent in London, that the Law Courts were transferred to Winchester, and it was to that city that Sir Walter and his fellow-prisoners were taken and tried on a charge of "attempting to deprive the King of his crown and dignity; to molest the Government, and alter the true religion established in England, and to levy war against the King."

George Brooke, a brother of Lord Cobham's, and two priests were found guilty and executed, Lords Grey de Wilton, Cobham, and Raleigh were respited, and were taken back to their prison in the Tower. Cobham never regained his liberty, he was a ruined man, and died probably in the Tower. The place of his burial is unknown.

In descent from Joan was Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, attainted first of James the First. He was born 1564, and succeeded to the title 1596-7, and shortly after installed Knight of the Garter. He married Francis Howard, daughter of the Earl of Nottingham, and widow of the Earl of Kildare. He was committed to the Tower December 16th, 1603, tried, and condemned to death, and actually brought out to be executed, but had been privately reprieved beforehand by James the First, who played with Cobham and Gray, and their companions, as a cat would with mice. After fifteen years' rigorous confinement in the Tower, his health failed, and he was allowed out, attended by his gaolers, to visit Bath. This was in 1617, and was taken so ill on his way back he had to stay at Odiham, Hants, at the house of his brother-in-law, Sir Edward Moore. He died, with very little doubt, in the Tower, January 24th, 1619, but the place of his burial has been undiscovered. He had been well supplied with books, for the Lieutenant of the Tower seized a thousand volumes at the time of his death of "all learning and languages." In a letter from Sir Thomas Wynne to Sir Dudley Carlton , 28th of January 1619, occurs this passage: "My Lord Cobham is dead, and lyeth unburied as yet for want of money; he died a papist." This probably was only gossip. While in the Tower he was allowed eight pounds a week for maintenance, but very little of this ever reached him, it probably was absorbed by his keepers and the Lieutenant. During his long imprisonment Lady Kildare never troubled herself further about him. She lived comfortably, first at Cobham, and afterwards at Copthall, Essex.

Lord Grey de Wilton, a young man of great promise, died in St Thomas's Tower in 1617, after passing nine years in the Brick Tower. Lord Grey had made an eloquent defence during his trial, which lasted from eight in the morning until eight at night, during which, according to the Hardwicke State Papers, many "subtle traverses and escapes," took place. When Grey was asked why judgment of death should not be passed against him, he replied, "I have nothing to say." Then he paused a little, and added, "And yet a word of Tacitus comes into my mind, 'non eadem omnibus decora,' the house of the Wiltons have spent many lives in their Princes' service and Grey cannot beg his."

For the next twelve years the Tower was Raleigh's home, and not till he had succeeded in bribing King James's favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, by the payment of a large sum of money, did he again obtain his liberty. Before settling down in the Tower, and while the plague was still raging, Raleigh, with his wife and son, were taken to the Fleet Prison on several occasions. At length they were placed in the not uncomfortable rooms in the Bloody Tower, which he, with his family and servants, must have quite filled, for besides Lady Raleigh and her son Carew, there were two servants named Dean and Talbot, and a boy, who was probably a son of Talbot's. Their imprisonment was not absolutely rigid, for they were allowed the visits of a clergyman named Hawthorne, a doctor, Turner, and a surgeon, Dr John, as well as those of Sir Walter's agent, who came up from Raleigh's place, Sherborn, so that he was kept in touch with his affairs; one or two other friends were also admitted. In addition to these privileges Sir Walter was allowed the run--the liberty as it would be called then--of the Lieutenant of the Tower's garden, which lay at the foot of the Bloody Tower, as has already been mentioned in the description of that place.

In 1604 the penal laws against the Roman Catholics were re-enacted by Parliament, and in the following year the famous Gunpowder Plot was discovered, with the consequence that in the month of November of that year the Tower received many of the principal conspirators, and still more of those individuals who were in some way or other concerned in it. Foremost amongst the latter were the aged Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy, and with him were Henry, Lord Mordaunt, Lord Stourton, and three Jesuit priests, Fathers Garnet, Oldcorn, and Gerrard. Northumberland, besides having to pay an enormous fine, was kept a prisoner in the Tower for sixteen years; Mordaunt and Stourton were also heavily fined and remanded to the fortress during the King's pleasure; Fathers Garnet and Oldcorn were hanged--the former at St Paul's, in the usual manner, after being cruelly tortured, the latter at Worcester. As for the third priest, Gerrard, I have in another part of this work described the treatment he endured and his escape from the Tower.

Of the active conspirators, besides Guy Fawkes--who was executed with Thomas Winter, Rookwood, and Keyes in Old Palace Yard--Sir Everard Digby, the father of the accomplished Sir Kenelm, Robert Winter, Grant, and Bates, were drawn on hurdles to the west end of St Paul's Churchyard, where they were done to death in the approved fashion of execution for high treason.

Guy Fawkes and most of his fellow-prisoners while in the Tower had been placed in the subterranean dungeons beneath the White Tower. Fawkes, besides being tortured by the rack, was placed in "Little Ease," in which horrible hole he is supposed to have been kept for fifty days. Father Oldcorn was imprisoned in the lower room of the Bloody Tower, whilst Father Fisher was in the White Tower; Northumberland, the "Wizard Earl," as he was called on account of his leaning towards chemical experiments, was lodged in the Martin Tower.

Until the month of August in that year , Sir Walter Raleigh's imprisonment in the Bloody Tower had not been very stringent. Sir George Harvey had filled the position of Lieutenant of the Tower, and Sir George and Sir Walter were on friendly terms. His lodging, for a prison, was comfortable enough; his wife and son were still with him, Lady Raleigh having been confined of a second son about this time. In addition to the attendance of his servants and the visits of his friends, as I have mentioned before, he was allowed to have all the books he required for the great literary labour that now began to occupy much of his time. When not working in his little garden by the Tower, or experimenting with his chemicals and decoctions in a small outbuilding which he had built in the garden, or taking exercise on the wall terrace which overlooked the wharf and the river beyond, he would be writing at his "History of the World," that wonderful fragment which is one of the marvels of our literature.

Unfortunately for Sir Walter, his friend Sir George Harvey, with whom he often dined and passed the evening, ceased being Lieutenant at this time, being succeeded by Sir William Waad. Raleigh's feelings towards the new Lieutenant appear to have resembled those of Napoleon to Sir Hudson Lowe. Waad, who had been Clerk of the Council, on his side seems to have had a personal dislike to the great captive over whom he was placed in charge, and to have done all he could--and he had the power of doing a great deal--to render Raleigh's life as unpleasant and galling as possible. For instance, Waad ordered a brick wall to be built in front of the terrace where Raleigh walked, so that the captive could no longer watch the passing life beneath him on the wharf or river. Then Waad complained to Cecil of Raleigh making himself too conspicuous to the people who passed beneath the Bloody Tower, and, not content with annoying Sir Walter, pestered Lady Raleigh, and deprived her of the poor satisfaction of driving her coach into the courtyard of the fortress, a privilege that had hitherto been allowed her. In these and many other petty ways the new Lieutenant contrived to make himself as unpleasant as he possibly could to Raleigh and his wife.

During the alarm consequent upon the Gunpowder Plot, Raleigh was examined by the Council, probably in the Lieutenant's, now the King's House, but naturally nothing could be found to implicate him with the conspiracy, and the King had to bide his time before he could bring his great subject to the block. In 1610, for some unknown reason, Sir Walter was kept a close prisoner in his tower for three months, and Lady Raleigh was taken from him.

In Disraeli's "Amenities of Literature" is the following interesting description of those friends of Sir Walter who shared his pursuits and studies in the Tower:--

'Deep Hariot's mine In which there is no dross.'

"Two other men, Walter Warner, who is said to have suggested to Harvey the great discovery of the circulation of the blood, and Robert Huer, famed for his 'Treatise on the Globes'--these, with Hariot, were the Earl's constant companions; and at a period when science seemed connected with necromancy, the world distinguished the Earl and his three friends as 'Henry the Wizard and his three Magi.'... Such were the men of science, daily guests in the Tower during the imprisonment of Raleigh; and when he had constructed his laboratory to pursue his chemical experiments, he must have multiplied their wonders. With one he had been intimately connected early in life, Hariot had been his mathematical tutor, was domesticated in his house, and became his confidential agent in the expedition to Virginia. Raleigh had warmly recommended his friend to the Earl of Northumberland, and Sion House became Hariot's home and observatory."

The elder Disraeli has argued that Raleigh could not possibly have written the whole of that large tome, "The History of the World," himself, for want of books of reference whilst in the Tower. But as his friends supplied him with books, and he himself had probably taken copious notes for the work while living in the old home of the Desmonds at Youghal, in Ireland, where a remnant of the old Desmond library is still existing, the argument can scarcely be considered proved. The late Sir John Pope Hennessy has pointed out in his work on "Raleigh in Ireland," that, by an odd coincidence, the son of the sixteenth Earl of Desmond, whose lands Raleigh held in Ireland, was a fellow-prisoner of Sir Walter's in the Tower during his first imprisonment in the fortress during Elizabeth's reign. Desmond died in prison in 1608, and was buried in St Peter's Chapel. Raleigh had this youth's sad fate in his mind, it seems, when he wrote from the Tower, "Wee shall be judged as we judge--and be dealt withal as wee deal with others in this life, if wee believe God Himself."

An almost contemporary historian, Sir Richard Baker, refers to Raleigh's imprisonment in the following quaint manner:--"He was kept in the Tower, where he had great honour; he spent his time in writing, and had been a happy man if he had never been released." A strange description, surely, of what is generally understood by the term, "happy man."

Henry, Prince of Wales, seems to have been the only member of his family who appreciated Sir Walter, frequently visiting him at the Tower. On one of the occasions when he had left him, the young prince remarked to one of his following that no king except his father could keep such a bird in such a cage. The Prince's mother, Queen Anne, seems also to have shown some interest in Raleigh's fate, and to have tried to induce her miserable husband to set him free.

In 1611 Arabella Stuart was brought a prisoner into the Tower, and with her, Lady Shrewsbury. When the news of Arabella's marriage with young William Seymour reached the King, her fate was sealed, for by this marriage the half-captivity in which she had lived was changed into captivity for life; and few of James the First's evil actions, and they were not a few, were more mean or cowardly than his treatment of his poor kinswoman, Arabella Hertford.

She had never been known to mix in politics, and if she had any ambition, it was the noble ambition of wishing to lead a pure life away from an infamous court. Poor Arabella used to declare that although she was often asked to marry some foreign prince, nothing on earth would induce her to marry any man whom she did not know, or for whom she had no liking.

At Christmastide of 1609, James, hearing a rumour that seemed to point to Arabella being married to some foreign prince, had sent her to the Tower, releasing her when he discovered that his fears were groundless, and giving his consent to her marrying one of his subjects should she wish to do so. Unfortunately, Arabella took advantage of the King's consent, trusting to his word, but she found to her bitter cost how hollow and false that promise was. In the following February she plighted her troth to William Seymour, both probably relying upon the Royal word. Whether James had forgotten that Seymour was a probable suitor for Arabella's hand when he gave his promise cannot be known, but Arabella could not have made a more unlucky choice, as far as she herself was concerned, for the Suffolk claims had been recognised by Act of Parliament; and the same Parliament which had acknowledged James the First could not alter the order of succession, and, consequently, William Seymour being the grandson of Lord Hertford, by his wife, Catharine Grey, was in what was called the "Suffolk Succession." His marriage to Arabella brought her still nearer to the Crown, and any children born of the marriage would have had a good chance of succeeding to the throne.

The young couple were summoned to appear before the Council, and were charged to give up all thoughts of marriage. But, in spite of King and Council, they were secretly married in the month of May 1611--a month said to be unlucky for marriages. Two months afterwards the news reached the King, and the storm burst over the unlucky lovers. Arabella was sent a prisoner to Lambeth Palace, and her husband to the Tower. From Lambeth Arabella was first removed to the house of Mr Conyers at Highgate, and thence she was to be sent to Durham Castle in charge of the Bishop. At Highgate, however, she fell ill, or pretended to fall ill, and the famous attempt made to escape by herself and her husband took place.

James made as much ado about this attempted escape of the Hertfords as if he had discovered a second Gunpowder Plot. And not only did he have all those who had been concerned in Arabella's flight seized and imprisoned in the Tower, but kept the Countess of Shrewsbury and the Earl strict prisoners in their house, and ordered the old Earl of Hertford to appear before him.

From all appearances William Seymour showed a lack of courage at this time, not unlike the husband of Lady Catherine Seymour in the last reign, for he remained abroad while the storm with all its fury fell and crushed his young wife. Poor Arabella lingered on in her prison till death released her from her troubles on the 25th of September 1615. She had been kept both in the Belfry Tower and in the Lieutenant's House, but had lost her reason some time previous to her final release both from durance and the world. Her body was taken in the dead of night to Westminster Abbey, and placed below the coffin of Mary Queen of Scots. Mickle, the author of "Cumnor Hall," and "There's nae luck about the house," is credited with having written the touching ballad on Arabella Stuart, which is included in Evans's "Old Ballads."

"Where London's Tower its turrets shew, So stately by old Thames's side, Fair Arabella, child of woe, For many a day had sat and sighed. And as she heard the waves arise, And as she heard the black wind roar, As fast did heave her heartfelt sighs, And still so fast her tears did pour."

In 1613, Sir William Waad, to the great delight of Raleigh, as well as of the other prisoners in the Tower, vacated his post as Lieutenant. He had been charged with the theft of the unfortunate Arabella's jewels, but his dismissal was also connected with a still more tragic story--the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury--a murder which throws a very lurid light upon the doings of James the First's court and courtiers. Two years before Arabella's death, the Tower had been the scene of a most foul murder. Scandalous as was the court of James, murder had not yet been associated with it, but in the year 1613 the fate of Sir Thomas Overbury added that dark crime to its other villainies.

"O Eloquent, just and mighty Death! whom none could advise thou hast persuaded: what now none hath dared thou hast done; and whom the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, ambition of man, and covered it over with these two narrow words: 'Hic Jacet.'" How noble, too, are the introductory lines to Ben Jonson, wherein he commends the serious study of history:

"... that nor the good might be defrauded, nor the great so cured; But both might know their ways are understood, And the reward and punishment assured."

No wonder that James disapproved of such sentiments and said of the "History," "it is too saucy in censuring the acts of princes."

To Raleigh, more than to any other of the great Elizabethan heroes, does England owe her mighty earth-embracing dominion. Sir Walter never ceased to urge the expansion of the empire, nor wearied in his efforts to make the English fleet the foremost in all the seas, not only as a check to Spain, but in order that the colonial possessions of the kingdom might be increased; and he, more than any of our great soldier-statesmen deserved those noble lines of Milton: "Those who of thy free Grace didst build up this Brittanick Empire to a glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter islands about her, stay us in this felicitie."

But to return to Sir Walter Raleigh. He invested all that remained of his own and his wife's fortunes in furnishing the expedition to Guiana, which proved so disastrous, on which he now embarked. On his return, a ruined man and a prisoner, he expressed his amazement at having thus in one desperate bid placed his life and all that he possessed in that unlucky venture. But before Raleigh had left England, Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, had told his master, the King of Spain, that Raleigh was a pre-doomed man. For James had not only revealed every detail relating to the Guiana expedition to Gondomar, but on condition that if any subject or property belonging to Spain were touched he had promised to hand over Raleigh to the Spanish Government in order that he might be hanged at Seville. To assure Gondomar of his good faith, James actually showed the ambassador a private letter written him by Raleigh, in which the exact number of his ships, men, and the place where the great silver mine was said to be located on the Orinoco, were all set forth. As the Spaniards claimed the whole of Guiana, it was evident that if Raleigh landed there he must infringe upon the Spanish possessions, and thus place himself, according to James's promise to Gondomar, in the power of his enemies.

The expedition sailed from England at the end of March 1617, from Plymouth, and consisted of fourteen ships and nine hundred men. But its story was one of continued disaster, and on the 21st of June 1618, writing to his friend Lord Carew, Raleigh gives a detailed account of all his misfortunes. In the postscript he adds: "I beg you will excuse me to my Lords for not writing to them, because want of sleep for fear of being surprised in my cabin at night" "has almost deprived me of sight, and some return of the pleurisy which I had in the Tower has so weakened my hand that I cannot hold the pen." Sir Walter's eldest son was killed gallantly fighting in Guiana.

Then followed a miserable time, and on his road to London the hope of life at times impelled him to attempt escape, but he was doomed to drink the bitter cup of his King's ingratitude to the dregs. On the 10th of August he again entered the Tower where so much of his life had been spent, and which was now to be his last abode on earth.

The next day the Council of State met to decide upon Sir Walter's fate, and incredible as it seems, it was actually debated whether Raleigh should be handed over to the tender mercies of the Spaniards or executed in London. Surely if what passed on this earth could have been known to Elizabeth, she would have burst her tomb at Westminster to protest against this abomination, this unspeakable shame and disgrace to the name of England.

The end being now so certain and so near, the bright courage of the man returned; there was no shrinking with the closing scene so close at hand. He was not brought back to the Tower after his condemnation, and he passed his last night upon earth in the Gate House at Westminster, close to which the scaffold stood in Old Palace Yard. He had a last parting that evening with his devoted wife, his "dear Bess," but neither dared to speak of their only remaining son--that would have been too bitter a pang for them to bear. Sir Walter's last words to his wife were full of hope and courage: "It is well, dear Bess," he said, referring to Lady Raleigh having been promised his body next day, the only mercy allowed her by the Council, "that thou mayest dispose of that dead which thou hadst not always the disposing of when alive." Then she left him. During the long hours of that last night, he composed those beautiful lines which will last as long as the language in which they are written:

"Even such is time! who takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with earth and dust: Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days. But from that earth, that grave, that dust, The Lord shall raise me up I trust."

Raleigh wrote these lines in a Bible which he had brought with him from the Tower.

Carlyle has summed up Raleigh's life and death in the following pregnant lines, in his "Historical Sketches":--

"On the morning of the 29th of October 1618 in Palace Yard, a cold morning, equivalent to our 8th of November, behold Sir Walter Raleigh, a tall gray-headed man of sixty-five gone. He has been in far countries, seen the El Dorado, penetrated into the fabulous dragon-realms of the West, hanged Spaniards in Ireland, rifled Spaniards in Orinoco--for forty years in quest a most busy man; has appeared in many characters; this is his last appearance on any stage. Probably as brave a soul as lives in England;--he has come here to die by the headman's axe. What crime? Alas, he has been unfortunate: become an eyesore to the Spanish, and did not discover El Dorado mine. Since Winchester, when John Gibb came galloping , he has been lain thirteen years in the Tower; the travails of that strong heart have been many. Poor Raleigh, toiling, travelling always: in Court drawing-rooms, on the hot shore of Guiana, with gold and promotions in his fancy, with suicide, death, and despair in clear sight of him; toiling till his brain is broken and his heart is broken: here stands he at last; after many travails it has come to this with him."

Sir Walter Raleigh died a martyr to the cause of a Greater Britain; his life thrown as a sop to the Spanish Cerberus by the most debased and ignoble of our kings. Raleigh's faults were undoubtedly many, but his great qualities, his superb courage, his devotion to his country, his faith in the future greatness of England, were infinitely greater, and outweighed a thousand times all his failings. The onus of the guilt of his death--a judicial murder if ever there was one--must be borne by the base councillors who truckled to the King, and by the King himself who, Judas-like, sold Raleigh to Spain.

Some less interesting State prisoners occupied the Tower towards the close of the inglorious reign of James Stuart. Among these were Gervase, Lord Clifford, imprisoned for threatening the Lord Keeper in 1617. Clifford committed suicide in the Tower in the following year. About the same time, Sir Thomas Luke, one of the Secretaries of State, and his daughter, were imprisoned in the Tower on the charge of insulting Lady Exeter, whom they accused of incest and witchcraft, but, whether the charges were true or false, they were soon liberated. James's court seems to have combined all the vices, for Lord and Lady Suffolk were also prisoners in the fortress about the same time, accused of bribery and corruption.

To the Tower also were sent the two great lawyers--Lord Chancellor Bacon, and Sir Edward Coke--the former for having received bribes, the latter for the part he had taken in supporting the privileges of the House of Commons. Here, also, two noble lords, the Earl of Arundel and Lord Spencer, were in durance, owing to a quarrel between them in the House of Lords, when Arundel had insulted Spencer by telling him that at no distant time back his ancestors had been engaged in tending sheep, to which Lord Spencer responded: "When my ancestors were keeping sheep, yours were plotting treason." The dispute seems scarcely of sufficient importance to have sent both disputants to the Tower.

The last State prisoner of mark to be sent to the Tower in James's reign was Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, who had been found guilty of receiving bribes in his official capacity as Lord High Treasurer.

A very remarkable man occupied a prison in the Tower early in Charles's reign. This was Sir John Eliot, "fiery Eliot" Carlyle calls him. He was first of that noble band of patriots who defied Charles's tyranny, and had been sent to the Tower in the winter of 1624-25 for censuring Buckingham during Charles's second Parliament, but he remained there only a short time. In the March of 1628, however, Eliot, with a batch of independent members of the House of Commons--amongst whom were Denzil Holles, Selden, Valentine, Coryton, and Heyman--was again imprisoned in the Tower. Eliot had boldly declared that the "King's judges, Privy Council, Judges and learned Council had conspired to trample under their feet the liberties of the subjects of the realm, and the liberties of the House." Denzil Holles and Valentine were the two members who had kept the Speaker in his chair by main force; the others were committed to prison for using language reflecting on the King and his Ministers. For the following three months these members of Parliament were kept in close confinement in the fortress, books and all writing materials being strictly kept from them. In May, Sir John Eliot was taken to Westminster, where an inquiry was held but no judgment given. After his return to the Tower, however, Eliot was allowed to write letters, and was also given "the liberty of the Tower," and permitted to see a few friends. In the month of October Eliot and the others were taken to the chambers of the Lord Chief-Justice, and thence to the Marshalsea Prison, a change which he jokingly described as having "left their Palace in London for country quarters at Southwark." Then they were tried, and Eliot, being judged the most culpable, was fined two thousand pounds, and ordered to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure. As for the fine, Eliot remarked that he "possessed two cloaks, two suits of clothes, two pairs of boots, and a few books, and if they could pick two thousand pounds out of that, much good might it do them." The fearless member never quitted the Tower again, for a galloping consumption carried him off two years after he had written the above lines. There can be no doubt that this consumption was not a little owing to the harsh treatment he endured. In 1630 he wrote to his friend Knightley, alluding to rumours of his being released. "Have no confidence in such reports; sand was the best material on which they rested, and the many fancies of the multitude; unless they pointed at that kind of libertie, 'libertie of mynde.' But other libertie I know not, having so little interest in her masters that I expect no service from her." His prison was frequently changed, and many restraints were put upon him, for, on the 26th of December, he writes to his old friend, the famous John Hampden, that his lodgings have been moved. "I am now," he says, "where candle-light may be suffered, but scarce fire. None but my servants, hardly my sonne, may have admittance to me; my friends I must desire for their own sake to forbear coming to the Tower." Poor Eliot was dying fast in the year 1632, but his last letter to Hampden, dated the 22nd of March, is full of his old brave spirit, and the gentle humour that distinguished this great and good man. The letter concludes thus: "Great is the authority of princes, but greater much is theirs who both command our persons and our will. What the success of their Government will be must be referred to Him that is master of their power." The doctor had informed the authorities that any fresh air and exercise would help Eliot to live, but all the air they gave him was a "smoky room," and all the exercise, a few steps on the platform of a wall. On the 27th of November Eliot died, "not without a suspicion of foul play," wrote Ludlow some years afterwards.

Eliot's staunch friends, Pym and Hampden, moved in the House for a committee "to examine after what manner Sir John Eliot came to his death, his usage in the Tower, and to view the rooms and place where he was imprisoned and where he died, and to report the same to the House," a motion which shows how matters had changed for the better since the days of Elizabeth, none of whose Parliaments would have dared thus to question the treatment of State prisoners.

The blame of his untimely death--for he was but forty-two--rests upon those who let him die by inches in his prison as much as if they had beheaded him on Tower Hill. John Eliot died a martyr in the cause of constitutional liberty as opposed to monarchical autocracy. Eliot's son petitioned the King to be allowed to remove his father's body to their old Cornish home at St Germains, but the vindictive and narrow-minded monarch, who would not even forgive Eliot after death had intervened, refused the prayer, writing at the foot of the petition, "Lett Sir John Eliot's body be buried in the church of the parish where he died." No stone marks the spot where he is buried, and his dust mingles with that of the illustrious dead in St Peter's Chapel in the Tower, but his name will be remembered as long as liberty is loved in his native land.

We now come to a period of quite another sort.

In Carlyle's "Historical Sketches," John Felton, the assassin of Buckingham, is thus described:--"Short, swart figure, of military taciturnity, of Rhadamanthian energy and gravity.... Passing along Tower Hill one of these August days Lieutenant Felton sees a sheath-knife on a stall there, value thirteen pence, of short, broad blade, sharp trowel point." We know the use Felton made of that Tower Hill knife on his visit to Portsmouth, where Buckingham was then about to set sail for his second expedition to La Rochelle; how he stabbed the gay Duke to the heart, exclaiming, as he struck him: "God have mercy on thy soul!" how he was promptly arrested, brought to London and imprisoned in the Tower.

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