belief is a fact which requires explanation, and the explanation I believe to be very simple.

7.

Franklin who, though a great villain, seems to have been a man of humour and no fool, had discovered, in the course of the examinations which he underwent, the soft place in Coke's head. Before his trial he had dropped into his ear some dark hint of a great Popish poisonplot; which worked so powerfully, that that wonderful announcement from the Bench, which I have already mentioned, of the narrow escape of Court, City, and the greater number of particular houses from the malice of that wicked crew, followed immediately. And when after his conviction Dr. Whiting was sent to " press his conscience," he allowed it to be delivered of the following confessions, as noted down by Coke himself, I presume from Dr. Whiting's report.

28 Die Nov.

The relation of Doctor Whightinge.

The Doctor conferring with Franklyn, and the Lord Treasurer being named, he said that he was as far in as himself.

He said further that the Lady of Somerset was the most impudent woman that lived, and there was no hoe with her.

He confessed that he said at the bar to some near to him, that there were greater persons in this matter than were yet known, and so in truth then said he there are; and that, although the Chief Justice hath found and sifteth out as much as any man could, yet that he is much awry, and has not come to the ground of the business; for more were to be poisoned and murdered than are yet known, and he marvelleth that they have not been poisoned and murdered all this while. He said further, that the man was not known that gave him the clyster, and that it was that did the deed.

I could have put the Chief Justice in the right way the first day I came to him, but now he hath put me in the right way to heaven.

And being asked whether he should not have had an hundred pounds to be employed to the Palsgrave and the Lady Elizabeth, answered An hundred! Nay five hundred. I will not say how much.

He saith that the Earl of Somerset and the Countess hath the most aspiring minds that ever were heard or read of.

He saith that the Earl of Somerset had a great book of policies and how to rise, which book Franklyn had once.

And saith that the Earl never loved the Prince nor the Lady Elizabeth. I could say more, but I will not.

Do not you marvel wherefore the King useth an outlandish physician

and an outlandish apothecary about him, and about the late Prince deceased? Therein (saith he) lieth a long tale.

Being told that the Queen had been extraordinarily sick and pained, and her young children taken away, said he, soft, I am not come to it yet.

I think next the gunpowder treason there was never such a plot as this is. I could discover knights, great men, and others. I am almost ashamed to speak what I know.

He could have confessed he had seen twenty letters from the Lieutenant to the Lady of Essex, whereof two he formerly confessed.

And Sir Thomas Mounson brought her word from the Lieutenant how Sir Thomas Overbury did, and so did one knight and another knight more. If I cannot prove these things I should be ten thousand times more the son of the Devil than now I am; but God hath sent me now more grace than so to do.

It was said to him that it was not possible that so young a lady as the Lady Somerset should contrive such a plot without some helps. No, no (said he) who can think otherwise? for the Lady had no money, but the money was had from the old Lady, one day 2007. and another day 5007. for we wanted no money.

He gave a glance of Sir William Mounson for the bringing of an hundred pound for the feeding of the plot.

He said that there is one living about the town that is fit to be called in question about the pictures and the plot against the Earl of Essex. I can make one discovery that should deserve my life.

He said he had some knowledge in all acts and villanies and knaveries in the world, but now he had recanted them and repented himself for them. He thanked God for it.

I could never find by any constellation or conjuration that I should be hanged; but therein the devil hath deceived me. FINIS.1

If Coke had contented himself with taking down these offers of information in order to see whether any light could be got out of them, and kept them in the meantime to himself, all would have been well. But though the bait seems coarse and clumsy, it was so well suited to his appetite that he seized it without examining and swallowed it without pausing. The note of these confessions is dated, we see, the 28th of November. On the 4th of December he made that other announcement from the Bench (which I have also mentioned) of a discovery that made "our deliverance as great as any that happened to the children of Israel:" adding (it is said) an obscure hint that he knew something about the death of "that sweet Prince Henry."

It was out of these hints, as I conceive, that all the mystery grew.

1 S. P. Dom. James I., vol. lxxxiii. no. 74. Docketed by Coke "The Conference between the Doctor and Franklyn."

Hearing such sayings from the oracle on the Bench, no wonder that the people, whose imagination was now all awake and agape for horrors, believed that some horrible iniquity was presently to be brought to light. No wonder that when nothing came they supposed that it had for mysterious reasons been hushed up; that thereupon they employed themselves in dark conjectures, which begot a brood of dark rumours; and that when Coke, not many months after, was removed from the Bench, they remembered the hints which had fallen from him on this occasion, and concluded that he had forfeited the King's favour by seeing too far into his secrets. A little reflexion might indeed have told them that when a man like Coke becomes dangerous from knowing too much, to disgrace him without silencing him is the last thing upon which a King who feared him would venture. But people never trouble themselves on these occasions to reflect. All the rest was natural, and (as things appeared then) not unreasonable. Some great iniquity had been found out and hushed up. What? why? by whom? To the last question the answer was obvious: by the King: for who but the King had power to stop inquiry or forbid disclosure? And why should the King have stopped inquiry? Doubtless because he had done something which he did not wish to become known. And what was it then that the King had done, of which he so dreaded the discovery? This opened a wide field for conjecture. Any crime would do that was bad enough; and as there was no evidence to guide the guesser toward any one in particular, each chose the one he liked best; preference being generally given to that class of crimes which cannot be named; because in them evidence was less to be expected. With a general presumption like this against him, it would be hard for a man to get through his life without incurring suspicion of something in particular. And the King's conduct in the prosecution of this cause,― straightforward, open, and consistent as it was,-was found to supply some hints for the suspicious. In the first place, when Somerset returned from Royston to London after the appointment of the commission, the King (having heard Coke's opinion of the evidence, but not seen the evidence itself) took leave of him with his usual demonstrations of affection; but observed, as soon as he was gone, that he should never see his face more. In the second place, after Somerset had been examined by the Commissioners, and they had reported that the examinations and testimonies gave ground in their opinion for vehement suspicion that he had been an accessary to the murder before the fact, the King showed great anxiety to induce him to confess himself guilty, and caused private communications to be made to him as by authority, holding out hopes of

pardon if he would do so. In the third place, when Somerset declared to Sir George More that the King durst not bring him to trial, and seemed to threaten that if he did he would publicly "tax him" with something, the King did not treat this threat with indifference, but took counsel with his lawyers and judges as to the means of preventing him from putting it in execution. In the fourth place, on the day of trial it was observed at Court that when the news of the verdict reached Greenwich, the King, who had been restless and uneasy before,1 recovered his usual composure. In the fifth place, though sentence of death was recorded in the usual form against both the Earl and the Countess, he spared their lives.

It will hardly be contended that these particular facts would justify any serious suspicion of any serious criminality, were it not for the previous assumption that something had been hushed up, and the fair inference that there was something to conceal. If that previous assumption were withdrawn, it would be found that there is no ground whatever for any such suspicion. And withdrawn, I think, it must be, absolutely and unconditionally; as having a distinct, wellauthenticated, and unbroken pedigree from nothing at all. The belief that something had been hushed up was the legitimate offspring of the belief that something of a dreadful nature had been discovered, which was never revealed. The belief that something of a dreadful nature had been discovered was the legitimate offspring of a public intimation to that effect from the Chief Justice of England. The intimation from the Chief Justice was the legitimate offspring (though an untimely birth) of his belief that he had discovered it. The belief that he had discovered it was the offspring (legitimate also, according to his own doctrine that the evidence of a man who accuses himself in his testimony is as strong as if on oath) of Franklin's liberal budget of confessions. And Franklin's budget of confessions was the natural offspring of his disinclination to be hanged sooner than he could help. Unless therefore there be any difficulty in believing that Franklin was a man who would tell a lie rather than be hanged, there is no reason for supposing that the iniquities he hinted at had any existence except in his own brain. By pretending to be able to disclose such things, he knew that he should at any rate delay his own execution. That his statements were false, we have

1 The reporter, a very fair witness, describes him as so extreme sad and discontented, as he did retire himself from all company, and did forbear both dinner and supper until he had heard what answer the said Earl had made." (Sherburn to Carleton, 31 May 1616.) But as we now know that Gondomar was a long time with him that day talking about the Spanish match ('Archæologia,' xli. p. 181), we must beware of concluding that the time of his retirement was all spent in guilty terror.

:

what may be regarded as positive evidence for there are among our State Papers several examinations taken down in Coke's own hand, evidently suggested by Franklin's information, and aiming to elicit evidence in corroboration of it, which show that he had followed the scent with his usual zeal and diligence and found nothing. A few vague rumours and a few old wives' stories were all the return of his industry.

This general assumption being withdrawn, the facts which remain admit in my opinion of an easy and sufficient explanation. The King parted with Somerset at Royston in his ordinary manner, because (making a just distinction between accusation and guilt) he would not treat as guilty a man who had not even heard what he was accused of. He observed at the same time that he should never see his face more, because he feared, from what Coke had said, that the accusation would be justified by the evidence. After hearing the report of the Commissioners upon their first examinations of him, he was anxious, for the reasons which I have already stated and need not repeat, to induce him to confess his crime. When threatened with a counter-accusation against himself, he felt uneasy, because to one in his position such an accusation, however groundless, would have been at least extremely inconvenient. He refrained from carrying the sentence into execution, partly because he did not feel certain that it was just; partly because the utter ruin of so great a fortune was punishment sufficient for an example and a deterrent; and partly (perhaps chiefly) because he could not forget that the man had been for so many years his bosom-friend, and to order him out to an ignominious death was more than he could bring himself to :— a weakness perhaps; but a weakness which, if not respected, may at least be excused.

A complete discussion of his behaviour to Somerset during all this business would lead me too far away from my proper subject. If any reader wishes for further information as to the grounds upon which I dissent from many conclusions which have been commonly accepted, I must be content to refer him to a paper which I read to the Society of Antiquaries in March 1866, and which will be found in the forty-first volume of the Archæologia." But I cannot quit the subject without taking some notice of an elaborate and rather imposing treatise, devoted specially to the elucidation of it, in which an opposite view is taken of everything, and supported with a great show of diligence and learning.

1 'Review of the Evidence respecting the Conduct of King James I. in the case of Sir Thomas Overbury, in a letter to C. Knight Watson, Esq.'