The Coming of the King: Henry Gresham and James I (The Henry Gresham Series Book 3)

by Martin Stephen

  ‘Can I leave you Mannion?’ Gresham asked.

  ‘Would you?’ she asked.

  Would he? Lose the only two people he loved?

  ‘For you, yes. For anyone else, no. For you, yes.’

  They travelled to Winchester together.

  They said Henry III had built Winchester Castle’s Great Hall, with its towering marble columns and coats of arms on every available inch of plastered wall.

  Gresham had ensured he and Jane, and Mannion, had seats on the back row, by the door, at a cost that would have fed a poor family for a month. To their credit, several of Raleigh’s friends had come, risking the displeasure of the Court in so doing. They greeted Gresham cheerfully.

  ‘Who’re the judges?’ asked Jane in a whisper, not wanting to appear ignorant.

  ‘The Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Popham, presides,’ whispered Gresham back. ‘Huge, ugly man, shady past; meant to have been stolen by gypsies as a child. Three other judges I don’t know, except I’m told they’re all Cecil’s men. Then there’s seven Commissioners, all the Crown’s men – Cecil, Suffolk, Devonshire and Henry Howard, and three others, all Cecil’s men.’

  ‘It’s fair trial then,’ said Jane. ‘Raleigh doesn’t stand a chance!’

  ‘He knows that. They even substituted three jurors as late as last night. Someone said they might be Raleigh’s friends.’

  ‘Does Popham prosecute?’

  ‘He might as well. But no, he doesn’t. That’s the job of the Attorney General, Sir Edward Coke. You’ll find him a real treat. He’s special. Quite the star.’

  It was eight in the morning when the trial started, and Gresham thought what a painting it would have made. The vast, imposing hall; Popham in full regalia under a splendid brocade canopy; the other judges and the Commissioners ranged at his side; the crowd, excited, restless, and in the centre, looking old, ill and infirm, Raleigh and the stool they had reluctantly allowed him. The charges were read out, sonorously, at great length. There was a stirring in the audience when one made specific mention of Arbella Stuart. Raleigh smiled at this, stirred himself and announced in a clear voice that she had no more claim on the Crown than Raleigh, and Raleigh had none. Raleigh accepted the jurors, albeit with a wry, sardonic smile at his lips, and pleaded ‘Not Guilty’. There was another stirring at this, and hissing. The crowd did not like Raleigh, and took against him even more for what they clearly saw as a useless attempt to prevaricate.

  Then Raleigh surprised them all, including Gresham.

  ‘My Lord, my health is not good and my memory failing. There will be many points made, too many for me to remember each one. May I ask that each point be answered separately by me, so that I may give a true and honest response?’

  Coke leapt to his feet. He was tall, handsome even, but marred by a fiery red face.

  ‘My Lord, I object! The King’s evidence is like a beautiful body. It cannot be broken into pieces without its ruin!’

  To Gresham’s great surprise, Coke was overruled. What might this mean?

  Undeterred, Coke leapt to his feet and delivered an impassioned monologue. After the first five minutes, the crowd began to mutter. Coke’s sermon was on the Bye Plot, a small scale affair led by some priests that had easily been found out before the plot supposedly involving Cobham, Raleigh and the Spaniards, which had become known as the Main Plot simply because it posed a far more credible threat to the monarchy. The judges said nothing but the chatter from the crowd rose louder and louder, until finally Raleigh spoke, addressing the jurors.

  ‘Gentlemen! I ask you to remember that I am not charged with this plot, which was the work of the priests.’

  Coke leapt in.

  ‘All treason is linked!’ he shouted, passion so great that the words seemed to hiss like water thrown into a hot frying pan. He then rambled on to discuss plots in the reign of Henry VII.

  ‘Has he lost it?’ whispered Jane, who had started to feel uncomfortable at the way several men were looking at her. I feel like a bitch in season, she thought, taken out into a public place where the dogs roam free.

  ‘No.’ Said Gresham, ‘just warming up, I think.’

  Raleigh spoke.

  ‘Prove to me the charges you have laid against me! Prove them, provide evidence, and you will not need to sentence me. I will confess and sentence myself to all the tortures of Hell.’

  ‘I will prove all,’ hissed Coke. ‘You are a monster! You have an English face but a Spanish heart. You conspired with Lord Cobham and Count Aremburg to set Lady Arbella on the throne in the place of the rightful king, lineal descendant of Edward IV. You planned to subvert not only England, but Scotland. You are the vilest of men!’

  Coke spat on. It appeared he was accusing Raleigh of corrupting the naive Lord Cobham.

  Raleigh replied, his voice rising, that where was proof? What was it to Raleigh if Cobham was a traitor? This was enough to set off Coke again, who launched into a string of invective. Even Popham was stirred. He tried to calm things down.

  ‘Sir Walter! Sir Edward speaks from zeal for his King. Sir Edward! Sir Walter speaks for his life! Be patient, on both sides!’

  ‘I will prove you a traitor!’ snarled Coke. With a flurry, he produced paper, and read from it. It was the statement from Cobham that Raleigh had plotted treason, the statement he had later retracted.

  Raleigh asked to see it. There was complete silence as Coke, looking to Popham is if expecting him to deny the request, handed the paper over to a guard to give to Raleigh.

  ‘Well,’ said Raleigh, calmly examining the paper, ‘this is it. All the evidence that can be brought against me. On this rests my life, and whether my wife and children will have to beg for their bread for the rest of their lives. This paper must prove me a traitor, or a loyal subject of the King.’

  There was absolute silence in the Great Hall now. All eyes were on Raleigh.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, looking straight at the jury, ‘please hear my words. I had no plots with the Lady Arbella, and you will hear no proof of such, because proof can only exist for that which is real. And my Lord Cobham has recanted of these rash words.’

  He paused, then struggled to his feet. It was something Gresham had rehearsed with him a hundred times. There was real doubt that he would succeed in standing. When he did so, there was almost a collective sigh of relief from the crowd. Spain, Raleigh looked at the jurors.

  ‘Do you think me a fool? Do you? Of all that I have been accused of in my life, has anyone accused me of having no brains? Lord Cobham may be a good man, he may be a bad man – but is his reputation such as to allow a man such as me to place his life and hopes in that man’s hands?’

  Cobham’s reputation was of a shallow, irascible fool.

  ‘And here am I charged with wishing to rouse the country in anger and violence against its rightful King. Our two great enemies, source of all our danger, Scotland and Ireland, either allied to us or quieted and defeated. Denmark and the Low Countries at peace with us. And instead of a lady whom time had surprised, we have a vigorous monarch, an active King, a lawful successor. Even the greatest enemy of all, Spain, repulsed and ceased of its attacks on us. Am I a fool? Who but a fool would seek to raise rebellion in times of such contentment and ease? Who would fight for such a rebel? Do I look to you as if my greatest ambition in life was to be a Robin Hood, a Wat Tyler or a Jack Cade? Think you me so stupid?’

  The delivery was superb, clear and forceful, yet relaxed and fully at ease. These were neither the words nor the tone of a man racked by guilt.

  I did well there, thought Gresham.

  Coke blustered into some more rambling charges, but, like Scotland, Ireland and Spain, seemed diminished. Gresham felt himself tense as Cecil, hitherto silent, decided to speak.

  ‘I cannot hide the affection that u
sed to exist between myself and this man,’ said Cecil, ‘albeit affection slackened since by his actions ...’

  Brilliant, thought Gresham. This man was my friend, but I now believe him to be a traitor. Cecil’s head shaking confession to the death of a friend was more damning than anything Coke had said.

  Raleigh stumbled for a moment, trying to bring up a point of law that he had misunderstood, and allowing Popham to crow, ‘We do not conceive the law. We know the law.’

  Raleigh picked up at that and pleaded that before a man should die there should be called at least two witnesses. No, he was told; there was no such right in law.

  There was more muttering among the crown, in Raleigh’s favour this time. Was a man to be condemned on hearsay?

  Then for the first time, the prosecution struck home. Raleigh was forced into a long admission that in Cobham’s presence Raleigh had discussed taking a large sum of Spanish money from Count Aremberg, who had wanted it used to bribe people into accepting the proposed peace with Spain. Raleigh’s line was that he opposed the peace, believing Spain would simply use the time it had bought to build up its forces for yet another assault on England. Raleigh denied that he had ever intended to take the money, and that if Cobham had decided to do so then it was his guilt and not Raleigh’s, but it did not ring true. It was an issue Gresham and Raleigh had spent hours discussing. Deny the whole story? Impossible. It had happened, and Cobham would certainly confirm it had happened. Yet in admitting to the conversation Raleigh was admitting that he had been offered Spanish money but not told the authorities.

  The truth? Raleigh would never admit it, but Gresham believed Raleigh had never intended to take Spanish money to further peace, and was doubtful the promised money would ever appear. Yet Gresham believed Raleigh would have taken the money, had it proved real. It rankled with Raleigh, who was avaricious in the manner of those who knew the reality of poverty, that he had spent the staggering sum of £4000 fighting Spain at sea. To get some of that back, in the mistaken Spanish belief that it would go anywhere other than Raleigh’s pocket, would be hugely amusing to Raleigh, the avarice blinding him as it blinded so many people to the possible consequences of his actions.

  What the prosecution won it rapidly lost, at least in the public sympathy. Raleigh asked, with great dignity, that Cobham be called as a witness. The whole case for the prosecution rested to a huge extent on Cobham. Surely the jury should hear that evidence from the witness himself, rather than relying on what the prosecution reported Cobham as saying. It seemed a little thing indeed, Raleigh commented. After all, he said, ‘I am here for my life.’

  Popham’s reply left Gresham and Jane gasping, poised between laughter and tears. The crowd listened open-mouthed.

  ‘If we grant this request, a gap opens up which could destroy the King. You plead hard for yourself, Sir Walter. Yet the law pleads as hard for the King. Where there is no evidence to suggest a thing may have happened, then the accuser may be heard. But if the evidence is overwhelming, the accuser should not be produced. If he first confessed himself voluntarily, appearing before the person he accused might make him change what he originally said, in hope of reward or fear of reprisal, and so the jury be misled.’

  A rumble of laughter rose up. Witnesses could not be brought to face the man they had accused in case they changed their story. Precisely. That was what any sane accused man would seek to do.

  As quickly as Raleigh had gained ground, he lost some. After more inconsequential rants about the Bye Plot. Coke produced the allegation that Raleigh had given a book away challenging the claim of Mary, Queen of Scots, and hence her son James, to the English throne. A clever intervention by Cecil seemed to establish that Raleigh had abused Cecil’s friendship by stealing the book in question from Lord Burghley’s library after the great lord’s death.

  Triumphant, Coke went on to allege that Raleigh had sent illicit letters to Cobham from The Tower, using Lawrence Keymis, one of the men who had served overseas with Raleigh, as messenger. Keymis had done just that, but Raleigh had an ace up his sleeve.

  ‘There were no such messages,’ said Raleigh, lying. ‘My servant was forced into such a confession though torture.’

  There was uproar. It was widely known and recognised that people under torture would confess to anything to end the pain, and any confession so obtained was dismissed by the public at large.

  Howard leapt in.

  ‘There was no use of The Rack.’

  The Rack? The most feared instrument of torture in The Tower? Who had mentioned The Rack?’

  Howard fell back slightly. He muttered,‘The King gave charge that no torture be used.’

  The Commissioners all burst out to a man. They swore before God that no torture had been used.

  ‘Why, then,’ said Raleigh, ‘was the Keeper of The Rack sent for, and my servant Keymis threatened with it?’

  A hush fell over the crowd. The Rack pulled the body apart, sheared tendons, muscle and sinew beyond repair. Those who survived it were cripples, condemned to a life in which they would not know a single second free from agonising pain. Given the choice between a quick death and such life as existed after The Rack, any sane man would choose death. In most cases the mere sight of The Rack produced a confession to order. Only a few Jesuit priests had been brave enough to choose The Rack over a false confession. They had died for their honesty, in agony.

  ‘Is this so?’ a Commissioner asked of his fellow, Sir William Wade, Keeper of The Tower.

  Wade turned a deep colour of purple. He was widely known to have supervised and enjoyed several sessions at The Rack, and to have thus obtained a number of convenient confessions.

  Finally, Wade found his breath, and responded.

  ‘When Mr Solicitor and I examined Keymiss, we told him he deserved The Rack.’

  There was a collective explosion of breath from the crowd. Gresham sensed rather than felt a shudder pass through the body of Jane.

  ‘Yet we did not threaten him with it,’ added Wade, rather feebly.

  Oh no? The Keeper of the Tower says the prisoner ‘deserves’ The Rack? What greater threat could there be?

  A Commissioner spluttered, ‘That was more than we knew.’

  It did not win him the support of the crowd. They were increasingly restive. The fun of seeing a great man brought down was not turning out to be as simple as they expected.

  Then came a piece of even purer theatre. Arbella Stuart’s name was mentioned, there was a flurry of activity from the back of the Court and there, a less than angelic vision, was the lady herself, on the arm of the elderly and infirm Nottingham, Lord Admiral. There was a babble of noise, much craning of necks. Popham fought to restore order. Yet it was the quavering voice of the Lord Admiral that was finally heard,

  ‘The lady swears upon her immortal soul that she has had no dealings in any of these things, and commands me to tell the Court so.’

  ‘She’s enjoying it, I think,’ whispered Jane.

  ‘I think she is,’ said Gresham sadly. Gresham always found it sad when life made excessive burdens on those whose birth put them in situations which were beyond their brains and their bodies to sustain. Arbella was almost certainly as innocent as she was stupid. Locked away and fought over in her absence, the essentially shallow and vain girl seemed to drag her heels as Nottingham turned away, his speech made. She looked up at the crowd from under her eyelashes, soaking up the attention of the crowd, feeding off it.

  Raleigh was quick to spot the opening this gave him. If Arbella Stuart could appear before the Court, why not Cobham?

  ‘Sir Walter,’ said Popham, ‘you have heard that your request cannot be granted. Please cease your asking.’

  ‘It is my life that is at stake,’ said Raleigh, ‘which is as important to me as your own life is to you.’

  Co
ke interrupted before Popham could reply, and produced a cock and bull story about some nonsense a ship’s captain had heard from a Portuguese sailor. Raleigh exploded.

  ‘This is no proof! This is mere rant and rave!’

  The prosecution wound up, and Raleigh turned to Coke.

  ‘Mr Attorney, have you done?’

  ‘Yes, if you have no more to say,’ Coke replied.

  ‘If you have indeed done, then I have something more to say.’

  ‘No!’ said Coke. ‘I will have the last word for the King.’

  ‘I will have the last word for my life,’ said Raleigh.

  Coke looked as if he was about to take off or spontaneously combust.

  ‘I will put you down!’ he said, ‘and show you to be the most confident traitor who ever lived or went to trial!’

  Cecil could see the impact this was having on the crowd, and interrupted.

  ‘Mr Attorney, please; do not be so impatient. Give him leave to speak.’

  There was a swell of support from the crowd. Coke was oblivious to it. It was bull ring fever.

  ‘I am the King’s sworn servant, and I must speak – or else you put down the King’s councillors and encourage the traitors!’

  Extraordinarily, Coke then flounced off, announced he was mortally offended and sat down, saying he refused to speak. Losing any dignity they may have had, several of the Commissioners pleaded with him to carry on. Only after he had milked it to the full did Coke get up, and his answer this time was to go over all the evidence again. The crowd groaned, and one or two even hissed. They had heard all this before! Raleigh interrupted Coke, who rounded on him, and the two men traded insults. Yet Raleigh spoke calmly, whilst spittle flew from Coke’s mouth. His words tumbled over each other, pure invective.

  Yet Coke was no fool. Just when it seemed he would place his own heart under so much pressure of anger that it would burst, he slowed, brought a paper out of his coat.