After Elizabeth

by Leanda de Lisle

  The Leicestershire gentleman Bartholomew Brookesby was also found guilty of treason, despite having refused to take part in the Bye plot. This seems to have been an act of revenge for his being caught in the company of priests on several occasions and as a warning to his sisters, who were believed, correctly, to be running a network of safe houses. They, however, were not to be intimidated and their names and safe houses would also be linked to the Gunpowder Plot. Remarkably, Edward Parham, who had also declined to take part in the plot, was acquitted. It was the first such judgment in forty-four years, but then Cecil had something else in mind for him. Parham was expelled from England and sent to the Netherlands, where he worked as a spy for Cecil for the rest of his life. He eventually married Francis Tresham’s sister and became Colonel of the English Catholic Regiment—an indication of just how deeply penetrated the Catholic community was.

  The trial of the Main plotters opened on 17 November with that of Sir Walter Ralegh. The Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Popham, “a huge, heavy, ugly man” who “lived like a hog,” presided from a raised platform under a brocade canopy. Alongside him were three other judges and seven commissioners: Robert Cecil, William Waad, Henry Howard, Lord Wotton, Sir John Stanhope and the new Earls of Suffolk and Devonshire (formerly Lord Thomas Howard and Lord Mountjoy). All were close allies of Cecil or long-standing enemies of Ralegh. The chief prosecutor was the Attorney General, Sir Edward Coke, a self-made, “very handsome, proper man,” rather in the mold of Ralegh himself.

  At eight in the morning Ralegh walked into the hall. He saluted some friends in the crowd and went to stand by a stool put out for him. The jury, all drawn from Middlesex, listened intently as the indictment was read: “That he did conspire, and go about, to deprive the King of his government; to raise up sedition within the realm; to alter religion, to bring in the Roman Superstition and to procure foreign armies to invade the kingdom.” The allegation that he wanted to restore Catholicism was a straightforward smear. As the indictment continued, however, specific incidents were alleged: that Ralegh had given Cobham a book “written against the title of the King to the crown of England”; that meetings had taken place where they had discussed plans “to advance Arbella Stuart to the crown and royal throne of this kingdom”; that they had agreed that Arbella should write letters to the Archduke Albert, the King of Spain and the Duke of Savoy promising peace, toleration of religion and a willingness to take their advice in her choice of husband; that Cobham was to negotiate with the Archduke Albert’s emissary, the Count of Aremberg, to raise £5,000 or £6,000 from the King of Spain to finance the rebellion; that he was to meet with Ralegh in Jersey to discuss “the fulfilling of said treasons, when discontentments in England should afford opportunity”; and that £8,000 or £10,000 was to be given to Ralegh personally to effect the treasons. When it finished Ralegh pleaded not guilty.

  Coke opened his case by reminding the jury of the details of the Bye plot, to surprise the court, kidnap James, take him to the Tower and “keep him there until they had extorted three things from him: first, their own pardon; secondly toleration for the Romish superstition . . . and thirdly the removal of certain Privy Councillors.” Ralegh interrupted him: “You gentlemen of the jury, I pray remember, I am not charged with the Bye being the treason of the priests.” Coke persisted. The Bye and the Main were, he said “like Sampson’s foxes, which were joined in their tails though their heads were severed.” Coke recalled Brooke’s description of how Cobham had told him that he, Markham and the priests were merely on the Bye, or secondary plot, while he and Ralegh were carrying through the Main plot, which was to “kill the King and his cubs.” He then turned on Ralegh: “To whom do you bear malice?” he demanded, “to the children?” Ralegh replied coolly:

  Mr. Attorney, I pray to whom, or to what end, speak you all this? I protest I do not understand what a word of this means, except it be to tell me news. What is the treason of Markham and the priests to me?

  [COKE] I will then come close to you. I will prove you to be a most notorious traitor that ever came to the bar. You are indeed upon the Main, but you have followed them of the Bye in imitation; I will charge you with the words.

  [RALEGH] Your words cannot condemn me; my innocency is my defence. I pray you go to your proofs. Prove against me any one thing of the many wherewith you have charged me, and I will confess all the indictment, and that I am the most horrible traitor that ever lived, and worthy to be crucified with a thousand torments.

  [COKE] Nay I will prove all; thou are a monster; thou hast an English face, but a Spanish heart: Now you must have money: Aremberg was no sooner in England (I charge thee Ralegh) but thou incitest Cobham to go unto him, and to deal with him for money, to bestow on discontented persons, to raise rebellion in the kingdom.

  Coke went on to describe how Ralegh intended for Cobham to pretend that the money was to be used to advance the cause of peace with Spain, when in reality it was to be used for “Spanish invasion and Scottish subversion.” It was just as Henry Howard had hoped in June 1602 when he had told Cecil that it was their dealings over Spain that would be the key to their destruction. Ralegh had often expressed his belief that England would be vulnerable to invasion from Scotland and Scaramelli had observed on 28 April that James was also concerned that Spanish money might be used to foment rebellion there if he failed to make peace. But as Coke steamrollered on, Ralegh interrupted: “Let me answer.”

  [COKE] Thou shalt not.

  [RALEGH] It concerns my life.

  The bleakness of the plea shifted the mood in the courtroom toward Ralegh. Cecil, restive, spoke out: “Mr Attorney, when you have done with this general charge, do you not mean to let him answer every particular?” Coke answered, “Yes, when we deliver the proofs to be read.” Coke insisted that Lord Cobham could not have dreamed up the plots on his own, for “all your Lordships all know” he “was never a politician, nor a swordsman . . . Sir Walter Ralegh was a man fitting for both. And such was Ralegh’s secrecy and machiavellian policy in these courses, that he would never confer but with one at once; because saith he ‘one witness can never condemn me’ . . . Notwithstanding this, the Lord Cobham did once charge Ralegh; but knowing afterwards that Ralegh had excused him, then he retracted.”

  [RALEGH] I do not hear yet, that you have spoken one word against me; here is no treason of mine done. If my Lord Cobham be a traitor what is that to me?

  [COKE] All that he did was by thy instigation, thou Viper; for I thou thee thou traitor.

  “Thou” was a term used to address social inferiors and Coke’s use of it was a mark of contempt.

  [RALEGH] It becomes not a man of quality and virtue, to call me so: but I take comfort in it, if it is all you can do.

  [COKE] Have I angered you?

  [RALEGH] I am in no case to be angry.

  Ralegh’s infuriating composure was costing the prosecutor his dignity and the substantial figure of Chief Justice Popham stirred: “Sir Walter Ralegh, Mr Attorney speaks out of the zeal of his duty, for the service of the king, and you for your life, be valiant on both sides.” Coke took a deep breath and read out Cobham’s confession of 20 July, which claimed Ralegh was the instigator of the Main treason and outlined how he had feared all along that Ralegh would betray him when he reached Jersey from Spain and “would send him to the King.” Ralegh demanded to see the accusation, then, turning to the jury, said: “This is absolutely all the evidence that can be brought against me; poor shifts! You gentlemen of the jury, I pray you understand this. This is that which must either condemn, or give me life; which must either free me, or send my wife and children to beg their bread about the streets.”

  Ralegh proceeded to question whether Cobham was such a weak man that he could be led into treason. He reminded the court that Cobham had a notoriously violent temper. “Is he so simple? No; he has a disposition of his own . . . he is no babe.” He then asked whether it was not also unlikely that he himself would devise with Cobham that he should go to Spain
, to persuade the King to disburse so much money . . . I knowing England to be in better state to defend herself than ever she was. I knew Scotland united; Ireland quieted, werein of late our forces were dispersed; Denmark assured, which before was suspected. I knew, that having lost a lady whom time had surprised, we now had an active king, a lawful successor, who would himself be present in all his a fairs. The State of Spain was not unknown to me [he continued]. I knew the Spanish had six repulses; three in Ireland and three at sea . . . I knew he was discouraged and dishonoured. I knew the King of Spain to be the proudest prince in Christendom; but now he comes creeping to the king my master for peace. I knew whereas before he had in his port six or seven score of ships, he has now but six or seven . . . And to show I am not “Spanish”—as you term me—at this time I had writ a treatise to the King’s Majesty of the present state of Spain, and reasons against the Peace.

  It was an impressive performance and when Coke returned to Cobham’s confession Ralegh showed his final hand: “You try me by the Spanish Inquisition, if you proceed only by the circumstances, without two witnesses.” Here, however, he made his first mistake. As Coke had already made plain, he knew Ralegh had planned such a defense and he informed him that the law had been amended, with the loophole requiring two witnesses to convict a man of treason closed years before. Ralegh realized that the only option that remained was for him to destroy the credibility of Cobham’s confession. Cobham’s wife, the Countess of Kildare, had persuaded her husband to abandon his recent promises to Ralegh, but Ralegh believed that if he faced him in court he could bring Cobham around once more and he asked for him to be brought to the hall to accuse him in person. Popham refused, arguing that to introduce such an uncertain witness might give him an unfair advantage over the crown!

  Coke then addressed the matter of the book written against the Stuart claim which Ralegh was alleged to have given Cobham. The book had been written when Mary, Queen of Scots, was alive and had belonged to the first Lord Burghley. Ralegh had taken it from his library some years before. The claim that Ralegh had passed it on to Cobham was suggestive of Ralegh the manipulator, persuading Cobham to treason, and Ralegh insisted that Cobham must have picked the book up off a table: “I remember that it lay upon my board at a time when he was with me.” It was not very convincing and his continued insistence that Cobham be brought to face him in court gave a still firmer impression of Cobham as a weak man who could be easily dominated. But Ralegh fought on against the odds, reiterating the paucity of the evidence against him as the pale winter light began to fade:

  I am accused concerning Arabella, concerning money out of Spain. My Lord Chief Justice says, a man may be condemned with one witness, yea without any witness. Cobham is guilty of many things . . . what can he hope for but mercy? My Lords, vouchsafe me this grace: let him be brought, being alive, and in the house; let him avouch any of these things, I will confess the whole indictment, and renounce the King’s mercy.

  Suddenly there was a dramatic interruption to the proceedings as Cobham’s father-in-law, the tall, silver-haired figure of Admiral Nottingham, walked forward with Arbella Stuart on his arm. Cecil stood up to point out that she was “a near kinswoman of the king’s” and that the trial had touched on her honor: “Let us not scandal the innocent by confusion of speech: she is as innocent of all these things as I, or any man here; only she received a letter from my Lord Cobham to prepare her; which she laughed at and immediately sent to the king.”

  Nottingham added, “The lady doth here protest upon her salvation that she never dealt in any of these things and so she willed me to tell the court.”

  Arbella’s uncle, Henry Cavendish, who had tried to help her escape from Hardwick, had been questioned to discover what links, if any, he had to the Main plotters. Nothing was revealed by these interviews, however, which was convenient for Cecil and for James. Cecil would not have wished to have Arbella repeating her allegations that his long-standing friend, the Earl of Hertford, had sought to marry her to his grandson; James, who was already accused of complicity in his mother’s execution, would not have wanted to damage his reputation further by ordering the beheading of his first cousin. The public declaration of Arbella’s innocence also served to suggest that Ralegh was guilty of abusing an innocent woman’s reputation. Ralegh, however, saw immediately that in bringing her forward Nottingham had made a mockery of the court’s refusal to call Cobham and again demanded that Cobham be brought before the court. He recalled that even the Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion “was not denied to have his accusers face to face.” Cecil, seeing the danger, interrupted the proceedings once more: “I am afraid my often speaking . . . will make the world think I delight to hear myself. My affection to you Sir Walter, was not extinguished, but slaked, in regard of your deserts. You know the law of the realm that my Lord Cobham cannot be brought.” Ralegh insisted: “He may be my Lord.”

  Cecil repeated that he was Ralegh’s friend but that Cobham could not be brought before the court. Another witness was, however, brought forward—a ship’s pilot called Dyer who claimed he had heard gossip that Ralegh and Cobham were to cut the King’s throat. Ralegh was contemptuous: “What infer you upon this?” he asked. “That your treason hath wings,” Coke retorted. Ralegh reiterated that they had “not proved any one thing against me, but all by circumstances.” Coke sat down “in a chaffe” and refused to get up again until urged to do so by the commissioners. He repeated the evidence thus far. Ralegh interjected that he was doing him wrong and Coke, goaded beyond reason, finally turned on him in a black fury:

  [COKE] Thou are the most vile and execrable traitor that ever lived.

  [RALEGH] You speak indiscreetly, barbarously and uncivilly.

  [COKE] I want words su ficient to express thy viperous treasons.

  [RALEGH] I think you want words indeed, for you have spoken one thing half a dozen times.

  Ralegh had caught the sympathy of the onlookers and to Cecil’s horror Coke was loudly hissed. At last, however, Coke put aside the blunt instrument of personal abuse in favor of a stiletto, a letter from Cobham describing how Ralegh had passed him a message in an apple warning him not to confess to a preacher. The letter added that Ralegh had told him to get Aremberg to give him a pension of £1,500 a year in exchange for intelligence. The court had been awash with Aremberg’s offers of bribes in June and Ralegh freely admitted that he had been offered one but he insisted he had never taken it. In a last throw of the dice he brought out the letter Cobham had written proclaiming his innocence. He asked Cecil, who knew his brother-inlaw’s writing, to read it. When Cecil had finished Ralegh concluded: “You shall see how many souls this Cobham has, and the King shall judge by our deaths which is the perfidious man.”

  It was nearly seven in the evening when the jury was asked to consider its verdict. Less than fifteen minutes later the foreman delivered it in the flickering candlelight: guilty. Ralegh was allowed one more statement before sentence was pronounced. He denied the charge of treason and submitted himself to the King’s mercy. Then Lord Chief Justice Popham delivered his judgment:

  I thought I should never have seen this day, to have stood in this place to give Sentence of Death against you; because I thought it impossible, that one of so great parts should have fallen so grievously. God has bestowed on you many benefits. You had been a man fit and able to have served the king in good place . . . if you had entered into a good consideration of your estate, and not su fered your own wit to have entrapped yourself, you might have lived in good comfort . . . Two vices have lodged chiefly in you; one is an eager ambition, the other corrupt covetousness . . . I am sorry to hear that a gentleman of your wealth would become a base spy for the enemy, which is the vilest of all others . . . You have been taxed by the world, with the defence of the most heathenish and blasphemous opinions, which I list not to repeat, because Christian ears cannot endure to hear them . . . You shall do well before you go out of the world, to give satisfaction therein, and not to die with t
hese imputations on you . . . Now it rests to pronounce the Judgement, which I wish you had not been this day to receive from me; for if the fear of God in you had been answerable to your other great parts you might have lived to have been a singular good subject. I never saw the like trial and I hope never to see the like again. But since you have been found guilty of these horrible Treasons, the judgement of this court is, that you shall be had from hence to the place whence you came, there to remain to the day of execution, there to be hanged and cut down alive, and your body shall be opened, your heart and bowels plucked out, and your privy members cut o f, and thrown into the fire before your eyes; then your head to be stricken of from your body, and your body shall be divided into four quarters to be disposed of at the king’s pleasure. And God have mercy upon your soul. 16

  Ralegh begged Devonshire and the judges to ask the King for a more honorable death than the hideous tortures to which Popham had sentenced him. They promised their best endeavors. The court rose and Ralegh was escorted from the room.

  The news of the guilty verdict on Ralegh was taken to the King by his huntsman Roger Aston and a fellow Scot. The court was already abuzz with discussion of Ralegh’s astonishing performance. The diplomat Dudley Carleton told his friend John Chamberlain that “in the opinion of all men, he had been acquitted.” He described how the first of James’s messengers “affirmed that never any man spoke so well in times past, nor would do in the world to come; and the other said that whereas when he saw him first he was so led with the common hatred, that he would have gone a hundred miles to have seen him hanged he would, ere he parted, have gone a thousand to have saved his life.” “In one word,” Carleton concluded, “never was a man so hated and so popular, in so short a time.”17

  James made light of the fact that Ralegh had been cleared at the bar of public opinion but not by the court, joking that he would be glad not to be tried by a Middlesex jury. There was a real danger, however, that Ralegh would become a martyr and Cecil, Howard and the King his murderers, just as he had warned the Council in August. With this in mind the trials of Cobham and Grey were delayed so that Cobham could be interviewed again. He obligingly gave the Council new information that Ralegh had urged him to tell the King of Spain that he should invade England at Milford Haven in Wales. Such an eventuality had been the nightmare of military and naval men for years and Ralegh proved ill-equipped to confront the accusation. Alone in his cell he had been contemplating the traitor’s death he had witnessed so many times as Captain of the Guard. It filled him with dread and he had just penned a letter to the King begging for his life when the news of Cobham’s latest confession was delivered. It dashed all his hopes of mercy and his answers to his interrogators were barely coherent.