the evidence he had to produce if she had made it sary by pleading not guilty. After this spee countess was recalled for a minute to the bar Lords to hear sentence of death, which was pron by the Chancellor Ellesmere, whom the king and after long deliberation, had appointed High Stew the trials. On the same day Somerset, who ou have been tried with his wife, was warned by Sir More, the present Lieutenant of the Tower, th must stand his trial on the morrow. Owing to causes not explained, but at which we may easily the earl, who had before desired this, absolutely 1 to go, telling the lieutenant that he should carry force in his bed; that the king had assured him he never come to any trial, and that the king dur bring him to trial. This language made More and shake; ..."yet away goes More to Gree as late as it was, being twelve at night, and bour the back-stairs as if mad." The king, who was i on hearing what the lieutenant had to say, fell passion of tears, and said, "On my soul, More, not what to do! Thou art a wise man; help me great strait, and thou shalt find thou dost it for a ful master." 99* 66 Returning to the Tower, the liet told his prisoner that he had been with the kir found him a most affectionate master unto him, a of grace in his intentions towards him; but, said satisfy justice, you must appear, although you ret stantly again, without any further proceeding, or shall know your enemies and their malice, thoug shall have no power over you. With this trick of allayed his fury, and got him quietly, about eight morning, to the Hall; yet feared his former bold la might revert again, and, being brought by this tri the toil, might have more enraged him to fly o some strange discovery. He had two servants *Weldon says that Sir George More "was re warded with a suit worth to him 1500l., although dale, his great friend, did cheat him of one-half; there falsehood in friendship." 1.D. 1616 e it neces peech the ar of the ronounced nd Bacon, eward for ought to ir George that he to some ly guess y refused 7 him by e should urst not e quiver eenwich, unces up in bed, into a utenant ng, and and full he, to urn in ly you h they wit he in the guage k into t into placed / ly re unanO was on each side of him, with a cloak on their arms, giving them a peremptory order, if that Somerset did any way fly out on the king, they should instantly hoodwink him with that cloak, take him violently from the bar, and carry him away; for which he would secure them from any danger, and they should not want also a bountiful reward."* Somerset, however, when brought to the bar of the Lords, was in a very composed easy humour, which Bacon took good care not to disturb by any of those invectives that were usually employed against prisoners. He abstained, he said, from such things by the king's order, though of himself he were indisposed to blazen his name in blood.† He handled the case most tenderly, never urging the guilt of Somerset without bringing forward the hope or assurance of the royal mercy. But the prisoner, who displayed far more ability than he had ever been supposed to possess, though he abstained from any accusations or out-pourings of wrath against James, was not willing to submit to a verdict of guilty, however sure of a pardon. He maintained his innocence, and defended himself so ably that the trial lasted eleven hours. In the end the peers unanimously pronounced him guilty. He then prayed them to be intercessors for him with the king, adding, however, words which meant *Weldon. The lieutenant of the Tower may have thought of providing the two sentinels and the hood-winking cloaks, but all the rest had certainly been suggested beforehand by Bacon, in a "Particular Remembrance for his Majesty." "It were good," says this miracle of genius and profligacy, "that after he is come into the hall, so that he may perceive he must go to trial, and shall be retired to the place appointed till the court call for him, then the lieutenant shall tell him roundly that if in his speeches he shall tax the king, that the justice of England is that he shall be taken away, and the evidence shall go on without him; and then all the people will cry, Away with him!' and then it shall not be in the king's will to save his life, the people will be so set on fire."-State Trials. †This was a hint at Coke, who was a terrible dealer in invectives. that he thought that it would hardly be needed. who had seen the king's restless motion all th sending to every boat he saw landing at the cursing all that came without tidings, would hav judged all was not right, and that there had be grounds for his fears of Somerset's boldness; bu one bringing him word he was condemned, A few weeks after s passages, all was quiet."* James granted a pardon to the countess, "bec process and judgment against her were not of a p but as of an accessory before the fact." A like was offered to the earl, who said that he, as an and injured man, expected a reversal of the ju After a few years pronounced by the peers. sonment, Somerset and his lady retired into the -there, as it is said, to reproach and hate one The king would not permit the earl's arms to be and kicked out of the chapel of Windsor; a his account it was ordered "that felony should reckoned amongst the disgraces for those who be excluded from the Order of St. George, w without precedent." Further, to keep the o favourite and depository of royal mysteries from ration, he was allowed for life the then splendi of 40007. a-year. Considering the power of m the baseness of the age, we are inclined the oratorical accounts of the loneliness and ment into which he fell. The countess died in the reign of Charles I.; the earl, who survived * Weldon. Old Sir Anthony's pen was no do sionally dipped in gall, but his account of these tra which he says he and a friend had from Sir Georg own mouth verbatim in Wanstead Park, after b ascribed to his libellous spirit and hatred of Jame ceived the most complete confirmation by some let More himself, published in the Archæologia, v When he is found so veracious in one important p it may be questioned whether Weldon has not been doubted in others. † Camden, Annals of King James. ed. "But that day. he bridge have easily been some but at last. and the r sentence ecause the principal ke pardon e country. hich was discarded m despe oney and d income to doubt abandon 1632, in her thir ubt occa sactions, e More's ing long has re ers from . xviii. ticular, infairly teen years, will reappear on the scene towards the close of the present reign. Their daughter, an only child, the Lady Anne Carr, who was born in the Tower, was married to William, fifth Earl, and afterwards first Duke, of Bedford, by whom she had many children, one of whom was the celebrated Lord Russell, who died on the scaffold in the time of Charles II. She is described as a lady of great honour and virtue: and it is said that her mother's history was so carefully concealed from her, that she knew nothing of the story of the divorce of Lady Essex until a year or two before her death.* The illused Earl of Essex will appear hereafter, and most conspicuously, as the leader of the parliament army against the unfortunate successor of King James. It should appear that the services of Bacon in the Overbury and Somerset case secured his triumph over his rival. Coke, however, had long been hated by the king, and in his irritation thereat he took an independent, and what might otherwise have been a patriotic course in administering the law. Many things had made the Lord Chief Justice totter in his seat, but a dispute with Villiers, the new favourite, about a patent place at court, a dispute with the king about bishoprics and commendams, and the ingenious malice of Bacon, who had James's ear, laid him prostrate at last. By the advice of Bacon, he was called before the council: the other judges had all been there before him, to kneel to the king and ask pardon for attempting to act according to law. Bacon, Ellesmere, and Abbot the primate had been employed for some time in collecting charges against him. Coke was accused of concealing a debt of 12,000l. due to the crown by the late Chancellor Hatton; of uttering on the bench words of very high contempt, saying that the common law would be overthrown, wherein he reflected upon the king; and, thirdly, of uncivil and indiscreet carriage in the matter of commendams. Coke repelled the charge about the money, and he afterwards obtained a legal decision in his favour: * Oldmixon. without denying his words on the bench, he the second charge; to the third he confessed, an forgiveness. The king ordered him to appear time before the council, and then the proud lay brought to his knees to hear the judgment of master, which was, that he should keep away council-table, and not go the circuit, but employ in correcting the errors in his book of Reports. Coke reported to the king that he could disco five unimportant errors in his book, James chos sider that he was proud and obstinate, and chief justiceship to Montague, the Recorder of It is said that Coke, on receiving his supersede like a child. Prince Charles, now created Prince of Wales his seventeenth year, and the king had not yet s in negotiating what he considered a suitable ma him. The religious feelings of his subjects, both land and Scotland, were violently opposed to any match; but James's pride led him to prefer a fa ance with some one of the royal houses in Europ those houses the greatest were all Catholic. S at last that the court of Spain had no intention to any arrangement with him, he opened negotiat that of France for the hand of Madame Christi to the young King Louis XIII.; but, notwith an extravagant and pompous embassy, the Fren preferred an alliance with the Duke of Savoy. after the failure of this treaty Concini, marshal a Florentine, who had accompanied the Queen Maria de' Medici into France, and who, since of Henry IV., had ruled the whole kingdom, dered on the drawbridge of the Louvre by Vitr the captains of the body-guard. The deed was broad daylight by order of Louis, who had bee a state of subjection, and almost of bondage, by ther's favourite. On the following day the Paris raised a cry against the excommunicated wizard; they dug up his body, which had bee buried,-dragged it through the streets,-hung |