The Gunpowder Plot (History/16th/17th Century History) by Alan Haynes Page B

Oxford and had finally settled at the Earl of Pembroke’s vast Wilton estate. It was there that some of the foreign ambassadors who had come to present greetings from brother rulers finally got to meet James during the time of the trials. In some measure Ralegh’s imperturbability had returned; a verdict against him was not a certain outcome. His lucidity and spirited ability to blunt the bullying invective of the attorney-general, Edward Coke, made it too difficult for the government to try and succeed in yoking Ralegh to the Bye plot, especially while public interest was high. Nor did they risk placing Cobham beside him to testify, for all he remained the Crown’s only witness. On Cecil’s orders it was Sir Walter Cope, a close associate of the minister, who led the search of Cobham’s house in Blackfriars, looking for incriminating papers and seizing Cobham’s servants. Nor was any spy for the government ever brought into court to testify against any of the accused. The difficulty with Cobham on trial was that he had already retracted earlier testimony and thus gave uncertainty a sharper edge. A public examination of him in such tense circumstances would very likely have rendered his evidence worthless in a confusing voiding of faltering denials from, as Ralegh charitably described him, ‘a poor silly, base, dishonourable soul’. Indeed, as an accused it was Cobham who sought to implicate Lady Arabella, and the charges of complicity certainly required that she should deny such things. In fact she was there, observing and listening from a gallery, and the old Earl of Nottingham, seated beside her, rose to protest that on her hopes of salvation she had never meddled in any such matters. Sir Robert Cecil himself acknowledged that she was not in any way tainted by the plot, and that the letter broaching treason from Cobham she had put before the king. Nottingham as a friend of Ralegh (and father-in-law of Cobham) did venture to suggest that it might serve to bring the two men face to face. However the crown lawyers baulked at this civil notion and Ralegh was condemned as James intended since he had an eye on his fortune. 4 When Cobham and Grey were arraigned they too were condemned.
    So the government now had a cluster of condemned men to deal with – priests and men of privilege. Clemency to all of them was not proper although Northumberland spoke to James on behalf of Ralegh and Cobham. Nor at the beginning of a reign was it suitable to have too much blood being shed. From his cell William Watson did send out an appeal, but it was not, as might have been expected, to the Catholic Earl of Worcester. Instead he wrote to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, because he knew how taken James was with the young man and he hoped the letter would be passed directly to the king. 5 But on 29 November, the day the Venetian embassy made their farewells to James, both priests were executed and were ‘very bloodily handled’; neither claimed to be repentant in the manner that had become customary. As for George Brooke – he seems to have been the butt of a bitter little joke when executed. Sir John Harington, a friend of Cecil’s, had told the Secretary that Brooke blamed him (Cecil) for his failure to become Master of the Hospital of St Cross in Winchester, and it was opposite this building that the execution took place. Writing to John Chamberlain, Dudley Carleton noted that when the executioner held up the severed head with the cry of ‘God save the King’, no one but the sheriff responded with the echoing cry. 6 So no applause, only silence for the removal of one of those who straddled the Bye and Main plots. Cobham, Grey and Ralegh remained, as did the lesser figure of Sir Griffin Markham, and on a day of atrocious weather a little after the execution of Brooke, it was Markham who was first escorted to the scaffold. The battle-scarred veteran was restless and declamatory, evidently expecting a last minute reprieve. It