At the head of this special commission were Cecil and the Earl of Suffolk, with two chief justices; but two other judges sat in the court. The trials took place at Winchester, and George Brooke, Sir Griffin Markham, with several of the inferior conspirators, were first put to the bar. They were all found guilty, principally upon their own confessions, which were probably made in the hope of obtaining pardon; and upon all the severe sentence of high treason was pronounced. The two priests, Watson and Clarke, were also condemned; and then Cobham, Grey, and Raleigh were severally brought to trial.
The demeanour of these three gentlemen in court excited not a little attention at the time, the deportment of each being very different from that of the others, and each marked with strong characteristic traits. Lord Cobham displayed nothing but weakness, imbecility, and fear; he trembled violently during the reading of the indictment, endeavoured to excuse himself by casting the blame upon his friends, made a confession more ample, it is generally supposed, than even truth warranted, and ended by begging hard for life, when sentence of death was pronounced upon him.
A very different scene was displayed at the trial of Lord Grey de Wilton. He defended himself with courage, vigour, and eloquence, without the slightest sign of fear or anxiety; showed himself learned in the law of the land, and by his gallant bearing and skilful reasoning both won the favour, and shook the opinion, of many of his judges. Nevertheless, the confessions of George Brooke and Sir Griffin Markham, in which his name was mentioned, were received as conclusive evidence against him, and he likewise was pronounced guilty of high treason. When asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him, he replied at first, "Nothing!" but then added, "Non eadem omnibus decora. The house of the Wiltons have spent many lives in their princes' service, and Grey cannot beg his."
Raleigh was the next to undergo the torture of a public trial, and against him there was arrayed the envy of inferior minds, the hatred of a king, the malice of private enemies, the prepossession of his judges, and all the virulence of legal insolence. The conduct of the attorney-general, Sir Edward Coke, stamped him for posterity as one of the greatest villains, as well as one of the greatest lawyers, that ever lived; and his speech against the illustrious prisoner offers a model, too frequently imitated in France, of all that the counsel for the prosecution should not say.
Raleigh displayed upon this terrible occasion all those powers of mind which distinguished him through life; and he also showed much temper and moderation in reply to the virulent abuse of Coke. The evidence upon which he was condemned--namely, a vague and unsatisfactory confession of Lord Cobham, unsigned, taken down from word of mouth, and recanted in the most solemn manner by a letter to Raleigh himself, and the testimony of a man named Dyer, who swore that a stranger in Lisbon had said to him, that the King would never be crowned, for Don Raleigh and Don Cobham would first cut his throat--would of course never be even heard in a court of justice, in the present day; and yet this was all that could be brought against him. But it was found sufficient in the minds of the judges; and, although Raleigh demanded that Lord Cobham should be confronted with him, and urged that no man could be condemned upon the written testimony of only one witness, he was found guilty of high treason, and condemned to death. All that the prisoner required, after the verdict was given, was, that the King should be requested that his death might be an honourable and not an ignominious one. He hinted, however, a desire that his execution should be delayed till after Cobham's, probably in the hope that on the scaffold itself his former friend would do him justice, and declare his innocence with his dying breath.
After the trials, the Court and the country were all eager to know, what would be the conduct of the King, with whom alone the fate of the prisoners now remained; but James, following the usual principles of his kingcraft, kept his determinations to his own bosom, suffering not even his most favourite counsellors to know whether he would show lenity or severity. The crimes proved against George Brooke, and his general bad reputation, decided his fate, and he suffered the full penalties of high treason in the month of November, 1603. He died in the same bold and careless manner in which he had lived, apparently without either fear or regret; and the whole country seems to have approved of the firmness of the King in carrying his sentence into execution.
Different feelings, however, were entertained in regard to the two priests, Watson and Clarke, who suffered nearly at the same time. Neither of them showed the slightest want of courage, and Clarke boldly proclaimed on the scaffold, that he was a martyr to his religious faith. The Roman Catholics of course exalted their virtues and their devotion, and cried out against the severity with which they were treated by a monarch who had flattered the Papists with false hopes of toleration.
These three executions, however, created great alarm amongst the friends of the other prisoners; and various efforts were made to avert their fate by petition and solicitation. Still James remained silent and unmoved, the day appointed for the punishment of Cobham, Grey, and Markham approached rapidly, and at length the death-warrant was sent down to Winchester, and another was signed for the execution of Raleigh on the Monday following, three days after the period appointed for the fate of his fellow-prisoners. Markham received some reason to hope, from private friends at the Court, that his life would be spared, but the two peers and Raleigh were directed to prepare themselves for certain death. The Bishop of Chichester and the Bishop of Winchester remained constantly with Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh, having been instructed by the King not only to give them religious consolation, but to induce them to make a full confession, with a view, it would appear, of reconciling the discrepancy of their statements.
If this was the monarch's object, however, no success was obtained; for while the weak and imbecile Lord Cobham once more varied in his statements, and re-asserted all that he had previously laid to the charge of Raleigh, the knight firmly maintained his innocence, and varied not in the least from his former account.
At length, on the Friday appointed for the execution, Markham was brought out of the castle, at ten o'clock in the morning, to the scaffold erected on the green. Finding all the preparations for the work of death ready, he complained bitterly of having been deluded with false hopes, admitted that he had listened but little to the exhortations of the priests, having been always assured that he would receive a pardon, and added that he was in no degree prepared to die.