Nevertheless, he displayed no want of courage, but calmly took leave of some of his friends who stood near the scaffold; but one of them having given him a handkerchief to cover his eyes, he threw it indignantly from him, saying that he could look death in the face without blushing. He then crossed himself, knelt, and prayed; after which he stripped off his doublet, and turned back the collar of his shirt, that his neck might receive the blow of the axe unimpeded. Whilst he was performing this last sad ceremony, a Scotch gentleman, of the name of John Gibb, groom of the bedchamber to the king, approached the scaffold from the side of the castle, and called the sheriff down to speak with him. Their conversation seemed long to the spectators, and probably not less so to the unfortunate Markham, who remained with his neck and shoulders bare, waiting for the order to lay his head upon the block. At length Sir Benjamin Tichborne, the sheriff, returned, and addressing the prisoner, said, "Sir, since you tell me that you are so ill-prepared for death, having been led by false hopes that your life would be spared, I take upon me, after consultation with a gentleman attached to the king, to grant you two hours' respite, that you may reconcile yourself, if possible, to God before you die.--Follow me."
Hastily covering his throat, and resuming his garments, with his whole brain whirling and his heart full of doubt and uncertainty, Markham followed the sheriff from the scaffold, and was conducted to the wide old stone chamber known in those days as Prince Arthur's Hall, where, the door being locked, he was left to meditate in solitude, without even the presence of a priest to afford him consolation, or encourage him to hope.
In the meanwhile, Lord Grey de Wilton was led to the scaffold, accompanied by a Puritan minister of the name of Field, and a large troop of noble friends. His countenance was gay and smiling, his whole demeanour easy and unaffected; and after Field had prayed for some time, the young lord addressed the people in an eloquent speech, full of deep religious feeling, and confidence in the mercy of God. He looked, says one of the authors of that day, more like a bridegroom than a condemned criminal.
In the midst of his speech, however, he was interrupted by the sheriff, who informed him that he had the king's command to stay the order of the execution, and to behead Lord Cobham first. With much surprise, and with no expression of satisfaction, Lord Grey, whose mind was perfectly made up to his fate, suffered himself to be led back to the castle, where he also was locked up in Prince Arthur's Hall, to converse with Sir Griffin Markham upon their strange situation. Lord Cobham was next brought upon the scene, and he also went through the same ceremony of prayer and preparation for the block. He showed none of that timidity and want of resolution, now that his fate was decided, which he had displayed while it seemed doubtful, but maintained that what he had said of Sir Walter Raleigh was true, though, as some writers have justly observed, no one could tell what he did really wish to impute and what he did not, as, amongst his various confessions and retractions, there was no one part that did not contradict another.
As he was about to kneel down to receive the stroke of the axe, the sheriff stopped him, saying, that he had orders to confront him, even at that last hour, with some of the other conspirators; and a message having been sent into the castle, Lord Grey and Sir Griffin Markham were brought back to the scaffold, where Sir Benjamin Tichborne addressed them in a long speech, inquiring whether they did not confess they were justly condemned, and merited death.
To this they assented, without reserve, and the sheriff announced to them that the king, in his great mercy, had determined to spare their lives. A full pardon, however, was not given; and Lords Cobham and Grey were destined to endure a long and painful imprisonment, terminated in the case of the first by his escape being connived at, and he himself allowed to drag out a few years in the most abject poverty and misery, till a wretched death, hastened by actual want, filth, and wretchedness, terminated the sorrows of a man who not long before had been one of the most wealthy peers of the realm. The proud and eager spirit of Lord Grey brought his career to an earlier close; and that most common of all diseases, which has obtained--why or wherefore I know not--the name of a broken heart, terminated his sufferings a few years after. Markham and several of the inferior conspirators were banished from the realm; and of one of them, at least, we shall have to speak hereafter. Raleigh, as all the world knows, was suffered to languish in prison for many years, with a capital sentence hanging over his head, and destined in the end to be one of the most illustrious victims to the tyranny and injustice of a base and low-minded king.
Thus did James contrive even with mercy to mingle tyranny, to deprive apparent clemency of all real lenity, and to display the pitiful frivolity of his nature in the solemn exercise of his holiest and his highest prerogative. There were not one of those, except Markham, whom he reprieved at Winchester, to whom immediate death would not have been pity, compared with the fate for which he reserved them; and yet the country rang with applause even while the spirit of historic truth stamped the act with the infamous brand it deserves.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
Such, then, as we have seen in the last chapter, was the termination of the conspiracy in which the name of Arabella Stuart was employed by bad men, for their own purposes, without her own will or consent. But what had in the meantime become of that sweet girl herself, whom we left at the inn at St. Neot's, ill in body and in mind. Several days passed before she recovered entirely, and the learned physicians who had been called from Cambridge to attend upon her, asserted that she had undoubtedly partaken of some poisonous substance.
Arabella herself was incredulous, and attributed in her own mind the fit of sickness which had overtaken her, to the care and anxiety which she had previously endured. But the learned doctors assured her that perhaps it might be a fortunate event she had taken this poison, as, under the good management with which she had been treated, it would act as an antidote against the infection of the plague, which in all probability she would otherwise have caught, as the case of Sir Harry West was undoubtedly one of a pestilential character.