“Furthermore, that the Marquis of Exeter, machinating with Lord Montague the death and destruction of the king, did openly declare to the Lord Montague, ‘I trust once to have a fair day upon those knaves which rule about the king; and I trust to see a merry world one day.’
“And, furthermore persevering in his malicious intention, he did say, ‘Knaves rule about the king;’ and then stretching his arm, and shaking his clenched fist, spoke the following words: ‘I trust to give them a buffet one day.’”
December 3. He is condemned.
Sir Geoffrey Pole was in all cases the witness. The words were proved. It was enough. A verdict of guilty was returned; and the marquis was sentenced to die.
Lord Montague also sentenced to die.
If the proof of language of no darker complexion was sufficient to secure a condemnation, the charges against Lord Montague left him no shadow of a hope. Montague had expressed freely to his miserable brother his approbation of Reginald’s proceedings. He had discussed the chances of the impending struggle and the resources of which they could dispose. He had spoken bitterly of the king; he had expressed a fear that when the world “came to strypes,” as come it would, “there would be a lack of honest men,” with other such language, plainly indicative of his disposition. However justly, indeed, we may now accuse the equity which placed men on their trial for treason for impatient expressions, there can be no uncertainty that, in the event of an invasion, or of a rebellion with any promise of success in it, both Montague and Exeter would have thrown their weight into the rebel scale. Montague, too, was condemned.
The date of the expressions which were sworn against them is curious. They belong, without exception, to the time when Reginald Pole was in Flanders. That there was nothing later was accounted for by the distrust which Geoffrey said that soon after they had begun to entertain towards him. Evidently they had seen his worthlessness; and as their enterprise had become more critical, they had grown more circumspect. But he remembered enough to destroy them, and to save by his baseness his own miserable life.
Convictions of Sir Edward Neville,
He was himself tried, though to receive a pardon after conviction. With Sir Edward Neville and four other persons he was placed at the bar on charges of the same kind as those against Exeter and his brother. Neville had said that he “would have a day upon the knaves that were about the king;” “that the king was a beast, and worse than a beast;” “machinating and conspiring to extinguish the love and affection of the king’s subjects.” Sir Geoffrey Pole, beyond comparison the most guilty, had been in command of a company under the Duke of Norfolk at Doncaster; and was proved to have avowed an intention of deserting in the action, if an action was fought,—real, bad, black treason. Of the others, two had spoken against the supremacy; one had carried letters to the cardinal; another had said to Lord Montague, that “the king would hang in hell for the plucking down of abbeys.”
And of Sir Nicholas Carew.