"At which place of execution, when he came, he was first forced to mount the ladder backward, and after permitted to use very few words. Notwithstanding he briefly opened the cause of his condemnation, and protested, that his master (Mr. Tregian) was never privy with his having of these things whereupon he was condemned—the Jubilee and the Agnus Dei; then one of the justices, interrupting his talk, commanded the hangman to put the rope about his neck, and then, quoth he, let him preach afterward. Which done, another commanded the ladder to be overturned, so as he had not the leisure to recite In manus tuas Domine to the end. With speed he was cut down, and with the fall had almost ended his life, for the gibbet being very high, and he being yet in the swing when the rope was cut, he fell in such sort, as his head encountered the scaffold which was there prepared of purpose to divide the quarters, as the one side of his face was sorely bruised, and one of his eyes far driven out of his head.
"After he was cut down, the hangman first spoiled him of his clothes, and then in butcherly manner, opening his belly, he rent up his bowels, and after tore out his heart, which he held up aloft in his hand, showing it unto the people. Lastly, his head was cut off, and his body divided into four quarters, which afterwards were dispersed and set up on the Castle of Launceston; one quarter sent unto Bodmin; another to Barnstaple; the third to Tregony, not a mile distant from Mr. Tregian's house; the fourth to Wadebridge."
Not only was Francis Tregian adjudged to forfeit his goods, but he was also prosecuted by a goldsmith, who claimed a debt of £70.
Accordingly he was sent up to London to the King's Bench prison, "strongly guarded by a ruffianly sort of bloody blue-coats, with bows, bills, and guns"; and the arms of Tregian were pinioned behind his back with cords. With him were associated the other Papists; and they met with insult and harsh treatment all the way to London. There he was again tried and cast into prison.
We are gravely informed that before these calamities befell Francis Tregian, a premonition of coming woes had been given to his wife.
"Mr. Tregian, her husband, not many days after they were first married, enforced for ten months to follow the Lords of the Council, his wife always in the mean season lying with a very virtuous maid, a sister of her husband's, it chanced that one night looking for fleas, as the manner of women is, she espied in her smock sundry spots, the which she perceived to carry the shape of sundry crosses. Whereat she, much marvelling, besought her sister to behold the same; whereupon, when both had long looked and wondered, at length endeavouring to number them, they found contained in the same smock no less than one hundred and twenty-five crosses, and after, upon more curious search, they likewise found sundry other, both on her pillow and in her sheets."
This omen of coming evil was now verified, but not by flea-bites. Francis Tregian remained in prison cruelly treated, and when he attempted to make his escape, manacled and fettered in a loathsome dungeon. From his cell he wrote in verse to his wife, but did not display much brilliancy of poetic art.
My wont is not to write in verse,
You know, good wife, I wis.
Wherefore you well may bear with me,
Though now I write amiss;
For lack of ink the candle coal,
For pen a pin I use,
The which also I may allege
In part of my excuse.
For said it is of many men
And such as are no fools,
A workman is but little worth
If he do want his tools;
Though tools I have wherewith in sort
My mind I may disclose,
They are, in truth, more fit to paint
A nettle than a rose.
And so on, never rising to a higher level.