Hence comes the cause, that each tear striveth to be first, As if I meant to stint them of their course, No salted meats: that done you know my heart would burst With violent assaults of your great force: But when I stay you, ’tis for that I fear, Your gushing so will leave me ne’er a tear.
But ah! this doubt, grief says I never need to fear For she will undertake t’afford me store; Who in all her knowledge never cause of woe did hear That gall’d her deeper or gave witness more Of earth’s hard usage, that does punish those That guiltless be, with Fortune’s cruellest blows.
Though further cause of more than utterable grief, As other’s loss I could dilate at large, Which I am cause of, yet her suffering being chief Of all their woes, that sail in this deep Barge Of sorrow’s Sea: I cannot but reflect Hereon more deeply, and with more respect.
On which dear object when I look with grieved mind, Such store of pities see I plead her case, As hardest hearts cause of compassion there would find; To hear what could be said before that face Which I have wrong’d in causing so to weep; The grief whereof constrains my pen to sleep.
The trial of the prisoners was long delayed; quite ten weeks passed between their capture and their sentence; but, as Mr Hepworth Dixon puts it,[368] they were, in fact, “undergoing a course of daily trial by Northampton in the Tower.”In the so-called gunpowder plot room, in the Lieutenant’s House, with its panelled walls, and high, wide window, they underwent “a thousand interrogatories from Coke, a thousand hostilities from Waad, and a thousand treacheries from Forsett. This Forsett was one of Northampton’s spies; a useful and despicable wretch, whom his master employed in overhearing and reporting the private conversations of prisoners with each other.”
Coke himself, in his speech at the trial, referred to the long delay in bringing the prisoners to the bar, saying[369] “There have been already twenty and three several days spent in Examinations.”And he summarized the good results of the delay thus[370]:—“Veritas Temporis filia, Truth is the daughter of Time, especially in this case; wherein by timely and often Examinations, First, matters of greatest moment have been lately found out. Secondly, some known Offenders, and those capital, but lately apprehended. Thirdly, sundry of the principal and Arch-traytors before unknown, now manifested, as the Jesuits. Fourthly—”but he might have abridged this statement into these few words—We hoped to worm some evidence out of the prisoners against Catholic priests.
FOOTNOTES:
[347] Letters of Sir E. D., Paper 7.
[348] A modern Jesuit thinks otherwise (see The Month, No. 367, p. 8), quoting Cecil’s letter to Favat (Brit. Museum MSS. Add. 6178. fol. 625). “Most of the prisoners have wilfully forsworn that the priests knew anything in particular, and obstinately refuse to be accusers of them, yea, what torture soever they be put to.”Cecil may have referred to Fawkes only when he mentioned torture; but the Jesuit Father may be right, and he gives other evidence in support of his theory.
[349] Cal. Sta. Pa. Dom., 1603-10, p. 258.