Coke, the enemy of Bacon, was now about fifty-five, and he had filled the post of Attorney-General for nine years. Sir Everard Digby and his fellow-prisoners knew that they had little mercy to expect at his hands. The asperity which he had shown in prosecuting Essex, five years earlier, and the personal animosity which he had exhibited, still later, in his sarcastic speech at the trial of Raleigh, when he had wound up with the phrase, “Thou hast an English face but a Spanish heart,” were notorious, and he was certain to make such a trial as that of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot the occasion of a great forensic display. It so happened that his speeches at this trial and that of Father Garnet, which presently followed it, brought his career as an advocate to a close; for within a year he was appointed Chief-Justice of Common Pleas.
Undoubtedly, his speeches at the trial of Sir Everard Digby and his accomplices added to his fame; but Jardine[387] called one of them “a long and laboured harangue,” and other historians thought him guilty of[388] “unnecessary cruelty in the torture and gratuitous” insolence which he exhibited towards the accused. The glaring eyes, which we see represented in his portrait, would be an unpleasant prospect for Sir Everard as he listened to his cruel words; but whatever tenderness a biographer may feel for his subject, and whatever dislike a Catholic may entertain to the Protestant bigotry of Sir Edward Coke, it ought not to be forgotten that, according to his lights, he was an honest, if a hard and an unmerciful man, that some ten years later he himself fell into disgrace and suffered imprisonment in the Tower, rather than yield on a point of principle, and that, vindictive as he could be in prosecuting a prisoner, one of his enemies—Lord Chancellor Egerton—said that his greatest fault was his “excessive popularity.”
Although he began his speech by saying that the Gunpowder Plot had been the greatest treason ever conceived against the greatest king that ever lived, he had presently a complimentary word or two to say as to the origins and previous lives of some of the conspirators. With an air of great truthfulness and fairness he said:—[389] “It is by some given out that they are such men as admit just exception, either desperate in estate, or base, or not settled in their wits; such as are sine religione, sine sede, sine fide, sine re, et sine spe—without religion, without habitation, without credit, without means, without hope. But (that no man, though never so wicked, may be wronged) true it is, they were gentlemen of good houses, of excellent parts, howsoever most perniciously seduced, abused, corrupted, and jesuited, of very competent fortunes and estates.”
After having said these comparatively gentle words concerning the laity, he launched forth in declamation against “those of the spirituality,” not one of whom was actually on his trial. “It is falsely said,” he cried, “that there is never a religious man in this action; for I never yet knew a treason without a Romish priest; but in this there are very many Jesuits, who are known to have dealt and passed through the whole action.” He then named four of these, beginning with Father Garnet, “besides their cursory men,” the first of which was Father Gerard. “The studies and practises of this sect principally consisted in two D’s, to wit, in deposing of kings and disposing of kingdoms.” Having thundered away at Jesuits and priests to his heart’s content, he exclaimed that “the Romish Catholicks” had put themselves under “Gunpowder Law, fit for Justices of Hell.”
“Note,” said he, with great vehemence, “that gunpowder was the invention of a Friar, one of that Romish Rabble.”[390] “All friars, religions, and priests were bad”; but “the principal offenders are the seducing Jesuits, men that use the reverence of Religion, yea, even the most Sacred and Blessed name of Jesus as a mantle to cover their impiety, blasphemy, treason, and rebellion, and all manner of wickedness.”
No speech in those days was considered perfect without a few words of astrology, so he called the attention of the Court to the remarkable fact “that it was in the entering of the Sun into the Tropick of Capricorn, when they” [the conspirators] “began their mine; noting that by mineing they should descend, and by hanging ascend.”
In the latter part of his pompous harangue, there was a passage which must have been very unpleasant hearing to the prisoners, however interesting to the rest of the audience.[391]
“The conclusion shall be from the admirable clemency and moderation of the King, in that howsoever these traitors have exceeded all others their predecessors in mischief, and Crescente, malitia crescere debuit, etc., Pœna; yet neither will the King exceed the usual punishment of Law, nor invent any new torture or torment for them, but is graciously pleased to afford them an ordinary course of trial, as an ordinary punishment, much inferior to their offence.” Nor was this reference to a “new torture” a mere figure of rhetoric on the part of the Attorney-General; for a few days earlier,[392] in both houses of Parliament, a proposal had been made to petition the King “to stay judgment until Parliament should have time to consider some extraordinary mode of punishment, which might surpass in horror even the scenes which usually occurred at the execution of traitors.” To their credit be it spoken, this suggestion was negatived by both Lords and Commons.
“And surely,” continued Coke, “worthy of observation is the punishment by law provided for High Treason, which we call Crimen læsæ Majestatis. For first after a traitor hath had his fair trial, and is convicted and attainted, he shall have his judgment to be drawn to the place of execution from his prison, as being not worthy any more to tread upon the face of the earth, whereof he was made. Also for that he hath been retrograde to Nature, therefore is he drawn backwards at a horse-tail. And whereas God hath made the head of man the highest and most supreme part, as being his chief grace and ornament: Pronáque cum spectent Animalia cætera terram, Os homini sublime dedit; he must be drawn with his head declining downward, and lying so near the ground as may be, being thought unfit to take benefit of the common air. For which cause also he shall be strangled, being hanged up by the neck between heaven and earth, as deemed unworthy of both, or either; as likewise, that the eyes of men may behold, and their hearts contemn him. Then is he to be cut down alive, and to have —— cut off, and burnt before his face, as being unworthily begotten, and unfit to leave any generation after him; his bowels and inlayed parts taken out and burnt, who inwardly conceived and harboured in his heart such horrible Treason. After, to have his head cut off, which had imagined the mischief. And lastly, his body to be quartered, and the quarters set up in some high and eminent place, to the view and detestation of men, and to become a prey for the Fouls of the Air.”
Considering that the prisoners had not yet been found guilty, and that even had they been, it was no business of his to pass sentence on them, this pointless and objectless description of their probable fate was as gratuitous as it was cruel on the part of the Attorney-General.