and called upon the high steward in the queen's name' to pass sentence. With tears in his eyes, the lord steward then proceeded to pronounce the dreadful sentence of the law. "Forasmuch," he said, "as thou, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, hath been charged with high treason, hath pleaded not guilty, and hath submitted thyself to the judgment of thy peers; this court adjudgeth thee to be carried back from hence to the Tower; then to be laid upon an hurdle, and drawn through the city to the gallows, there to be hanged; and being half dead, to be cut down, thy bowels taken out, and after thy head is cut off, to be quartered; thy head and body to be disposed of according to the queen's pleasure; and God have mercy upon thy soul." The Duke listened to these frightful details without any visible emotion. "Sentence is passed upon me," he said, "as upon a traitor; I have none to trust but God and the queen. I am excluded from your society, but hope shortly to enjoy the heavenly. I will fit myself to die. Only one thing I crave; that the queen would be kind to my poor children and servants, and take care that my debts be paid." The Duke was beheaded on Tower Hill, on the 2nd of June, 1572. He died pious and undaunted, on the same spot where his father, the accomplished Earl of Surrey, had been decapitated twenty-six years before.

A more interesting person even than the Duke of Norfolk, was Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, the illfated favorite of Queen Elizabeth, who was tried in Westminster Hall, with his friend, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, on the 19th of February, 1601. Camden was also present on this occasion, and has left us an interesting account of the proceedings. The peers having unanimously pronounced a verdict of guilty, the clerk of the crown inquired of the prisoners, as usual, if they had anything to offer why judgment should not be

passed upon them. Southampton addressed them in a modest, pathetic and effective appeal, while Essex contented himself with generously pleading the cause of his friend. As for his own life, he said, he valued it not; his only desire was to lay down his life with the sincere. conscience of a good Christian, and a loyal subject; and though he was unwilling that he should be represented to the queen as a person who despised her clemency, yet he trusted he should make no cringing submissions for his life. "And you, my lords," he concluded, "though you have condemned me in this tribunal, yet I most heartily entreat you, that you will acquit me in your opinion of having entertained any ill intentions against my prince."

The edge of the axe being now turned against the prisoners, the high steward passed on them the dreadful sentence of the law. At its conclusion Essex exclaimed: "If her majesty had pleased, this body of mine might have done her better service: however, I shall be glad if it may prove serviceable to her in any way." He then requested that a clergyman whom he named, Mr. Ashton, should be allowed to administer the holy sacrament to him, and attend him in his last moments; and, lastly, he begged pardon of the Earl of Worcester and the lord chief justice, for having detained them as prisoners in Drury House; and especially of the Lords Morley and Delaware for having brought their sons into danger. The lord steward then broke his wand, and the court broke up. "I was myself present at these proceedings," says Camden, "and have related them with all fairness and impartiality." Southampton escaped with his life, and shortly afterwards, on the accession of James the First, obtained the Order of the Garter and other honors. Essex was less fortunate. He was beheaded in the court-yard of the Tower six days after his con

demnation; displaying on the scaffold the same unaffected courage and calm dignity which he had exhibited at his trial in Westminster Hall.

James the First and his consort, Anne of Denmark, were crowned in Westminster Abbey, and afterwards sat at their coronation banquet in the hall, though the festivities were greatly curtailed in consequence of the plague which was raging in the metropolis. Two years afterwards, the old Hall witnessed a very different scene, the trial of the handsome Sir Edward Digby, Guy Fawkes, and the other conspirators engaged in the memorable Gunpowder Plot, who were conveyed by water from the Tower to be tried by a special commission in Westminster Hall.

A scarcely less remarkable trial was that of the celebrated favorite, Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, and his countess, who were arraigned before the bar of the House of Lords in Westminster Hall on the 24th and 25th of May, 1616, for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury.

The countess was the first who was brought to trial; presenting the extraordinary spectacle of a young and beautiful woman being tried by her peers for a foul and unnatural murder. The lord chancellor, who acted as lord high steward, rode into Westminster Hall on horseback. When the prisoner was brought to the bar, doubtless in consideration of her sex, the ceremony of carrying the axe before her was omitted. She stood pale and trembling, and during the reading of the indictment kept her face covered with her fan. She pleaded guilty of the crime; but beseeched the peers to intercede for her with the king, with so many tears and with such evident anguish of mind, that the bystanders, forgetting the horror of her crime in the touching sight of beauty in distress, were unable to withhold from her their commiseration.

The following day, the earl was brought with all due solemnity before the same tribunal in Westminster Hall. He is described as being dressed on the occasion in "a plain black satin suit, his hair curled, his face pale, his beard long, and his eyes sunk in his head:" he was also decorated with the George and Garter. According to Weldon, two persons were placed behind him at his trial, whose instructions were to throw a cloak over his face, and carry him off, should he exhibit the slightest intention of implicating the king. He pleaded innocent; but the peers bringing in a verdict of guilty, he was sentenced, with his countess, to be reconducted to the Tower, and from thence to be carried to the place of execution, where they were to be hanged like common criminals. They received at different times several reprieves; till, at last, in 1624, about four months previous to the death of James, they received a full pardon for their crime. In the reign of Charles the First, Somerset petitioned, though unsuccessfully, for the restoration of his estates. The guilty pair, during the remainder of their lives, resided together in a private and almost obscure condition. Their former passionate love was converted into abhorrence, and though inmates of the same house, they lived entirely separated and estranged. Such was the end of these two persons, both of them gifted with extraordinary beauty of person and of exalted rank; whose marriage had been solemnized a few years before in the palace of Whitehall, with greater splendor than had ever been witnessed in England at the espousals of a subject; and which even the citizens of London, in order to please their sovereign, had celebrated with all kinds of masks, dancing, and rejoicings.

Charles the First was crowned in Westminster Abbey on the 2nd of February, 1626, and afterwards dined in