guilty of the family appears to have been the Countess's
eldest son, Lord Montague;[1040] but he, too, was involved in (p. 374)
the common ruin. Plots were hatched for kidnapping the Cardinal and
bringing him home to stand his trial for treason. Sir Geoffrey was
arrested in August, 1538, was induced, or forced, to turn King's
evidence, and as a reward was granted his miserable, conscience-struck
life.[1041] The Countess was spared for a while, but Montague mounted
the scaffold in December.

[Footnote 1038: _Ibid._, vii., 1368; viii., 750.]

[Footnote 1039: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 835, 838,
855.]

[Footnote 1040: He had, however, been sending
information to Chapuys as early as 1534 (_L. and
P._, vii., 957), when Charles V. was urged to make
use of him and of Reginald Pole (_ibid._, vii.,
1040; _cf. ibid._, XIII., ii., 702, 830, 954).]

[Footnote 1041: _Ibid._, XIII., pt. ii., _passim_.
He attempted to commit suicide (_ibid._, 703).]

With Montague perished his cousin, the Marquis of Exeter, whose
descent from Edward IV. was as fatal to him as their descent from
Clarence was to the Poles. The Marquis was the White Rose, the next
heir to the throne if the line of the Tudors failed. His father, the
Earl of Devonshire, had been attainted in the reign of Henry VII.; but
Henry VIII. had reversed the attainder, had treated the young Earl
with kindness, had made him Knight of the Garter and Marquis of
Exeter, and had sought in various ways to win his support. But his
dynastic position and dislike of Henry's policy drove the Marquis into
the ranks of the discontented. He had been put in the Tower, in 1531,
on suspicion of treason; after his release he listened to the
hysterics of Elizabeth Barton, intrigued with Chapuys, and corresponded
with Reginald Pole;[1042] and in Cornwall, in 1538, men conspired to
make him King.[1043] Less evidence than this would have (p. 375)
convinced a jury of peers in Tudor times of the expediency of Exeter's
death; and, on the 9th of December, his head paid the price of his
royal descent.

[Footnote 1042: _Ibid._, v., 416; vi., 1419, 1464.]

[Footnote 1043: _Ibid._, XIII., ii., 802, 961.]

These executions do not seem to have produced the faintest symptom