ven mad by
merciless treatment. Had death ensued, a worse suspicion, however in
this instance unjust, was to be feared. Cecil would remember that there
had been Tower suicides before, and that they had been interpreted as
evidence rather against the gaolers than the prisoners.

[Sidenote: _Improbability of Ralegh's Complicity._]

For a moment it seemed as if Ralegh had been superfluously mistrustful
of English justice. A mass of tremendous charges had been rolled
together. To Waad's hopeful fancy they appeared, he told Cecil, to have
gravely implicated Ralegh, as well as Cobham. Investigated with a view
to a positive arraignment, the pile broke up and evaporated. Watson's
and Brooke's stories proved as unsubstantial as the astonishing romance
adopted by grave de Thou. According to the French annalist, Ralegh, in
disgust at the loss of his Captaincy of the Guard, had joined in a plot
to kill the King, started by a band of Englishmen incensed at the
Scottish irruption. He had accepted the post of assassin. But his
sister's report of his agitation, of which she misapprehended the
cause, induced inquiry. Arrested, he confessed the whole to James, and
bought his life by the betrayal of Grey, Cobham, and Markham. Silly as
is that tale, there was almost a more obvious dearth of motive for the
prominent part assigned to him in the most circumstantial of the
extorted depositions. Evidence was given that the other conspirators had
agreed upon the apportionment among themselves of the high offices of
State. No one testified that any had been reserved for the most
competent, the most distinguished, and the most ambitious of the
company. Ralegh's sole reward for the alleged terrible risk was, by
Waad's report of Brooke's and Watson's admissions, to be some such sum
of eight or ten thousand crowns as was to be offered to Cecil and
Northumberland, who incurred no danger.

Soon it must have become apparent that success in a prosecution of
Ralegh depended solely on the plausibility and consistency of Cobham's
accusations. They were peculiarly deficient in those qualities. Ralegh
has recorded that Cobham's remorse for the evil wrought by his charges
of July 20 commenced within the building in which they had been uttered.
At any rate, on the 29th he retracted them more or less completely. By a
letter of that date, addressed to the Lords of the Council, he admitted
he had pressed Arenberg for four or five hundred thousand crowns, though