nothing was decided about their application. He had expected, he said, a
general discontentment, and the money was to be expended as occasion
offered. At his oral examination on the same day he is stated by Cecil,
in a letter to Parry, to have 'cleared Sir Walter in most things, and to
have taken all the burden to himself.' It may be inferred from an
allusion by him in a letter that some of the Lords who had been
interrogating him allowed their indignation at his apparent calumnies
against Ralegh to be perceptible. The result was a growing impression
that the proceedings against Ralegh would have to be abandoned. Lord
Grey, an austere Protestant, and Sir Griffin Markham, a Catholic,
already, it was rumoured, had denied that he had been a conspirator.
They had affirmed they would have given up their project upon any
suspicion that he was mixed up with it. Now Cobham also was become a
broken reed. M. de Beaumont wrote to King Henry that the Lords found it
difficult in consequence to sustain Ralegh's prosecution. 'God forgive
Sir Walter Ralegh,' Cobham had exclaimed in August to Sir John Peyton's
son; 'he hath accused me; but I cannot accuse him.'

[Sidenote: _Cobham's Remorse._]

[Sidenote: _Written Retractations._]

Cobham's awakened sense of justice prompted him in the autumn to a step
which might have been decisive. Peyton was no longer at the Tower.
Ralegh's guilt had so far been presumed, as early as August, that his
patent as Governor of Jersey had been declared forfeited through his
grievous treason intended against the King. The office was conferred on
Peyton, in some measure, perhaps, that he might be removed from the
charge of Ralegh. The current belief was that his preferment was
disgrace for connivance at communications between him and Cobham. To his
successor, Sir George Harvey, Cobham wrote on October 24, desiring the
grant of facilities to him to address the Council on Ralegh's behalf:
'Mr. Lieutenant, If that I may write unto the Lords I would, touching
Sir Walter Ralegh; besides my letter to my Lord Cecil; God is my
witness, it doth touch my conscience. As you shall send me word so I
will do, that my letter may be ready against your son's going. I would
very fain have the words that the Lords used of my barbarousness in
accusing him falsely.' Harvey received this brief and not very coherent,
but significant, epistle, and locked the request up in his own bosom. He
did worse. From the language of his tar