s
not prepossessing in appearance, 'a huge, heavy, ugly man,' and he had
an uncouth history. As a child he had been stolen by gipsies. In early
manhood he was a notorious gamester and reveller. He took purses, it is
stoutly affirmed, on Shooter's Hill, when he was a barrister, and thirty
years of age. Then he reformed his morals, read law, and entered the
House of Commons. In 1581 he was elected Speaker, and in 1592 was
appointed Chief Justice. Essex had imprisoned him in Essex House on the
day of the rising, but protected his life from his crazy followers. He
had the generosity to requite the favour by venturing to advise the
Queen to grant a pardon. He amassed a vast estate, part of it being
Littlecote, which he was fabled to have wrested, together with an
hereditary curse, from a murderer, Sir Richard Dayrell. With Popham,
Chief Justice Anderson, and Justices Gawdy and Warburton, there sat as
Commissioners of Oyer and Terminer, Lord Thomas Howard, since July Earl
of Suffolk and Lord Chamberlain, Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy and Earl
of Devonshire, Lord Henry Howard, Robert Cecil, now Lord Cecil, Lord
Wotton, Vice-Chamberlain Sir John Stanhope, and Sir William Waad. That
the King, with his personal knowledge of Henry Howard's fierce hatred of
Ralegh, as evinced in the whole private correspondence with Holyrood,
should have appointed him a judge was an outrage upon decency.
Attorney-General Coke, Serjeant Hele, who had been Ralegh's counsel
against Meere, and Serjeant Phillips, prosecuted. The law allowed no
counsel to prisoners. Sir Michael Stanhope, Sir Edward Darcy, Ralegh's
neighbour in Durham House, and Sir William Killigrew, had been, it was
rumoured, on the jury panel, but were 'changed overnight, being found
not for their turn.' The report of a sudden modification in the list is
not necessarily untrue, though the jury, it is said, was a Middlesex
jury, and had been ordered long before to attend at Winchester. Other
Middlesex men, of whom many were at Winchester, may have been
substituted. At any rate, Ralegh did not except to any names. 'I know,'
said he, 'none of them. They are all Christians and honest gentlemen.'
Sir Thomas, or John, Fowler was chosen foreman.

Ralegh asked leave to answer the points particularly as they were
delivered, on account of his failing memory and sickness. Coke objected
to having the King's evidence dismembered, 'whereby it might lose much
of its grace and vigour.' Popham was more