hen I come
to the sad parting, you will see me grave enough.'

[Sidenote: _Fearless of Death._]

By desire of the Lords of the Council, Dr. Robert Tounson, Dean of
Westminster, and afterwards Bishop of Salisbury, attended him. Tounson
wrote on November 9 to Sir John Isham: 'He was the most fearless of
death that ever was known; and the most resolute and confident, yet with
reverence and conscience. When I began to encourage him against the fear
of death, he seemed to make so light of it that I wondered at him. He
gave God thanks, he never feared death; and the manner of death, though
to others it might seem grievous, yet he had rather die so than of a
burning fever. I wished him not to flatter himself, for this
extraordinary boldness, I was afraid, came from some false ground. If it
were out of a humour of vain glory, or carelessness of death, or
senselessness of his own state, he were much to be lamented. He answered
that he was persuaded that no man that knew God and feared Him could die
with cheerfulness and courage, except he were assured of the love and
favour of God unto him; that other men might make shows outwardly, but
they felt no joy within; with much more to that effect, very
Christianly; so that he satisfied me then, as I think he did all his
spectators at his death.' A reputation for free thinking once
established is tenacious. Though Ralegh satisfied a Chief Justice, a
Dean of Westminster, and men like Pym, Eliot, Hampden, of his orthodoxy,
he did not satisfy all. Archbishop Abbot three or four months later
wrote to Sir Thomas Roe that his execution was a judgment on him for his
scepticism.

He did not allude, wrote Tounson, to 'his former treason.' As to more
recent imputations, he could not conceive how it was possible to break
peace with Spain, which 'within these four years took divers of his men,
and bound them back to back and drowned them.'

[Sidenote: _A last Farewell to his Wife._]

Later arrived his wife. She had spent the earlier hours in trying to
induce the Council to mediate with the King. Before she came she had
learnt from a friend that it refused to beg the life, but authorized her
to dispose of the corpse. At the Gate-house first she heard he was to be
beheaded on Friday morning, October 29. That was Lord Mayor's Day, the
morrow of St. Simon and St. Jude. It appears to have been selected, that
the City pageant might draw away the crowd from hearing him, and seeing
him die. As he an