assemblage is said to have included
ladies of rank. The morning was raw, and a fire had been lighted beside
the scaffold for the Sheriffs, while they waited before going to the
Gate-house. They invited him to descend and warm himself. He declined;
his ague would soon be upon him; it might be deemed, he said, if he
delayed, and the fit began before he had played his part, that he quaked
with fear.

[Sidenote: _Rejoices to 'die in the Light.'_]

Proclamation having been made by the Sheriffs, he addressed his
audience. Tounson's, and another account prepared, it would appear from
a statement of the Dean's, for the Government by one Crawford, do not
materially differ. They seem both to be honest, if not fluent. He
commenced by explaining, not complaining, that he had the day before
been taken from his bed in a strong fit of fever, which might recur that
morning. Therefore, he hoped they would ascribe any disability of voice
or dejection of look to that, and not to dismay of mind. Hereupon he
paused and sat down. Beginning again to speak he fancied they in the
balcony did not hear. So he said he would raise his voice. Arundel
replied that the company would rather come down to the scaffold.
Northampton, Doncaster, and himself descended, mounted the scaffold, and
shook hands with Ralegh. Then he resumed: 'I thank God that He has sent
me to die in the light, and not in darkness, before such an assembly of
honourable witnesses, and not obscurely in the Tower, where, for the
space of thirteen years together, I have been oppressed with many
miseries. I thank Him, too, that my fever hath not taken me at this
time.' He proceeded to excuse his counterfeit sickness at Salisbury: 'It
was only to prolong the time till his Majesty came, in hopes of some
commiseration from him.' He dwelt more seriously on two or three main
points of suspicion conceived by the King against him. They, he
believed, had specially hastened his doom. One was connected with his
supposed intrigues with France. He gave an indignant denial to this
charge of practices with foreigners, at any rate without the
qualification expressed in the testamentary note he had composed during
the night, 'unknowing to the King.' The mistrust had, he was aware, been
strengthened by his projects of flight from Plymouth and London. Those
luckless schemes had, he asserted, no affinity to thoughts of permanent
expatriation and foreign service. Simply he had reckoned that he could
mor