s, and were
then granted their lives. Cobham, when in instant expectation of death,
persisted in avowing Raleigh's guilt.

Beyond the interest that attaches to Raleigh's trial from the historical
and personal points of view, it is interesting as showing the methods in
which an important trial was conducted at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. The most remarkable feature of the trial itself in
the eyes of a modern reader, beyond its extreme informality, is that
Raleigh was condemned on the statement of a confederate, who spoke under
extreme pressure, with every inducement to exculpate himself at
Raleigh's expense, and whom Raleigh never had a chance of meeting. The
reasons given by Popham for refusing to allow Cobham to be called as a
witness at the trial are instructive, and, as Professor Gardiner points
out, prove that in political trials at all events, when the government
had decided that the circumstances of the case were sufficient to
justify them in putting a man on his trial, the view of the court before
which he was tried was that he was to be condemned unless he succeeded
in proving his innocence. This fact alone leads the modern Englishman
to sympathise with Raleigh, and this feeling is naturally increased by
what Sir James Stephen calls the 'rancorous ferocity' of Coke's
behaviour. The second cause added to Raleigh's popularity, and the
political reasons which led to his trial are probably what produced the
same feelings among his contemporaries. It is beyond my present purpose
to discuss how far Raleigh was really guilty of treason, even were I
competent to express any opinion on the subject worth attending to. But
for the credit of the lawyers who presided at the trial, I may point out
that the assertions that the statute of Edward VI., requiring two
witnesses in cases of treason, had been repealed, and that the trial at
common law was by examination, and not by a jury and witnesses, were not
as incomprehensibly unjust as they appear to us. A statute of Philip and
Mary enacted that cases of treason should be tried according to the due
order and course of common law, and the statute of Edward VI., being
regarded as an innovation upon the common law, was thus held to be
implicitly repealed. The rule as to the two witnesses seems to have been
construed as referring to trial by witnesses as it existed under the
civil law, which was taken to require two eye- or ear-witnesses to the
actual fact constitutin