that he might die by the axe like
a nobleman.[92]

[Footnote 92: _Queen Jane and Queen Mary_, p 17,
Renard says that he asked the council to intercede
for his life.]

On the 19th, Sir John and Sir Henry Gates, Sir Andrew Dudley, and Sir
Thomas Palmer were tried before a special commission. Dudley had gone
with the treasonable message to France; the three others were the
boldest and most unscrupulous of the Duke's partisans, while Palmer
was also especially hated for his share in the death of Somerset.
These four also pleaded guilty, and were sentenced, Palmer only
scornfully telling the commissioners that they were traitors as well
as he, and worse than he.[93]

[Footnote 93: So Renard states. The author of the
_Chronicle of Queen Mary_ says merely that he
denied that he had borne arms against the queen,
but admitted that he had been with the army.]

Seven had been condemned; three only, the duke, Sir John Gates, and
Palmer, were to suffer.

Crime alone makes death terrible: in the long list of victims whose
bloody end, at stake or scaffold, the historian of England in the
sixteenth century has to relate, two only showed signs of cowardice,
and one of those was a soldier and a nobleman, who, {p.041} in a
moment of extreme peril, four years before, had kissed swords with his
comrades, and had sworn to conquer the insurgents at Norwich, or die
with honour.

The Duke of Northumberland, who since that time had lived very
emphatically without God in the world, had not lived without religion.
He had affected religion, talked about religion, played with religion,
till fools and flatterers had told him that he was a saint; and now,
in his extreme need, he found that he had trifled with forms and
words, till they had grown into a hideous hypocrisy. The Infinite of
death was opening at his feet, and he had no faith, no hope, no
conviction, but only a blank and awful horror, and perhaps he felt
that there was nothing left for him but to fling himself back in agony
into the open arms of superstition. He had asked to speak with some
member of the council; he had asked for a confessor. In Gardiner,
Bishop of Winchester, he found both.

After the sentence Gardiner visited him in the Tower, where he poured
out his miserable story; he was a Catholic, he said, he always had
been a Catholic; he had