ing Courtenay, his words would have been far
more effective than they were. This, however, it
was hard for Wyatt to do, as it would have been
equivalent to a repetition of his accusations.]

[Footnote 309: Les gens de loy ne treuvent matiere
pour la condamner.--Renard to Charles V., April 22:
Tytler, vol. ii.]

[Footnote 310: Ibid. And see a passage in the MS.,
which Mr. Tytler has omitted.]

The threatened escape of her sister, too, was but the beginning of the
queen's sorrows. On the 17th of April Sir Nicholas Throgmorton was
tried at the Guildhall for having been a party to the conspiracy. The
confessions of many of the prisoners had more or less implicated
Throgmorton. Cuthbert Vaughan, who was out with Wyatt, swore in the
court that Throgmorton had discussed the plan of the insurrection with
him; and Throgmorton himself admitted that he had talked to Sir Peter
Carew and Wyatt about the probability of a rebellion. He it was, too,
who was to have conducted Courtenay to Andover on his flight into
Devonshire; and the evidence[311] leaves very little doubt that he was
concerned as deeply as any one who did not actually take up arms. Sir
Nicholas, however, defended himself with resolute pertinacity; he
fought through all the charges against him, and dissected the
depositions with the skill of a practised pleader; and in the end, the
jury returned the bold verdict of {p.132} "Not guilty." Sir Thomas
Bromley urged them to remember themselves. The foreman answered they
had found the verdict according to their consciences.

[Footnote 311: It is printed at length in
Holinshed.]

Their consciences probably found less difficulty in the facts charged
against Throgmorton than in the guilt to be attached to them. The
verdict was intended as a rebuke to the cruelty with which the
rebellion had been punished, and it was received as an insult to the
crown. The crowd, as Throgmorton left the court, threw up their caps
and shouted. The queen was ill for three days with mortification,[312]
and insisted that the jurors should be punished. They were arrested,
and kept as prisoners till the following winter, when they were
released on payment of the ruinous fine of L2000. Throgmorton himself
was seized again on some other pretext, and sent again to