the first place, that as little of the
real truth as possible should be divulged in the trial, and that Bacon
and others should manage so as to let out enough to get a conviction
and no more; hence the evidence is so fragmentary and unsatisfactory,
that none but a tribunal prepared to be very easily satisfied could
have formed any conclusion from it. In the second place, it was the
king's object that Somerset should be assured all along that his life
would be spared. The object of this certainly was to prevent him, in
his despair, from uttering that secret, whatever it was, about which
the king was so terribly alarmed. The reader may now expect some
further elucidation of this part of the mystery.

In Sir Anthony Weldon's _Court and Character of King James_ (p. 36),
we have the following statement in reference to the trial:--

'And now for the last act, enters Somerset himself on the stage,
who being told (as the manner is) by the lieutenant, that he must
go next day to his trial, did absolutely refuse it, and said they
should carry him in his bed; that the king had assured him he
should not come to any trial--neither _durst_ the king bring him
to trial. This was in a high strain, and in a language not well
understood by Sir George Moore, then lieutenant in Elwes's
room--that made Moore quiver and shake. And however he was
accounted a wise man, yet he was near at his wits' end.' This
conversation had such an effect on the lieutenant, that though it
was twelve o'clock at night, he sped instantly to Greenwich, to
see the king. Then he 'bownseth at the back-stair, as if mad;'
and Loweston, the Scotch groom, aroused from sleep, comes in
great surprise to ask 'the reason of that distemper at so late a
season.' Moore tells him, he must speak with the king. Loweston
replies: 'He is quiet'--which, in the Scottish dialect, is fast
asleep. Moore says: 'You must awake him.' We are then told that
Moore was called in, and had a secret audience. 'He tells the
king those passages, and requires to be directed by the king, for
he was gone beyond his own reason to hear such bold and undutiful
expressions from a faulty subject against a just sovereign. The
king falls into a passion of tears: "On my soul, Moore, I wot not
what to do! Thou art a wise man--help me in this great straight,
and thou shalt find thou dost it fo