under
which he groaned in this, he sought to avert its everlasting action by
practising upon himself the expiatory rigors of asceticism. The sequel
of his melancholy history we shall have occasion to contemplate
hereafter.

Thomas Percy earl of Northumberland, brother to that earl who had
suffered death on account of the Northern rebellion,--by his
participation in which he had himself also incurred a fine, though
afterwards remitted,--was naturally exposed at this juncture to vehement
suspicions. After some examinations before the council, cause was found
for his committal to the Tower; and here, according to the iniquitous
practice of the age, he remained for a considerable time without being
brought to trial. At length the public was informed that another
prisoner on a like account having been put to the torture to force
disclosures, had revealed matters against the earl of Northumberland
amounting to treason, on which account he had thought fit to anticipate
the sentence of the law by shooting himself through the heart. That the
earl was really the author of his own death was indeed proved before a
coroner's jury by abundant and unexceptionable testimony, as well as by
his deliberate precautions for making his lands descend to his son, and
his indignant declaration that the queen, on whom he bestowed a most
opprobrious epithet, should never have his estate; though it may still
bear a doubt whether a consciousness of guilt, despair of obtaining
justice, or merely the misery of an indefinite captivity, were the
motive of the rash act: but the catholics, actuated by the true spirit
of party, added without scruple the death of this nobleman to the "foul
and midnight murders" perpetrated within these gloomy walls.

Meantime the opposition to popery, which had now become the reigning
principle of English policy, was to be maintained on other ground, and
with other weapons than those with which an inquisitorial
high-commission, or a fierce system of penal enactments, had armed the
hands of religious intolerance, political jealousy, or private
animosity; and all the more generous and adventurous spirits prepared
with alacrity to draw the sword in the noble cause of Belgian
independence, against the united tyranny and bigotry of the detestable
Philip II.

The death of that patriot hero William prince of Orange by the hand of a
fanatical assassin, had plunged his country in distress and dismay, and
the States-general had