cholas Throgmorton was so mixed up in the confessions
of the bishop of Ross, that it was perhaps an indulgent fate which had
removed him some months previously from the sphere of human action. He
died at the house of the earl of Leicester, and certainly of a pleurisy;
but the malevolent credulity of that age seldom allowed a person of any
eminence to quit the world without imputing the occurrence in some
manner, direct or indirect, to the malice of his enemies. It was rumored
that Throgmorton had fallen a victim to the hostility of Leicester,
which he was thought to have provoked by quitting the party of the earl
to reconcile himself with Burleigh, his secret enemy; and the suspicion
of proficiency in the art of poisoning, which had so long rested upon
the favorite, obtained credit to this absurd report. Possibly there
might be more truth in the general opinion, that it was in some measure
owing to the enmity of Burleigh that a person of such acknowledged
abilities in public affairs, and one who had conducted himself so
skilfully in various important negotiations, should never have been
advanced to any considerable office of trust or profit. But the lofty
and somewhat turbulent spirit of Throgmorton himself, ought probably to
bear the chief blame both of this enmity, and of his want of success at
the court of a princess who exacted from her servants the exercise of
the most refined and cautious policy, as well as an entire and implicit
submission to all her views and wishes. It is highly probable that she
never entirely pardoned Throgmorton for giving the lie to her
declarations respecting the promises made to the earl of Murray and his
party, by the open production of his own diplomatic instructions.

The hostility of Leicester extended, as we shall see hereafter, to other
branches of the unfortunate family of Throgmorton, whom an imprudent or
criminal zeal in the cause of popery exposed without defence to the
whole weight of his vengeance. On some slight pretext he procured the
dismissal of sir John Throgmorton, the brother of sir Nicholas; from his
office of chief justice of Chester, who did not long survive the
disgrace though apparently unmerited. Puttenham, author of the "Art of
English Poesie," ventured, though a professed courtier, to compose an
epitaph on this victim of oppression, of which he has preserved to us
the following lines in the work above mentioned:

"Whom Virtue reared Envy hath overthrown,