ed to have poisoned, and of the chief
justice of Chester lately displaced. When therefore, in addition to
these circumstances of suspicion, it was further observed that
Somerville, instead of being produced to deny or confirm on the scaffold
the evidence which he was said to have given against Arden, died
strangled in prison, by his own hand as was affirmed;--when it was seen
that Hall, who was confessedly the instigator of the whole, and further
obnoxious to the laws as a catholic priest, was quietly sent out of the
kingdom by Leicester's means, in spite of the opposition of sir
Christopher Hatton;--and finally, when it appeared that the forfeited
lands of Arden went to enrich a creature of the same great man,--this
victim of law was regarded as a martyr, and it was found impossible to
tie up the tongues of men from crying shame and vengeance on his cruel
and insidious destroyer.

The plot thickened when Francis Throgmorton, son of the degraded judge
of Chester, was next singled out. Some intercepted letters to the queen
of Scots formed the first ground of this gentleman's arrest; but being
carried to the Tower, he was there racked to extort further discoveries,
and lord Paget and Charles Arundel, a courtier, quitted the kingdom in
haste as soon as they knew him to be in custody. After this many of the
leading catholics fell into suspicion, particularly the earls of
Northumberland and Arundel, who were ordered to confine themselves to
their houses; lord William Howard, brother to the latter nobleman, and
his uncle lord Henry Howard, were likewise subjected to several long and
rigorous examinations, but were dismissed at length on full proof of
their perfect innocence. The confessions of Throgmorton further
implicated the Spanish ambassador; who replied in so high a tone to the
representations made him on the subject, that her majesty commanded him
to quit the kingdom.

Francis Throgmorton was condemned, and suffered as a traitor, and, it is
probable, not undeservedly: there was reason also to believe that a
dangerous activity was exercised by the queen of Scots and her agents,
and that the letters which she was continually finding means of
conveying not only to the heads of the popish party, but to all whose
connexions led her to imagine them in any degree favorable to the cause,
had shaken the allegiance of numbers. On the other hand, the catholics
complained, and certainly not without reason, of dark and detestable