to have been assassinated in
the New Forest, though the popular notion is, that he was accidentally
killed by an arrow from the bow of Walter Tirrel, which must have been a
long-bow. Richard II. was probably killed in prison, after deposition.
Henry VI. is believed to have been killed in 1471, he being then a
prisoner in the hands of the triumphant Yorkists,--but there is no proof
that he was killed. Edward V., a boy-monarch, is one of the princes whom
Richard III.'s enemies said he had smothered in the Tower,--a story to
be maintained only by smothering all evidence. Many English sovereigns
were attacked by assassins, but escaped. Edward I. was stabbed by a
Mussulman when he was crusading in the East,--and we had almost said
that he was rightly served; for what business had he in that remote part
of the world? Henry V. was to have been assassinated, according to the
statement of himself and his friends; but he had the satisfaction of
killing the conspirators judicially. Elizabeth, as became her
superiority to most sovereigns, was a favorite with persons with a taste
for assassination strongly developed. She was under the Papal ban, and
was an object of the indelicate attentions of that prince of assassins,
Philip II.; and his underlings, who were all great people, made her life
so uncertain that there never lived the actuary who was capable of
estimating the probabilities of its duration. That she escaped is as
wonderful as anything in her history, for she does not appear to have
been very heedful of her personal safety; yet she could punish detected
ruffians sharply enough. James I. was once in no slight danger. No
conspiracy ever came so near making a great noise in the world, of a
kind very different from that which it did make, as the Gunpowder Plot;
and the silence which marked its course is quite as astonishing as the
excitement that followed its disclosure. That so many persons should
have kept so deadly a secret so long and so faithfully is as great a
mystery as ever was invented by a writer of the sensation school; and
when Catholics declare that there never was a plot, except that which
was formed against their religion by artful men for the worst purposes,
they do not talk so unreasonably as at the first blush it should seem.
This plot was emphatically a gentlemanly transaction. There was hardly a
person who had part in it who was not a gentleman by birth or education,
or both. Catesby, Percy, Rookwood, Digby,