he quitted the hall, accompanying Sir Benjamin Tichborne, the High
Sheriff, to the prison, according to Sir Thomas Overbury, 'with
admirable erection, yet in such sort as a condemned man should.'

CHAPTER XX.

JUSTICE AND EQUITY OF THE CONVICTION.

[Sidenote: _Exceptionally iniquitous._]

Students of English judicial history, with all their recollections of
the strange processes by which criminal courts in Ralegh's age leaped to
a presumption of a State prisoner's guilt, stand aghast at his
conviction. Mr. Justice Foster, in his book, already cited, on _The
Trial of the Rebels in Surrey in 1746_, professes his inability to see
how the case, excepting the extraordinary behaviour of the King's
Attorney, differed in hardship from many before it. He is referring to
the legal points ruled by the judges against Ralegh. Possibly previous
prisoners had been as ill-treated; and the fact amounts to a terrible
indictment of English justice. But one broad distinction separates this
from earlier convictions. Other prisoners in general were guilty, though
their guilt may have been a form of patriotism, or may not have been
logically proved. Ralegh's guilt of the crime imputed to him was not
proved at Winchester, and has never been proved since. If to have
cherished resentment for the loss of offices, to have incurred popular
odium, to be reputed superhumanly subtle, to have been the sagacious
comrade of a foolish malcontent, to have been alleged by that man, whom
he was not permitted to interrogate, to be disaffected at a time at
which strangers to him happened to be plotting rebellion, to have
abstained from betraying overtures for the exertion by him of an
influence he never used and did not possess on behalf of a pacification
which the sovereign was negotiating, be high treason, then it is
possible, though even then not certain, that Ralegh was a traitor. If
none of these possibilities amount to the crime of treason, then he was
not.

[Sidenote: _The Spanish Pension._]

[Sidenote: _James and Arenberg._]

He was alleged to have listened to disclosures by Cobham of a scheme for
obtaining money from the Archduke, or the King of Spain. He was alleged
to have been offered a share. He was alleged to have asked for a pension
as the price of the revelation of Court secrets. No other relevant
charges were brought. Of the evidence against him, the second or third
hand hearsay depositions of Brooke, Watson, Copley, and Clark