he Tower chapel; the two Seymours were again present with
Courtenay: and before Gates received the sacrament, he said a few
words of regret to the latter for his long imprisonment, of which he
admitted himself in part the cause.[97] On leaving the chapel Warwick
was taken back to his room, and learned that he was respited. Gates
joined Palmer, who was walking with Watson in the garden, and talking
with the groups of gentlemen who were collected there. Immediately
after, the duke was brought out. "Sir John," he said to Gates, "God
have mercy on us; forgive me as I forgive you, although you and your
council have brought us hither." "I forgive you, my lord," Gates
answered, "as I would be forgiven; yet it was you and your authority
that was the only original cause of all." They bowed each. The duke
passed on, and the procession moved forward to Tower Hill.

[Footnote 97: "Not for any hatred towards you," he
added, "but for fear that harm might come thereby
to my late young master."--_Queen Jane and Queen
Mary_, p. 20.]

The last words of a worthless man are in themselves of little moment;
but the effect of the dying speech of Northumberland lends to it an
artificial importance. Whether to the latest moment he hoped for his
life, or whether, divided between atheism and superstition, he
thought, if any religion was true, Romanism was true, and it was
prudent not to throw away a chance, who can tell? At all events, he
mounted the scaffold with Heath, the Bishop of Worcester, at his side;
and then deliberately said to the crowd, that his rebellion and his
present fall were owing to the false preachers who had led him to err
from the Catholic faith of Christ; the fathers and the saints had ever
agreed in one doctrine; the present generation were the first that had
dared to follow their private opinions; and in England and in Germany,
where error had taken deepest root, there had followed war, famine,
rebellion, misery, tokens {p.044} all of them of God's displeasure.
Therefore, as they loved their country, as they valued their souls, he
implored his hearers to turn, all of them, and turn at once, to the
church which they had left; in which church he, from the bottom of his
heart, avowed his own steadfast belief. For himself he called them all
to witness that he died in the one true Catholic faith; to which, if
he had been brought sooner, he would not h