xcess of favor which she at first lavished upon him, was the
original cause of that intoxication of mind which finally became the
instrument of his destruction?

But from observations which anticipate perhaps too much the catastrophe
of this melancholy history, it is time to return to a narrative of
events.

The Spanish armament incidentally became the occasion of involving the
earl of Arundel in a charge of a capital nature. Ever since the
treachery of his agents, in the year 1585, had baffled his design of
quitting for ever a country in which his religion and his political
attachments had rendered him an alien, this unfortunate nobleman had
remained close prisoner in the Tower. Such treatment might well be
supposed calculated to augment the vehemence of his bigotry and the
rancor of his disaffection; and it became a current report that, on
hearing news of the sailing of the armada, he had caused a mass of the
Holy Ghost and devotions of twenty-four hours continuance to be
celebrated for its success. This rumor being confirmed by one Bennet, a
priest then under examination, and other circumstances of suspicion
coming out, the earl, on April the 14th, 1589, was brought to the bar of
the house of lords on a charge of high treason. Bennet, struck with
compunction, addressed to him a letter acknowledging his testimony to
have been false, and extorted from him solely by the fear of the rack.
But it appears that this letter, still extant among the Burleigh papers,
was intercepted by the government; and the prisoner, by this cruel and
iniquitous artifice, was deprived of all means of invalidating the
testimony of Bennet, who was brought into court as a witness against
him. By a second violation of every principle of justice, the matters
for which, as contempts, he had already undergone the sentence of the
Star-chamber, were now introduced into his indictment for high treason,
to which the following articles were added;--that he had engaged to
assist cardinal Allen in the restoration of popery;--that he had
intimated the unfitness of the queen to govern;--that he had caused
masses to be said for the success of the armada;--that he had attempted
to withdraw himself beyond seas for the purpose of serving under the
duke of Parma;--and that he had been privy to the bull of Pope Sixtus V.
transferring the sovereignty of England from her majesty to the king of
Spain.

To all these articles, which he was not allowed to separate, t