first articles there could be no doubt, and for the last he would
intercede. The house was then yielded with all that were in it. During
that night the principal offenders were lodged in Lambeth-palace, the
next day they were conveyed to the Tower; while the common prisons
received the accomplices of meaner rank.

On February 19th Essex and Southampton were brought to their trial
before the house of peers; lord Buckhurst sitting as lord high steward.
Essex inquired whether peers might not be challenged like common
jurymen, but was answered in the negative. He pleaded Not guilty;
professed his unspotted loyalty to his queen and country, and earnestly
labored to give to his attempt to raise the city the color of a
necessary act of self-defence against the machinations of enemies from
whom his life was in danger. Had this interpretation of his conduct been
admitted, possibly his offence might not have come within the limits of
treason: but it was held, that his refusal to attend the council; the
imprisonment of the three great officers sent to him by the queen; and
above all the consultations held at Drury-house for bringing soldiers
from Ireland, for surprising the Tower, for seizing the palace, and for
compelling the queen to remove certain persons from her counsels and to
call a parliament, assigned to his overt acts the character of designs
against the state itself. For the confessions of his accomplices, by
which the secrets of the Drury-house meetings were brought to light, he
was evidently unprepared; and the native violence of his temper broke
out in invectives against those associates by whom, as he falsely
pretended, all these criminal designs had been originally suggested to
his mind. This evidence, he said, had been elicited by the hope of
pardon and reward;--let those who had given it enjoy their lives with
impunity;--to him death was far more welcome than life. Whatever
interpretation lawyers might put upon it, the necessity of self-defence
against Cobham, Raleigh and Cecil, had impelled him to raise the city;
and he was consoled by the testimony of a spotless conscience. Lord
Cobham here rose, and protested that he had never acted with malice
against the earl, although he had disapproved of his ambition. "On my
faith," replied the earl, "I would have given this right hand to have
removed from the queen such an informer and calumniator."

He afterwards proceeded to accuse sir Robert Cecil of having affirmed