umberland, was by the court, at the instigation of the ministers faction, treated with unsparing cruelty on account of his relationship to Thomas Percy, a ringleader in the gunpowder treason. After all the scrutiny I have been able to give this affair, on which, I freely confess, I am very incredulous, I could never discover one line of argument to convince me, that the noble Earl had any thing more to do with his relation's guilt, than I had to do with the Cato Street conspirators. But be that as it may, the Earl was imprisoned in the Tower, from whence he was carried before the court of the Star Chamber, and there convicted of six several contempts, misprisions and offences. The grand charge seems to have been "for endeavouring to be head of the papists, and to procure them toleration." The cant in the remaining counts of the indictment, might gratify Cecil and the Howards, but it is

devoid of reason, and utterly unworthy the grave deliberations of statesmen. But the jugglers who tried Northumberland, adjudged him "to pay a fine to the use of his majesty, of thirty thousand pounds, and to be displaced and removed from the place of a privy counsellor, and from being captain of his majesty's pensioners, and from being lieutenant of any of his majesty's counties, and from all and every other offices which he held of his majesty's grace and favour; and hereafter to be disabled to take upon him or exercise any of the said offices and places, and to return prisoner to the Tower of London, there to remain during his life."

This was the summit of the ministers revenge they had disposed of Grey, Cobham, and Raleigh, before James knew either the temper or disposition of the people he was called to govern ; and, certainly before the King could

appreciate the character of Sir Walter Raleigh. Now they subjected to a cruel imprisonment, and in the prime of his life, the only man who seemed possessed of vigour enough to do his country service, by preventing some of those invasions on the liberty of the subject, which followed the tragedy of the gunpowder plot. James was easy and goodnatured, fond of recreation, and fonder still of pleasures; a bigot in religion, and a fool in respect to the treasures of his people. He was surrounded by needy and spendthrift favourites; and his counsels were directed by crafty and avaricious statesmen, who found that all they could wring from the nation, and bring into the Exchequer, was too little to meet the extravagance of their majesties, whose maxim seemed to be "all for ourselves."

CHAP. XII.

-Such a noise arose

As the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest,
As loud, and to as many tunes. Hats, cloakes,
Doublets, I think flew up; and had their faces
Been loose this day they had been lost. Such joy
I never saw before. Great belly'd women,
That had not half a week to go, like rams
In the time of war, would shake the grass
And make 'em reel before 'em. No man living
Could say, this is my wife there; all were woven
So strangely in one piece.

THE LIFE OF HENRY VIII.

NOTHING could exceed the King's gratitude for the deliverance wrought in his favour, by the discovery of the gunpowder plot, which in all time to come was to be annually celebrated, as well as

the Gowrie conspiracy. But, indeed, there seems a strange coincidence in both these plots. The latter happened, when James was yet in Scotland, and, at a juncture when every thing and every party seemed to promote his interest. The church interfered not with his authority, the private quarrels of the nobility were gradually subsiding, and if the Gowrie conspiracy ever existed, it was assuredly one of the worst concerted which the history of treason can produce, for the circumstances were of the wildest character that barbarous times have handed down to posterity; and if the plot had succeeded, it is marvellous what advantage any of the conspirators could reap from it.

But look at the narrative which James himself gave to the public. Lord Gowrie and his brother Alexander Ruthven, (of that ilk who first plunged a dagger in David Rizzio,) were the