These three executions, however, created great alarm amongst the friends of the other prisoners; and various efforts were made to avert their fate by petition and solicitation. Still James remained silent and unmoved, the day appointed for the punishment of Cobham, Grey, and Markham approached rapidly, and at length the death-warrant was sent down to Winchester, and another was signed for the execution of Raleigh on the Monday following, three days after the period appointed for the fate of his fellow-prisoners. Markham received some reason to hope, from private friends at the Court, that his life would be spared, but the two peers and Raleigh were directed to prepare themselves for certain death. The Bishop of Chichester and the Bishop of Winchester remained constantly with Lord Cobham and Sir Walter Raleigh, having been instructed by the King not only to give them religious consolation, but to induce them to make a full confession, with a view, it would appear, of reconciling the discrepancy of their statements. If this was the monarch's object, however, no success was obtained; for while the weak and imbecile Lord Cobham once more varied in his statements, and re-asserted all that he had previously laid to the charge of Raleigh, the knight firmly maintained his innocence, and varied not in the least from his former account. At length, on the Friday appointed for the execution, Markham was brought out of the castle, at ten o'clock in the morning, to the scaffold erected on the green. Finding all the preparations for the work of death ready, he complained bitterly of having been deluded with false hopes, admitted that he had listened but little to the exhortations of the priests, having been always assured that he would receive a pardon, and added that he was in no degree prepared to die.