In the midst of his speech, however, he was interrupted by the sheriff, who informed him that he had the king's command to stay the order of the execution, and to behead Lord Cobham first. With much surprise, and with no expression of satisfaction, Lord Grey, whose mind was perfectly made up to his fate, suffered himself to be led back to the castle, where he also was locked up in Prince Arthur's Hall, to converse with Sir Griffin Markham upon their strange situation. Lord Cobham was next brought upon the scene, and he also went through the same ceremony of prayer and preparation for the block. He showed none of that timidity and want of resolution, now that his fate was decided, which he had displayed while it seemed doubtful, but maintained that what he had said of Sir Walter Raleigh was true, though, as some writers have justly observed, no one could tell what he did really wish to impute and what he did not, as, amongst his various confessions and retractions, there was no one part that did not contradict another. As he was about to kneel down to receive the stroke of the axe, the sheriff stopped him, saying, that he had orders to confront him, even at that last hour, with some of the other conspirators; and a message having been sent into the castle, Lord Grey and Sir Griffin Markham were brought back to the scaffold, where Sir Benjamin Tichborne addressed them in a long speech, inquiring whether they did not confess they were justly condemned, and merited death. To this they assented, without reserve, and the sheriff announced to them that the king, in his great mercy, had determined to spare their lives. A full pardon, however, was not given; and Lords Cobham and Grey were destined to endure a long and painful imprisonment, terminated in the case of the first by his escape being connived at, and he himself allowed to drag out a few years in the most abject poverty and misery, till a wretched death, hastened by actual want, filth, and wretchedness, terminated the sorrows of a man who not long before had been one of the most wealthy peers of the realm. The proud and eager spirit of Lord Grey brought his career to an earlier close; and that most common of all diseases, which has obtained--why or wherefore I know not--the name of a broken heart, terminated his sufferings a few years after. Markham and several of the inferior conspirators were banished from the realm; and of one of them, at least, we shall have to speak hereafter. Raleigh, as all the world knows, was suffered to languish in prison for many years, with a capital sentence hanging over his head, and destined in the end to be one of the most illustrious victims to the tyranny and injustice of a base and low-minded king.