He was one day standing thus employed, gazing at a spot on the wall where some hand had carved the name of Edward Plantagenet, and wondering to which of all the many distinguished persons who had borne that appellation, the inscription referred, when a gentleman, whom he well knew, named Sir Robert Killigrew, approached with the sauntering and meditative step of a prisoner, and gave him the good morning. "I was coming to seek you, sir," said Killigrew, "to pay you my respects as your fellow captive, which I have been since last night." "May I ask on what cause, Sir Robert?" demanded Seymour. "You would be long in divining," answered the Knight. "That I may well be," replied Seymour; "for as things now go on in England, there is not an act in all the wide range of those which man can perform, that may not, by the elastic stretching of the law, the cunning of the bad, and the indifference of all the rest, be construed into some crime worthy of imprisonment." "It is but too true," replied Killigrew. "My crime was but speaking a few words with poor Sir Thomas Overbury, who called to me when I passed his window, as I was returning from a visit to my poor friend Raleigh. For this mighty misdemeanour I was committed from the council-table, and here I am, your servant at command,[8] so far as services may be rendered within the walls of the Tower." ---------- [Footnote 8: Let it be remembered that this act of intolerable tyranny was actually committed: and this, with the rest of James's conduct towards Overbury, led men reasonably to suspect that the prisoner was in possession of some horrible secret affecting the King himself.] ---------- "I must not welcome you, Sir Robert," replied Seymour; "for it were no friendly act to see you gladly here. What news were stirring when you left the Court?" "Good faith, but little," answered the Knight, "except that Rochester exceeds all bounds in favour, impudence, rapacity, and rashness. The functions of all offices of the state are now monopolized by him; there's not a privy-councillor can wag his beard, unless my Lord of Rochester give leave; and if a suitor have ever so just a claim, good faith his gold must flow into the favourite's purse, before he can obtain a hearing. He rules the Court and the State, and were it not for Abbott, would rule the church too, I believe. But the archbishop frowns upon him, and holds out against the nullity of his fair Countess's marriage with Lord Essex." "What does he do for want of Overbury?" asked Seymour. "Good faith, when I heard that the knight was arrested, I fancied that the favourite's day was at an end." "Heaven and the King forgive you," cried Killigrew. "Why, it was Rochester himself did it. That is known to all the world now-a-days; and as to how he does without him, he pins himself upon my Lord Northampton, that learned piece of Popish craft. He is with him daily, hourly, and by his advice rules all his actions, as he did by Overbury's."