_Coke._ "Well, I will now make it appear to the world that there never lived a viler viper upon the face of the world than thou." And he proceeded to work up his speech to his last chief point of all--that was the production of a letter from Cobham, which he read. He interspersed his reading with exclamations of triumph. "I have thought fit to set down this to My Lords, wherein I protest on my soul to write nothing but the truth. I am now come near the period of my time, therefore I confess the whole truth before God and his angels. Ralegh, four days before I came from the Tower, caused an apple (Eve's apple, cried out the King's Attorney) to be thrown in at my chamber window; the effect of it was to entreat me to right the wrong I had done him, in saying, that I should have come home by Jersey, which under my hand to him I have retracted.... At Aremberg's coming Ralegh was to have procured a pension of £1500 a year, for which he promised, that no action should be against Spain, the Low Countries, or the Indies, but he would give knowledge beforehand. (Ah! is not this a Spanish heart in an English body?) He hath also been the cause of my discontentment; he advised me not to be overtaken with preachers, as Essex was; and that the king would better allow of a constant denial, than to accuse any." "Oh! damnable atheist!" cried Coke. "He counsels him not to be counselled by preachers as Essex was; he died the child of God. God honoured him at his death." _Ralegh._ "You have heard a strange tale of a strange man. Now he thinks he hath matter enough to destroy me; but the king and all of you shall witness, by our deaths, which of us was the ruin of the other. I bid a poor fellow throw in the letter at his window, written to this purpose: You know you have undone me, now write three lines to justify me. In this will I die that he hath done me wrong." Then Ralegh pulled a letter out of his pocket, which the Lord Cobham had written to him, and desired my Lord Cecil to read it because he only knew his hand. Cecil read the letter. "Seeing myself so near my end, for the discharge of my own conscience, and freeing myself from your blood, which also will cry vengeance against me, I protest upon my salvation I never practised with Spain upon your procurement: God so comfort me in this my affliction, as you are a true subject, for anything that I know. I will say as Daniel, _Purus sum a sanguine hujus_. So God have mercy upon my soul, as I know no treason by you!" "Now I wonder," said Ralegh, "how many souls this man hath; he damns one in this letter: another in that."