“Whereupon the said Duke desired me that I should go about to know whether the Lord Cardinal’s Grace had a spirit, and I showed him that I could not skill thereof. And the Duke then said if I would take pains therein, he would appoint me to a cunning man, Dr. Wilson. And so the said Dr. Wilson was sent for, and they examined me, and the Duke’s Grace commanded me to write all these things, and so I did. Whereupon, considering the great folly which hath rested in me, I humbly beseech your Grace to be a good and gracious lord unto me, and to take me to your mercy.” The case of Sir Edward Neville, quoted from the same authority, commences by a statement of the treasonable words laid to his charge, which were, “The King is a beast, and worse than a beast; and I trust knaves shall be put down, and lords reign one day, and that the world will amend one day.” He was found guilty, hanged, drawn and quartered. He is suspected to have been connected with Stapleton the monk, who has already appeared as a necromancer. At all events, his confession shows again how much Wolsey was supposed to be conversant with magic; and indeed the ‘ring’ by which the Cardinal was thought to have won the fatal favour of the king, was noticed in the accusations against him when he fell. In seeking for treasure, Sir Edward fully acknowledges being led to it by “foolish fellows of the country.” In his account of his own dealings with spirits and magic, there is much curious mixture of half-doubting marvel and self deceit, probably not unconnected with influences baffling the human intellect, so apparent in the kindred delusions of Mesmerism, that strange development of the age of civilization, in no respect differing from the superstitions usually considered as the peculiar characteristics of the Middle ages. He was also a practitioner of alchemy. He would jeopard his life to make the philosopher’s stone if the king pleased, aye, and was willing to be kept in prison till he had: in a year he would make silver, and in a year and a half, gold, which would be better to the king than a thousand men. But Henry was too shrewd thus to be allured into mercy; and Neville perished in the prolonged agonies which his sentence involved. He appears, from other documents, to have been of a light-hearted and merry temper; not very wise, but wholly innocent of any crime, except a few idle words. THE CONFESSION OF SIR EDWARD NEVILLE.