Edward Arden was a temperate follower of the old faith; but his son-in-law, John Somerville, an excitable youth, seemed to chafe under the increasing oppression of the Catholic Church and its adherents.[417] The evil reports concerning the Queen and Leicester increased the friction. Shut out from travel or active exercise, as all Catholics then were by law, he studied and pondered, and his mind seemed to have given way in his sleepless attempts to reconcile faith and practice. He started off suddenly one morning before anyone was awake, attended only by one boy, who soon left him, terrified; and when he reached a little inn on the lonely road by Aynho on the Hill, he spoke frantically to all who chose to hear that he was going to London to kill the Queen.[418] Then followed arrest, examination before Justice D'Oyley, a march to London with twelve guards,[419] examination in the Gatehouse, imprisonment in the Tower. Thereafter went forth the mandate to arrest Edward Arden, his wife, Francis Arden, of Pedmore, his brother, Somerville's wife and sister, and the priest, Hugh Hall. Sir John Conway, his wife's grand-uncle, was also commanded up to London, and seems to have been confined for a time. Examinations, probably under torture, followed fast on each other. John Somerville, Edward Arden, his wife and brother, and the priest, Hugh Hall, were tried, found guilty, and condemned to the traitor's death. Hugh Hall is said to have turned Queen's evidence, but I have found no proof of it. Somerville and Arden were carried forth from the Tower on December 19, 1583, to Newgate, in preparation for their execution on the morrow; Somerville was found two hours afterwards strangled in his cell; Edward Arden suffered the full penalty of the law December 20, 1583.[420] Robert of Leicester had his revenge. Mrs. Arden and Francis[421] seem to have suffered a term of imprisonment, and then to have been released. This first noble victim of the tyrannical Royal Commission was praised by all the writers of his time, and pitied by all Europe. Burleigh lived to be ashamed of his part in his death; and in his "Life" one can still read in the index "On the Case of Arden" an explanation which has been excised from the text.