Produced by David Garcia, Brownfox and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) STATE TRIALS _All rights reserved_ [Illustration: W Ralegh.] STATE TRIALS POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SELECTED AND EDITED BY H. L. STEPHEN IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I [Illustration] LONDON DUCKWORTH AND CO. NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1899 Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION, vii SIR WALTER RALEIGH, 1 CHARLES I., 75 THE REGICIDES, 123 COLONEL TURNER AND OTHERS, 169 THE SUFFOLK WITCHES, 211 ALICE LISLE, 239 _The portraits of_ SIR WALTER RALEIGH _and_ LORD RUSSELL _are taken from photographs of pictures in the National Portrait Gallery, by permission of_ Messrs. WALKER and BOUTALL. To G. DE L'É. D. DEAR GERALD,--As you suggested the idea of this book to me, and as I know that whether it succeeds or fails I can count confidently on your sympathy, I will throw into the form of a letter to you the few remarks which I might otherwise put into a preface. For as I have confessions to make which amount almost to an apology, I had rather address them to one who is pledged to express the most favourable possible view of my literary efforts, such as they are, than to that hypothetical reader, of whose tastes I feel most shamefully ignorant, though I am ready to assume everything in his favour. Far abler writers than I have frequently dilated on the charms attending a study of the reports of State Trials, as they are best known to the world; namely, in one-and-twenty stately volumes compiled by the industrious Howells, father and son, and published, a year after the battle of Waterloo, by the combined efforts of on a few of my contemporaries the idea that persons long since dead on the block or the gallows were Englishmen very much like ourselves, my object is secured.