The castles and abbeys of England; Vol. 1 of 2: from the national records, early chronicles, and other standard authorsBeattie, William
History
The castles and abbeys of England; Vol. 1 of 2: from the national records, early chronicles, and other standard authors
Beattie, William
Abbeys -- England; Castles -- England
After discharging with fidelity and éclat the high posts of trust
already mentioned; he was at last entangled by the snares of flattery
and overweening ambition, and charged with treasonable designs entered
into by him to forward the schemes of Mary Queen of Scots, with the view
of allying himself with that ill-fated Princess by marriage,--views in
which his ambition or his sympathy had got the better of his deliberate
judgment, and in which he appears to have been encouraged by those
hollow friends, who sought not his honour but his disgrace. He was
accordingly arraigned, tried; and confessing his wilful participation in
the plot, expiated his offence on the scaffold with characteristic
firmness and composure.
[Sidenote: 1572. {]
By his alliance with Mary Fitzalan of Arundel, whom he lost within a
year of their marriage, he had one son--Philip, Earl of Arundel.
To detail the circumstances of his life would far exceed our limits; but
one or two incidents, taken from his later history, will be neither
uninteresting nor uninstructive.--The charges brought against him
were--conspiring, with Cardinal Allen, to restore the Roman Catholic
faith in England; and concerting measures for quitting the realm without
the queen’s knowledge and permission. With regard to the conspiracy, the
evidence was too much based on party jealousy, vague hearsay, and
surmise, to establish anything like conviction in the minds of
unprejudiced judges. But of his attempted evasion from the kingdom, the
fact is abundantly clear, and is thus related.
After his liberation from the Tower, his fears of new prosecutions and
imprisonment became so excited, that he hastened from London to his
castle of Arundel, and there prepared to join a vessel previously
engaged for his service, and then waiting for him at Little Hampton.
Walsingham, however, who had his eyes and his spies everywhere, and is
proudly recorded to have “out-shot the Jesuits with their own bow, and
over-reached them in their equivocation,” was already in the secret.
Before the Earl could reach the coast, the captain had received private
notice from the Council, and was prepared to act in accordance with his
instructions. Day after day was consumed in waiting, as the skipper
pretended, for “a fair wind.” At length, the propitious moment having
arrived, Arundel, attended by two domestics, went on board, and the wind
being in their favour, the vessel made rapid way, and soon cleared that
beautiful coast where the castle and forest of Arundel were among the
last objects that faded from his eye, and led him, reflecting on the
past, to ejaculate--
Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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