For a true estimate of the second Earl of Essex, see Dr. R. W. Church’s “Bacon” (Macmillan).——See also Major Hume’s “_Courtships of Queen Elizabeth_ (Fisher Unwin) and his “_Treason and Plot_” (Nesbit).] [Footnote 159:——How well-grounded Oldcorne’s suspicions of Littleton were, and how soundly he had discerned the man’s spirit, is proved from the fact that after Littleton had been condemned to death for harbouring his cousin, the Master of Holbeach, and Robert Winter, the Master of Huddington, Littleton sought to save his life by telling the Government that Oldcorne had “answered that the [Gunpowder] action was good, and that he seemed to approve of it.” Littleton also said that “since this last rebellion he heard Hall [_i.e._, Oldcorne] once preach in the house of the said Mr. Abington, at which time he seemed to confirm his hearers in the Catholic cause.”——See Foley’s “_Records_,” vol. iv., p. 219.] [Footnote 160:——On the 5th of October, 1900, I saw this Declaration by the courtesy of the authorities at the Record Office, London, and compared it with the Letter to Lord Mounteagle. Miss Emma M. Walford was present the while.——See Appendix.] [Footnote 161:——This luminous definition is by that great writer, Frederic Harrison.] [Footnote 162:——It is not less dangerous to indulge in Irony. For an emphatic proof of this see the “_Life of Lord Bowen_,” p. 115 (Murray), by Sir H. S. Cunningham, K.C.I.E. _Cf._ the great Stagyrite’s discountenancing the study by the inexperienced (the young in years or in character) of the fundamental grounds of those moral rules that each man must observe if he would faithfully do his duty from day to day, and “walk sure-footedly” in this life.——See “_The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle_,” book i. See also Professor Muirhead’s “_Chapters from the Ethics_” (Murray). Hector, in “Troilus and Cressida,” act ii., scene 2, speaks of “Young men, whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral philosophy.”] [Footnote 163:——Jardine thinks that Oldcorne manifests a disposition “to hesitate and argue about the moral complexion” of the Gunpowder Treason; and this disposition Jardine regards as exhibiting in Oldcorne, “apparently a man of humane and quiet character,” a “distorted perception of right and wrong.”——See “_Criminal Trials_,” pp. 232, 233. But it is evident that, for the nonce, the London Magistrate’s judicial temper of mind had deserted him, when he sniffed too closely the moral air breathed by a Jesuit. For manifest is it that, _e.g._, all acts of insubordination against an established government are not treasons and rebellions when that government is hopelessly tyrannical, inhuman, and corrupt. Nor are all acts of slaughter of human beings acts of wilful murder. They may be acts of justifiable tyrannicide, as, possibly, in the case of “the man Charles Stuart, King of England;” and acts of justifiable homicide, as in the case of every just war, or of every legitimate slaying upon the gallows.]