As to moderation of justice, replied the Attorney-General, how could a man expect or ask for it who had acted in direct opposition to all mercy and all justice? And had he not already had most ample and most undeserved moderation shown to him? Verily he ought "to admire the great moderation and mercy of the King, in that, for so exorbitant a crime, no new torture answerable thereunto was devised to be inflicted upon him." Was it not sufficient consolation to him to reflect upon his good fortune in this respect? Sir Everard had talked about his wife and children. Well! did he forget how he had said "that for the Catholick Cause he was content to neglect the ruine of himself, his Wife, his Estate, and all"? Oh! he should be made content enough on this point. Here was an appropriate text for him:--"Let his Wife be a widow, and his Children vagabonds, let his posterity be destroyed, and in the next generation let his name be quite put out." Then Sir Edward Coke spoke directly to Sir Everard, and said:--"For the paying of your Creditors, it is equal and just, but yet fit the King be first satisfied and paid, to whom you owe so much, as that all you have is too little: yet these things must be left to the pleasure of his Majesty, and the course of Justice and Law." Fortunately for Sir Everard, "in respect for the time (for it grew now dark)" the Attorney General spoke "very briefly." One of the nine Commissioners, appointed to try the prisoners, now addressed Sir Everard. His words came with more force, perhaps it might be said with more cruel force, because he was himself a Catholic. This was Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, younger brother of the Duke of Norfolk, and second son of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who had been beheaded on Tower Hill, nearly sixty years earlier, in the reign of Henry VIII. This Commissioner had espoused the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots,[398] and he was rather ostentatiously put forward at this trial, and afterwards at that of Father Garnet, to prove his loyalty and to counteract the jealousy and suspicion which had been caused by the appointment of a man of his religion[399] to the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports. Banks wrote of him,[400] "other authors represent him as the most contemptible and despicable of man-kind; a wretch, that it causes astonishment to reflect, that he was the son of the generous, the noble, and accomplished Earl of Surrey.[401] He was a learned man, but a pedant, dark and mysterious, and consequently far from possessing masterly abilities. He was the grossest of flatterers, &c." [398] Froude's Hist. of Eng., Vol. xi. p. 74. [399] _Criminal Trials_, Jardine, Vol. xi. p. 172, footnote. [400] I quote from Burke's _Dormant and Extinct Peerages_, p. 285. [401] Henry, Earl of Surrey, was the first English writer of blank verse and sonnets. _Beeton's Encyclopaedia_.