to Raleigh, but he got his liberty in 1616 by bribing Villiers, who went to the king and roused his cupidity by explaining that if Raleigh were allowed to make a fresh expedition to the West Indies he might gather great spoils, the lion’s share of which would go to the king. And so the warrant for his liberation was signed in March, 1616, at the time when Shakespeare was dying at Stratford-on-Avon. The wretched king at the same time not only gave a pledge to Gondomar that if Raleigh touched any Spanish person or property he would hand him over to the Spanish Government to be hanged at Seville, but also showed him a private letter of Raleigh, stating the exact number of his ships and men, as well as the spot on the banks of the Orinoco where he expected to find a great silver mine. As the Spaniards claimed the whole of that territory, the vileness of the treachery becomes apparent. He started from Plymouth in March, 1617, with fourteen ships and nine hundred men. Continual disaster is the summary of the expedition. His eldest son was killed fighting gallantly in Guiana. In August, 1618, he returned a ruined man, and was again lodged in the Tower. The king was burning to get rid of him, but what should the pretext be? The Council of State was in uttermost perplexity. Bacon advised acting on the former sentence. Raleigh pleaded that the commission sending him to America was a reversal of that sentence both in law and reason, but the Lord Chief Justice Montagu gave his judicial opinion that it held good, and so on October 24 the warrant was signed, and on the 29th he was beheaded in Old Palace Yard. Again we have to retrace our steps. In 1604 the penal laws against the Roman Catholics were re-enacted. On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes was seized in the vaults of the Houses of Parliament and conveyed to the Tower, as were also Thomas and Robert Winter, Robert Keyes, Thomas Oates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, and Sir Everard Digby. They were placed in the dungeons beneath the White Tower. The room is still shown in the King’s House in which Guy was brought before the Council of State. And, moreover, in the subterranean dungeon are the bases of the rack on which he was tortured He is said to have been kept in “Little Ease” for fifty days. He was put to death, along with Thomas Winter, Rookwood and Keyes, in Old Palace Yard on January 31, 1606. Digby, Rookwood and Keyes suffered the same horrible death in Old Palace Yard.