Sir Thomas White, Kt. Lord-Mayor of London.
Earl of Shrewsbury.

Earl of Derby.

Sir Thomas Bromley, Kt. Lord Chief Justice of England.

Sir Nicholas Hare, Kt. Master of the Rolls.

Sir Francis Englefield, Kt. Master of the Court of
Wards and Liveries.

Sir Richard Southwell, Kt.
Sir Roger Cholmley, Kt.
Sir Edward Waldegrave, Kt.

Sir William Portman, Kt. one of the Justices of the Queen's Bench.

Sir Edward Saunders, Kt. one of the Justices of the
Common Pleas.

Serjeant Stamford, and Serjeant Dyer.
Edward Griffin, Attorney-General,

An account of some of these commissioners may give the reader a more distinct idea of the tribunal before which the trial took place. It may be remarked that upon the whole the list does not exhibit any unjust partiality in the selection of the judges.

Sir Thomas White, the Lord Mayor, appears to have been a liberal man considering the times in which he lived. He was a merchant tailor, and is mentioned with commendation by contemporary writers as a worthie patrone and protector of poore scholers and lerning." He renewed or rather erected St. John's College, Oxford, and founded schools at Bristol and Reading.

66

Francis Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, was a nobleman of no ordinary talents, though his life was principally spent in military service. Under Henry VIII. he was Lieutenant-General of the North; in the reign of Edward VI. he held successively the offices of Lord-Lieutenant of the Northern Counties and Justice of the Forests North of the Trent; and on Mary's accession he became President of the

Council in the North. The moderation, skill, and bravery which he had displayed in these several important offices, induced Elizabeth to retain him as one of the members of her Privy Council. He was a Catholic, though not a bigotted one; indeed, a bigotted Papist would hardly have been appointed to important offices of state in the reigns of Edward and Elizabeth. He so far adhered, however, to the religion of his ancestors that of the whole body of temporal peers who had unanimously subscribed to Mary's recognition of the Papal authority, he and Lord Montague alone refused to revoke that concession after Elizabeth's accession *.

Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby, was celebrated for his unbounded liberality and the princely style of his household; he was also retained by Elizabeth as a member of her Privy Council, though he had been in office during the preceding reign. He died in 1572, "with whom," says Camden, "the glory of hospitality was in a manner laid asleep."

Of Sir Thomas Bromley little information is to be found: Fuller says (Worthies, vol. ii. p. 307,) that "he was made Lord Chief Justice in the first year of Queen Mary's reign, holding his place hardly a year; but whether quitting his office, or dying therein, is to me unknown." He had been a judge in the reigns of Henry VIII. and of Edward VI., and a Privy Councillor to the latter. He was a first cousin of Sir Thomas Bromley, who was SolicitorGeneral and Lord Chancellor in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Sir Nicholas Hare was an eminent and learned lawyer, and had been Speaker of the House of Commons in 1540†.

Sir Francis Englefield was a zealous Papist, but *Lodge's Introduction, p. 13.

+1 Cobb. Parl. Hist. 536.

does not seem to have taken an active part in the persecutions of those days: he was, however, decidedly hostile to Queen Elizabeth on the ground of religion, and upon her accession retired beyond sea; and though he had a very large property in England he resided for the most part in Spain, where he was an industrious agent for Mary, Queen of Scots, both with the Pope and the King of Spain. He was also a great promoter and benefactor of the English college at Valladolid, where he was buried in 1571*.

Sir Richard Southwell had been a Privy Councillor to Henry VIII. and Edward VI. In Fox's Acts and Monuments' he is described as a monster of cruelty and bigotry, who encouraged and directed most of the persecutions of the Protestants in Queen Mary's days; but Fox's accounts of the characters of Papists, especially of such as were active members of Mary's government, are not at all to be depended

upon.

Sir Roger Cholmley, according to the report of the trial, appears to have taken the most obnoxious part against Throckmorton. He had been Lord Chief Baron in the reign of Edward VI., and at the time of that King's death was Lord Chief Justice of England. A few days after Mary's accession he was sent to the Tower with Sir Henry Montague, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, for having drawn up the will of Edward VI. excluding Mary from the succession, and remained a prisoner there for several weeks, being specially excepted from the general pardon passed at her coronation. Upon his enlargement, he became a member of the Privy Council, but never afterwards held any judicial office excepting that of Recorder of London.

Sir Edward Waldegrave was the ancestor of the present noble family of that name; in the reign of * Baronetage, vol. ii.

Mary he was Master of the Wardrobe, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Receiver-General of the County of Cornwall. His adherence to Popery, however, which advanced him under Mary, proved his destruction under her successor, for he was imprisoned in the Tower in 1561 for hearing mass and having a Popish priest in his house. He died in the Tower after an imprisonment of five months*.

Sir William Portman succeeded Sir Thomas Bromley as Lord Chief Justice. He died in 1555, and was buried in St. Dunstan's Church in London. His family was of considerable note in Somersetshire. John Portman, his grandson, was created a baronet in 1612; the baronetcy is now extinct, and the family estates in Dorsetshire and Somersetshire were long since carried by a female into a family which assumed the name of Portman.

Sir Edward Saunders immediately succeeded Portman as Lord Chief Justice; and a few years afterwards, was made Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer: as Lord Chief Baron, he attended in the Court of the Lord High Steward on the trial of the Duke of Norfolk in 1571. It is singular that in course of a year from the time of Throckmorton's Trial, the office of Lord Chief Justice became twice vacant, and was in that short space of time successively filled by three of the Judges before whom he was tried.

Serjeant Stamford, or Staundford more properly, and Serjeant Dyer, were both lawyers of learning and distinction: the former was the author of a treatise on the Pleas of the Crown, of great authority; and the latter, who in 1559 was made Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and in 1571 was present at the trial of the Duke of Norfolk, is well known as the collector of very valuable Reports which were published after his death.

* Strype's Annals, vol, i. 270.

The Attorney-General Griffin was an ancestor of the present Lord Braybrook. He had been SolicitorGeneral to Henry VIII., and Attorney-General to Edward VI. He held the latter office during the whole of the reign of Mary, and retired into the country on the accession of Elizabeth. He died in 1569, possessed of the lordships of Gumley and Braybrooke, in the County of Leicester*.

THE TRIAL.

AFTER Proclamation made, and the Commission read, the Lieutenant of the Tower brought the prisoner to the bar, and he was arraigned as follows:

Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Kt. hold up your hand; you are indicted of High Treason; in that you falsely and traitorously compassed and imagined the death of the Queen's Majesty, and levied war against her, within her realm, and adhered to the Queen's enemies within her realm, giving them aid and comfort; and also conspired and intended to depose and deprive the Queen of her royal state, and so finally to destroy her; and that you also falsely and traitorously devised and intended to take the Tower of London by force and violence. Of all which Treasons, and every of them, in manner and form aforesaid, Are you Guilty or Not Guilty?

Sir N. T. May it please you, my Lords and Masters, who, by the Queen's Commission, are authorized to be my judges this day, before I plead to the Indictment, to give me leave to speak to you a few words which concern both you and me, and which are not altogether impertinent to the subject matter in hand.

Bromley, C. J. The order is not so, you must first plead Guilty or Not Guilty.

Sir N. T. If that be your law and order, you may judge accordingly.

Hare. You must first answer to the matter wherewith you are charged, and then you may talk at your pleasure, Nichols's Leicestershire, vol. ii. p. 588.