to my letter,-After my hearty commendations, I have heard that Sir Thomas Monson thinks I can clear him, but I know nothing of him to accuse or excuse him; but I hope he is not guilty of so foul a crime.'-You hear (quoth he) that he will neither accuse you or excuse you.”

Monson.-"I do not accuse the Lord Treasurer nor calumniate him, for I know he is very honourable, but I desire to have an answer to my two questions."

6

Lord Chief Justice.-"You shall hear more of that when the time serveth; do you as a Christian, and as Joshua bad Achan, My son, acknowledge thy sin, and give glory to God?!" Monson." If I be guilty, I renounce the King's mercy and God's; I am innocent."

Lord Chief Justice." There is more against you than you know of."

Monson." If I be guilty, it is of that I know not.”

Lord Chief Justice.-"You are popish; that pulpit was the pulpit where Garnet died, and the Lieutenant as firmly; I am not superstitious, but we will have another pulpit."

Doderidge.-"It is an atheist's word to renounce God's mercy; you must think the change of your lodging means somewhat."

Hyde.-"I have looked into this business, and I protest, my Lord, he is as guilty as the guiltiest."

Monson.-"There was never man more innocent than I; in this I will die innocent."

"The Lord Chief Justice (y) having at this trial let drop

(y) "It was intended the law should run in its proper channell, but was stopt and put out of course by the folly of that great clerke, though no wise man, Sir Edward Cooke, who, in a vaine glorious speech, to shew his vigilancy, enter into a rapture as he then sat on the Bench, saying, God knows what became of that sweet babe Prince Henry [but I know somewhat]; AND SURELY, IN SEARCHING THE Cabinets, he lighted on SOME PAPERS THAT SPAKE PLAIN IN THAT WHICH WAS EVER WHISPERED; which, had he gon on in a gentleway, would have falne in of themselves, not to have been prevented, but this folly of his tongue, stopt the breath of that discovery, of that so foule a murder, which, I fear, cryes still for vengeance." Weldon.

some insinuations that Overbury's death had somewhat in it. of retaliation, as if he had been guilty of the same crime against Prince Henry, Sir Thomas Monson's trial was laid aside, and himself soon after set at liberty; and the Lord Chief Justice was rebuked for his indiscretion, and before the next year expired removed from his post."

This, and not his resistance about the "commendams," (y) was the cause of Sir E. Coke's disgrace; and I must (z) say that I am astonished in a writer of Lord Campbell's known accuracy, research, aud acuteness, to meet with such a passage as the following: "When all the other judges basely succumbed to the mandate of a sovereign who wished to introduce despotism under the forms of juridical proceeding, he did his duty at the sacrifice of his office." Now I think it as clear and certain, and incontrovertible, as any fact related

(y) "Sir Thomas Monson, another of the Countess's agents in the poisoning contrivance, was arraigned for it, but his good luck was, that at his trial the Lord Chief Justice Coke brake forth to an expression, intimating from the Earl of Northampton's assuring the Lieutenant of the Tower, that the making away of Overbury would be acceptable to the King, or from some other hint that Overbury's untimely remove had something in it of relation, as if he had been guilty of the same crime against Prince Henry. Upon this, Monson's trial was laid aside, and the Chief Justice's wings were clipt." Whitelocke, p. 295. Lord Campbell has followed Blackstone, who, with all his great merit as a writer, is by no means a very safe guide on such a subject. Coke's tenacity for the jurisdiction of the Court of Queen's Bench, arose solely from his own pedantry, vanity, and self-importance. His resistance on the matter of commendams flowed from the same source as his absurd and unjustifiable attack on Chancellor Ellesmere; neither had any thing to do with his disgrace.

(z) There can not be a doubt that James spoke the exact truth when he said, "he is the fittest instrument for a tyrant that is to be found in England." His exertions as a member of Parliament, in the cause of constitutional freedom, were owing entirely and exclusively to mortified vanity and reiterated disappointment; and giving Williams the Great Seal, it is curious that he retained the same habit of adulation as a patriot. He called Buckingham "our Saviour," as Lord Clarendon tells us in great scorn.

in history," that Lord Coke was not disgraced for resisting the mandate of a sovereign," but for an injudicious speech, which he meant for adulation, but which "caught the conscience of the King."

Secondly. That the man who destroyed prisoners, by garbling extracts of their statements, was not a murderer only, but an assassin, and, therefore, was not deterred by any sense of duty or of right from performing any function imposed upon him by his Sovereign.

Thirdly. That his resistance to the will of James proceeded not from love of justice, but from hatred of Bacon.

Fourthly. That so far from introducing such a system as Lord Campbell mentions, James found it established with almost every other device that could tend to oppress innocence, and that it continued, with many other such practices to the days of Lord Mansfield.

And lastly. That Coke, on and off the Bench, was ready to connive at any practice however nefarious, in spite of his own recorded judgment, except when his infernal temper and detestation of Bacon's great qualities flung him off his bias.

But that Lord Campbell's veneration for his learned predecessor, in the office of Attorney General, has cast a mist over his judgment no one will doubt, who reads in a writer of tried humanity (a), the following passages: "he (Coke) laid down in the most peremptory manner, that torture was contrary to the law of England," and three lines lower, "he thought the Crown not bound by this law, and a warrant for administering torture being granted by the council, he unscrupulously attended to see the proper degree of pain inflicted. I do not know that this practice reflects serious discredit on his memory!"

So stung was James by this ebullition of Sir E. Coke's loyalty, that he took a course as self-condemning as the intolerable consciousness of guilt ever dictated to a suspected

(a) Lord Campbell was not only a most successful, but a most humane Attorney General.

criminal. "He went," says Wilson, "to the council table, and kneeling down, there desired God to lay a curse upon him and his posterity for ever if he were consenting to Overbury's death." The imprecation he made on himself and his posterity if he forgave the murderers of Overbury, and his subsequent pardon of the two principal murderers, may teach us the value we ought to annex to his adjurations.

The sudden termination of Monson's trial excited much scandal. Dark rumours soon began to be whispered abroad; nor is this surprising, for Monson was precisely the man against whom, if Overbury was poisoned, the evidence was morally speaking most conclusive. He had induced Elwes to accept the office; he had recommended Weston to Overbury; his servant had carried the poisoned tarts and jellies from the Countess; his servant had carried the letter containing poison from the Countess to the Lieutenant; he had been the bearer of a message from the Earl of Northampton to the Lieutenant to keep the prisoner close, and to debar his friends from access to him; he had at his own personal request been appointed to keep Sir Thomas Overbury.

Hyde, the counsel, declared in open Court that he was guilty as the guiltiest. Well then might the sudden stopping of Monson's trial (he was soon afterwards set at liberty) put strange imaginations into men's heads.

Lord Campbell gives high praise to Coke, because in a civil case, the case of commendams, he refused to attend to a message from the King ordering him to postpone the trial. But if the love of justice was really the motive of Coke's conduct on this occasion, how came it not to operate in this case of a murderer, a case so much more serious, and on which any undue interference was so much more dangerous to the pure administration of the law? How came he to do in Monson's instance, what he had stated was contrary to his duty in another less important case?

Now, it is a remarkable circumstance, that during the whole

time Overbury was ill in the Tower, and while he was struggling with the poison, he was attended by Dr. Mayerne, the King's physician, famous for his skill in chymistry. In no one trial of those who suffered, or were put in jeopardy for Overbury's murder, was Mayerne produced as a witness. Lobell was the apothecary who made up Mayerne's prescriptions. It was the disclosure of an apprentice of Lobell's abroad, that was said to have occasioned the suspicion of Overbury's murder. Lobell had delivered into the hands of Coke all Mayerne's prescriptions; none of these prescriptions were produced; and Lobell, notwithstanding his terror and prevarication, was never even taken into custody. And on this part of the case it may be remarked, that in Mayerne's collection of cases for which he wrote prescriptions, every thing relating to Prince Henry's illness is torn out of the book.

If these circumstances alone were to be considered; the King's detestation of Overbury,-the conversation of the card table,—the sudden message to Coke,—the pardon of Monson, the allusion of Coke, -the fury of the King,-the absence, contrived it must have been, of the physician and apothecary of Overbury, the very witnesses who could give most important evidence,—the acknowledged guilt of the Countess of Somerset, and the guilt imputed actually to her father, Suffolk, by Elwes directly, and covertly by Monson ;—there would be enough to constitute a grave and substantial charge against James's memory. For it is remarkable that Elwes, who was guilty at most of connivance, but who was not the direct instrument of Suffolk and Northampton, and the King, but chosen by Monson their immediate instrument, was executed; and that Monson who was in direct communication with Suffolk, and who might, therefore, be guilty, acquainted with James's share in the transaction, and who was determined to say what he knew, if driven to extremity, was, in spite of the universal conviction of his guilt, dismissed unhurt; combine