description of which might have been borrowed from the torture chamber of the Inquisition, but which assuredly was never pronounced in an English court of justice. "Thomas Cobham," wrote de Silva, "being asked at his trial, according to the usual form in England, if he had anything to say in arrest of judgment, and answering nothing, was condemned to be taken to the Tower, to be stripped naked to the skin, and then to be placed with his shoulders resting on a sharp stone, his legs and arms extended, and on his stomach a gun, too heavy for him to bear, yet not large enough immediately to crush him. There he is to be left till he die. They will give him a few grains of corn to eat, and for drink the foulest water in the Tower." "His relations," de Silva added, "are doing all in their power to prevent the execution of the sentence." Had any such sentence been pronounced, it would not have been left to be discovered in the letter of a stranger: the ambassador may perhaps in this instance have been purposely deceived, and his demand for justice satisfied by a fiction of imaginary horror (VIII. p. 449). We pass over Mr. Froude's arrogant sneer at the credulity of the Spanish ambassador, and his ill-natured allusion to "the torture chamber of the Inquisition;" but we cannot conceal our astonishment that any one with the most ordinary pretension to scholarship could be in doubt for a moment, whether as to the meaning or as to the accuracy of the ambassador's information. Cobham suffered the well-known but most revolting peine forte et dure of English judicature, which is described by every writer on English law, from Coke to Stephen, and which remained in the statute-book till the 12th Geo. III. It was not, as Mr. Froude imagines, the sentence passed for the crime of piracy, but the punishment, as the ambassador most correctly writes, of "answering nothing," that is to say, of refusing to plead. Even an authority so very far from abstruse or recondite as Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, in his History of Jack Sheppard, would have informed Mr. Froude of the procedure in all its horrors, as detailed in the case of Blueskin. But in the moment of referring him to that veracious history, we are reminded, by his own allusion to the Inquisition, of what would have supplied a painfully accurate illustration of the literal truth of De Silva's narrative-the interesting memoir of the Abbé Destombes, named at the head of these pages, La Persécution Religieuse en Angleterre sous le Règne d'Elisabeth. Among the victims of that persecution whose fate the Abbé records, is a lady of gentle birth, Dame Margaret Clitherow of York, who being arraigned in 1585, upon the charge of harbouring priests, and refusing, lest she might involve others in the same penalty, to plead to the indictment, was subjected to the very torture the possibility of which in an English Court of justice Mr. Froude treats as "a fiction of imaginary horror." M. Destombes has given, at page 363, a sufficiently interesting account of the case of Dame Clitherow; but we prefer to reproduce the exact details of the original contemporary memoir, drawn up by Father Mush, the priest who prepared her for her hour of trial, as the best commentary on Mr. Froude's "fiction of imaginary horror," and the clearest illustration of the truism that "truth is often stranger than fiction." We can only find room, however, for the closing horrors of the scene: Then Fawcett commanded her to put off her apparel; "for you must die naked," said he, " according as judgment was pronounced against you." The martyr with other women requested him, on their knees, that she might die in her shift, and that for the honour of womanhood they would not see her naked; but they would not grant it. Then she requested them that the women might unapparel her, and that they would turn their faces from her during that time. The women took off her clothes, and put upon her the long linen habit. Then very quietly she laid her down upon the ground, her face covered with a handkerchief, the linen habit being placed over her as far as it would reach, all the rest of her body being naked. The door was laid upon her, her hands she joined towards her face. Then the sheriff said, "Nay, you must have your hands bound." The martyr put forth her hands, still joined over the door. Then two serjeants parted them, and with the inkle-strings which she had prepared for the purpose, bound them to two posts. So that her body and hands made a perfect cross. They willed her again to ask the Queen's majesty's forgiveness, and to pray for her. The martyr said she had prayed for her. They willed also to ask her husband's forgiveness. The martyr said, "If ever I have offended him, but for my conscience, I ask him forgiveness." After this they laid weight upon her, which, when she first felt, she said, "Jesu! Jesu! Jesu; have mercy upon me!" which were the last words she was heard to speak. She was in dying about one quarter of an hour. A sharp stone, as much as a man's fist, put under her back; upon her was laid to the quantity of seven or eight hundred weight at the least; which, breaking her ribs, caused them to burst forth of the skin. Thus most victoriously this gracious martyr overcame all her enemies, passing from this mortal life with rare and marvellous triumph into the peaceable City of God, there to receive a worthy crown of endless immortality and joy. This was at nine of the clock, and she continued in the press till three afternoon.* If the "grains of corn" and "foul water" which De Silva, *Life and Death of Margaret Clitherow, the Martyr of York. Edited from the original MS. by William Nicholson, pp. 194-5. VOL. III.-NO. v. [New Series.] K in Mr. Froude's extract, most correctly gives as part of the ordinary peine forte et dure, do not appear in the punishment of the Martyr of York, it is simply because, she having died under the first infliction, the occasion did not arise in her case for offering that mockery of nourishment which formed part of this cruel and revolting torture, in cases in which the life of the sufferer was prolonged beyond the opening ordeal. And here we take our leave of Mr. Froude. There is one portion of his work-the chapters devoted to Irish affairson which we have hitherto kept resolutely silent. These chapters may more fitly be discussed in connection with the later history of Ireland under Elizabeth; but we cannot dismiss the volumes now before us without an earnest and indignant protest against the spirit in which the subject of Ireland is discussed therein. We do not hesitate to say that Mr. Froude has shown himself quite incapable of comprehending the realities of that painful but deeply interesting subject; and we regret to add that he has betrayed, in dealing with it, an utter ignorance or a reckless disregard of the very first principles of historical criticism. His sketches of the Irish leaders are a tissue of mistakes and misrepresentations. His picture of the social condition of Ireland is a pointless caricature, for which his sole authority (which he parades with all the pretensions of "original materials") is the blundering but malignant report of one of Cecil's salaried spies, of whom the most favourable criticism would be, that he did not possess ability or knowledge sufficient to render his malevolence intelligible. And through Mr. Froude's whole narrative there runs that vein of contempt for Ireland, and that offensive assumption of its social and moral inferiority, which form the traditional characteristic of the bigotry of the vulgar Englishman, so severely scourged by Mr. Goldwin Smith, and deplored by every true Englishman as at once the origin and the daily aliment of international jealousy and disunion. For Mr. Froude's exhibition of this contemptible feeling we have no mercy. In his case there is not or at least, there ought not to be-the excuse which may be pleaded on the score of ignorance. We shall give one example, and have done with Mr. Froude. He prints at full length, and without any reserve, Sussex's infamous letter to Elizabeth, in which Sussex details to the Queen all the particulars of his plan for the assassination of O'Neil, and of his actual negotiation with the intended assassin. MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HIGHNESS, August 24, 1561. "After conference had with Shan O'Neil's seneschal I entered talk with Neil Grey; and perceiving by him that he had little hope of Shan's conformity in anything, and that he therefore desired that he might be received to serve your Highness, for that he would no longer abide with him, and that if I would promise to receive him to your service he would do anything that I would command him, I sware him upon the Bible to keep secret that I should say unto him, and assured him if it were ever known during the time I had the government there, that besides the breach of his oath it should cost him his life. I used long circumstance in persuading him to serve you to benefit his country, and to procure assurance of living to him and his for ever, by doing of that which he might easily do. He promised to do what I would. In fine I brake with him to kill Shan; and bound myself by my oath to see him have a hundred marks of land by the year to him and to his heirs for his reward. He seemed desirous to serve your Highness, and to have the land; but fearful to do it, doubting his own escape after with safety, which he confessed and promised to do by any means he might, escaping with his life. What he will do I know not, but I assure your Highness he may do it without danger if he will. And if he will not do that he may in your service, then will be done to him what others may. God send your Highness a good end. "Your Highness's most humble and faithful Subject and Servant, "From Ardbrachan." "T. SUSSEX. On this infamous letter Mr. Froude's simple commentary is, that "English honour, like English coin, lost something of its purity in the sister island"! (VIII. 29). Might it not have occurred to Mr. Froude, before he ventured upon this impertinent sarcasm, that this base and treacherous letter was addressed by Sussex to the very source and fountain of English honour -the Queen herself-still in England, untouched by the polluting influences of the sister island; that the dishonouring proposal was renewed some time later; that it passed unrebuked; and that, notwithstanding these repeated suggestions, Sussex was continued in his command? 132 ART. V.-GARIBALDI IN ENGLAND. The Life of Garibaldi. By O. J. VICTOR. London: Beadle & Co. ARIBALDI was born at Nice in 1807, and, after spending 1833, when he was about twenty-five years of age; from that time he has been nothing else but the willing tool of that revolutionist. Under the direction of his master, he was made to "enlist in the Sardinian navy service;" and of the results of this enlistment Garibaldi gives the following account: I entered the service as a first-class sailor, on the frigate L'Eurydice. My duty was to make proselytes among the crew for the revolution, and I succeeded in the best manner possible. Should all things prosper on the land, I and my fellows were to seize upon the frigate, and thus place at the disposal of the republicans a good vessel of war.-Life, p. 14. Here is the treacherous pirate ready formed, the incipient filibuster, and the dishonoured felon. Mazzini was bent on the ruin of Charles Albert, and in this way was the work to be done. Garibaldi enters the navy-not to serve the king, but to serve Mazzini; and, perfectly careless of the honour of a sailor, conspires against his sovereign and corrupts the crew of the frigate. The dagger given to Gallenga by the hands of Sciandra is but the complement of the perfidy that sent Garibaldi into the naval service of Charles Albert for so foul a purpose. The revolution failed at this time; Garibaldi and Mazzini ran for their lives, and, under feigned names, escaped from justice. The former was detected in a public-house near Geneva, and the innkeeper, apparently, resolved to hand him. over to the police. Garibaldi, however, won over the fellows who were drinking with him by singing one of Beranger's songs; and, for the instruction of Mr. Gladstone, we will quote three lines of that abominable composition : Moi, qui ne crois qu'à des dieux indulgents, Au Dieu des bonnes gens. Obliged to run as far as he could from Savoy after this infamous rebellion, this unprincipled adventurer took refuge in the service of the Bey of Tunis. His admiring biographer gives |