“I do,” rejoined Seymour. “You may spare yourselves the trouble of reading those depositions to me. I shall not reply to them.”
“We will find a way to move you, if you continue thus stubborn, my lord,” remarked Southampton. “The rack may make you speak.”
“Not if you turn the wheel yourself, my lord, with as much zeal as you did against poor Anne Askew,” retorted Seymour. “How know I by what means these depositions against me have been procured? Let my accusers be confronted with me, and we shall then see whether they will maintain their charges to my face.”
“We might well refuse your demand,” replied Warwick. “But to prove that we are not so inimical as you represent us, it shall be granted. Let Sir William Sharington be brought in.”
After a short pause, the unfortunate master of the mint was introduced by a side door. Wholly unable to walk without support, he had to be accommodated with a chair. He gave a terrified and half-imploring look at the admiral, and then cast down his eyes.
“Sir William Sharington,” said Warwick, “you have already confessed that you have coined ten thousand pounds of false money, and clipped coin to the extent of forty thousand pounds. At whose instigation, and for whose benefit, did you commit these offences?”
“Before you answer, Sir William,” cried Seymour, “I desire you will look me straight in the face.”
“Speak!” cried Warwick, “and declare the truth.”
“I cannot speak,” said Sharington, quailing beneath the admiral’s terrible gaze. “His glances pierce into my soul.”
“You have wrung this confession from him by, torture,” cried Seymour. “He has accused me to save himself. Is it not so, Sir William?”
“Do not let him intimidate you, sir, but avow the truth,” said Warwick. “You cannot deny your own confession.”
“Was it not extorted by the rack?” cried Seymour.
“Ay, marry was it,” replied Sharington; “else I had confessed nothing. I pray you forgive me, my lord, for what I have done.”
“I freely forgive you,” rejoined the admiral, “though you have placed a weapon against me in the hands of my enemies. But they cannot use it now.”
“The council cannot be trifled with in this manner, sir,” observed Southampton to the master of the mint. “Are the charges you have made against Lord Seymour true, or false? Answer!”
“Take me hence, and place me again upon the rack, if you will,” cried Sharington. “I would rather die than submit to these interrogations.”
“Thou wilt die by the hangman’s hand, thou false and equivocating knave!” cried Warwick. “But we have thy confession—signed by thine own hand—and that is enough. Take him hence!” he added to the guard.
And, much to his own relief, the unfortunate man was removed.
“Your first accusation falls to the ground, my lords,” said Seymour, triumphantly. “And I doubt not all the rest will do so.”
“Do not delude yourself with any such notion, my lord,” said Southampton. “We are all satisfied of the truth of Sir William Sharington’s confession, and it is sufficient to condemn you. But your crimes are manifold, as they are heinous. Thirty-six articles of high treason and other misdemeanors against the Crown will be exhibited against you. You are charged with using all your natural influence over our youthful sovereign’s mind to dissatisfy him with the government, and to get the control of affairs into your own hands—with corrupting by bribes certain gentlemen of the privy-chamber and others—with promising his majesty’s hand in marriage—with endeavoring to obtain possession of his person, to the infinite peril of the realm—with confederating with divers disaffected noblemen and gentlemen—with secretly raising an army of ten thousand men, and providing money and supplies for that force for one month. You are also charged with putting your castle of Holt, in Denbighshire, into a state of defence, with providing it with a strong garrison and stores of war, with fortifying your castle of Sudley, in Gloucestershire, and with possessing yourself of the strong and dangerous Isles of Scilly, to which you purposed to retreat. All this you have done with the design of exciting rebellion, and causing civil war. In addition to these atrocious crimes, you are charged with others of a more dishonorable nature, and which must stamp your name with perpetual infamy. Not only are you taxed with inciting and abetting the gigantic frauds perpetrated by Sir William Sharington, but it is objected against you, and can be proved, that you have abused the high office with which you have been intrusted by extorting money from merchantmen under various false pleas and pretences, by seizing upon wrecks and refusing restitution to the rightful owners, and by conspiring with pirates and sharing their plunder. To this long catalogue of offences, it may be added that you have secretly attempted to obtain the hand in marriage of his majesty’s sister, the Princess Elizabeth, second inheritor of the crown, well knowing that such marriage would be against the late king’s will, and could not be contracted without consent of the council. What answer make you to these charges?”