A shudder of horror went through the assembly, and perhaps few except Richard Talbot felt that the examination of the prisoners ought to have been public.  The form, however, was gone through of asking whether they had cause to render wherefore they should not be condemned to die.

The first to speak was Ballard.  His eyes glanced round with an indomitable expression of scorn and indignation, which, as Diccon whispered, he could have felt to his very backbone.  It was like that of a trapped and maimed lion, as the man sat in his chair with crushed and racked limbs, but with a spirit untamed in its defiance.

“Cause, my Lords?” he replied.  “The cause I have to render will not avail here, but it may avail before another Judgment-seat, where the question will be, who used the weapons of treason, not merely against whom they were employed.  Inquiry hath not been made here who suborned the priest, Dr. Gifford, to fetch me over from Paris, that we might together overcome the scruples of these young men, and lead them forward in a scheme for the promotion of the true religion and the right and lawful succession.  No question hath here been put in open court, who framed the conspiracy, nor for what purpose.  No, my Lords; it would baffle the end you would bring about, yea, and blot the reputation of some who stand in high places, if it came to light that the plot was devised, not by the Catholics who were to be the instruments thereof, nor by the Lady in whose favour all was to be done,—­not by these, the mere victims, but by him who by a triumph of policy thus sent forth his tempters to enclose them all within his net—­above all the persecuted Lady whom all true Catholics own as the only lawful sovereign within these realms.  Such schemes, when they succeed, are termed policy.  My Lords, I confess that by the justice of England we have been guilty of treason against Queen Elizabeth; but by the eternal law of the justice of God, we have suffered treachery far exceeding that for which we are about to die.”

“I marvel that they let the fellow speak so far,” was Cavendish’s comment.

“Nay, but is it so?” asked Diccon with startled eyes.

“Hush! you have yet to learn statecraft,” returned his friend.

His father’s monitory hand only just saved the boy from bursting out with something that would have rather astonished Westminster Hall, and caused him to be taken out by the ushers.  It is not wonderful that no report of the priest’s speech has been preserved.

The name of Antony Babington was then called.  Probably he had been too much absorbed in the misery of his position to pay attention to the preceding speech, for his reply was quite independent of it.  He prayed the Lords to believe, and to represent to her Majesty, that he had received with horror the suggestion of compassing her death, and had only been brought to believe it a terrible necessity by the persuasions of this Ballard.