On this Hatton broke forth in indignant compassion,—­“O Ballard!  Ballard! what hast thou done?  A sort of brave youth, otherwise endowed with good gifts, by thy inducement hast thou brought to their utter destruction and confusion!”

This apparently gave some hope to Babington, for he answered—­“Yes, I protest that, before I met this Ballard, I never meant nor intended for to kill the Queen; but by his persuasions I was induced to believe that she being excommunicate it was lawful to murder her.”

For the first time Ballard betrayed any pain.  “Yes, Mr. Babington,” he said, “lay all the blame upon me; but I wish the shedding of my blood might be the saving of your life.  Howbeit, say what you will, I will say no more.”

“He is the bravest of them all!” was Diccon’s comment.

“Wot you that he was once our spy?” returned Cavendish with a sneer; while Sir Christopher, with the satisfaction of a little nature in uttering reproaches, returned—­“Nay, Ballard, you must say more and shall say more, for you must not commit treasons and then huddle them up.  Is this your Religio Catholica?  Nay, rather it is Diabolica.”

Ballard scorned to answer this, and the Clerk passed on to Savage, who retained his soldierly fatalism, and only shook his head.  Barnwell again denied any purpose of injuring the Queen, and when Hatton spoke of his appearance in Richmond Park, he said all had been for conscience sake.  So said Henry Donne, but with far more piety and dignity, adding, “fiat voluntas Dei;” and Thomas Salisbury was the only one who made any entreaty for pardon.

Speeches followed from the Attorney-General, and from Sir Christopher Hatton, and then the Lord Chief Justice Anderson pronounced the terrible sentence.

Richard Talbot sat with his head bowed between his hands.  His son had begun listening with wide-stretched eyes and mouth, as boyhood hearkens to the dreadful, and with the hardness of an unmerciful time, too apt to confound pity with weakness; but when his eye fell on the man he had followed about as an elder playmate, and realised all it conveyed, his cheek blanched, his jaw fell, and he hardly knew how his father got him out of the court.

There was clearly no hope.  The form of the trial was such as to leave no chance of escape from the utmost penalty.  No witnesses had been examined, no degrees of guilt acknowledged, no palliations admitted.  Perhaps men who would have brought the Spanish havoc on their native country, and have murdered their sovereign, were beyond the pale of compassion.  All London clearly thought so; and yet, as Richard Talbot dwelt on their tones and looks, and remembered how they had been deluded and tempted, and made to believe their deed meritorious, he could not but feel exceeding pity for the four younger men.  Ballard, Savage, and Barnwell might be justly doomed; even Babington had, by his own admission, entertained a fearfully evil design; but the other three had evidently dipped far less deeply into the plot, and Tichborne had only concealed it out of friendship.  Yet the ruthless judgment condemned all alike!  And why?  To justify a yet more cruel blow!  No wonder honest Richard Talbot felt sick at heart.