perhaps but inventions. Truth and falsehood, suspicion and certainty, gathered up in one black ominous thundercloud.
The Duke made no attempt to save Surrey. He knew the schemes which had been formed, and he felt that it was idle to deny them. He contented himself with declaring his own innocence of bad intentions, and his ignorance of the intrigues of Gardiner. He drew up a confession, in which he acknowledged that he had criminally concealed the dangerous purposes of his son, and that, for himself, 'contrary to his duty and allegiance, he had at divers times, and to divers persons, disclosed secrets of the privy council, to the King's peril;[1] for which offence he deserved to be attainted of high treason.' But in a letter to the council, he protested vehemently his general fidelity. To the King he declared that he was conscious of no real fault, unless his hatred of 'sacramentaries' was a fault.[2] He insisted on his services; he disowned any leaning to the Papacy.[3] He seemed to fear that the same measure would be dealt to him which he had dealt to Cromwell, and that he would be attainted and condemned without trial. Yet, even so, he said, Cromwell had been heard
- ↑ Printed by Lord Herbert, p. 265.
- ↑ Norfolk to the King: Lord Herbert, ibid.
- ↑ Perhaps truly; but if Surrey had succeeded, events would have probably, or assuredly, fallen into the course which they assumed under Mary, as the instinct of the sacramentaries told them. 'There was a nobleman in England,' wrote one of them to Bullinger, 'commonly called the Duke of Norfolk, who was a most bitter enemy to the Word of God, and who, with his son and others, made a secret attempt to restore the dominion of the Pope and the monks.'—Original Letters, p. 639.
