ing the chapel Warwick was taken back to his room, and learned that he was respited. Gates joined Palmer, who was walking with Watson in the garden, and talking with the groups of gentlemen who were collected there. Immediately after the Duke was brought out. 'Sir John,' he said to Gates, 'God have mercy on us; forgive me as I forgive you, although you and your council have brought us hither.' 'I forgive you, my Lord,' Gates answered, 'as I would be forgiven; yet it was you and your authority that was the only original cause of all.' They bowed each. The Duke passed on, and the procession moved forward to Tower Hill.
The last words of a worthless man are in themselves of little moment; but the effect of the dying speech of Northumberland lends to it an artificial importance. Whether to the latest moment he hoped for his life, or whether, divided between atheism and superstition, he thought, if any religion was true, Romanism was true, and it was prudent not to throw away a chance, who can tell? At all events, he mounted the scaffold with Heath, the Bishop of Worcester, at his side; and then deliberately said to the crowd, that his rebellion. and his present fall were owing to the false preachers who had led him to err from the Catholic faith of Christ; the fathers and the saints had ever agreed in one doctrine; the present generation were the first that had dared to follow their private opinions; and in England and in Germany, where error had taken deepest root, there
might come thereby to my late young master.' Queen Jane and Queen Mary, p. 20.
