The Court of Star Chamber. yet he purposed not to ask any questions when he came thither : but if to ask questions of a man going to execution were offensive to the state, he did humbly submit to their Lordships' censures." Hollis confessed having expressed his doubt of Weston's guilt at the trial, saying he had been but a by-stander and that his opinion had been drawn from him " in ordi nary discourse, and that he had offended as a man perhaps more trickish and curious to give his verdict or judgment of life or death than others." He said he had gone to the execution as he had gone to many others : that he had know it to be a custom for by standers to interrogate condemned men. As to having offended by his behavior there, he said " that Mr. Attorney had so well applied his charge against him, that though he car ried the seal of a good conscience with him, he would almost make him believe that he was guilty; but he hoped their Lordships would take the bird by the body and not by the feathers." He had, he claimed, acted as he thougnta Christian should act, to persuade Weston to ease his conscience, and " in tended not to controvert the law and justice that had passed on him." If the court deter mined that he had offended, " he did humbly submit himself to their honorable censures." Coke pronounced sentence. First dealing with Lumsden he said among other things : "He that infuseth into his Majesty's ears the least falsehood concerning his judges unjustly, is like him that infuseth never so little copper into coin; the both commit a kind of treason. . . . And for your persuasions, Mr. Lumsden, that you will not be an ac cuser, this is a contemptuous answer : forthis is not to be an accuser, being examined of another to discover him; but your refusal in this kind of answer is a manifest contempt." Lumsden was fined two thousand marks, im prisoned in the Tower for a year, and there after until he should at the Kings-Bench Bar submit himself, confess his fault, and disclose the authors.
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As to Hollis and Weston Coke proceeded : "If that he that is to be undone by a verdict shall not speak cross matter to a verdict (as the books of Edward III. and Edward I. are, and II. Henry IV., 53 Estophel, 137), what shall be done to him that, having no matter in a cause capital wherin he had nothing to do, would intermeddle? For as the law saith, ' Turpis est admissis rei ad fe non pertinentis.' Sir John said, that it hath been a custom to ask questions at those times, and that he did usually go to execu tions. For his own part, he said, that ever since he was a scholar, and had read those verses of Ovid, Trist. III., 5 : — • Et lupus et vulpes instant morientibus —* Et quaecunque minor nobilitate fera est, he never did like it, and therefore he said, he did marvel much at the use of Sir John ... I know he " ( Hollis) " hath travelled many coun tries, speaks many languages, hath seen many manners and customs, and knows much of foreign nations; yet a little knowledge of the common law of this land would have been better for him than all these; it would have kept him from asking questions, and coun selling in scandal of religion and justice, two of the main pillars of the kingdom, and that in cold blood. Evidence is above eloquence; the party himself acknowledged that he died justly, and those that saw him said that he died penitently : so to conclude, as it was sometimes said of Rome, ' et quae tanta, fuit Romam tibi causa videndi,' he might very well now say of Sir John Hollis his going to Tyburn, with a little alteration of the words, ' et quoe tanta fuit Tyburn tibi causa videndi.'" Hollis was fined £1000, and Wentworth I Ooo marks, each was imprisoned in the Tower for a year, and compelled to make submission to the common law courts. As far as the mere management in court of the different cases went, it cannot be denied 1 This line is incorrectly quoted. It should be " Ut lupus et turpis instant morientibus ursi." Tristia, III., 5 (j5„ 36).
