[The following is in regards to the verdict at the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh. I’ll provide a link below so you can read more about him and his trial if you wish.]
It was nearly seven in the evening when the jury was asked to consider its verdict. Less than fifteen minutes later the foreman delivered it in the flickering candlelight: guilty. Raleigh was allowed one more statement before sentence was pronounced. He denied the charge of treason and submitted himself to the king’s mercy. Then Lord Chief Justice Popham delivered his judgement:
I thought I should never have seen this day, to have stood in this place to give Sentence of Death against you; because I thought it impossible, that one of so great parts should have fallen so grievously. God has bestowed on you many benefits. You had been a man fit and able to have served the king in good place… if you had entered into a good consideration of your estate, and not suffered your own wit to have entrapped yourself, you might have lived in good comfort… Two vices have lodged chiefly in you; one is an eager ambition, the other corrupt covetousness… I am sorry to hear that a gentleman of your wealth would become a base spy for the enemy, which is the vilest of all others… You have been taxed by the world, with defence of the most heathenish and blasphemous opinions, which I list not to repeat, because Christian ears cannot endure to hear them… You shall do well before you go out of the world, to give satisfaction therein, and not to die with these imputations on you…
Now it rests to pronounce the Judgement, which I wish you had not been this day to receive form me; for if the fear of God in you had been answerable to your other great parts you might have lived to have been a singular good subject. I never saw the like trial and I hope never to see the like again. But since you have been found guilty of these horrible Treasons, the judgement of this court is, that you shall be had from hence to the place whence you came, there to remain to the day of execution, there to be hanged and cut down alive and your body shall be opened, your heart and bowels plucked out, and your privy members cut off, and thrown into the fire before your eyes; then your head to be stricken off from your body, and your body shall be divided into four quarters to be disposed of at the king’s pleasure.
And God have mercy upon your soul.
Source:
Lisle, Leanda De. "The God of Truth and Time" After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle for the Throne of England. New York: Ballantine, 2005. 268. Print.
Original Source Listed:
For trial transcript see Cobbett, State Trials and Edwards, Life.
Further Reading:
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