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At one time the hatred of the Apprentices grew so irrepressible that a conspiracy like that of Evil May Day was formed among the Apprentices, with the design of murdering all the foreigners. The conspiracy was happily discovered, and the conspirators laid by the heels in Newgate. A Petition to the Queen against the grievous encroachments of aliens will be found in Appendix III.

WILLIAM CECIL, FIRST BARON BURGHLEY (1520–1598)

From the painting by Marc Gheeraedts (?) in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

The domestic history of Elizabeth’s reign is crammed full of hangings, burnings, and the executions of traitors, with all the barbarity of that punishment. There are so many, that in order to make this remarkable shedding of blood intelligible, I have compiled a list of the executions mentioned by Holinshed and Stow during one part of her reign. The list will be found in Appendix X., (Executions, 1563–1586). This list, which principally concerns London and is apparently incomplete, even within its narrow limits shows that between the years 1563 and 1586, there were in all 64 executions at which 228 persons suffered. Of these, seventy-one were rebels hanged on two occasions; seventeen were executed for murder; three for military offences; twelve for counterfeiting, clipping, or debasing the coinage; two for counterfeiting the Queen’s signature; twenty-nine were pirates; two were executed for witchcraft or conjuring; twelve for robbery; one for adultery; three for heresy, and seventy-six for high treason. Among the traitors were Dr. John Storey; Edmund Campion; William Parry; the Babington conspirators; the Charnock conspirators; and many Roman Catholic priests. There can be no doubt that the priests who came over with secret designs for the conversion of the country constituted a real and ever-present danger; if anything could justify the barbarities committed upon them when they were caught these conspiracies were enough. That the people at large did not condemn these barbarities is proved by the fact that there was no feeling of sympathy for the sufferers; that the common opinion was that for treason no punishment could be too severe; and that the country after Elizabeth’s reign was concluded was far more Protestant than at the beginning. The conspiracies and secret goings in and out of Catholic priests came to an end in the reign of James, for the best of all reasons, viz. that there was no one left with whom a priest could conspire or whom he could convert. Two women were burned for poisoning their husbands—a most dreadful offence, and one which called for the direst terrors of the law; one woman was burned for witchcraft; another was only hanged for the same offence—but such differences in sentences are not unknown at the present day. One more point occurs. Were the last dying speeches correctly reported? If so, since they are always so moving, and sometimes so eloquent, why did they elicit no response of sympathy or indignation among the bystanders? When Thomas Appletree was to be hanged for firing a gun accidentally into the Queen’s barge (see p. 389), the people wept, and the culprit wept, but the justice of the sentence was not questioned. Now in the Marian Persecution the people looked on indignant and sympathetic, being restrained from demonstrations by force and fear. Whether the dying speeches are correctly reported or invented, matters very little. They show one thing, that there was no unmanly terror observed at the last moment: every one, guilty or innocent, mounted the ladder with an intrepid countenance. Death has no terrors either for the arch-conspirator Storey, or for the pirate hanged at Execution Dock.