LETTERS FROM BIRCH. 289 



about your reference to this purpose, that if you can get 

 power over the whole title, it may be safe for his majesty 

 to assent, that you may try the right upon the deed. This 

 is the farthest I can go. I ever rest 



Yours assured, 



February 28, 1614. FR. BACON. 



To the King. 



May it please your most excellent Majesty, 

 I send your majesty enclosed a copy of our last examina 

 tion of Peacham,* taken the 10th of this present ; whereby 

 your majesty may perceive that this miscreant wretch goeth 

 back from all, and denieth his hand and all; no doubt being 

 fully of belief that he should go presently down to his trial, 

 he meant now to repeat his part which he purposed to play 

 in the country, which was to deny all. But your majesty 

 in your wisdom perceiveth that this denial of his hand, being 



* Edmund Peacham, a minister in Somersetshire [MS. Letter of Mr. Cham 

 berlain, dated January 5, 1614-5]. I find one of both his names, who was insti 

 tuted into the vicarage of Ridge, in Hertfordshire, July 22, 1581, and resigned 

 it in 1587 [Newcourt Repertor, vol. i. p. 864]. Mr. Peacham was committed 

 to the Tower for inserting several treasonable passages in a sermon never preached, 

 nor, as Mr. Justice Croke remarks in his Reports during the reign of King 

 Charles I. p. 125, ever intended to be preached. Mr. Chamberlain, in a letter 

 of the 9th of February, 1614-5, to Sir Dudley Carleton, mentions Mr. Peacham s 

 having been &quot; stretched already, though he be an old man, and, they say, much 

 above threescore ; but they could wring nothing out of him more than they had 

 at first in his papers. Yet the king is extremely incensed against him, and will 

 have him prosecuted to the uttermost.&quot; In another letter, dated February 23, 

 we are informed that the king, since his coming to London on the 15th, had had 

 &quot; the opinion of the judges severally in Peacham s case ; and it is said, that 

 most of them concur to find it treason : yet my lord chief justice [Coke] is for 

 the contrary ; and if the Lord Hobart, that rides the western circuit, can be 

 drawn to jump with his colleague, the chief baron [Tanfield], it is thought he 

 shall be sent down to be tried, and trussed up in Somersetshire.&quot; In a letter 

 of the 2d of March, 1614-5, Mr. Chamberlain writes, &quot; Peacham s trial at the 

 western assizes is put off, and his journey stayed, though Sir Randall Crew, the 

 king s Serjeant, and Sir Henry Yelverton, the solicitor, were ready to go to 

 horse to have waited on him there.&quot; &quot; Peacham, the minister,&quot; adds he in a 

 letter of the 13th of July, 1615, &quot; that hath been this twelvemonth in the Tower, 

 is sent down to be tried for treason in Somersetshire, before the lord chief baron 

 and Sir Henry Montagu, the recorder. The Lord Hobart gave over that circuit 

 the last assizes. Sir Randall Crew and Sir Henry Yelverton, the king s serjeant 

 and solicitor, are sent down to prosecute the trial.&quot; The event of this trial, 

 which was on the 7th of August, appears from Mr. Chamberlain s letter of the 

 14th of that month, wherein it is said that &quot; seven knights were taken from the 

 bench, and appointed to be of the jury. He defended himself very simply, but 

 obstinately and doggedly enough. But his offence was so foul and scandalous, 

 that he was condemned of high treason ; yet not hitherto executed, nor perhaps 

 shall be, if he have the grace to submit himself, and shew some remorse.&quot; He 

 died, as appears from another letter of the 27th of March, 1616, in the jail at 

 Taunton, where he was said to have &quot; left behind a most wicked and desperate 

 writing, worse than that he was convicted for.&quot; 



VOL. XII. U 



