LEGAL PROCEEDINGS. 391 



examinations ; which was the cause we certified no 

 sooner. Upon the whole matter, we find the cause 

 of his imprisonment just, and the suspicions and 

 presumptions many and great ; which we little need 

 to mention, because your majesty did relate and 

 inforced them to us in better perfection, than we 

 can express them. But, nevertheless, the proofs 

 seem to us to amount to this, that it was possible 

 he should be the man ; and that it was probable 

 likewise, he was the man : but no convicting proofs, 

 that may satisfy a jury of life and death, or that 

 may make us take it upon our conscience, or to 

 think it agreeable to your majesty s honour, which 

 next our conscience to God, is the dearest thing to 

 us on earth, to bring it upon the stage : which not- 



warrant and particular illumination to understand certain hard 

 passages of Daniel and the Revelation, which made him adven 

 ture so far. MS. letter of John Chamberlain, Esq. to Sir 

 Dudley Carleton, dated at London, May 8, 1619. 



This case was urged against the seven bishops at their trial in 

 king James II. s reign by Sir William Williams, then solicitor- 

 general, who observed, Trial, p. 76, that it had been made 

 use of by Mr. solicitor-general Finch on the trial of Col. 

 Sidney, and was the great &quot; case relied upon, and that guided 

 and governed that case;&quot; though there is nothing of this, that 

 appears in the printed trial of Sidney. 



It is but justice to the memory of our great antiquary, Sir 

 Robert Cotton, Bart, to remark here a mistake of Dr. Thomas 

 Smith in his life of Sir Robert, p. 26. prefixed to his catalogue 

 of the Cottonian library, where he has confounded the Cotton, 

 mentioned in the beginning of this note, with Sir Robert Cotton, 

 and erroneously supposed, that the suspicion of having written 

 the libel had fallen upon the latter. 



