JUNE 133 



far as to burn a single poor heretic, one Bembridge, as 

 became the citizens of a courtly town, just to show Philip 

 that he had not come to a barbarous, unfashionable land. 

 But the restoration went no further, and the only relic 

 remaining of Queen Mary's sombre presence is the carved 

 chair in which she sat at her wedding, still preserved in 

 the Lady Chapel. 



Crafty, silly King Jamie proved too much for the Win- 

 tonian conception of royalty. Feeling nervous about the 

 plague in London, James had moved his Court to Win- 

 chester in 1603, and the eleven prisoners implicated in 

 the 'Main' and 'Bye' conspiracies were brought hither 

 for trial. They were condemned to die — among them the 

 gentle Kaleigh — and one by one they were led out for 

 execution in front of Winchester Castle. Brooke, as head 

 of the ' Bye ' plot, actually was decapitated ; then on the 

 following days came the Lords Cobham and Grey, Sir 

 Griffin Markham and Sir Walter Raleigh. The king had 

 arranged a scandalous farce. He hoped to extract con- 

 fession from them under fear of death, and as each one 

 was about to lay his head on the scaffold, the groom of 

 the bedchamber stopped the proceeding in name of the 

 king. Raleigh's poem, the 'Pilgrimage,' was written at 

 Winchester on this occasion, when he was preparing for 

 what he believed to be certain death. It is as remarkable 

 for the beauty of the first stanza as for the mediocrity of 

 the other two : — 



' Give uie my scallop-shell of quiet, 

 My staff of faith to walk upon, 

 My scrip of joy, immortal diet, 

 My bottle of salvation. 

 My gown of glory (hope's true gage !) 

 And thus I '11 take my pilgrimage.' 



