ent with the settled belief with which the judges had from the first pursued the investigations. De Bruyne, to follow the Dutch record, "stated his suit and drew his conclusion." It is almost unnecessary to say what that conclusion was. The Fiscal was an apt tool of an infamous system under which men could be done to death with due judicial forms. Torquemada was not more indefatigable in scenfcing out a heretic than De Bruyne was in discovering a conspirator. To his own satisfaction he brought home guilt to all the prisoners save four of the least important of them, viz., Powle, Ramsey, Sadler and Ladbrook. It now only remained for the Court to pass sentence. Before this was done, we are told, "prayers were said to the Lord that He might govern their (the Council's) hearts in this gloomy consultation and that He might inspire them only with equity and justice"—hollow words after such "equity and justice" as had been dealt out to the unfortunate prisoners.
With quivering lips and blenched faces Towerson and his companions listened to the declaration which sealed their fate. Towerson himself was condemned to be decapitated and quartered, and his head to be hung on a post as a warning to other evil-doers. His fellow captives were sentenced to simple decapitation. In every instance the victim's private property was ordered to be confiscated—an idle injunction, for the poor fellows had so little to leave that the Dutch were afterwards content that the surviving English should divide their hapless comrades' possessions amongst themselves.
Before the prisoners were removed, it occurred to the Council that the wholesale execution of the English would give rise to inconvenience by throwing upon them the
