Note 28 — Chapter I · THE OLD MANOR HOUSE.

“Dastardly,” for he who had with such cruel indifference sent others to the stake, the quartering block, or the axe, lost all his own courage when a like doom impended over himself—when, without a trial, he was sentenced, by the process of a “bill of attainder,” which he had first invented. In the most abject manner he fawned on the tyrant, and besought mercy in terms which were a disgrace to his manhood. Innocent of intentional treason against Henry no doubt he was; but was he more so than many of his own victims, whom on the fifth of July, 1540, he went to meet before the bar of God?