Varney,upon a second examination,made very little mystery either of the crime or of its motives---alleging,as a reason for his frankness,that though much of what he confessed could only have attached to him by suspicion,yet such suspicion would have been sufficient to deprive him of Leicester's confidence,and to destroy all his towering plans of ambition.I was not born,he said,to drag on the remainder of life a degraded outcast;nor will I so die that my fate shall make a holiday to the vulgar herd.From these words it was apprehended he had some design upon himself,and he was carefully deprived of all means by which such could be carried into execution.But like some of the heroes of antiquity,he carried about his person a small quantity of strong poison,prepared probably by the celebrated Demetrius Alasco.
Having swallowed this potion over-night,he was found next morning dead in his cell;nor did he appear to have suffered much agony,his countenance presenting,even in death,the habitual expression of sneering sarcasm which was predominant while he lived.The wicked man,saith Scripture,hath no bands in his death.The fate of his colleague in wickedness was long unknown.Cumnor Place was deserted immediately after the murder;for in the vicinity of what was called the Lady Dudley's Chamber,the domestics pretended to hear groans,and screams,and other supernatural noises.After a certain length of time,Janet,hearing no tidings of her father,became the uncontrolled mistress of his property,and conferred it with her hand upon Wayland,now a man of settled character,and holding a place in Elizabeth's household.But it was after they had been both dead for some years that their eldest son and heir,in making some researches about Cumnor Hall,discovered a secret passage,closed by an iron door,which,opening from behind the bed in the Lady Dudley's Chamber,descended to a sort of cell,in which they found an iron chest containing a quantity of gold,and a human skeleton stretched above it.The fate of Anthony Foster was now manifest.He had fled to this place of concealment,forgetting the key of the spring-lock;and being barred from escape by the means he had used for preservation of that gold,for which he had sold his salvation,he had there perished miserably.
Unquestionably the groans and screams heard by the domestics were not entirely imaginary,but were those of this wretch,who,in his agony,was crying for relief and succour.
The news of the Countess's dreadful fate put a sudden period to the pleasures of Kenilworth.Leicester retired from court,and for a considerable time abandoned himself to his remorse.But as Varney in his last declaration had been studious to spare the character of his patron,the Earl was the object rather of compassion than resentment.The Queen at length recalled him to court;he was once more distinguished as a statesman and favourite;and the rest of his career is well known to history.
But there was something retributive in his death,if,according to an account very generally received,it took place from his swallowing a draught of poison which was designed by him for another person.[See Note 9.Death of the Earl of Leicester.]
Sir Hugh Robsart died very soon after his daughter,having settled his estate on Tressilian.But neither the prospect of rural independence,nor the promises of favour which Elizabeth held out to induce him to follow the court,could remove his profound melancholy.Wherever he went he seemed to see before him the disfigured corpse of the early and only object of his affection.At length,having made provision for the maintenance of the old friends and old servants who formed Sir Hugh's family at Lidcote Hall,he himself embarked with his friend Raleigh for the Virginia expedition,and,young in years but old in grief,died before his day in that foreign land.
Of inferior persons it is only necessary to say that Blount's wit grew brighter as his yellow roses faded;that,doing his part as a brave commander in the wars,he was much more in his element than during the short period of his following the court;and that Flibbertigibbet's acute genius raised him to favour and distinction in the employment both of Burleigh and Walsingham.
NOTES.
*Note 1.Ch.III.--FOSTER,LAMBOURNE,AND THE BLACK BEAR.
If faith is to be put in epitaphs,Anthony Foster was something the very reverse of the character represented in the novel.
Ashmole gives this deion of his tomb.I copy from the ANTIQUITIES OF BERKSHIRE,vol.i.,p.143.
In the north wall of the chancel at Cumnor church is a monument of grey marble,whereon,in brass plates,are engraved a man in armour,and his wife in the habit of her times,both kneeling before a fald-stoole,together with the figures of three sons kneeling behind their mother.Under the figure of the man is this inion:--ANTONIUS FORSTER,generis generosa propago,Cumnerae Dominus,Bercheriensis erat.
Armiger,Armigero prognatus patre Ricardo,Qui quondam Iphlethae Salopiensis erat.
Quatuor ex isto fluxerunt stemmate nati,Ex isto Antonius stemmate quartus erat.
Mente sagax,animo precellens,corpore promptus,Eloquii dulcis,ore disertus erat.
In factis probitas;fuit in sermone venustas,In vultu gravitas,relligione fides,In patriam pietas,in egenos grata voluntas,Accedunt reliquis annumeranda bonis.
Si quod cuncta rapit,rapuit non omnia Lethum,Si quod Mors rapuit,vivida fama dedit.
These verses following are writ at length,two by two,in praise of him:--Argute resonas Cithare pretendere chordas Novit,et Aonia concrepuisse Lyra.
Gaudebat terre teneras defigere plantas;
Et mira pulchras construere arte domos Composita varias lingua formare loquelas Doctus,et edocta scribere multa manu.
