Free ELIZABETH AND ESSEX: a tragic history by Lytton Strachey Page B

but it was a reason, not of justice, but expediency. Upon the life of Elizabeth hung the whole structure of the State. During the first thirty years of her reign, her death would have involved the accession of a Catholic sovereign, which would inevitably have been followed by a complete revolution in the system of Government, together with the death or ruin of the actual holders of power. The fact was obvious enough to the enemies of the English polity, and the danger that they might achieve their end by the Queen's assassination was a very real one. The murder of inconvenient monarchs was one of the habits of the day. William of Orange and Henry III of France had both been successfully obliterated by Philip and the Catholics. Elizabeth on her side had sought - though, indeed, rather half-heartedly - to have the Queen of Scots secretly put out of the way, in order to avoid the public obloquy of a judicial execution. Her own personal fearlessness added to the peril. She refused, she said, to mistrust the love of her subjects; she was singularly free of access; and she appeared in public with a totally inadequate guard. In such a situation, only one course of action seemed to be possible: every other consideration must be subordinated to the supreme necessity of preserving the Queen's life. It was futile to talk of justice; for justice involves, by its very nature, uncertainty; and the government could take no risks. The old saw was reversed; it was better that ten innocent men should suffer than that one guilty man should escape. To arouse suspicion became in itself a crime. The proofs of guilt must not be sifted by the slow processes of logic and fair play; they must be multiplied - by spies, by agents provocateurs , by torture. The prisoner brought to trial should be allowed no counsel to aid him against the severity of iron-hearted judges and the virulence of the ablest lawyers of the day. Conviction should be followed by the most frightful of punishments. In the domain of treason, under Elizabeth, the reign of law was, in effect, superseded, and its place was taken by a reign of terror.
     
    It was in the collection of evidence that the mingled atrocity and absurdity of the system became most obvious. Not only was the fabric of a case often built up on the allegations of the hired creatures of the government, but the existence of the rack gave a preposterous twist to the words of every witness. Torture was constantly used; but whether, in any particular instance, it was used or not, the consequences were identical. The threat of it, the hint of it, the mere knowledge in the mind of a witness that it might at any moment be applied to him - those were differences merely of degree; always, the fatal compulsion was there, inextricably confusing truth and falsehood. What shred of credibility could adhere to testimony obtained in such circumstances - from a man, in prison, alone, suddenly confronted by a group of hostile and skilful examiners, plied with leading questions, and terrified by the imminent possibility of extreme physical pain? Who could disentangle among his statements the parts of veracity and fear, the desire to placate his questioners, the instinct to incriminate others, the impulse to avoid, by some random affirmation, the dislocation of an arm or a leg? Only one thing was plain about such evidence: - it would always be possible to give to it whatever interpretation the prosecutors might desire. The Government could prove anything. It could fasten guilt upon ten innocent men with the greatest facility. And it did so, since by no other means could it make certain that the one actual criminal - who might be among them - should not escape. Thus it was that Elizabeth lived her life out, unscathed; and thus it happened that the glories of her Age could never have existed without the spies of Walsingham, the damp cells of the Tower, and the notes of answers, calmly written down by cunning questioners, between screams