The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
shall be most necessary. To you having the sacred exercise of justice
in your hand, nothing appertains more properly than truth nakedly and
freely set down. To me, being environed round about with many
dangerous calamities, what can be more convenient, than, at least, to
be at peace with myself, in having discharged my conscience in a most
behoveful verity. Understand therefore, and truly understand, that the
lady Philoclea, to whose unstained virtue it hath been my unspeakable
misery, that my name should become a blot, if she be accused, is most
unjustly accused of any dishonourable fact, which by my means she may
be thought to have yielded unto. Whatsoever hath been done, hath been
my only attempt, which notwithstanding was never intended against her
chastity. But whatsoever hath been informed, was my fault. And I
attest the heavens, to blaspheme which I am not now in fit tune, that
so much as my coming into her chamber, was wholly unwitting unto her.
This your wisdom may withal consider, if I would lie, I would lie for
mine own behoof, I am not so old as to be weary of myself; but the
very sting of my inward knowledge, joined with the consideration I
must needs have what an infinite loss it should be to all those who
love goodness in good folks if so pure a child of virtue should
wrongfully be destroyed, compels me to use my tongue against myself,
and receive the burden of what evil was {601} upon mine own doing.
Look therefore with pitiful eyes upon so fair beams, and that
misfortune which by me hath fallen upon her, help to repair it with
your public judgment, since whosoever deals cruelly with such a
creature, shows himself a hater of mankind, and an envier of the
world’s bliss. And this petition I make, even in the name of justice,
that before you proceed further against us, I may know how you
conceive of her noble, though unfortunate action, and what judgment
you will make of it.”
He had not spoken his last word, when all the whole people, both of
great and low estate, confirmed with an united murmur Pyrocles’s
demand, longing, for the love generally was borne Philoclea, to know
what they might hope of her. Euarchus though neither regarding a
prisoner’s passionate prayer, nor bearing over-plausible ears to a
many-headed motion, yet well enough content, to win their liking with
things in themselves indifferent, he was content: first, to seek as
much as might be of Philoclea’s behaviour in this matter: which being
cleared by Pyrocles, and but weakly gainsaid by Philanax, who had
framed both his own and Dametas’s evidence most for her favour, and in
truth could have gone no further than conjecture, yet finding by his
wisdom that she was not altogether faultless, he pronounced she should
all her life long be kept prisoner among certain women of religion,
like the Vestal nuns, so to repay the touched honour of her house,
with well observing a strict profession of chastity. Although this
were a great prejudicating of Pyrocles’s case, yet was he exceedingly
joyous of it, being assured of his lady’s life; and in the depth of
his mind not sorry, that what end soever he had, none should obtain
the after enjoying that jewel whereon he had set his life’s happiness.
After it was by public sentence delivered, what should be done with
the sweet Philoclea, the laws of Arcadia bearing that what was
appointed by the magistrates in the nonage of the prince could not
afterwards be repealed. Euarchus still using to himself no other name
but protector of Arcadia, commanded those that had to say against the
Queen Gynecia to proceed, because both her estate required she should
be first heard, and also for that she was taken to be the principal in
the greater matter they were to judge of. Philanax incontinently
stepped forth, and showing in his greedy eyes that he did thirst for
her blood, began a well thought on discourse of her, in his judgment,
execrable wickedness. But Gynecia, standing up before the judge,
casting abroad her arms, with her eyes hidden under the breadth of her
unseemly hat, laying open in all her gestures the despairful
affliction, to which all the might of her reason was converted, with
such like words stopped Philanax, as he was entering into his
invective oration:
{602}
“Stay, stay, Philanax,” said she, “do not defile thy honest mouth with
those dishonourable speeches thou art about to utter against a woman,
now most wretched, lately thy mistress. Let either the remembrance how
great she was move thy heart to some reverence, or the seeing how low
she is, stir in thee some pity. It may be truth doth make thee deal
untruly, and love of justice frames injustice in thee, do not
therefore, neither shalt thou need, tread upon my desolate ruins. Thou
shalt have what thou seekest; and yet shalt not be oppressor of her,
who cannot choose but love thee for thy singular faith to thy master.
I do not speak this to procure mercy, or to prolong my life, no, no, I
say unto you I will not live, but I am only loth, my death should be
engrieved with any wrong thou shouldst do unto me. I have been too
painful a judge over myself to desire pardon in others’ judgment. I
have been too cruel an executioner of my own soul to desire that
execution of justice should be staid for me. Alas, they that know how
sorrow can rend the spirits, they that know what fiery hells are
contained in a self-condemning mind, need not fear that fear can keep
such an one from desiring to be separated from that which nothing but
death can separate. I therefore say to thee, O just judge, that I, and
only I, was the worker of Basilius’s death. They were these hands that
gave unto him the poisonous potion that hath brought death to him, and
loss to Arcadia; it was I, and none but I, that hastened his aged
years to an unnatural end, and that have made all his people orphans
of their royal father. I am the subject that have killed my prince, I
am the wife that have murdered my husband, I am a degenerate woman, an
undoer of this country, a shame of my children. What wouldst thou have
said more, O Philanax! and all this I grant, there resteth then
nothing else to say but that I desire you, you will appoint quickly
some to rid me of my life, rather than these hands, which else are
destined unto it, and that indeed it may be done with such speed as I
may not long die in this life, which I have in so great horror.” With
that she crossed her arms, and sat down upon the ground, attending the
judge’s answer. But a great while it was, before anybody could be
heard speak, the whole people concurring in a lamentable cry, so much
had Gynecia’s words and behaviour stirred their hearts to a doleful
compassion, neither in troth could most of them in their judgments
tell whether they should be more sorry for her fault, or her misery;
for the loss of her estate, or loss of her virtue. But most were most
moved with that which was under their eyes, the sense most subject to
pity. But at length the reverent awe they stood in of Euarchus brought
them to a silent waiting his determination, who, having well
considered the abomination of the fact, attending more the manifest
proof of so horrible a trespass, {603} confessed by herself, and
proved by others, than anything relenting to those tragical phrases of
hers, apter to stir a vulgar pity than his mind, which hated evil in
what colours soever he found it, having considered a while with the
principal men of the country, and demanded their allowance, he
definitively gave this sentence: “That whereas, both in private and
public respects, this woman had most heinously offended, in private,
because marriage being the most holy conjunction that falls to
mankind, out of which all families, and so consequently all societies
do proceed, which not only by community of goods, but community of
children, is to knit the minds in a most perfect union, which whoso
breaks, dissolves all humanity, no man living free from the danger of
so near a neighbour, she had not only broken it, but broken it with
death, and the most pretended death that might be: in public respect,
the princes’ persons, being in all monarchal governments the very knot
of the people’s welfare, and light of all her doings, to which they
are not only in conscience, but in necessity bound to be loyal, she
had traitorously empoisoned him, neither regarding her country’s
profit, her own duty, nor the rigour of the laws. That therefore, as
well for the due satisfaction to eternal justice, and accomplishment
of the Arcadian statutes, as for the everlasting example to all wives
and subjects, she should presently be conveyed to close prison, and
there kept with such food as might serve to sustain her life, until
the day of her husband’s burial, at which time she should be buried
quick, in the same tomb with him: that so his murder might be a murder
to herself, and she forced to keep company with the body from which
she had made so detestable a severance; and lastly, death might
redress their disjoined conjunction of marriage.” His judgment was
received of the whole assembly, as not with disliking, so with great
astonishment, the greatness of the matter and person as it were
overpressing the might of their conceits. But when they did set it to
the beam, with the monstrousness of her ugly misdeed, they could not
but yield in their hearts, there was no over-balancing. As for
Gynecia, who had already settled her thoughts, not only to look but
long for this event, having, in this time of her vexation, found a
sweetness in the rest she hoped by death, with a countenance
witnessing she had before-hand so passed through all the degrees of
sorrow, that she had no new look to figure forth any more, rose up,
and offered forth her fair hands to be bound or led as they would,
being indeed troubled with no part of this judgment, but that her
death was as she thought long delayed. They that were appointed for
it, conveyed her to the place she was in before, where the guard was
relieved, and the number increased to keep her more sure for the time
of her execution: none of them all that led her, though most {604} of
them were such whose hearts had been long hardened with the often
exercising such offices, being able to bar tears from their eyes, and
other manifest tokens of compassionate sorrow. So goodly a virtue is a
resolute constancy, that even in evil deservers, it seems that party
might have been notably well deserving. Thus the excellent lady
Gynecia, having passed five and thirty years of her age, even to the
admiration of a beautiful mind and body, and having not in her own
knowledge ever spotted her soul with any wilful vice, but her
immoderate love of Zelmane, was brought first by that ill-answered
passion, and then by the despairing conceit she took of the judgment
of God in her husband’s death and her own fortune, purposely to
overthrow herself, and confirm by a wrong confession, that abominable
shame, which with her wisdom, joined to the truth, perhaps she might
have repelled.
Then did Euarchus ask Philanax, whether it were he that would charge
the two young prisoners, or that some other should do it, and he sit,
according to his estate, as an assistant in the judgment. Philanax
told him as before he had done, that he thought no man could say
manifest the naughtiness of those two young men with so much either
truth or zeal as himself, and therefore he desired he might do this
last service to his faithfully beloved master, as to prosecute the
traitorous causers of his death and dishonour, which being done, for
his part he meant to give up all dealing in public affairs, since that
man was gone who had made him love them. Philanax thus being ready to
speak, the two princes were commanded to tell their names, who