I know Athole
promised his interest to old Ravenswood, and here is his son already
bandying and making a faction by his own contemptible influence. What
a ready tool he would be for the use of those who are watching the
downfall of our administration!"
While these thoughts were agitating the mind of the wily statesman, and
while he was persuading himself that his own interest and safety, as
well as those of his friends and party, depended on using the present
advantage to the uttermost against young Ravenswood, the Lord Keeper
sate down to his desk, and proceeded to draw up, for the information of
the privy council, an account of the disorderly proceedings which,
in contempt of his warrant, had taken place at the funeral of Lord
Ravenswood. The names of most of the parties concerned, as well as the
fact itself, would, he was well aware, sound odiously in the ears of his
colleagues in administration, and most likely instigate them to make an
example of young Ravenswood, at least, in terrorem.
It was a point of delicacy, however, to select such expressions as might
infer the young man's culpability, without seeming directly to urge
it, which, on the part of Sir William Ashton, his father's ancient
antagonist, could not but appear odious and invidious.
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