his contemporaries marks the transition of which he was conscious
and they were not. Their eyes were fixed upon Europe. Burghley’s
calculations were always directed to the preservation of a balance
of power on the Continent; he was afraid of France, and knew the
commercial value of the Burgundian alliance. The New World did not
appeal to him at all--a rivalry there would hardly have seemed to him
desirable. The ordinary Englishman, on the other hand, felt that Spain
had proved herself the enemy of his country and his creed, and in the
moment of victory his views were roughly summed up in two phrases--_vae
victis_; and, _the spoils for the victors_. He had no very definite
ideas as to the further results, though he might have the triumph of
“the Religion” over Popery in his mind. If he thought of the New World,
it was not as a land where he might make himself a new home, but as a
Tom Tiddler’s ground for bold adventurers. Raleigh saw the vision of
the boundless empire occupied by the men of his own race. There are
indications that if Walsingham had lived Raleigh would have stood less
alone; but Walsingham died, poor and in disfavour, in 1590.
Roughly speaking, then, for some years after the Armada the war party
at large predominated; maintaining the system of persistent warfare
on Spanish commerce, varied at intervals with more effective blows
such as the attack on the Bretagne forts held by the Spaniards (in
league with the Guises), and the great Cadiz expedition. In these moves
Raleigh’s voice and hand were heard and felt; but they were isolated
moves, not followed up--largely owing to the clever management of
the Cecils, in whom the Queen really placed her reliance. The war
party itself was ruled in effect by the young Earl of Essex, whose
personality was particularly obnoxious to the Cecils, while his policy
was comparatively acceptable to them. Essex, being desperately jealous
of Raleigh’s general favour with the Queen, Sir Walter was generally on
friendly terms with the Cecils; whereas anything but a very temporary
show of amity between the two Court rivals was entirely out of the
question. And whenever Essex had access to the Queen he had the better
of the contest. These controlling conditions make Raleigh’s career at
this time intelligible.
Both Raleigh and Essex accompanied the Lisbon expedition in 1589.
Raleigh was with Drake; Essex, who had joined in defiance of orders,
with the land force. The fleet was in no way responsible for the
failure, though the blame was carefully laid on Drake; Raleigh,
ostensibly at any rate, rather gained in favour with the Queen, who was
extremely angry with Essex. The Earl, however, recovered his ascendency
while his rival was in Ireland in this same year. Then came another
period of Raleigh’s ascendency. Essex married Philip Sidney’s widow,
thereby infuriating his mistress; and, when he had been forgiven, was
not kept at Court, but sent to command the English contingent in France
in support of the king, Henry IV.--who was warring for his throne
against the Guises, backed by Philip. Still, the raiding policy held
the field, and the naval operations of 1590 were conducted by Hawkins
and Frobisher. The Treasure fleet, against which it was directed, had
warning and did not sail into the trap, so that the expedition was
practically a failure. A similar expedition was planned for the next
year, in which Raleigh was to have sailed as Vice-Admiral, Lord Thomas
Howard being in command; but, Essex being in France, Elizabeth would
not spare him, and Grenville went instead, to meet his death in the
last famous fight of the _Revenge_. The next year, Raleigh and the Earl
of Cumberland had a great enterprise on hand; but, again, Raleigh was
ordered to turn back and resign his command to Frobisher.
At this time Sir Walter fell into complete disgrace at Court, partly
because he did not at first obey the Queen’s orders, partly because
of the discovery of his _liaison_ with Elizabeth Throgmorton, who
became his wife--whether he was already secretly married to her is a
matter of some doubt. He was placed in confinement, and wrote the most
outrageous letters to Robert Cecil anent the misery of being deprived
of the sunshine of the Royal presence; in the then conventional
form of adulation for Gloriana. He was more or less forgiven when
the ships under the command of his lieutenant, Borough, returned,
with a very rich prize, of the value whereof Elizabeth took one-half
for herself. Incidentally, the whole story of this enterprise shows
that Raleigh could make himself as popular with sailors as unpopular
elsewhere; for the crews nearly mutinied when they found he was to be
displaced by Frobisher; and after they landed, Robert Cecil was quite
perturbed at the discovery of their devotion to him, their wrath at his
imprisonment, and his influence over them when he was sent down to the
port to keep matters straight.
Raleigh was released, but he no longer basked in the sunshine of the
Virgin Queen’s favour, and lived away from the Court, spending much of
his time at his newly acquired estate of Sherborne. About this time
his rival, returned from France, was admitted to the Privy Council,
from which he himself was still excluded; but he became active in
Parliament, in private matters relating to his various estates, and in
planning his great expedition for the “discovery of Guiana”; while he
was also an energetic advocate of the policy of expelling the Spaniards
from Brittany, relying--in full accord with the school of Drake--on the
navy as England’s instrument for fighting her great foe. The persuasive
eloquence of his tongue would seem to have equalled the picturesque
force of his pen, which had been displayed in more than one pamphlet,
notably in his extremely vivid account of the great fight in which
his kinsman Grenville lost his life--where his narrative powers are
associated with a singularly telling rhetorical invective directed
against the Spaniards.
For a dozen years past, however, Raleigh had hardly put to sea in his
own person, or seen much fighting. In 1595 he reappears as emphatically
a man of action.
V
FAVOUR AND FALL
The Virginia project was for the time abandoned, since it had become
clear that no serviceable co-operation could be expected from any
quarter. If the establishment of a working colony in North America
was out of his power, Raleigh came to the conclusion that territorial
acquisitions on the southern continent might prove more attractive.
Rumour declared that the Peruvian Incas had set up in the interior
a new empire, known as Guiana, whose capital was the golden city of
Manoa; Spanish attempts to penetrate inland had failed. If England
established her sovereignty in the heart of South America, taking
possession of what was believed to be the richest country in the
world, the most short-sighted could see what a prospect was offered of
dominating her rival, in the field to which that rival laid exclusive
claim; and the most avaricious might anticipate opportunities of
accumulating enormous wealth.
So Raleigh organised his expedition for the exploration of the Orinoco
in 1595, taking command of it in person. The record of it we have
from his own pen. As a matter of course, he had sundry collisions
with the Spaniards, very much of his own seeking, capturing Berreo,
the Governor of Trinidad, from whom he extracted a certain amount of
information. Then he made his way some distance up the great river,
enduring many hardships, seeing many strange sights, and gathering
still more astonishing reports; collecting also samples of ore which
suggested the auriferous character of the district. It seems, however,
a somewhat curious omission on his part that he had sailed without
proper means either for mining or assaying. In all other respects he
proved himself an extremely competent explorer, in especial recognising
the necessity of cultivating--in contrast to the Spaniards--the
confidence and friendliness of the natives; carrying out his scheme,
not on the hypothesis of bringing home the maximum of loot, but of
preparing the way for the systematic entry of England into a great
inheritance. He was again doomed to disappointment. The Cecils at
this period were cooperating with him cautiously, but he could still
get no other support; the Queen was minded to participate royally in
profits, but she preferred to leave all the risks to others--and the
others preferred the immediate return from raids to any systematic and
laborious methods, however paying in the long run. Moreover, the credit
which Sir Walter gave to apparently authentic but fabulous tales of
Amazons and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, brought
undeserved discredit on the explorer’s account of what he had actually
seen. In short, the result of his adventure seemed very likely to be,
that adventurers with very different methods would visit Guiana in
search of Eldorado; but the beginnings of an English Empire in America
were brought no nearer.
By this time Elizabeth was awaking to the fact that Spain’s power of
aggression on the seas had by no means disappeared; and Drake had once
more been called into counsel. In the winter of 1595, the great seaman
and his old colleague and rival John Hawkins were in joint command of
a new Panama expedition, in the course of which both of them died.
The Cadiz expedition next year was the fruit of the more efficient
policy which was being forced to the front by circumstances. General
reconciliation was the order of the day in England; the Cecils, the
Howards, Raleigh, and Essex were all on formal terms of alliance.
Philip was making great naval preparations, when an English force
appeared off Cadiz; Essex was the General, Effingham the Admiral; his
cousin, Lord Thomas Howard and Raleigh, were both on the War Council.
Effingham wished to land the soldiers and attack the town; Raleigh,
who had been absent from the Council of War, appeared in time to get
a hearing; the decision arrived at was reversed, and Raleigh in his
vessel headed the squadron as it sailed into Cadiz harbour. There is
no doubt that Sir Walter was the hero of the occasion, setting the
example of doing the right thing in the right way. The result was that
thirteen of Philip’s best warships were sunk or captured, a great fleet
of forty sail packed full of riches was taken or burnt, and Cadiz
itself was sacked completely and thoroughly, while the persons of the
inhabitants were protected and cared for with a most unaccustomed
generosity. Raleigh’s own narrative--he was badly wounded during the
engagement--gives the fullest account of the proceedings, but is in
the main substantiated by other evidence; and if he had no qualms about
asserting the merits of his own performance, he was also at pains
to emphasise with generous frankness the frank generosity displayed
towards him by his personal rival. In all the relations between him and
Essex, this is the pleasantest--one might almost say the only really
pleasing--episode.
At last Raleigh was restored to Court favour; but for a time a
superficial friendliness with Essex was maintained, and the pair were
again united with Lord Thomas Howard in the following year in what
was known as the Islands voyage: a futile performance, in which the
English fleet had the worst of luck in respect of weather, and Essex,
who was in supreme command, showed grave incompetence--which was
hardly unnatural, since he was quite inexperienced in naval warfare
and knew nothing whatever of naval strategy. At one stage Raleigh,
awaiting Essex off Fayal (in the Azores), with orders not to attack
till the whole force was assembled, found sufficient reason, after
some days’ delay, for effecting the capture of the place on his own
responsibility--to the extreme annoyance of Essex. The action was
executed with brilliant courage and success; but the Earl’s anger was
with difficulty appeased, and the old animosity between the rivals was
to a great extent revived by the incident.
For a time, however, Raleigh was not much at Court. But Essex, who was
popular with the mob, as the other was not, was jealous of every one,
and nearly every one was jealous of Essex. Old Lord Burghley died, and
a considerable part of the story of the Queen’s last years is really
the story of the crafty intriguing by which Robert Cecil first urged
Essex to the ruin on which he was ready enough to rush, and then laid
his mines for the destruction of Raleigh--while carefully avoiding the
odium in both cases. Essex, when in Ireland, acquired a fixed idea that
Sir Walter was the principal person whose machinations were compassing
his downfall; but there is little enough reason to suppose that he
had any one but himself to thank. The only effective machinations
were those of the people who covertly encouraged his own arrogance
and misconduct. Nevertheless, it is matter of regret that when Essex
fell, Raleigh--who had recently received insults from him--did take a
vindictive line, while Cecil was posing as the advocate of magnanimity.
A sketch such as this does not permit of an examination of the
intricate plottings that surrounded the old Queen as she was wearing
rapidly to her grave. Roughly speaking, the English Catholics outside
the country were zealous for the quite impossible succession of Philip
III. of Spain--a plan which did not appeal to the Catholics in England.
There were schemes for the succession of that monarch’s sister, which
found supporters only on the basis of her uniting the crowns of the
Netherlands and England, in independence of Spain. There were ideas of
marrying Arabella Stewart and Lord Beauchamp--each of whom had some
sort of title--with the object of preventing the accession of James
VI., whose claim on purely legitimist grounds was quite indisputable.
Cecil, satisfied that James was the winning candidate, made it his
business to convince that prince that his peaceful accession would be
entirely due to Cecil’s own masterly management, and that Raleigh in
particular was extremely antagonistic; while Raleigh himself was at no
pains to curry favour with the Scots king.
Scarcely was Elizabeth dead and James on the throne when a plot for
his removal and the substitution of Arabella was brought to light,
and Raleigh was charged with having sold himself to Spain and being a
principal agent in the conspiracy, which involved the introduction of
Spanish troops. The conduct of the trial was a monstrous perversion
of justice, and Raleigh was condemned as a traitor. Apart from the
inadequacy of the evidence and the palpable fact that it was full of
contradictions and of perjury, it remains incredible that Raleigh
should ever have seriously intended to support a Spanish domination.
It would not only have been a flat contradiction of his whole career,
a merely amazing folly in the man who in all England was the most
absolutely convinced of the rottenness of the power of Spain; there
was also no man alive who more thoroughly appreciated the historical
truth, that he who sells his own country to her enemies purchases
for himself not power and confidence but suspicion and contempt. The
part of Themistocles would not have attracted him. He might have been
capable of playing a selfish game; he was certainly not likely to play
a consciously unpatriotic one; but the game attributed to him by his
enemies would have been in his own eyes not only unpatriotic, but, from
the selfish point of view, egregiously stupid.
VI
CAPTIVE AND VICTIM
Raleigh was condemned to die as a traitor; but the sentence was not
carried out. Instead, he was relegated to the Tower, and was there
held a prisoner for twelve years--mainly occupied in scientific and
literary pursuits, varied by petitions for release. His chemical
experiments may be accounted as a hobby; but his writings would have
assured his fame had he possessed no other claim to recognition. They
range over the whole field of what the Greeks included under the term
“politics”--economics, the art of war, the art of government, political
institutions, as well as other subjects. The incidental discourses on
such matters, illustrated from the events _quorum pars magna fuerat_,
with his comments thereon, give the main permanent interest to his
“History of the World”--in itself a monument of such historical
learning as was available in his day. On every subject he touched he
wrote with a knowledge of facts and a penetrating perception of causes
which distinguish him as a political thinker of a high order; alive,
like Thomas More, to truths which had hardly won general recognition
two centuries after he was in his grave. He who in the great days had
been the intimate of Edmund Spenser was in the days of his captivity
on terms of friendship with Ben Jonson. He, too, wrote poetry, but
this was for him rather in the nature of an intellectual exercise or
accomplishment than of a creative order; little that can with certainty
be attributed to him has been handed down, though that little includes
lines (like “The Lie” and the sonnet to Spenser) which are immortal,
assuring him his place on the English Helicon. But his _magnum opus_
was that “History of the World” which King James condemned because it
spoke too “saucily” of the doings of princes, but which was ranked by
Oliver Cromwell next to his Bible.
Raleigh’s condemnation produced a curious effect. Hitherto, he had been
able to win the devotion of the few chosen intimates whom he accounted
his intellectual peers, and of the mariners who sailed under his
command, who adored him in much the same way and for the same reasons
as they adored Francis Drake. Among courtiers his open and aggressive
consciousness of intellectual superiority and his scornful attitude
made him intensely unpopular; and he was the pet aversion of the mob,
who had made a hero of Essex and regarded him as the Earl’s principal
enemy. Yet the sense that he was a victim of gross injustice, the
dignity and eloquence he displayed at his trial, the contrast between
this typical Elizabethan and the minions of the new Stewart Court,
brought about a revulsion of sentiment, and Raleigh in the Tower became
an object of admiration, and to Henry Prince of Wales of hero-worship.
A curious psychological study is afforded by Sir Walter’s letters when
he was lying under sentence of death. He condescended to appeal to the
king for mercy in terms which can only be called abject; yet the ink
was scarcely dry when he was writing to his wife with tender affection
and beautiful dignity. The conclusion afforded by a comparison of
the documents is that his personal attitude towards death was that
expressed in the letter to his wife, but that for the sake of his
family he felt bound to appeal for life, and the only form of appeal
from which anything might be hoped must be couched in that style of
pitiful self-abasement and fulsome flattery which he adopted--and by
which he felt himself degraded.
While Robert Cecil lived there was never much hope of liberty for Sir
Walter, who yet seems never to have realised that his old friend and
colleague was, under the surface, his most determined enemy. But the
prisoner, though now advanced in years--he was already fifty-one at the
time of the trial--never ceased to dream of Eldorado, and to petition
for liberty in order to make one more expedition to Guiana. Cecil died;
the rising favourite, Villiers, was a person whose influence could
be secured--at a price; and at last, after more than twelve years of
captivity, Raleigh was released, to prepare for his last voyage. But
the attitude of England to Spain had changed since Elizabeth’s death:
the ambassador Gondomar could twist King James round his little finger.
Raleigh meant to win his golden empire, and incidentally to teach the
old lesson of Spanish incapacity over again; Gondomar intended to use
that expedition for Raleigh’s destruction. Sir Walter played the game
on the old familiar theory of twenty--thirty--forty years before: that
success would excuse proceedings unauthorised, and even forbidden.
Every soul, from the king down, knew perfectly well that if the
adventurer did not set Spain at defiance, the adventure itself would be
a stupid farce.
So the greatest living Englishman was sent forth to his carefully
prepared destruction, to entangle himself in the toils laid by, and
at the bidding of, the minister of England’s old foe. Of course,
under the conditions the expedition was a disastrous failure. Raleigh
returned from it with a perfect knowledge that he was coming back to
irretrievable ruin and disgrace. It would have been easy enough for him
to find refuge in a French port; that he deliberately faced his fate
is sufficient proof that the charge of his having already sold himself
to France was a base slander. Raleigh’s enemies were everlastingly
accusing him of selling himself; they never produced a scintilla of
proof, and the sales were singularly unremunerative to a man who was as
careful of his own interests as any one when he did drive a bargain. He
had hardly landed in Plymouth when he was placed under arrest. Even now
he had an opportunity of escaping to France, but he refused to avail
himself of it. His doom was a foregone conclusion; the death sentence
passed on him in 1603 had never been cancelled.
He bore himself worthily; with the fortitude and dignity which were
almost a commonplace with Englishmen of the Tudor tradition. The king
of England, Elizabeth’s successor, struck off the head of the last of
the Elizabethan heroes, at the orders of the king of Spain. But the
degradation was only for a time. Spain had laid her enemy low; but the
lesson he had spent his life to teach his countrymen was bearing its
fruit even in the hour of his doom; to the men of Raleigh’s race was
destined the Empire of the seas, and of the new worlds which Spain had
arrogantly claimed.
INDEX
A
Agrarian distress, 20-21, 90-91, 95, 211, 223-224, 262
Alençon, Duke of, 335-336, 341, 343-344, 347
Alva, Duke of, 308, 330, 331, 335, 338
Annates Act, 132, 135, 182
Armada, 315-316, 367-369
Arthur, Prince, 26, 30
Ascham, Roger, 282, 283
Askew, Anne, 328
Assassinations, 349-350
B
Babington plot, 315, 353, 366-367
Bacon, Nicholas, 282, 307
Beauchamp, Lord, 385
Benevolences, 51
Beton, Cardinal, 189-190, 200, 214, 300
Bible, vernacular version of, 185, 199, 218, 254
Blount, Elizabeth, 192
Bocher, Joan, 221
Boleyn, Anne, Henry’s passion for, 57, 171-172, 175, 192, 194-195;
marriage, 55, 56, 104, 136, 170, 195, 248;
Act of Succession for issue of, 104;
Henry’s treatment of, 199;
fall of, 249-251;
Cranmer’s attitude towards, 192, 194-195;
execution of, 148, 195
Boleyn, Mary, 192, 194, 251
Bonner, Bishop, 210, 219, 221, 231, 261, 268, 272
Buckingham, Duke of, 46, 50, 177
Bucer, 264
Burghley, Lord (William Cecil), family and early years of, 281-282;
first marriage, 282;
relations with Somerset, 283-284;
second marriage, 283;
relations with Warwick, 284;
retirement, 288;
ecclesiastical policy, 297;
financial policy, 298-299;
Scottish policy, 301-303;
foreign policy, 303-306, 308, 311-312, 319;
relations with Queen Elizabeth, 279-280, 289;
views on privateering, 312-314;
made Lord High Treasurer, 312 _note_, 339;
war with Spain, 316;
contrasted with Cromwell, Somerset, and Philip of Spain, 321;
relations with Walsingham, 326, 346, 356-357;
secret service created by, 330;
death of, 318;
characteristics of, 319-322
Burgundy, 292, 304, 317, 334, 377
Burning of heretics, 101, 271;
repeal of statutes, 220, 226
C
Cabot, 19
Calais Conference, 167
Catherine de Medici, 295, 304, 332, 336-338
Catherine of Aragon, &c. _See_ Katharine of Aragon
Cecil, David, 281-282
Cecil, Robert, 317, 362, 379, 385, 386, 387, 389
Cecil, William. _See_ Burghley
Chantries Act, 219
Chapuys _cited_, 127, 132, 193, 195, 197
Charles V., Emperor, candidature of, for the Empire, 45, 164;
relations with France, 46-47, 146-147, 152-154, 166, 169, 184;
on More, 111;
Katharine’s policy as to, 194;
Cromwell’s attitude towards, 183;
Henry VIII.’s alliance with, 189