On Thursday, October Twenty-ninth, Sixteen Hundred Eighteen, at the
Tower of London, the curtain fell on the fifth act of the life of Sir
Walter Raleigh. It was a public holiday for all London.
The morning was cold and foggy.
Sir Walter was kept standing on the scaffold while the headsman ground
his axe, the delay being for the amusement and edification of the
people assembled. The High Sheriff approached the man who was so soon
to die, and asked if there was not some last message he wished to send
to some one. Sir Walter took from his neck a gold chain and locket. He
handed them to the Sheriff and said, "Send these by a trusty messenger
to Virginia Dare by the first ship that sails for the New World."
Sir Walter's frame shook in the cold, dank fog, and the Sheriff offered
to bring a brazier of coals, but the great man proudly drew his cloak
about him and said: "It is the ague I contracted in America. I will
soon be cured of it!" And he laid his proud head, gray in the service
of his country, calmly on the block, as if to say, "There now, take
that, it is all I have left to give!"
Among the crowd that pushed, jostled, leered and looked was one Oliver
Cromwell, short, swart and strong, a country youth who had come up to
London to make his fortune. And Oliver Cromwell there and then made a
vow that he would dedicate his life to the death of tyranny. So died
Sir Walter Raleigh.
And Oliver Cromwell went forth to meet Fate as Destiny had willed.