AWAITING TRIAL (July-November, 1603).
[Sidenote: _The Plots._]
We now enter the period of the plot and plot within plot in which
Anthony Copley, the priests William Watson and Francis Clarke, George
Brooke and his brother Cobham, Sir Griffin Markham and his brothers, the
Puritan Lord Grey of Wilton, and Sir Edward Parham were variously and
confusedly implicated. The intrigue, 'a dark kind of treason,' as
Rushworth calls it, 'a sham plot' as it is styled by Sir John Hawles,
belongs to our story only so far as the cross machinations involved
Ralegh. His slender relation to it is as hard to fix as a cobweb or a
nightmare. Even in his own age his part in it was, as obsolete Echard
says, 'all riddle and mystery.' Cobham had an old acquaintance with the
Count of Arenberg, Minister to the Archduke Albert and the Infanta
Isabel, joint sovereigns of the Low Countries. The Infanta was that
daughter of Philip II whose claims to the English throne Jesuits had
asserted, and Essex had affected to fear. During the late reign Cobham
had been in the habit of corresponding with the Count both openly and
secretly. De la Fayle and an Antwerp merchant, la Renzi or de Laurencie,
carried letters and messages to and fro. In November, 1602, the Count
had invited Cobham to come over and confer about peace, of which Cobham
was a strong advocate. After James's accession he wrote again. Cobham
inquired of Cecil and the King how he was to reply. James answered that
Cobham should know his pleasure on the meeting of the Council. To
Lennox he remarked angrily that Cobham was more busy in it than he
needed to be. Cobham meanwhile thought of going abroad; but Cecil
dissuaded him. In May, 1603, Arenberg sent a third letter by de la
Fayle.
[Sidenote: _Cobham's Projects._]
During this period Cobham frequently met Ralegh. He was negotiating the
purchase of a fee farm from the Crown, and trusted much to Ralegh's
advice. He had confided to Ralegh L4000 worth of jewels to complete the
contract. Their talk, Ralegh admitted later, though commonly about
private affairs, would sometimes turn upon questions of State. Before
the Queen's death, it must be repeated, Ralegh would have committed no
crime, or even impropriety, in listening, if he ever listened, without
disapproval to Cobham's most intemperate assertions in favour of the
title of Arabella, and against that of James. The evidence adduced of
their talk on politics after the King's accession contains no reference
to any such topic. Even if its subject then had been improper, nothing
worse than passive complicity was proved against Ralegh. Thus, one day
at dinner, in Cobham's house at Blackfriars, Cobham declared that the
Count, when he came, would yield such strong arguments for peace as
would satisfy any man. He specified great sums of money to be given to
certain Councillors for their aid. Cecil and Lord Mar were instanced by
him. On the same occasion he held out liberal offers to Ralegh. Ralegh,
by his own account, which was not contradicted by other testimony, only
listened. When he was taxed at his trial with having given ear to
matters he had not to deal in, he exclaimed: 'Could I stop my Lord
Cobham's mouth!' The teaching of adversity showed him that in prudence
he should have removed himself from the possibility of hearing. 'Venture
not thy estate,' he wrote in his _Instructions to his Son and to
Posterity_, 'with any of those great ones that shall attempt unlawful
things, for thou shalt be sure to be part with them in the danger, but
not in the honour. I myself know it, and have tasted it in all the
course of my life.' But the application of the warning, and the regret,
to the hearing of Cobham's vague after-dinner flights might have
seemed, unless for the result, impossibly remote.
[Sidenote: _Negotiations with Arenberg._]
Early in June the Count arrived in London, under the escort of Henry
Howard. Cobham, with la Renzi, visited him on June 9. At night Cobham
supped with Ralegh at Durham House; or Ralegh supped with Cobham at
Blackfriars, being accompanied by him back to Durham House afterwards.
From Durham House Cobham was alleged to have gone privily with la Renzi
to obtain a promise of money from the Count. According to Cecil's
narrative in the following August to Sir Thomas Parry, the Ambassador at
Paris, Cobham had told Arenberg that if he would provide four or five
hundred thousand crowns, 'he could show him a better way to prosper than
by peace.' Scaramelli, the Secretary to the Venetian Legation, wrote
home on December 1, 1603, that Arenberg promised 300,000 ducats in cash,
and an equal sum when he should have returned to Flanders. Ralegh
subsequently was accused of having on this occasion been offered money
by Cobham to be a promoter of peace. Cobham, in the written statement
read at the trial, alleged that Ralegh had bargained for L1500 a year
for divulging Court secrets. How Ralegh, out of favour and wholly
eclipsed, was to learn them, Cobham did not indicate. Ralegh mentioned
subsequently he had noticed from a window of Durham House that Lord
Cobham once or twice after visiting him was rowed past his own mansion
at Blackfriars. He went to St. Saviour's, on the other side of the
river. There la Renzi was known to be residing. This is the sum of the
facts out of which the large fabric of Ralegh's guilt was to be
constructed.
[Sidenote: _The 'Surprising Treason.'_]
He had attended the Court to Windsor. There he heard of the arrest of
Anthony Copley in Sussex on July 6. From Copley, according to Cecil at
the trial, the first discovery of the Bye or Surprising Treason came. By
letter from Windsor, Ralegh informed Cobham. On July 12 Copley was
examined. George Brooke was arrested on the 14th, and the arrests of
Lord Grey of Wilton and Sir Griffin Markham were ordered. One day
between the 12th and the 16th Ralegh was on the Terrace at Windsor. The
King was preparing to hunt, and Ralegh was waiting to join the
cavalcade. Cecil came out, and bade him, as from the King, stay. The
Lords in the Chamber, Cecil said, had some questions to put to him. How
far he was interrogated on the intercourse of Cobham with the Count, and
how much he disclosed, is obscure. At his trial he gave his story of the
transaction. He said he was examined at Windsor touching the conspiracy
to surprise and coerce the King; next, about plotting for Arabella;
thirdly, about practices with the Lord Cobham. He added: 'It is true I
suspected that Lord Cobham kept intelligence with Arenberg. For long
since he held that course with him in the Low Countries, as was well
known to my Lord Treasurer and to my Lord Cecil. La Renzi being a man
also well known to me, I, so seeing him and the Lord Cobham together,
thought that was the time they both had been to Count d'Arenberg. I gave
intimation thereof. But I was willed by my Lord Cecil not to speak of
this, because the King at the first coming of Arenberg would not give
him occasion of suspicion. Wherefore I wrote to the Lord Cecil that if
la Renzi were not taken the matter would not be discovered. Yet, if he
were then apprehended, it would give matter of suspicion to the Lord
Cobham. This letter of mine being presently shown to the Lord Cobham, he
spake bitterly of me; yet, ere he came to the stairs' foot, he repented
him, and, as I hear, acknowledged that he had done me wrong.'
Ralegh's account of the matter, in a court of honour, might have been
that Cobham's understanding with Arenberg did not seem to him of much
importance. As it perplexed the Council he, not perceiving the possible
prejudice to his friend, volunteered his services in clearing it up.
When it was discovered to be deadly, or had been inflated into an
appearance of capital criminality, his letter to Cecil was employed to
represent to Cobham an act, it must be admitted, at best of not very
friendly officiousness as black treachery. His suggestion to Cecil is
in any case inconsistent with consciousness of a guilty connexion with
treason, if there were treason. Nobody of the least sagacity, much less
the 'master of wiles,' such as contemporaries accounted Ralegh, if he
had been concerned in a plot, and if his implication in it had been
known to a single person, would have been so foolish as to provoke his
one accomplice to retaliate by accusing him.
[Sidenote: _Ralegh in Confinement._]
[Sidenote: _The Message by Keymis._]
From the examination at Windsor he returned a prisoner, confined to his
own house. Some intercourse was then held between him and Cobham,
through Captain Keymis. He said he sent Keymis to explain to Cobham
that, being under restraint, he could not come himself, and to mention
what he had done with Mr. Attorney in the matter of a great pearl and
diamond given him by Cobham in order to arrange the business of the fee
farm Cobham was purchasing from the Crown. He had added that he 'had
cleared him,' which was, he asserted, true, as he had remarked to Cecil
that he believed Cobham had no concern with the plot of the priests.
Cecil's statement disagrees both as to Ralegh's examination, and as to
the message to Cobham. According to Cecil, Ralegh was not examined at
Windsor on any matter concerning Cobham. Yet, though Cobham was not then
suspected, and though Ralegh had been examined about himself alone, he
immediately, it is alleged, sent Keymis to tell Cobham that he had been
examined concerning him, and that he had cleared him of all to the
Lords. Keymis is stated, though not by Cecil, to have added verbally, as
if from Ralegh, an exhortation to Cobham to be 'of good comfort, for one
witness could not condemn a man for treason.' Ralegh denied positively
that any such message came from him. Mr. S.R. Gardiner, in his _History
of England from the Accession of James I to the Disgrace of Chief
Justice Coke_, condemns this as 'an unlucky falsehood.' His reason for
the violent charge is that he does not suppose so loyal a friend as
Keymis would have invented a damaging calumny. Keymis would not have
invented it to injure; he may, in the hope that the effect would be
beneficial, have repeated to Cobham casual expressions he had heard from
Ralegh; or Cobham may have himself imagined the message was from Ralegh
without any authority to that purport from Keymis. The former hypothesis
is not inconsistent with the character of the messenger. Keymis could
endure much for his leader. Without flinching he bore imprisonment in
the Tower and Fleet, from which he was not released till December 31,
1603. He was a brave and loyal follower, but not very prudent, as
after-events evinced. If the prosecution thought it could prove that he
really used the words as from Ralegh, it is strange that it did not
venture to produce him in court to testify to it.
Cobham could not have escaped suspicion. Ralegh's allusion to his
dealings with Arenberg was not needed to direct it against him. He was
notoriously reckless in his language. It had been remarked by Beaumont,
the French Ambassador, in the previous May that he could scarcely
mention Cecil without abusing him as a traitor. He was not likely to
have been reticent on his relations with the Archduke's envoy. He was
examined before the Privy Council several times at Richmond after July
15. On July 20 he confessed that he had asked Arenberg to procure five
or six hundred thousand crowns for distribution among English
malcontents. He had purposed to go on, after an interview with the
Archduke in the Netherlands, and seek the money from the King of Spain.
From Spain he intended, if the report of his examination can be
credited, to return home by way of Jersey, where he expected to meet
Ralegh. With him he meant to discuss the application of the money. So
far his statement indicated reliance on his power of persuading Ralegh
to abet the design. It showed no present complicity on Ralegh's part. At
this point, according to the official narrative, 'a note under Ralegh's
hand was shown to Examinate. Examinate, when he had perused the same,
brake forth, saying, "O, Traitor! O, Villain! I will now tell you all
the truth." And then said that he had never entered into these courses
but by Ralegh's instigation; and that he would never let him alone.' He
referred to suggestions by Ralegh of plots and invasions, and said he
feared when he had him in Jersey, he would send him to the King.
Convinced believers in Ralegh's duplicity will accept as satisfactory
confirmation of that extraordinary apprehension an opinion attributed by
Aubrey to Lord Southampton, an old enemy, that Ralegh joined the
conspiracy in order to buy his peace by betraying it, and had schemed to
inveigle Cobham and others over to Jersey, where he might secure them
for the Government.
[Sidenote: _Weaving a web for Ralegh._]
[Sidenote: _Extorted Evidence._]
By this time various circumstances supposed to criminate Ralegh had been
collected from the answers of the other accused persons. Each had been
given over to one or more Commissioners to worry into confessions. Sir
William Waad, or Wade, had charge of Ralegh, as of others. It was Waad
who had broken open Queen Mary's cabinet at Chartley Hall. He was fitted
for any dirty work. Keymis also had been arrested, and was examined by
Waad and the Solicitor-General on Ralegh's communications with Cobham.
They told him he deserved the rack. Waad hereafter denied that they ever
'threatened him with it.' La Renzi was examined, and deposed that Ralegh
had been in Cobham's company when Cobham received letters from Arenberg,
and sent others to him. The contents of the voluminous inquisitorial
dust-heap were perpetually being sorted, and distributed, or,
reluctantly, discarded. Any answers reflecting on another, particularly
if reflecting on Ralegh, were carefully put aside, to fill gaps in the
direct evidence against him. Thus, Brooke, according to Sir William
Waad, 'confidently thinketh what his brother knows was known to the
other.' On July 17, Brooke said that the conspirators among themselves
thought Sir Walter Ralegh a fit man to be of the action. No account was
made of the report by Markham of an express warning given him by Brooke
himself against communications to Cobham, on the ground that whatever
Cobham knew, Ralegh the witch would get out of him. In August, Brooke
affirmed that both Ralegh and Cobham had resolved to destroy the King
'with all his cubs.' Watson mentioned that he and Brooke, and apparently
Copley, had consulted concerning Sir Walter's surprising of the King's
fleet. Copley reported a remark by Brooke that the project of causing
stirs in Scotland came out of Ralegh's head. Watson had said of an
assembly at Cobham's house reported to him by Brooke, that, beside
Brooke and Cobham, my Lord Grey and Sir Walter Ralegh were there, and
showed every one of them great discontent, but especially the two Lords.
My Lord Cobham discovered his revenge to no less than the depriving of
his Majesty and all his Royal issue both of crown, kingdom, life, and
all at once; and my Lord Grey, to use Master Brooke's own words, uttered
nothing but treason at every word. At a subsequent examination Watson
stated to Sir William Waad that from Brooke's words it was evident the
great mass of money reported to be at the disposal of the Jesuits was,
most of it, from the Count of Arenberg. It was impossible for all the
Catholics in England to raise so much of themselves. Brooke, moreover,
it was recorded, had stated that his brother, Cobham, told him Lord Grey
and others were only on the Bye, but he and Ralegh were on the Main. By
the Main was signified the dethronement of James in favour of Arabella.
[Sidenote: _Attempt at Suicide._]
Such second or third hand tales were to be used to point and colour the
particle of direct testimony. This was Cobham's allegation that Ralegh
had instigated the dealings with Arenberg. Otherwise, as Cecil almost
officially admitted in a letter of August 4 to Parry, the only ground
for proceedings against him was that he had been discontented _in
conspectu omnium_ ever since the King came. Without Cobham's charge it
would have been impossible to prosecute him with any show of justice.
Immediately after Cobham's examination he was committed to the Tower. He
was conveyed thither from Fulham Palace, where he had been examined
before Bishop Bancroft, one of the Royal Commissioners. He believed his
doom decided. He found himself treated as convicted before he was tried.
A resignation of the Wardenship of the Stannaries had been extorted from
him. 'He underwent,' Sir John Harington wrote, 'a downfall of despair
as his greatest enemy could not have wished him so much harm as he would
have done himself.' Sir John spoke of a period before 1618. He did not
know how Ralegh's enemies could accumulate hate. Ralegh never put any
faith in the equity of English criminal procedure. He was resolved, if
the story about to be related is to be credited, to disappoint it of
some of its cruel fruits. Very soon after his arrival at the Tower, it
has been supposed on July 20, he is said to have attempted his life. He
was lodged in two small rooms in the Bloody tower. A couple of servants
of his own waited on him. He dined with the Lieutenant, Sir John Peyton.
Being at table, he was reported to have suddenly torn his vest open,
seized a knife, and plunged it into his breast. It struck a rib and
glanced aside. Being prevented from repeating the blow, he threw the
knife down, crying, 'There! An end!' The wound appeared at first
dangerous, though it turned out not very serious. For the details of the
occurrence we have to rely upon Cecil's correspondence, together with a
few words from Scaramelli, Secretary to the Venetian Legation. Cecil
wrote of it to Parry, at Paris, on August 4: 'Although lodged and
attended as well as in his own house, yet one afternoon, while divers of
us were in the Tower, examining these prisoners, Sir Walter Ralegh
attempted to have murdered himself. Whereof when we were advertised, we
came to him, and found him in some agony, seeming to be unable to endure
his misfortunes, and protesting innocency with carelessness of life. In
that humour he had wounded himself under the right pap, but no way
mortally; being, in truth, rather a cut than a stab.' Cecil adds: 'He is
very well cured both in body and mind.' Several days earlier, on July
30, Peyton had written to Cecil that the hurt was nearly well. James had
been informed of the event by Cecil. His comment was that Ralegh should
be well probed by a good preacher, and induced to wound his spirit, not
his body. Beaumont, the French Ambassador, observed on the matter to
Henry IV: 'Sir Walter Ralegh is said to have declared that his design
to kill himself arose from no feeling of fear, but was formed in order
that his fate might not serve as a triumph to his enemies, whose power
to put him to death, despite his innocency, he well knows.' Confiscation
was the triumph of which he wished to deprive his persecutors, if he
really contemplated suicide. His motive would be the rescue of Sherborne
for his wife and child from forfeiture through attainder, the sure
result, as he truly foresaw, of a trial for treason.
[Sidenote: _A Disputed Letter._]
'After he had hurt himself,' it is stated on the extant copy of the
letter, though more probably, if at all, on the eve of the attempt, he
is alleged to have written to apprise his wife of his approaching death.
In 1839, in an edition of Bishop Goodman's _Court of King James the
First_, the late Professor John Brewer printed an unsigned paper,
purporting to be such a letter, which had been found in All Souls
College Library. Mr. Brewer describes it as in Sir Henry Yelverton's
Collection, for no other apparent reason than that the document is in a
commonplace book, which includes three speeches by Yelverton. The
contents are miscellaneous, ranging from satirical verses to State
papers, and of dates from 1500 to 1617. Mr. Oman, of All Souls,
considers that the hand, the same throughout, of the copyist is of
ordinary seventeenth century character. The volume came to the college
from the collection of Narcissus Luttrell. The name of the original
owner, for or by whom the matter was compiled and transcribed, is not
known. Consequently, belief in the authenticity of the supposed letter
from Ralegh depends on its own intrinsic probability.
[Sidenote: _An Apocryphal Daughter._]
In the course of it, Ralegh, 'for his sake who was about to be cruel to
himself, to preserve' his wife, begged her to be charitable 'to my poor
daughter, to whom I have given nothing,' and to 'teach my son to love
her for his father's sake.' Nowhere else is an allusion to this daughter
discoverable. Nothing is known of her or her mother. Almost a necessary
presumption is, that, if she existed, she was an illegitimate child. One
benevolent writer has suggested, without a shadow of evidence, a prior
marriage to that with Elizabeth Throckmorton. The manner in which she is
commended to Lady Ralegh's compassion excludes the explanation that Lady
Ralegh was her mother, whether before or after marriage. Ralegh
proceeded to ask his wife's 'kindness for his brother Adrian Gilbert,'
and for Keemis, 'a perfect honest man who hath much wrong for my sake.'
He advised her to marry, not to please sense, but to avoid poverty, and
in order to preserve their son. Very bitterly he cries: 'That I can live
never to see thee and my child more! I cannot. I have desired God, and
disputed with my reason, but nature and compassion hath the victory.
That I can live to think you are both left a spoil to my enemies, and
that my name shall be a dishonour to my child--I cannot. I cannot endure
the memory thereof. For myself, I am left of all men, that have done
good to many. All my good turns forgotten; all my errors revived and
expounded to all extremity of ill. All my services, hazards, and
expenses for my country--plantings, discoveries, fights, councils, and
whatever else--malice hath now covered over. I am now made an enemy and
traitor by the word of an unworthy man. He hath proclaimed me to be a
partaker of his vain imaginations, notwithstanding the whole course of
my life hath approved the contrary, as my death shall approve it. Woe,
woe, woe be unto him by whose falsehood we are lost. He hath separated
us asunder. He hath slain my honour, my fortune. He hath robbed thee of
thy husband, thy child of his father, and me of you both. O God! Thou
dost know my wrongs. Know then, thou my wife and child; know then, thou
my Lord and King, that I ever thought them too honest to betray, and too
good to conspire against. But, my wife, forgive them all, as I do. Live
humble, for thou hast but a time also. God forgive my Lord Harry, for he
was my heavy enemy. And for my Lord Cecil, I thought he would never
forsake me in extremity. I would not have done it him, God knows. But do
not thou know it, for he must be master of my child, and may have
compassion of him. Be not dismayed that I died in despair of God's
mercies. Strive not to dispute it. But assure thyself that God hath not
left me, nor Satan tempted me. Hope and despair live not together. I
know it is forbidden to destroy ourselves; but I trust it is forbidden
in this sort, that we destroy not ourselves despairing of God's mercy.
The mercy of God is immeasurable; the cogitations of men comprehend it
not. In the Lord I have ever trusted; and I know that my Redeemer
liveth. Far is it from me to be tempted with Satan; I am only tempted
with Sorrow, whose sharp teeth devour my heart. O God! Thou art goodness
itself; Thou canst not but be good to me. O God! that art mercy itself;
Thou canst not but be merciful to me!
[Sidenote: _Apology for Self-Destruction._]
'Oh, what will my poor servants think at their return, when they hear I
am accused to be Spanish, who sent them, at very great charge, to plant
and discover upon his territory. Oh, intolerable infamy! O God! I cannot
resist these thoughts. I cannot bear to think how I am derided, to think
of the expectation of my enemies, the scorns I shall receive, the cruel
words of lawyers, the infamous taunts and despites, to be made a wonder
and a spectacle! O Death! hasten thou unto me, that thou mayest destroy
the memory of these, and lay me up in dark forgetfulness. O Death!
destroy my memory, which is my tormentor; my thoughts and my life cannot
dwell in one body. But do thou forget me, poor wife, that thou mayest
live to bring up my poor child. The Lord knows my sorrow to part from
thee and my poor child. But part I must, by enemies and injuries; part
with shame, and triumph of my detractors. And therefore be contented
with this work of God and forget me in all things, but thine own honour,
and the love of mine.
'I bless my poor child, and let him know his father was no traitor. Be
bold of my innocence, for God--to whom I offer life and soul--knows it.'
[Sidenote: _Doubts._]
The obstacles to the acceptance of this composition as authentic are
almost insuperable. It does not ring truly. Hard as it may be to
distinguish rhetoric and passion in the death-bed phrases of men who
have lived before the world, the contrast here with the natural pathos
of the other, and undisputed, farewell of December, is too
irreconcilably vivid. Then there is the extraordinary apparition of an
otherwise invisible daughter. It is not the more intelligible for the
opposite difficulty that few forgers would have been likely to venture
upon so surprising an invention. The total disappearance of the original
manuscript, and the absence for more than two centuries of all knowledge
of its contents, are still stronger elements of doubt. Together, the
circumstances fully justify the scepticism of Mr. Hepworth Dixon in the
copious compilation styled by him a _History of the Tower_, though it is
not requisite to adopt his amusing surmise that a document allowed to
repose in the dark till the present age was fabricated to taint the
credit of Ralegh as a virtuous husband. Probably the epistle was
innocently concocted as a literary exercise by an admirer, who wished to
explain or apologise for his temporary loss of self-control.
[Sidenote: _Reasons for Silence._]
Notwithstanding a fire and indignation, occasionally approaching
grandeur, which, it must be admitted, raise another perplexing question,
who, if not Ralegh, had the wit to pen the epistle, it seems necessary
to surrender the letter. But it is too great a leap from repudiation of
it to the disbelief, first insinuated by Mr. Tytler, and more boldly and
absolutely enunciated by Mr. Dixon, in the attempt itself at suicide.
Their theory is that the whole was an invention of Ralegh's enemies. It
may be admitted that the stab, like the letter, has its difficulties. If
he tried to kill himself, it is strange that a practised swordsman
should not have succeeded. Whether he meant death or not, the reserve of
the Crown advocates at Winchester is equally mysterious. They were, it
might have been thought, sure to dwell upon the act in the one case as
contemptible, in the other as presumptive proof of a sense of guilt. The
latter is the obvious way in which it would strike the mind. Sir Toby
Matthew, son of the Bishop who had lately ejected Ralegh from his London
house, described it as 'a guilty blow.' Two centuries later, it
suggested to Hallam, 'a presumption of consciousness that something
could be proved against him.' Why did Ralegh's contemporary and official
adversaries not press the presumption home, if they could? On the other
side, there is the yet weightier evidence of Ralegh's own conduct. He
and his wife and friends must have heard the rumour, and their tongues
were not tied. Whatever reasons counsel and judges had for reticence,
the town had none. If Ralegh could have contradicted the discreditable
tale, it is, as in the case of an earlier scandal, inconceivable that he
should not. The explanation of his absolute silence, and the partial,
not entire, silence of his adversaries, is that he was ashamed of his
despair, and they were ashamed of having brought him to it. Cecil, after
the trial, referred to the matter, after the fashion of Matthew and of
Hallam, as 'suspicious.' At the time of the occurrence he mentioned it
to Sir Thomas Parry in a tone more of apology. He appeared to be afraid
European opinion might imagine that Ralegh had been driven mad by
merciless treatment. Had death ensued, a worse suspicion, however in
this instance unjust, was to be feared. Cecil would remember that there
had been Tower suicides before, and that they had been interpreted as
evidence rather against the gaolers than the prisoners.
[Sidenote: _Improbability of Ralegh's Complicity._]
For a moment it seemed as if Ralegh had been superfluously mistrustful
of English justice. A mass of tremendous charges had been rolled
together. To Waad's hopeful fancy they appeared, he told Cecil, to have
gravely implicated Ralegh, as well as Cobham. Investigated with a view
to a positive arraignment, the pile broke up and evaporated. Watson's
and Brooke's stories proved as unsubstantial as the astonishing romance
adopted by grave de Thou. According to the French annalist, Ralegh, in
disgust at the loss of his Captaincy of the Guard, had joined in a plot
to kill the King, started by a band of Englishmen incensed at the
Scottish irruption. He had accepted the post of assassin. But his
sister's report of his agitation, of which she misapprehended the
cause, induced inquiry. Arrested, he confessed the whole to James, and
bought his life by the betrayal of Grey, Cobham, and Markham. Silly as
is that tale, there was almost a more obvious dearth of motive for the
prominent part assigned to him in the most circumstantial of the
extorted depositions. Evidence was given that the other conspirators had
agreed upon the apportionment among themselves of the high offices of
State. No one testified that any had been reserved for the most
competent, the most distinguished, and the most ambitious of the
company. Ralegh's sole reward for the alleged terrible risk was, by
Waad's report of Brooke's and Watson's admissions, to be some such sum
of eight or ten thousand crowns as was to be offered to Cecil and
Northumberland, who incurred no danger.
Soon it must have become apparent that success in a prosecution of
Ralegh depended solely on the plausibility and consistency of Cobham's
accusations. They were peculiarly deficient in those qualities. Ralegh
has recorded that Cobham's remorse for the evil wrought by his charges
of July 20 commenced within the building in which they had been uttered.
At any rate, on the 29th he retracted them more or less completely. By a
letter of that date, addressed to the Lords of the Council, he admitted
he had pressed Arenberg for four or five hundred thousand crowns, though
nothing was decided about their application. He had expected, he said, a
general discontentment, and the money was to be expended as occasion
offered. At his oral examination on the same day he is stated by Cecil,
in a letter to Parry, to have 'cleared Sir Walter in most things, and to
have taken all the burden to himself.' It may be inferred from an
allusion by him in a letter that some of the Lords who had been
interrogating him allowed their indignation at his apparent calumnies
against Ralegh to be perceptible. The result was a growing impression
that the proceedings against Ralegh would have to be abandoned. Lord
Grey, an austere Protestant, and Sir Griffin Markham, a Catholic,
already, it was rumoured, had denied that he had been a conspirator.
They had affirmed they would have given up their project upon any
suspicion that he was mixed up with it. Now Cobham also was become a
broken reed. M. de Beaumont wrote to King Henry that the Lords found it
difficult in consequence to sustain Ralegh's prosecution. 'God forgive
Sir Walter Ralegh,' Cobham had exclaimed in August to Sir John Peyton's
son; 'he hath accused me; but I cannot accuse him.'
[Sidenote: _Cobham's Remorse._]
[Sidenote: _Written Retractations._]
Cobham's awakened sense of justice prompted him in the autumn to a step
which might have been decisive. Peyton was no longer at the Tower.
Ralegh's guilt had so far been presumed, as early as August, that his
patent as Governor of Jersey had been declared forfeited through his
grievous treason intended against the King. The office was conferred on
Peyton, in some measure, perhaps, that he might be removed from the
charge of Ralegh. The current belief was that his preferment was
disgrace for connivance at communications between him and Cobham. To his
successor, Sir George Harvey, Cobham wrote on October 24, desiring the
grant of facilities to him to address the Council on Ralegh's behalf:
'Mr. Lieutenant, If that I may write unto the Lords I would, touching
Sir Walter Ralegh; besides my letter to my Lord Cecil; God is my
witness, it doth touch my conscience. As you shall send me word so I
will do, that my letter may be ready against your son's going. I would
very fain have the words that the Lords used of my barbarousness in
accusing him falsely.' Harvey received this brief and not very coherent,
but significant, epistle, and locked the request up in his own bosom. He
did worse. From the language of his tardy explanation to Cecil it is
plain that he effectually discouraged Cobham's disposition to be
Ralegh's apologist to the Council. He underrated, however, Ralegh's
energy and dexterity. Cecil imagined that Ralegh had solicited from
Cobham the original retractation. Messages, he suspected, had passed
between the two in which Ralegh had 'expostulated Cobham's unkind using
of him.' The correctness of his conjecture for the past is unknown. It
was true of the present. Ralegh managed to have a letter, inclosed in,
or fastened to, an apple, thrown, in November, four nights before they
came to Winchester, into Cobham's window in Wardrobe tower. At the time
the Lieutenant was at supper. In it he entreated Cobham to do him
justice by his answer, and to signify to him that he had wronged him in
his accusation. He added: 'Do not, as my Lord of Essex did, take heed of
a preacher. By his persuasion he confessed, and so made himself guilty.'
Cobham, though later he forgot the fact, appears to have duly replied in
a letter, which was pushed under Ralegh's door. In it he admitted the
wrong he had done to Ralegh. The language was not distinct enough. It
was 'not to my contenting,' as afterwards said Ralegh, who wrote again.
He did not ask for another written confession. Instead, he besought
Cobham to declare his innocence when he should himself be arraigned.
Thereupon Cobham sent a letter described by Ralegh as 'very good,' a
complete and solemn justification, of which Howell in his _State Trials_
adopts the following transcript: 'Seeing myself so near my end, for the
discharge of my own conscience, and freeing myself from your blood,
which else will cry vengeance against me, I protest upon my salvation I
never practised with Spain by your procurement. God so comfort me in
this my affliction, as you are a true subject for anything that I know.
I will say, as Daniel, _Purus sum a sanguine hujus_. So God have mercy
upon my soul as I know no treason by you.' According to another version,
differing in language, not in tenor, the letter ran: 'To free myself
from the cry of blood, I protest upon my soul, and before God and His
angels, I never had conference with you in any treason, nor was ever
moved by you to the things I heretofore accused you of; and, for
anything I know, you are as innocent and as clear from any treasons
against the King as is any subject living. And God so deal with me and
have mercy upon my soul, as this is true.' Ralegh seems to have kept to
himself the knowledge of the existence of this letter for the present,
as Sir George Harvey, with less excuse, concealed the fact of Cobham's
prayer to himself.
[Sidenote: _Sir George Harvey's Disclosure._]
The correspondence was arranged partly through Edward Cottrell, a Tower
servant who waited upon Ralegh. Partly it was through the Lieutenant's
son, George, whom Ralegh had won over, as he had won over Sir John
Peyton's son, John. It was on account of the discovery by the Council,
through Ralegh's production at the trial of Cobham's letter to him, of
George Harvey's mediation, and of the youth's imprisonment for it, that
on December 17, several weeks after the end of the trial, at which it
might have benefited Ralegh, the Lieutenant gave Cecil the letter of
October 24. In the confidence that the infraction of discipline by his
son, as well as by his two prisoners, would be extenuated by his own
confession of an excess of official zeal, he acknowledged his
suppression of the October letter. Incidentally he testified to the
sincerity of Cobham's remorse. Cobham's 'great desire to justify Sir
Walter,' he admitted to Cecil, 'having been by me then stopped, he
diverted it, as I conceive, and it is very likely, unto Sir Walter
himself.' In this penitent mood Cobham had confessed his misdeeds to
others besides. He is reported to have told the vicar of Cobham parish
that Ralegh 'had done him no hurt, but he had done Ralegh a great deal.'
At last Ralegh might think that Cobham had ceased to be his accuser.
Prepared as he was for his companion's 'fashion of uttering things
easily,' he could scarcely have anticipated the layers of retractation
still latent in that voluminous repository.
[Sidenote: _Animosity of the Howards._]
His trust in the return of Cobham's veracity would not blind him to the
peril he continued to incur from the 'cruelty' of the law of treason;
from its willingness, in jealousy for the sovereign's safety, to have an
innocent scapegoat rather than no example. He knew that the people took
his guilt for granted, and that a jury would reflect popular opinion. He
could look for no real help in any quarter. To honest, but
unimaginative, politicians, he was an enigma and a trouble with his
ideas. They simply wished him out of the way. He was sure of the hatred
of the new men, 'very honourable men,' like the Tissaphernes of his
History, 'if honour may be valued by greatness and place in Court.' He
could calculate on no benevolence from the old courtiers. His claims of
equality had always been an offence to the ancient nobility, which held
itself entitled to precedence in glory as in its rewards. One from whom
better things were to have been expected, the Lord Admiral, though he
did not actively join in the prosecution, had his personal reasons for
rejoicing in the downfall of a sharp censor of his naval administration.
Between him and the Howard interest in general there had been frequent
feuds, and they were opposed on many important questions. Lord Henry was
not the only Howard who bore him ill-will, though the rest were not
equally malignant.
[Sidenote: _Cecil's Coldness._]
Henry Howard's confederate in the Scottish intrigues, Robert Cecil, had
no family grievances to avenge. If he once feared Ralegh's rivalry, he
could fear it no more. It is very difficult now, as before, to believe
that he entertained sentiments of positive animosity or vindictiveness
against Ralegh. Canon Kingsley's description of him as one of the most
'accomplished villains in history,' as the archplotter, who had managed
the whole conspiracy against Ralegh, though Ralegh knew nothing of it
till after the trial, is extravagant. Even Hallam's reference to 'the
hostility of Cecil, so insidious and implacable,' seems exaggerated and
unjust. The Minister was conscious of no malice. He took no pleasure in
the present prosecution. But moral cowardice and incapacity to dispense
with power now, as formerly, explain an attitude, which, it must be
admitted, is hardly to be distinguished from that of an inveterate
enemy. He could not afford, having, after a struggle, clambered on board
the new ship of State, to identify himself with wrecked comrades known
to be distasteful to his present master. It was convenient for him to
assume an air of reluctant conviction that his friend was guilty, and
that the only question was whether sufficient evidence could be
collected to prove it judicially. On October 3 he wrote that Cobham's
original accusation was 'so well fortified with other demonstrative
circumstances, and the retractation so blemished by the discovery of the
intelligence which they had, as few men can conceive Sir Walter Ralegh's
denial comes from a clear heart.' He who knew well the habits of judges
and juries in trials for treason, affected to think Ralegh could desire
no fairer opportunity. 'Always,' he wrote in October to Winwood, 'he
shall be left to the law, which is the right all men are born to.' His
elaborate statements of the charges and proceedings to Parry, which were
intended for circulation through Europe, convey the same impression of
willingness to warp facts under cover of a cold concern for nothing but
the truth. He did not deceive foreigners. M. de Beaumont, whose
diplomatic interest it was to abet a prosecution which implicated Spain,
spoke of him, in language already quoted, as undertaking the affair with
so much warmth that it was said he acted more from interest and passion
than for the good of the kingdom. He did not deceive unbiassed
Englishmen. Harington wrote in 1603: 'I doubt the dice not fairly
thrown, if Ralegh's life be the losing stake.' He has not deceived
posterity.
To the new Court, its head, and his Scotch favourites, Ralegh
necessarily was an object of aversion. He was not the less odious that
he was incomprehensible. For years he and his designs had been subjects
of suspicion and dread at Holyrood. Now, when he was no longer directly
dangerous, he was an obstruction and a perplexity. In spite of the
current charges against him, he represented hatred of Spain, with which
James was eager to be on terms of amity. He represented the spirit of
national unrest and adventurousness, which James abhorred. The obstinate
calumny of his scepticism served as a pretext to the King's conscience
for the unworthier instinct of personal dislike. His wisdom, learning,
and wit were no passports to the favour of the one privileged Solomon of
these isles.
[Sidenote: _Compensations for Ralegh's Sufferings._]
He understood all he had to face. Vehemently as he fretted and
complained, he was equal to the ordeal. He may be said to have been
happy in undergoing it. Unless for it, neither his contemporaries nor
posterity could have fully comprehended the scope and strength of his
character. Unversed in law, he was more than a match for the
incomparable legal learning of Coke and for his docile bench of judges.
His trial, which is the opprobrium of forensic and judicial annals,
makes a bright page in national history for the unique personality it
reveals, with all its wealth of subtlety, courage, and versatility.
Figures of purer metal have often stood in the dock, with as small
chance of safety. Ralegh was a compound of gold, silver, iron, and clay.
The trial, and all its circumstances, brought into conspicuous relief
the diversity which is no less the wonder of the character than it is of
the career. The Ralegh who has stamped himself upon English history, who
has fascinated English imagination, is not so much the favourite of
Elizabeth, the soldier and sailor; it is the baited prey of Coke and
Popham, the browbeaten convict of Winchester, the attainted prisoner of
the Tower. Against the Court of James and its obsequious lawyers he was
struggling for bare life, for no sublime cause, for no impersonal ideal.
Yet so high was his spirit, and his bearing so undaunted, that he has
ever appeared to subsequent generations a martyr on the altar of English
liberties.