A PRISONER (1604-1612).
On December 16, 1603, Ralegh, with his fellow convicts, returned to
London. That would have been the close of an ordinary man's career. To
him alone it did not seem the end, and he resolved it should not be. He
had his life. Liberty and fortune were still to be regained. He looked
around him, and endeavoured to retrieve the scattered fragments of his
wealth. Like all his peers in arms and politics he had ever believed in
the importance of riches. But now he was grasping at the possibility of
continuing by money in lieu of his imprisoned self his schemes of a
Guiana sovereignty. He was striving to construct out of the wreck of his
grandeur a refuge for his wife and his boy from the anguish and
dependence of penury. 'Poverty,' he preached to his son, 'is a shame, an
imprisonment of the mind. Poverty provokes a man to do infamous and
detested deeds.'
[Sidenote: _Civilly dead._]
[Sidenote: _Lord Nottingham's Rapacity._]
He was civilly dead. The division of his spoils had commenced before the
trial. He had, as has been mentioned, been dismissed in July from his
island government. In September Godolphin, High Sheriff of Cornwall, had
been directed to take the musters, 'the commission of Lieutenancy
granted to Sir Walter Ralegh being become void and determined.' Early in
1604 he formally returned the seal of the Duchy of Cornwall to Cecil.
His successor was his connexion, Lord Pembroke. He was stripped of the
Rangership of Gillingham Forest, and of the Lieutenancy of Portland,
though he would regret the loss of those offices the less that they
remained in the hands of their joint tenant, his brother, Sir Carew. His
enjoyment of his patent as wine licenser had been suspended, that it
might be considered if the post were a monopoly. The Council came to the
conclusion that it was not. But before Ralegh could collect the arrears
from the vintners he was arraigned. Thereupon, not waiting for the
result of the trial, the King revoked the patent, and granted it to the
Lord Admiral. Nottingham, not content with the profit from new licenses,
claimed the arrears. Lady Ralegh remonstrated. She indignantly computed
to Cecil in 1604 that the Admiral 'hath L6000, and L3000 a year, by my
husband's fall. And since it pleaseth God that his Lordship shall build
upon our ruins, which we never suspected, yet the portion is great and,
I trust, sufficient, out of one poor gentleman's fortune to take all
that remains, and not to look back before his Majesty's grant, and take
from us the debts past, which your Lordship knows were stayed from us by
a proclamation before my husband was suspected of any offence.'
Sherborne was attached. Commissioners for it had been appointed,
Serjeant Phillips and Meere. They had pounced upon the domain, and were
selling stock, felling timber, and dismantling the castle. Cecil
interfered peremptorily by letter, and for a time stayed all
proceedings. He is likely to have 'spoken the one word' about the wine
licence arrears which Lady Ralegh implored. No more is heard of the Lord
Admiral's demand. A more important favour was obtained. In February,
1604, all Ralegh's goods, chattels, and money due to him, though
forfeited for treason, were granted by the Crown to trustees for payment
of debts owing before his attainder, and for the maintenance of his wife
and child. The trustees named were Robert Smith and John Shelbury.
Shelbury was Ralegh's steward, 'a man I can better entreat than know how
to reward.'
[Sidenote: _The Sandersons._]
The grant included, beside the wine arrearages, money in the hands of
the wine licenser's deputy, William Sanderson. Sanderson was husband to
Ralegh's niece, Margaret Snedale. He was father of Sir William
Sanderson, writer in 1656 of a _History of Queen Mary and King James_,
full of calumnies upon Ralegh. He denied the debt, and claimed L2000
from his principal. Thereupon Ralegh, 'in great anger,' sued him,
apparently with success. It is unnecessary to credit the further
allegation by the author, supposed to have been Ralegh's son Carew,
though more probably somebody inspired by him, of the _Observations_,
already cited, upon Sanderson's _History_, that the deputy was for the
debt cast into prison, where he died a beggar. On the contrary, slender
as is the authority of the historian, as of his critic, it is easier, as
well as preferable, to accept Sir William Sanderson's statement, in
answer to the _Observations_, that his father and his family continued
to be prosperous, and, having resumed amicable relations with Ralegh,
remained kind and faithful kinsfolk to the last. It is pleasant to be
able to believe that Ralegh disappointed a relative's temporary
calculations upon his incapacity of resistance, without acting the part
of the insolvent steward of the Parable.
[Sidenote: _The Wreck of his Estate._]
The mercy of the Crown extended for the present to the maintenance even
of his rights over the estate of Sherborne itself. A dozen suitors had
applied for it, Cecil told a Scotch courtier in October, 1603. But on
July 30, 1604, in place of Ralegh's life interest, which was forfeited
by the attainder, a sixty years' term of Sherborne and ten other Dorset
and Somerset manors, with all other lands escheated, was conveyed by the
Crown to trustees for Lady Ralegh and young Walter, should Ralegh so
long live. This boon, following the rest, went far towards remedying the
overwhelming pecuniary consequences of a judicial crime. The King is
entitled to share the credit with Cecil. He was not incapable of
caprices of beneficence. Pity, rather than a sense of justice, moved
him. He loved to be magnanimous at small cost. He chose to regard Ralegh
as a traitor when he was innocent. He reaped from the injustice the
additional satisfaction of being exalted by his flatterers into a
paragon of generosity for waiving part of the penalties for offences
which had not been committed. Ralegh's estate was, however, indebted yet
more to Cecil. If he would not, or could not, secure justice for his old
ally, Cecil had no desire to see him reduced to beggary. Whatever the
cause, Ralegh undoubtedly suffered in purse less than his condemned
fellows. Cobham's and Grey's vast patrimonies were wholly confiscated.
They subsisted on the charity of the Crown. Markham was sent into exile
so bare of means that he had to barter his inlaid sword hilt for a meal.
Ralegh was not thus stripped. Only, being guiltless, as they were not,
and did not pretend to be, he was not always gratefully content with the
morsels tossed back to him. Soon after his removal from Winchester he
wrote to Cecil that L3000 a year, from Jersey, the Wine Office, the
Stannaries, Gillingham, and Portland, was gone; there remained but L300
from Sherborne, with a debt upon it of L3000. His tenants refused to pay
Lady Ralegh her rents. His woods were cut down, his grounds wasted, and
his stock sold. Meanwhile he was charged at the Tower, at first, L4, and
later, L5, a week for the diet of himself, his wife, child, and two
servants. He had to urge the Council to stay the Commissioners at
Sherborne, whose rapacious activity had again awoke. He told the Council
that the estate, with the park and a stock of L400 in sheep, whatever
its valuation by others, brought in but L666 13_s._ 4_d._ This has been
estimated, perhaps somewhat excessively, as equivalent to an income now
of L3333. Out of it he had to pay the Bishop of Salisbury L260. Fees and
rates took another L50 a year. His personal property he reckoned at not
worth a thousand marks, or L666 13_s._ 4_d._ His rich hangings were sold
to my Lord Admiral for L500. He had but one rich bed, which he had sold
to Lord Cobham before his misfortunes. His plate, which he describes as
very fair, was all 'lost, or eaten out with interest at one Chenes', 'or
Cheynes', the goldsmith, in Lombard-street.
[Sidenote: _Struggle for Freedom._]
He thought it hard to be robbed of his revenues. He declared that he
could have endured the calamity if penury had been all. Early in 1604 he
wrote that, if Sherborne could be assured, he should take his loss for a
gain, nothing having been lost that could have bettered his family, 'but
the lease of the wines, which was desperate before his troubles.' He did
not wish for his wife and son, 'God knows, the least proportion of
plenty, having forgotten that happiness which found too much too
little.' His one desire was that they should be able to eat their own
bread. The interruption of his career was the real and unappeasable
wrong. All his virtues made him struggle indomitably against that. He
was supported in the contest by the vice itself, if it were a vice, of
his abounding egotism. His incapacity for believing that powers like his
could be wasted by the State, buoyed him up against the direst
persecutions. He was unable at heart, whatever his groanings, to regard
them as more than passing checks in a game in which he had chanced upon
losing cards. He fought for liberty more stubbornly than for his
property, that he might resume his work in the world. He complained in
January, 1604, that Papists who plotted to surprise the King's person
had been liberated, while Cecil's poor, ancient, and true friend was
left to perish 'here where health wears away.' Cecil had written kind
but cautious lines in another hand, of which Ralegh 'knew the phrase.'
They had raised his hopes. Cecil dashed them by declaring to Lady Ralegh
early in 1604 that, 'for a pardon, it could not yet be done.' Ralegh did
not therefore leave off seeking it. For some time he could not believe
that his imprisonment was to be more than transitory. His efforts were
directed to the negotiation of terms to which he might consent for the
abridgment of the liberty he deemed his right. He did not ask to be
'about London--which God cast my soul into hell if I desire.' He would
be content to be confined within the Hundred of Sherborne. If he could
not be allowed so much, he was ready to live in Holland. There he
thought he might obtain some employment connected with the Indies. Else
he petitioned to 'be appointed to any bishop, or other gentleman, or
nobleman, or that your Lordship would let me keep but a park of
yours--which I would buy from someone that hath it--I will never break
the order which you shall please to undertake for me.'
[Sidenote: _At the Fleet Prison._]
[Sidenote: _His Ailments._]
He fretted in mind; and he was ill in body. For several years his health
had been impaired. Only periodical visits to Bath for its waters
assuaged his ailments. He prayed in vain that he might be suffered to go
thither in the autumn after his conviction. His prognostication that, if
he 'could not go this fall, he should be dead or disabled for ever,' was
not likely to alarm his foes. They affected at all times to be
incredulous of the gravity of his infirmities. But there is no reason to
question his statement that he was 'daily in danger of death by the
palsy; nightly of suffocation by wasted and obstructed lungs.' His
complaints began in the early summer of 1604. After a week's sojourn in
the Tower he seems to have been sent to the Fleet, where Keymis was for
a short time his fellow prisoner. There bills for his diet show that he
was staying between Christmas 1603 and Lady Day, 1604, or rather a few
days later. He cannot have gone back to the Tower precisely by Lady Day
to stay, for reasons not of State, but of Court. On Monday, March 26,
1604, Easter games were to be performed before the Court at the Tower.
Two mastiffs were to be let loose on a lion, and the King wanted to have
his fortress-palace cleared, for the occasion, of melancholy captives. A
custom prevailed at such festivities of releasing prisoners. There was
no intention of liberating the Winchester convicts. So, according to the
rumour of the Court, as sent home by the Venetian Embassy, they 'were
removed from the Tower and placed in other prisons.' If this statement
is to be accepted literally, and to be reconciled with the Fleet bills
for food, they must, at some time before Easter, have returned from the
Fleet to the Tower, and then, before March 26, been sent back for a
brief space to the Fleet. Ralegh had no cause for rejoicing when the
time arrived for his permanent establishment in the Tower. After his
return it was again, as in 1603, visited by the Plague. He prayed to be
taken elsewhere, on the ground that the pestilence was come next door.
In the adjacent tenement, with a paper wall between, were, he told
Cecil, lying a woman and her child, dying of it. When the Tower was free
from the Plague it was still an unsuitable lodging for one of Ralegh's
constitution. Moisture oozed constantly into the walls from the wide
muddy ditch. The cells were bitterly cold, and Ralegh was chilled and
benumbed. 'Every second or third night,' he reiterated to Cecil in 1605,
'I am in danger either of sudden death, or of the loss of my limbs and
senses, being sometimes two hours without feeling a motion of my hand
and whole arm.' In 1606 his physician, Dr. Peter Turner, certified that
his whole left side was cold. His fingers on the same side began to be
contracted, and his tongue in some sort, insomuch that he spoke weakly,
and that it was to be feared he might utterly lose the use of it. Only
in consequence of Turner's authoritative representations was Ralegh's
chamber changed. In the little garden under the terrace was a lath and
plaster lean-to. It had been Bishop Latimer's prison. Since it had been
used as a hen-house. Ralegh had already been permitted to employ this
out-house as a still room. He was allowed now to build a little room
next it, and use it as his habitual dwelling.
[Sidenote: _In the Bloody Tower._]
Other alleviations of his confinement were granted, particularly in its
earlier and again in its concluding years. For an inmate of a gaol, his
treatment was commonly not very rigorous. His quarters themselves, though
cold, were otherwise convenient. At his committal in July he had been put
into the upper chamber of the Bloody tower. Formerly this was called the
Garden tower. According to one authority it became known by the more
ominous name after Lord Northumberland's death there in June, 1585. Mrs.
Lucy Hutchinson, who was born in the Tower, derives the appellation from a
tradition of her childhood, that it was the scene of the murder of the Duke
of Clarence. The assassination in it of Edward V and his brother seems to
account for it more naturally. On Ralegh's return from Winchester, he was,
says Lord de Ros, who was both Lieutenant of the Tower and one of his
successors in the Captaincy of the Yeomen, placed in a semi-circular room,
lighted by loopholes, in the White tower, and there remained all the years
of his imprisonment. That, though a current local tradition, is grossly
incorrect, as a Lieutenant of the Tower ought to have known. As, however,
Lord de Ros also thought that Ralegh died on Tower Hill, it is the less
surprising that he should not have known where in the Tower he lived.
According to another legend equally baseless, he was lodged on the second
and third floors of the Beauchamp tower. Really from Winchester he went
back to the apartment he had previously inhabited. It had its advantages. A
passage in the rear led by a door to the terrace, which has been christened
Ralegh's Walk. From it he could look down on one side over a
much-frequented wharf to the busy river. On the other it commanded the
Lieutenant's garden and green. The suite of rooms accommodated Cottrell,
and apparently also John Talbot, Talbot's son, and Peter Dean, who waited
on Ralegh. There was space for Lady Ralegh, Walter, and Lady Ralegh's
waiting maid. They occupied the room in which Edward V and his brother were
murdered. When the Plague invaded their quarters they removed for a time to
lodgings on Tower Hill, near the church of Allhallows, Barking. It is
uncertain whether there, or in the room of the slaughtered Princes, a
second son, Carew, was born to Ralegh and his wife in 1604. On the
abatement of the epidemic, Lady Ralegh, with the children, returned.
[Sidenote: _Alleviations of Confinement._]
Ralegh could entertain dependents and acquaintances. His Sherborne
steward, John Shelbury, Hariot, his physician Dr. Turner, a surgeon Dr.
John, and a clergyman named Hawthorn, were frequently with him. His
Ralegh and Gilbert kinsfolk, we may be sure, did not desert him, though
there was no especial reason to chronicle their visits. Had fuller
details been preserved of his private life, we should doubtless have
found mention of his brother Carew, who was living in apparent
prosperity at Downton. His employment, as soon as he had the
opportunity, of the naval and military services of his nephews, George
Ralegh and Gilbert, shows that the family union survived unbroken.
Admirers from the West and the Court came to listen to his conversation,
and watch his chemical experiments. The Indians he had brought from
Guiana had stayed in England. The register of Chelsea Church records the
baptism of one of them by the name of Charles, 'a boy of estimation ten
or twelve years old, brought by Sir Walter Rawlie from Guiana.' After
his imprisonment they were lodged in the Tower, or near. He could amuse
himself by catechising them on the wonders of their land. His freedom of
movement in the early and late stages of his imprisonment, when he had
'the liberty of the Tower,' roused the envy of fellow prisoners. Grey
murmured in 1611: 'Sir Walter Ralegh hath a garden and a gallery to
himself.' In his deepest tribulations he had reverential valets and
pages to comb by the hour his thick curling locks, to trim his bushy
beard, and round moustache. Crowds thronged the wharf below to mark him
pacing his terrace in the velvet and laced cap, the rich gown and trunk
hose, noted by Aubrey's cousin Whitney, and the jewels, of which he
retained an ample store.
[Sidenote: _His Gaoler._]
But he was made in many respects, and at frequent intervals, to feel
himself 'a dead man,' possessed of no rights, subject to all sorts of
caprices. A kind-hearted Lieutenant might ameliorate his lot. He had
fascinated Sir George Harvey, who had commenced ill with the suppression
of Cobham's letter. They habitually dined together. Harvey had lent or
let to him his garden. The door of the Bloody tower was suffered to
stand habitually open. On August 16, 1605, Sir William Waad replaced
Harvey. He had earned the post by his keen scent for plots. He came
prepared to grudge privileges to the man who had foiled his
inquisitorial cunning. A week after his appointment to the Lieutenancy
he wrote to Cecil, to suggest the replacement of a lath fence, which ran
past the Bloody tower gate, by a brick wall, as 'more safe and
convenient.' His advice was taken, and a brick wall built. Still he was
uneasy. In December, 1608, he complained indignantly to Cecil that 'Sir
Walter Ralegh doth show himself upon the wall in his garden to the view
of the people, who gaze upon him, and he stareth on them. Which he doeth
in his cunning humour, that it might be thought his being before the
Council was rather to clear than to charge him.' Waad took credit to
himself that he had been 'bold in discretion and conveniency to restrain
him again.' For Waad to reprove Ralegh ought to have needed boldness. He
desired to repress the wife as well as the husband. Lady Ralegh does not
seem to have been sufficiently awed by the august associations of the
Tower. He had to issue an order forbidding her to drive into the
court-yard in her coach. By another solemn order aimed at Sir Walter, he
decreed that, at ringing of the afternoon bell, all the prisoners, with
their servants, were to withdraw into their chambers. They were not to
go forth again for that night.
Until May, 1613, Ralegh had to endure this man's petty spite and
disciplinary pedantry. Then Waad retired, to the great contentment of
his prisoners, though, as it happened, from a cause which did him
honour. Lady Arabella Stuart's chief pleasure during her iniquitous
imprisonment was the increase of her stock of jewels. From an order of
Council after her death, she would seem to have consulted Ralegh as an
expert. Several stones of price had disappeared in 1613. Suspicion was
cast upon Waad, or his wife and daughter. Probably they were entirely
innocent. The real object was that Carr might introduce a more pliant
instrument for foul play against Sir Thomas Overbury. Under pressure of
the accusation based on the missing trinkets, Waad accepted L1400 from
Sir Gervase Elways, with a promise of L600 more, and vacated his office.
Elways became an accomplice in Overbury's murder, and was hanged on his
own Tower Hill. But he was less of a martinet than his predecessor.
Perhaps his patrons were engaged in too serious crimes to waste their
energy in inciting him to petty persecutions of Ralegh. At all events,
Ralegh recovered the liberty of the Tower; and the restrictions on the
presence of his wife were relaxed.
[Sidenote: _Fresh Accusations._]
At no period were his really formidable enemies inside the Tower. Waad
himself would not have dared to harass and worry him, if he had not been
confident that his tyranny would be approved at Court. His foes there
were perpetually on the watch for excuses for tightening and
perpetuating his bonds. He had to defend himself from a suspicion of
complicity with the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. Commissioners, of whom Waad
was one, were appointed to inquire. Lord Northumberland had been sent to
the Tower by the Star Chamber for misprision of treason, on the flimsy
pretext of his intimacy with Thomas Percy. He was questioned on his
communications at the Tower with Ralegh. Ralegh was questioned on his
with the Earl. One day the French ambassador's wife, Madame de Beaumont,
came to visit the lions in company with Lady Howard of Effingham. She
saw Ralegh in his garden. The Tower contained no lion as wonderful. She
asked him for some balsam of Guiana. He forwarded the balsam to the
ambassadress by Captain Whitelocke, a retainer of Northumberland's, who
happened to have been in her train. Several Lords of the Council were
deputed to examine him on his intercourse with Whitelocke, a spy having
deposed that he had noticed Whitelocke in the Archduke's company during
the summer of 1605. Ralegh had difficulty in persuading the Council that
he had seen little either of the Captain, who came only on an ordinary
visit, of Northumberland, since the Earl's confinement, or of the French
ambassador and his wife. He prayed their Lordships in the name of 'my
many sorrows and the causes, my services and love to my country, not to
suspect me to be knowing this unexampled and more than devilish
invention.' Some of them, with their master, were capable of thinking,
or affecting to think, any incredible evil of him, and all belonging to
him. It was accounted an alarming circumstance that in the September of
1605 Lady Ralegh, during a visit to Sherborne, had the old arms in the
castle scoured.
[Sidenote: _Lady Ralegh's Expulsion._]
In 1607 the Council instituted an inquiry into the manner in which
Harvey had played the gaoler. Ralegh was brought before it, and
interrogated. So was Edward or William Cottrell, described as 'alias
Captain Sampson.' He was found to have been living for some time past at
Sherborne, perhaps under his alias, on a pension granted him by Ralegh.
In terror, or through an offer of better terms, he now confessed his
part in the bygone transmission of messages between Ralegh, Keymis, and
Cobham. Again, in 1610 some new and shadowy charges were brought against
Ralegh. The Council sat at the Tower. On Cecil was thrown the task, we
will hope, the very ungrateful task, of addressing to him a solemn
rebuke. He was subjected to three months of close imprisonment, and his
wife was obliged to leave the Tower. An order was served upon her: 'The
Lady Raleighe must understand his Majesty's express will and commandment
that she resort to her house on Tower Hill or ellswhere with her women
and sonnes to remayne there, and not to lodge hereafter within the
Tower.' Ralegh prayed earnestly that she might 'again be made a prisoner
with me, as she hath been for six years last past, in this unsavoury
place--a miserable fate for her, and yet great to me, who in this
wretched estate can hope for no other thing than peaceable sorrow.' The
offence for which he was censured and immured was never revealed to the
public; for the excellent reason, it may be presumed, that to the public
it would have appeared frivolous. His true criminality now and
throughout is to be gathered from the testimony of Henry Howard in the
year following. In July, 1611, fresh rumours of offences committed by
him were spread. Howard, now Earl of Northampton and Lord Chamberlain,
and another Privy Councillor, were commissioned to inquire. To Howard's
taste, his spirit was not at all sufficiently subdued. In a letter to
his notable accomplice and pupil, and the future husband of his great
niece, Carr, Lord Rochester and Privy Seal, Howard expressed his spite:
'We had a bout with Sir Walter Ralegh, in whom we find no change, but
the same boldness, pride, and passion, that heretofore hath wrought
more violently, but never expended itself in a stronger passion. Hereof
his Majesty shall hear when the Lords come to him. The lawless liberty
of the Tower, so long cockered and fostered with hopes exorbitant, hath
bred suitable desires and affections. And yet you may assure his Majesty
that by this publication he won little ground.' He gained so little
that, as he wrote in this year, he was, after eight years of
imprisonment, as straitly locked up as he had been the first day.
[Sidenote: _Search for Evidence of Guilt._]
When his imprisonment was most severe, it was moderate for his guilt if
he were guilty. In its times of least oppressiveness it was an enormity,
if he were innocent. To himself, who knew that he was guiltless of the
treason imputed to him, and was convinced that his gaolers knew it, his
imprisonment under any conditions appeared a monstrous iniquity. He
could never desist from protesting against the wrong. It was the
grievance as much of his enemies that they had him fast in prison, and
could neither browbeat him into acknowledging the justice of his doom,
nor prove its justice. They had obtained his condemnation rather than
his conviction. They were incited by his appeals to redoubled efforts to
establish his original guilt. Some, the King for example, may, from
rooted prejudice, have believed him guilty. No less than his most
malignant and unscrupulous foes they resented furiously their inability
to demonstrate it. They regarded it as evidence merely of his abominable
craft. The ordinary and extraordinary laxity of his confinement
indicated their doubt of his fair liability to any. The intervals of
rigour were meant to notify to the sceptical that the Government was at
last on the track of evidence which would confirm the equity of
everything from the beginning done against him. Constantly he had to
stand on his defence against attempts to palliate the effrontery of the
Winchester judgment by experimental accusations that he had been
tampering with new conspiracies. For ten years the contest proceeded
between him and the Court on that basis. He asseverated the right of an
innocent man to freedom, and the Court went on searching for proofs of
its right to put him into captivity. His adversaries might have been
content with the degree of ruin they had wrought if he would have
acquiesced in his fall. He insisted on regarding himself as living,
though he could not deny that he was civilly dead. He looked forth from
his prison on the world as a stage on which he still played a part, and
might once more lead. He would keep digging up the buried past. He
assumed the offensive against the majesty of the law. He was not patient
of injustice because a court of justice was its source. He had the
audacity to speak, think, and write, as if he were entitled to canvass
affairs of State. From his gaol he became audible in the recesses of the
Palace. He troubled the self-complacency of its master by teaching his
consort and his heir-apparent to question his infallible wisdom.
[Sidenote: _Queen Anne's Favour._]
[Sidenote: _Cobham's Winchester Letter again._]
Queen Anne perhaps scarcely needed the lesson. She was fond of power,
and 'bold and enterprising,' records Sully. Her husband appears to have
stood in some awe of her criticisms. She commonly took a line of her
own. Henry Howard, whose policy she had opposed before the death of
Elizabeth, insinuated that she was a foolish, garrulous, and intriguing
woman. She may not have been very wise, but she had generous emotions
and courage. She disliked the Spanish connexion, of which she was at one
period esteemed a supporter. She admired Ralegh's great qualities and
great deeds. His faithful cousin George Carew, her Vice-Chamberlain,
would remind her of them. Lady Ralegh, whom she is said on her first
arrival from Scotland to have repulsed, had gained her ear and sympathy.
She had, from the time of Ralegh's trial, tried to help him. By a
medicine of his invention she believed herself subsequently to have been
cured of a violent malady. In gratitude she is reported, or fabled, to
have gained the King's consent to a re-examination of Cobham's charge
against him. Reference has already been made to the story, as told by
Sir Anthony Welldon. Cecil, Lenox, Worcester, Suffolk, Carew, and Julius
Caesar are said to have been deputed to ask Cobham if he had not really
accused Ralegh at Winchester. Cobham answered: 'Never, nor could I; but
that villain Waad got me by a trick to write my name upon a piece of
white paper, which I, thinking nothing, did; so that, if any charge came
under my hand, it was forged by Waad by writing something above my
hand.' Then returning to the King the rest chose Cecil for spokesman. He
said: 'Sir, my Lord Cobham hath made good all that ever he wrote or
said.' Altogether it is a most improbable tale. Waad disliked Ralegh;
there is no ground for belief that he would have perpetrated a
cold-blooded fraud to gratify his ill-will. He was arrogant and
tyrannical, not criminal, as the circumstances of the loss of his
Lieutenancy show. The presence of honest and friendly Carew as one of
the royal commissioners, renders the account as it stands all but
incredible. He certainly would not have been a party to a lying and
wicked prevarication. Cecil would not, nor Sir Julius Caesar. But it is
one of the many Ralegh myths, with a possible particle of truth in it,
which cannot be sifted out of the mass of fiction.
[Sidenote: _Ralegh on a Piedmontese Alliance._]
Ralegh built more hopes on the favour of the Prince of Wales than on
that of his mother. Prince Henry was of a high spirit. He would have
rejoiced in war at which his father shuddered. Through his mother he
made Ralegh's acquaintance in his boyhood, and for him the prisoner was
a hero. Everybody has heard his saying: 'Who but my father would keep
such a bird in a cage!' Ralegh eagerly responded to the advances of one
through whom he might become not only free but powerful. The Prince
delighted in the company of Ralegh, who states that he had intended the
_History of the World_ for him; and he is said to have looked over the
manuscript. He consulted Ralegh in 1611 on the proposal by Duke Charles
Emmanuel I of Savoy for a double intermarriage. The Elector Palatine was
negotiating for the hand of Princess Elizabeth. Spain and the whole
Catholic party in Europe dreaded an alliance of the English royal family
with German Protestantism. They tried to engage James to affiance
Elizabeth to the Duke of Savoy's son, the Prince of Piedmont, and Henry
to the Duke's daughter. Ralegh combated the scheme in two Discourses,
printed long after his death. The first mainly discussed the plan of
Elizabeth's marriage to 'a prince jesuited,' her removal far from her
country to a family circle of another faith, a dependent now and ever,
as Ralegh not prophetically declared, 'either upon France or upon
Spain.' He foreboded how, in default of male heirs in England, 'a
Savoyan, of Spanish race, might become King of England.' 'I do prize,'
he declared, 'the alliance of the Palatine of the Rhine, and of the
House of Nassau, more than I do the alliance of the Duke of Savoy.' In
the second Discourse Ralegh argued against the Prince's alliance with
Dukes of the blood of Spain, and servants of 'Spain, which to England is
irreconcilable.' Such an alliance would increase the jealousy of the
Netherlands, a country which was for England a necessary friend. He
lamented the present weakness of England, 'through the detested
covetousness of some great ones of ours. Whereas, in my time, I have
known one of her Majesty's ships command forty Hollanders to strike
sail, they will now take us one to one, and not give us a good morrow.
They have our own ordnance to break our own bones withal.' Besides, the
Prince was only about eighteen. So long as he continued unmarried all
the eyes of Christendom were upon him. 'Let him for a while not entangle
himself.' When he desired to wed he would find, Ralegh suggested, a
French family alliance more honourable and advantageous than a Spanish.
His presumption in meddling with questions of State, and in answering
them in a manner opposite to the King's inclination, may have had
something to do with the unexplained chastisement inflicted upon him in
the summer of 1611. Whatever their cause, rebukes and curtailments of
privileges neither silenced him nor lost him the goodwill of his
friend. The Prince not long after sought his assistance in the building
of a model ship. The vessel was christened 'The Prince,' and it proved
an excellent sailer. The prisoner of the Tower wrote about it as if he
smelt the sea-breezes. Twenty-nine years earlier he had proved himself a
master in the art of ship-building. In his time, as he has recorded,
'the shape of English ships had been greatly bettered.' Much of the
credit of the reform is his due. Pett, the best naval architect in the
kingdom, in whose family the post of Master Shipwright became almost
hereditary, is reported to have been glad to gather hints from him. His
communications with the Prince about the ship drew his thoughts back to
maritime questions. Beside a letter, admirably terse and critical, to
Prince Henry, he composed a treatise minutely practical, called a
_Discourse of the Invention of Ships_, and also _Observations concerning
the Royal Navy and Sea Service_. Both probably were intended for parts
of an elaborate work on _The Art of War by Sea_, which the death of the
Prince hindered him from completing. He alludes in the Observations to a
_Discourse of a Maritimal Voyage_, as a previous product of his pen,
which, unless it be the _Discourse of the Invention of Ships_, has
disappeared. Had _The Art of War by Sea_ come into systematic being,
that might have stood as another of its chapters.
[Sidenote: _Robert Cecil's Death._]
Prince Henry's death was the most cruel blow inflicted on him since his
trial. The disappointment was the severer that it had been preceded six
months earlier by another death on which his friends, and perhaps
himself, founded expectations. On May 16, 1612, died Robert Cecil, Earl
of Salisbury, and Lord High Treasurer. He was hastening to Court, to
countermine his underminers, from Bath, where he had been taking the
waters. At the inn at Marlborough he found himself grievously ill. He
was removed, it has been variously stated, either to the parsonage, or
to the house of a Mr. Daniel, which had formerly been St. Margaret's
Priory. There he expired.
[Sidenote: _Dumb Enmity._]
A born statesman, Cecil had been condemned by a passion for affairs, and
incapacity for dispensing with office, to serve a great sovereign in
little ways, and to emphasize or dissemble a feeble sovereign's
feebleness. As a friend he could relieve adversity so far as not to
cancel it; but he could not pardon in a companion prosperity which
threatened rivalry, or risk his share of sunshine by screening a victim
of popular and regal odium. By no class was he profoundly lamented.
Veteran and well-endowed officials seldom are. Ralegh, it is to be
feared, was never among the mourners. He had received benefits from
Cecil, and acknowledged them thankfully. He could not forgive an
acquaintance, who must have known his innocence of treason, for letting
his life be blasted by the charge. He could not understand that the
statesman and potent courtier, whose fortunes at no time were visibly
clouded, should be unable, or honestly think himself unable, to lift a
persecuted comrade out of the mire. If Cecil did not come effectually to
the rescue, he believed, at any rate at last, that it was because he
would not. Cecil read his mind, had no faith in his gratitude, and
accounted the duties of a dead friendship discharged by attempts to
mitigate rather than to reverse his doom. Harassed by business and the
toil of keeping his slippery footing, he would feel chiefly a dull
irritation at the captive, whether guiltless or guilty, for the
obstinacy of his dispute with accomplished facts. He ought, the
Minister, like his avowed enemies, would think, to have acquiesced, and
been still. Thus the two went on, mutually scornful and mistrustful,
exchanging soft phrases which neither meant. The true condition of their
hearts was not hidden from bystanders. They never confessed it one to
the other, or frankly to themselves.
Historical scavengers, Aubrey and Osborn, have attributed to Ralegh's pen a
coarse and truculent epigram on the dead statesman under the name of
Hobbinol. John Shirley, Ralegh's honest but credulous biographer, in 1677,
also alleges him to have been the author, 'on very good grounds,' by which
probably is signified nothing better than common gossip. Aubrey vouches in
support statements made to him by Mr. Justice Malet, who is not known to
have had any especial means of procuring information. Mr. Edwards believes
it to be genuine. I cannot, though King James's alleged expression of a
'hope that the writer of those lines might die before him,' of which he was
so careful to secure the fulfilment, has to be discarded with it. The
evidence for Ralegh's authorship is exceedingly weak; and the rude verses
are marked by none of his elegance of style. But the attempt to father so
wretched a foundling upon him is proof the more of the popular perception
of the dissembled estrangement. In a less undignified shape than a
scurrilous epitaph on a dishonest shepherd, the bitterness Ralegh felt was
sometimes openly exhibited. It is not discernible merely in collective
insinuations against men whose ascendency in the royal council had been his
'infelicity.' When he had an opportunity it found a vent in a formal
written accusation against the dead Lord Treasurer of having violated his
duty to the King and the Exchequer by diverting to his own use the mass of
Cobham's forfeited wealth. Gradually, brooding over his wrongs, he had
accustomed himself to think Cecil not only the egotist he was, but an
unscrupulous plotter, who wished to keep under lock and key a man able to
unmask his rapacity. The Minister's death would appear to him to have
cleared the board for new and happier combinations in his favour.
[Sidenote: _Prince Henry._]
[Sidenote: _The Prince's Death._]
The Prince of Wales had at eighteen developed a will both resolute and
impetuous, to which the death of a veteran statesman like Cecil was sure
to have afforded freer scope. He did not disguise either his discontent
at the policy of his father's favourite advisers, or his preference for
ambitious projects such as Ralegh was known to cherish. Ralegh never had
reason to doubt the sincerity of his admiration. There seemed no more
ground for uncertainty as to the Prince's immediate influence on his
behalf than as to the benefits to be derived from the youth's eventual
accession to the throne. Henry was said to have extracted a promise from
James of Ralegh's liberation at Christmas, 1612. November came, and the
Prince lay dying of a raging fever. The Queen sent to the Tower for the
medicine which had cured her. Ralegh despatched it with a letter,
asserting that it would certainly heal this or any other case of fever,
unless there were poison. A vehement debate followed among the Lords of
the Council and the doctors, including the Genevese physician, Dr.,
afterwards Sir, Theodore Mayerne. Finally, the potion was administered.
The patient, who had been speechless, revived sufficiently to speak. But
it did not save his life. The populace and the Queen believed that it
had been ineffectual because there had been poison. Forty years later,
Carew Ralegh referred to the rumour as still credited. At the time it
was repeated on the judicial bench. Sir Thomas Monson in 1615 was being
tried for complicity in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Coke, become
Chief Justice, insinuated with his usual discretion and fairness at the
trial that Overbury was poisoned from fear that he might, through
hostility to Carr, divulge his guilty knowledge of a similar crime
against 'a sweet Prince.'
Prince Henry's death blasted the prospect of Ralegh's ultimate
restoration to royal favour, as well as to immediate liberty. It
inflicted a less, but very vexatious, disappointment. After a protracted
struggle he had been stripped of his Dorsetshire estate. Sherborne, he
might have reckoned, was indefeasibly safe. Its enjoyment for his life
was covered by the term for sixty years. The settlement of 1602 seemed
to have set the inheritance out of danger. But in the course, perhaps,
of the legal investigation with a view to the grant of the term for the
benefit of Ralegh's wife and children, a flaw was detected in the
conveyance of the fee. Little cause as Ralegh had to respect the
impartiality of Popham and Coke in criminal procedure, he retained full
confidence in their legal learning. To them in 1604, at his own earnest
request, the deed of 1602 was submitted by Cecil. Their opinion on it
was clear and fatal. They could have given no other. The essential words
of a conveyance in trust, that the trustees shall stand thereof seised
to the uses specified, had, Popham wrote to Cecil on June 7, 1605, been
omitted. Popham believed the omission to have been due to the
carelessness of the engrossing clerk. Through it the estate had remained
wholly in Ralegh. Consequently, by his attainder it was forfeited. Lady
Ralegh sought an audience of James. She prayed him not to take advantage
of the forfeiture. With the facility which was compatible equally with
generosity and with rapacious injustice, he promised. He directed Cecil
to have a grant to her and her children prepared. It never was. At first
the preposterous suspicion of Ralegh's sympathy with the Gunpowder Plot
may have caused delay. Later the King discovered that he wanted the
property for his own purposes. Alarmed at his own propensity for
indulging the caprice of the moment, and mindful of the extent to which
the Scottish Crown had been pauperized by royal improvidence, he had
accepted a self-denying ordinance. By this he bound himself not to grant
away the patrimony of the Crown. For the endowment of favourites he had
to rely, therefore, on windfalls from attainders and escheats. Robert
Carr now had to be provided for. Sherborne happened to suit his taste,
and the Ralegh family had to be ejected.
[Sidenote: _Lady Ralegh and the King._]
[Sidenote: _Escheat of Sherborne._]
Proceedings were commenced in 1607 on the Attorney-General's Information
to establish the claim of the Crown. Lady Ralegh again knelt before the
King. She implored a waiver of the forfeiture in her and young Walter's
favour. James rejected her petition either silently, or, according to
Carew Ralegh, with the ejaculation, 'I mun have the land; I mun have it
for Carr.' In a petition he addressed to the Long Parliament, Carew
related that she fell down upon her knees, with her young sons beside
her, and in the bitterness of her spirit invoked the vengeance of Heaven
upon those who had so wrongfully exposed her and her poor children to
ruin and beggary. James was used to her supplications for justice, and
to repulsing them. In the previous autumn she had knelt to him at
Hampton Court for her husband's liberty, and been passed without a word.
Ralegh himself wasted upon Carr an eloquent prayer that he would not
begin his first buildings upon the ruins of the innocent. He entreated
him not to 'give me and mine our last fatal blow by obtaining from his
Majesty the inheritance of my children and nephews, lost in law for want
of words.' He made the attempt after his manner of neglecting no
possibility. He can have put little trust in royal justice, and less in
a worthless minion's magnanimity. Early in January, 1608, the Court of
Exchequer decided against the validity of the conveyance. Chamberlain
wrote on January 10, 1608, to Dudley Carleton: 'Sir Walter Ralegh's
estate is fallen into the King's hands by reason of a flaw in the
conveyance. He hath bestowed it on Sir Robert Carr. And though the Lady
Ralegh hath been an importunate suitor all these holidays in her
husband's behalf, yet it is past recall. So that he may say, with Job,
Naked came I into the world, &c. But, above all, one thing is to be
noticed: the error or oversight is said to be so gross that men do
merely ascribe it to God's own hand that blinded him and his counsel.'
Apparently the case was too technically plain against the deed for it to
be seriously defended. Ralegh before the formal judgment had assented,
under protest, to a proposal for the conveyance of his wife's and son's
interest during his life to the Crown for a sum of L5000 to be paid the
next year. For the remainder in fee he and she both struggled a while
longer. Finally, formal judgment having been given for the Crown on
October 27, 1608, they agreed to convey absolutely the entire interest
for an annuity of L400, to be paid for the lives of lady Ralegh and
young Walter, in lieu of Lady Ralegh's right to jointure out of the
estate, and for a capital sum of L8000. In this the L5000 was to merge.
The annuity was often in arrear. Part of the L8000 was paid down, and
Ralegh lent it on mortgage to the dowager Countess of Bedford. For the
rest the Exchequer not very regularly paid interest. The rental of the
Sherborne lands was L750. This at sixteen years' purchase was L12,000.
Consequently, it has been urged, the Crown did not drive a hard bargain.
They who thus argue confess to some perplexity how the property could
shortly afterwards have been, as it was, valued against Carr himself at
L20,000 or L25,000. They have forgotten that the L750 rental does not
allow for the worth of the house Ralegh had built, and for its costly
embellishments.
[Sidenote: _Vicissitudes of Ownership._]
[Sidenote: _Sale to Digby._]
Ralegh, with the certainty of a legal declaration of the forfeiture of
the fee, had reluctantly assented to the compromise. He was weary and
sick. He would be glad, he wrote, never to hear the place named
thenceforth. Not so easily could he divorce himself from it. There was
his old bailiff, whose insolent persecution tied him to the estate. In
April, 1610, Meere had the effrontery to offer to prove by a letter,
probably forged, that Ralegh had promised him L100 a-year to conceal a
set of frauds. His own heart cherished a lingering hope of a restoration
of the property after all. In 1612 it seemed to be on the point of
returning to him. Prince Henry expressed his indignation that a place of
so much strength and beauty should have been given away, and had begged
it of his father in the summer. James consented, and compensated Carr
with L25,000 or L20,000. Ralegh and his friends believed that the Prince
meant to bestow it on him with his freedom. On the Prince's death in
November it reverted to the Crown, which sold a lease of it to Sir
Robert Phillips. The transaction was speedily cancelled, and James gave
the place back to Carr for the sum of L20,000, which, if not more, he
had received. Three years later Carr's attainder shifted it over once
again. Villiers might have had it, and refused. He would not, he said,
have his fortune built upon another man's ruins. His contemporaries
thought he might have been influenced also by fear of Bishop Osmund's
curse upon all who should take Sherborne from the bishopric. Had he
accepted it, Felton's dagger would have been considered one of the
curse's instruments. At all events, he did not lose by his generous
sentiment. Eleven manors were bestowed upon him instead, as was recited
in their grant, of the Manor of Sherborne intended for him. Thereupon
the property was sold to Sir John Digby, subsequently Lord Digby of
Sherborne and Earl of Bristol, for L10,000, supplemented by gratuitous
diplomatic services in Spain. Long afterwards, as we shall see, Carew
Ralegh tried to revive the hereditary claim. Ralegh himself ceased to
prosecute it after Prince Henry's death.