THE RELEASE (March, 1616).
[Sidenote: _How his Fetters fell off._]
No merits of his, and no sense of justice to him, opened, or ever would
have opened, his prison doors. But at length it was become inconvenient
to keep him under duress. The gaolers who cared to detain him were gone.
In their places stood others who had an interest in sending him forth,
though with a chain on his ankle. He could never have been brought to
trial on a fantastic charge, or been convicted without evidence, unless
for the weight of popular odium, which enabled the new Court to trample
upon the favourite of the old. Without that he could not have been kept
for long years in prison. Gradually the nation forgot its habit of
dislike, which never had much foundation. Englishmen remembered his
mighty deeds. They honoured him as the representative of a glorious and
dead past. His fetters were of themselves falling off. Special
circumstances helped to shake him free of them. He had protested
ineffectually in the name of right. He had pleaded to deaf ears for
liberty to serve his country. At length an impression had been produced
that the prosecution of his policy might bring money into other coffers
beside his own.
He had never ceased to plan the establishment of English colonies in
Virginia and Guiana. He regarded both countries as his, and as English
by priority of discovery or occupation. From the fragments of his broken
fortunes the captive of the Tower had managed to fit out or subsidize
expeditions at intervals to both. Every few years the Guiana Indians in
particular were reminded by messages from him that their deliverance
from the Spaniards was at hand. To Englishmen ores and plants from
Guiana recalled the riches of the land, and their title to it. Thus, in
December, 1609, we hear that Sir Walter Ralegh had a ship come from
Guiana laden with gold ore. His chase after freedom was stimulated by
visions of himself once more a leader, and the founder of an empire. The
thought grew to be a passion, and almost a monomania.
[Sidenote: _Petitions to the Queen._]
To gain permission to hazard life, health, and reputation in the western
seas, he was ready to subscribe to the most grotesque conditions, which,
however, do not seem to have impressed contemporaries as extravagant. He
had hoped that the Queen Consort might consent to be lady patroness of
his project. In 1611 he solicited her formally. He proffered by letter
his service in Virginia. It was his name for Guiana, in order not to
alarm pro-Spanish jealousies. He had been suspected of a design to fly
from England under cover of a voyage of discovery. The Queen had faith
in him, and he entreated her to give her word for him to mistrustful
Cecil. He was willing, if he should not be on his way to America by a
day set, to forfeit life and estate. As a security against turning aside
to some foreign European Court after his departure from England, he
would leave his wife and two sons as his pledges. His wife, whom we can
see stooping over him, and dictating the words, 'shall yield herself to
death, if I perform not my duty to the King.' If this sufficed not, the
masters and mariners might have orders, if he offered to sail elsewhere,
to cast him into the sea. Again in 1611 he addressed the Queen.
Previously he had propounded to Cecil a scheme for a Guiana expedition,
of which he now sent her a copy. He besought her influence on its
behalf. She would be acting for the King's sake, that 'all presumption
might be taken from his enemies, arising from the want of treasure.' He
was scarcely pleading, he said, for himself. 'My extreme shortness of
breath doth grow so fast, with the despair of obtaining so much grace
to walk with my keeper up the hill within the Tower, as it makes me
resolve that God hath otherwise disposed of that business, and of me.'
[Sidenote: _Golden Bait._]
At this time interest in Guiana and its precious metals had revived.
Ralegh had some morsels of merquisite he had himself picked up assayed
by a refiner. The man found gold in them. These, or other specimens of
Guiana ores, Sir Amias Preston, his old adversary, had seen. Preston had
extolled them to Cecil. Ralegh may have discussed their virtues with
Cecil in the Tower at one of the interviews in the laboratory, when, he
complains, the Minister would listen, inquire, talk of the assay, hold
out hopes, and then retreat into an _arriere boutique_, in which he lay
unapproachable. A letter to Cecil, with the uncertainty of date which
breaks the hearts of Ralegh's biographers, says: 'I have heard that Sir
Amias Preston informed your Lordship of certain mineral stones brought
from Guiana, of which your Lordship had some doubt--for so you had at my
first return--secondly, that your Lordship thought it but an invention
of mine to procure unto myself my former liberty; suspicions which might
rightly form into the cogitations of a wise man.' He assured Cecil that
a mountain near the river contained 'an abundance sufficient to please
every appetite.' Once he had thought the stones valueless, like other
merquisite. He had been convinced of his error by the refiner, who was
willing to go and be 'hanged there if he prove not his assay to be
good.' To avert suspicion that he meant to become a runagate, Ralegh was
ready not to command, but to ship as a private man. He repeated his
strange offer to be cast into the sea if he should persuade a contrary
course. The cost would be no more than L5000. 'Of that, if the Queen's
Majesty, to whom I am bound for her compassion, and your Lordship will
bear two parts, I and my friends will bear a third. Your Lordship may
have gold good and cheap, and may join others of your honourable friends
in the matter, if you please. For there is enough. The journey may go
under the colour of Virginia. We will break no peace; invade none of
the Spanish towns. We will see none of that nation, except they assail
us.' His intention was to melt down the mineral on the spot into ingots,
'for to bring all in ore would be notorious.' In 1610 he had written to
a trusted friend of James, John Ramsay, then Viscount Haddington, and
later Earl of Holderness, with similar proposals. He would follow Ramsay
as a private man, or others, and if he recommended a different course
was willing to be drowned. Then, 'if I bring them not to a mountain,
near a navigable river, covered with gold and silver ore, let the
commander have commission to cut off my head there.' Or he would give a
L40,000 bond to boot.
[Sidenote: _Overtures to the Council._]
In 1611, or 1612, he alternated his overtures to the Queen with others
to Lords of the Council, who, it may be gathered from a letter of his,
agreed to become joint-adventurers with him. A plan had been started for
sending Captain Keymis with two ships to Guiana, and enough men to
defend him 'from the Spaniards inhabiting upon Orenoche, not that it is
meant to begin any quarrel with them, except themselves shall begin the
war.' Captain Moate, servant of Ralegh's friend, Sir John Watts, had
come the last spring 'from St. Thome, where the Spaniards inhabit.'
According to him Keymis might safely go the five miles from the river to
his mountain. In this way he could bring from the mine 'half a ton of
that slate gold ore, whereof I gave a sample to my Lord Knevett.' In
default, all the charge of the journey should be laid upon himself. He
was contented to adventure all he had but his reputation upon Keymis's
memory. He warned the Lords, that 'there is no hope, after this trial
made, to fetch any more riches from thence.' But he submitted to the
wisdom of the King and their Lordships. 'Only, if half a ton be brought
home, then I shall have my liberty, and in the meanwhile my free pardon
under the Great Seal, to be left in his Majesty's hands till the end of
the journey.' That precaution later he omitted, and paid the penalty of
dealing in good faith with crowned and coroneted pettifoggers. At all
events, the present proposal gave full notice to members of the Council
of the existence of a Spanish settlement on the Orinoko, which
subsequently Ralegh was accused of having perfidiously concealed from
the King.
[Sidenote: _Other Voyagers to Guiana._]
His projects, prayers, and expeditions came to nothing at the time. They
were not without their effect. They kept the thought of Guiana before
the nation. As James in his _Declaration_ afterwards asserted, the
confident asseveration of that which every man was willing to believe,
enchanted the world. To a certain degree it influenced the King and
Court. James was not of a nature to undervalue dignities and
opportunities of wealth. While he imprisoned the explorer, he had
asserted the title to Guiana acquired through him. He commissioned
Captain Charles Leigh in 1604, and, after his death, Captain Robert
Harcourt in 1608, to take possession of all from the Amazon to the
Dessequebe, with the neighbouring islands. The result was a settlement
on the Oyapoco. After three years the colonists abandoned the
enterprise, and returned to England. Harcourt experienced the effect of
the local renown of Ralegh, and of the success of his efforts to keep
alive the recollection of the fealty once offered through him to
England. Leonard the Indian, who had resided in England three or four
years with Ralegh, obtained for Harcourt supplies he sorely needed. The
help was rendered in the belief, says Ralegh, that Harcourt was a
follower of his. The natives visited Harcourt's vessel dressed in
European clothes, which Ralegh had sent them the year before. They were
disappointed at not finding him in command. Leigh's and Harcourt's
expeditions confirmed his assertions of the immense possibilities of the
country. Harcourt expressly stated his 'satisfaction that there be rich
mines in the country.' The actual fruits were so meagre as to
demonstrate that supreme capacity was needed to extract its treasures.
Ralegh's adversaries, including James, were as persuaded as his friends
of his unbounded ability. They hated him for it. They were covetous of
gold and territory. They thought he might justify his boasts, and
enrich them as well as himself, if he were let go. Failure, on the other
hand, would, they calculated, blast his power to hurt. At all events, in
the existing popular mood, it was easier to despatch him at his own
expense for their contingent gain to America, than to confine him in the
Tower. Their personal relations with Spain supplied rather a motive for
his liberation for such a purpose than a fatal objection. James longed
for a family league with the Escurial. Spain was reserved and proud, and
responded coldly to his advances. He did not care what harm came to
Ralegh, upon whom, as Mr. Gardiner says, he knew the Spaniards would
fall wherever they found him. Meanwhile he hoped to warm his coy allies
by letting loose upon the Spanish Main their and his inveterate
aversion. Ralegh was a convenient firebrand to show Spain the harm
England, if an enemy, could do. He was a scapegoat to immolate in proof
of all England was prepared to sacrifice in return for Spain's love.
Suddenly, for many mixed reasons, it was decided to free him. He was to
be licensed to discover gold mines and affirm the English title to the
Orinoko.
[Sidenote: _Ralegh's Opportunity._]
[Sidenote: _King Christian._]
He himself was at the moment in a strong position for demanding liberty
and a commission. The arms and hands which had, according to his
expression, abused their Sovereign's borrowed authority to fling stones
at him, were now, as with doubtful discretion as well as taste he
reminded James in the _Prerogative of Parliaments_, 'most of them
already rotten.' Robert Cecil, though nowise to be ranked with Howard as
demoniacally malevolent, had evinced no disposition to release him.
Certainly he would, if only for Ralegh's own sake, not have abetted his
wild quest of Guiana gold. But he too was dead. Robert Carr was worse
than dead. The terrible exposure of his and his wife's crimes had made
James and his counsellors peculiarly sensitive to public opinion. Hallam
thinks it 'more likely than anything else that James had listened to
some criminal suggestion from Overbury and Somerset, and that, through
apprehension of this being disclosed, he had pusillanimously acquiesced
in the scheme of Overbury's murder.' That is Hallam's deliberate view of
the King who claimed the right to sit in judgment on Ralegh. The country
entertained a similar suspicion. It might have been dangerous to hold a
national hero confined under the same prison roof with the principals in
the crime. Moreover, a sympathetic politician, Sir Ralph Winwood, was
Secretary of State. Personally, Winwood was in high favour with the
King, notwithstanding discrepancies in their estimates of the value of a
Spanish alliance. Of that he and Archbishop Abbot both were vehement
opponents. They thought Ralegh a likely instrument for bringing about a
collision with Spain in the most advantageous circumstances. For the
moment Winwood's admiration of Ralegh and dislike of Spain, and the
King's contrary feelings, together with his general disposition to shift
responsibility, worked to the same end. George Villiers was inclined to
befriend Ralegh out of opposition to the Howards, who had been Carr's
supporters. Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, had died in June, 1614.
The credit of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Treasurer, was
waning. The old Lord High Admiral Nottingham's naval administration had
been unsuccessful and wasteful. King Christian, the Queen's brother,
when recently in England, had warmly interceded for Ralegh, whom, if Sir
Thomas Wilson's reports of subsequent conversations with Ralegh are to
be believed, he would gladly have borrowed of James for the Danish navy.
Ralegh believed the King had, on a previous visit, asked for his
liberty. That is not certain. Carleton, writing to Chamberlain in
August, 1606, stated that Christian had declined the office. In any case
he exerted himself on his second visit. The fact must be set off for him
against another, that he was a sot, and, as Harington shows, set an evil
example of drunken bouts to the imitative English Court. Ralegh wrote to
Winwood in January, 1616, on the wealth of Guiana: 'Those that had the
greatest trust were resolved not to believe it; not because they doubted
the truth, but because they doubted my disposition towards themselves,
had I recovered his Majesty's favour and good opinion. Our late worthy
Prince of Wales was extreme curious in searching out the nature of my
offences; the Queen's Majesty hath informed herself from the beginning;
the King of Denmark, at both times his being here, was thoroughly
satisfied of my innocency. The wife, the brother, and the son of a King
do not use to sue for mere suspect. It is true, sir, that his Majesty
hath sometimes answered that his Council knew me better than he did;
meaning some two or three of them; and it was indeed my infelicity. For
had his Majesty known me, I had not been where I now am; or had I known
his Majesty, they had never been so long where they now are. His
Majesty's misknowing of them hath been the ruin of a goodly part of his
estate; but they are all of them--some living, and some dying--come to
his Majesty's knowledge. But to die for the King, and not by the King,
is all the ambition I have in the world.'
[Sidenote: _Gifts of Money._]
No further explanation of Ralegh's deliverance might seem to be
required. Without the co-operation of these various coincidences which
aided his claim to justice, and weakened the resistance to it, he must
indeed have remained in prison. But the popular belief was that the
immediate agency to which he owed his freedom was neither equity nor
policy; it was the prisoner's own money. A half-brother of George
Villiers, Sir Edward Villiers, and Sir William St. John, a kinsman of
Sir Edward's wife, are alleged in the _Observations on Sanderson's
History of King James_, to have procured Sir Walter Ralegh's liberty,
and to have had L1500 for their labour. The story has been denied.
Unfortunately it is by no means intrinsically improbable. It agrees with
Ralegh's confident allusion at his death to the ease with which he could
have bought his peace, even after his return from Guiana, if he had been
rich enough. There is a miserable consistency in his imprisonment on a
false charge of treason, and his release through a bribe to relatives of
the King's favourite. He wrote to George Villiers: 'You have by your
mediation put me again into the world.' The service cannot be
questioned, but its motive.
[Sidenote: _Ralegh's Fellow Prisoners._]
[Sidenote: _Death of Cobham._]
On March 19, 1616, a royal warrant required the Lieutenant of the Tower
to 'permit Sir Walter Ralegh to go abroad to make preparations for his
voyage.' He then partially or entirely quitted the prison which had been
his home for twelve years. Its population had undergone some recent and
notable changes and exchanges. Sir George More was Lieutenant. Lord Grey
of Wilton had died in July, 1614. To the end he had hoped to be, through
the influence of Henry Howard and Carr, set free to serve Protestant
Holland against Catholic Spain. More pitiable Arabella Stuart, or
Seymour, had entered in 1611. She survived till September, 1615, ever
weak, but guilty of no crime except her contingent birthright. Ralegh
left in prison Northumberland. This splendid patron of letters, for the
dozen years he inhabited the Tower, has been said to have invested it
with the atmosphere of an university. He peopled it with students and
inquirers, such as Thomas Allen, William Warner, Robert Hues, Torporley,
and Hariot. Of an intelligence and capacity which won Sully's
admiration, but wayward, scornful, and, for his own interests very
little of the wizard he was reputed to be, he had been consigned thither
for no guilt, unless, like Ralegh, that he may have consorted with the
guilty. An injustice was not wholly fruitless which bestowed on Ralegh
the comfort of a companionship of learning. Death, eight years before
his release, had freed the last titular chieftain of the Fitzgeralds,
whose spoils he had shared; but he left there an older antagonist,
Florence McCarthy, the 'infinitely adored' Munster man, who in a
neighbouring cell emulated his historical researches. He left Cobham. A
rumour current at the commencement of 1616 that Cobham, like him, was to
be freed, was not confirmed till 1617, and then only partially. In that
year Cobham was allowed to visit Bath for the waters. He was on his way
back to the Tower in September, when, at Odiham, he had a paralytic
stroke. He was conveyed to London at the beginning of October, and
lingered between life and death till January 12, 1619. Probably he
expired in the Tower, though Francis Osborn, who had been master of the
horse to Lord Pembroke, was told by Pembroke that he died half starved
in the hovel of an old laundress in the Minories. The statement of his
poverty is in conflict with the fact mentioned by Ralegh in the
_Prerogative of Parliaments_, that the Crown allowed him L500 a year
till his death for his maintenance. An explanation has been offered that
the tale may have been founded on the delay in his burial. His wealthy
wife and relatives tried to throw upon the Crown the liability for the
cost of an obscure funeral by night at Cobham. But for some unknown
reason he appears to have been in pecuniary straits. Camden speaks of
his return to the Tower 'omnium rerum egentissimus,' and of his death
'miser et inops.' Certainly he had been, as he deserved to be, more
harshly treated in respect of money than Ralegh. On his conviction his
estates had been confiscated. Even his valuable library, which, in the
Tower, he had retained, was claimed in 1618 for the King's use by the
Keeper of State Papers. He had no wife to tend him as had Ralegh. Lady
Kildare was more literally faithful than Sir Griffin Markham's wife,
who, while he was in exile, wedded her serving man, and had to do
penance for bigamy at St. Paul's in a white sheet. But she neglected her
husband, whom she had once ardently loved, and allowed him to pine
alone. Ralegh's admirers too cannot but despise him, though their
feeling is less anger than impatience that so poor a creature should
have warped the fate of one so great.
[Sidenote: _Carr and his Wife._]
Another and newer prisoner Ralegh left, who was to stay till 1622, as
notorious as Cobham, and yet more ignoble. Robert Carr, Viscount
Rochester, and Earl of Somerset, had been committed to the Tower on
October 18, 1615, on the charge of having procured the murder of Sir
Thomas Overbury. The guiltier Countess was joined in the accusation, and
committed in April, 1616. Both were convicted in the May after Ralegh's
release. They were lodged in Ralegh's old quarters, he in the Bloody
tower, she in the garden pavilion erected or remodelled for Ralegh's
accommodation. It had been hastily prepared for her in response to her
passionate entreaties to the Lieutenant not to be put into Overbury's
apartment. Carr's imprisonment and Ralegh's liberation are said, in a
treatise attributed to Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, to have given great
occasion of speech and rumour. Quips and taunts upon Carr, on the same
authority, are imputed to Ralegh. Town gossip was always busy with his
name. In the absence of facts it invented. He was capable of sharp
epigrams, and may have exulted in the fall of his unworthy supplanter.
He would not have condescended to hurl gibes, as has further been
alleged, in the face of the miserable being who was succeeding him as
tenant of his cell. The story is that, possibly during a visit to the
Tower after Carr's trial, he met the convict entering the dark archway
from Water Lane, and thereupon remarked aloud: 'The whole History of the
World had not the like precedent of a King's prisoner to purchase
freedom, and his bosom favourite to have the halter, but in Scripture,
in the case of Mordecai and Haman.' As improbably James is reported to
have been told, and to have retorted that 'Ralegh might die in that
deceit.'