PREPARING FOR GUIANA (1616-1617).
[Sidenote: _A Pilgrimage Round London._]
Ralegh's freedom was for a period conditional. The King's warrant 'fully
and wholly enlarging' him, was not issued till January 30, 1617. From
the preceding March 19, or, Camden says, March 29, he was permitted to
live at his own house in the city. But he was attended by a keeper, and
his movements were restricted. On March 19, the Privy Council had
written to him: 'His Majesty being pleased to release you out of your
imprisonment in the Tower, to go abroad with a keeper, to make your
provisions for your intended voyage, we admonish you that you should not
presume to resort either to his Majesty's Court, the Queen's, or
Prince's, nor go into any public assemblies wheresoever without especial
licence.' Before his liberation he had been seriously ill. Anxiety, and,
it was rumoured, excessive toil in his laboratory at the assaying of his
Guiana ores, had brought on a slight apoplectic stroke. A sense of
liberty restored his activity. In March or April he handselled his
freedom, as Chamberlain wrote to tell Carleton, with a journey round
London to see the new buildings erected since his imprisonment. Then
forthwith he commenced his preparations for 'the business for which,' as
wrote the Council, 'upon your humble request, his Majesty hath been
pleased to grant you freedom.' He needed no driving, and he spared no
sacrifices.
[Sidenote: _The Destiny._]
He collected information from every quarter, and was willing to buy it.
He promised, for instance, payment out of the profits of the voyage to
an Amsterdam merchant for discovering somewhat of importance to him in
Guiana. He arranged on March 27, eight days after his release, for
Phineas Pett, the King's shipwright, to build, under his directions, the
Destiny, of 450 tons burden. He pledged all his resources. He called in
the loan of L3000 to the Countess of Bedford. His wife sold to Mr.
Thomas Plumer for L2500 her house and lands at Mitcham. Altogether he
spent L10,500. Part he had to borrow on bills. So impoverished was he
that, as he related subsequently, he left himself no more in all the
world, directly or indirectly, than L100, of which he gave his wife L45.
Warm personal friends, of whom he always had many, notwithstanding his
want of promiscuous popularity, gave encouragement and sympathy. George
Carew, writing to Sir Thomas Roe at the Great Mogul's Court of the
building of the Destiny, which was launched on December 16, 1616,
'prayed Heaven she might be no less fortunate with her owner than is
wished by me.' Carew, shrewd and prudent, had no doubt of the sincerity
of his 'extreme confidence in his gold mine.' Adherents contributed
money and equipments. Lady Ralegh's relative, grand-nephew of her old
opponent at law, Lord Huntingdon, presented a pair of cannon. The Queen
offered good wishes, and was with difficulty dissuaded from visiting the
flagship.
Many co-adventurers joined, and contributed nearly L30,000.
Unfortunately they were, Ralegh has recorded, mostly dissolute,
disorderly, and ungovernable. Their friends were cheaply rid of them at
the hazard of thirty, forty, or fifty pounds apiece. Some soon showed
themselves unmanageable, and were dismissed before the fleet sailed. Of
the discharged a correspondent of Ralegh's pleasantly wrote: 'It will
cause the King to be at some charge in buying halters to save them from
drowning.' More than enough stayed to furnish Ralegh with mournful
grounds later on for recollecting his own Cassandra-like regret that
Greek Eumenes should have 'cast away all his virtue, industry, and wit
in leading an army without full power to keep it in due obedience.' Of
better characters were some forty gentlemen volunteers. Among them were
Sir Warham St. Leger, son of Ralegh's Irish comrade, not as Mr. Kingsley
surmises, the father, who had been slain in 1600; George Ralegh,
Ralegh's nephew, who had served with Prince Maurice; William or Myles
Herbert, a cousin of Ralegh, and near kinsman of Lord Pembroke; Charles
Parker, misnamed in one list Barker, a brother of Lord Monteagle;
Captain North; and Edward Hastings, Lord Huntingdon's brother. Hastings
died at Cayenne. He would, wrote Ralegh at the time, have died as
certainly at home, for 'both his liver, spleen, and brains were rotten.'
[Sidenote: _Young Walter._]
Young Walter was of the company, and Ralegh and his wife adventured
nothing else for them so precious. Walter was fiery and precocious, too
much addicted, by his father's testimony, to strange company and violent
exercise. He had been of an age to feel the ruin of his parents, and to
resent their persecution. In childhood, with the consent of Cobham, and
of Cecil as Master of the Court of Wards, he was betrothed to Cobham's
ward, Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of wealthy William Basset, of
Blore. On the attainder the contract was broken. The girl was affianced
to Henry Howard, who died in September, 1616, a son of Lord Treasurer
Suffolk, formerly Lord Thomas Howard. Walter was born in 1593, and in
October, 1607, at fourteen, matriculated at Corpus College, Oxford. He
was described as, at this time, his father's exact image both in body
and mind. In 1610 he took his bachelor's degree. By 1613 he was living
in London. In April, 1615, according to a letter from Carew to Roe,
though other accounts variously give the date as 1614 or early in 1616,
he fought a duel with Robert Finett or Tyrwhit, a retainer of Suffolk's.
It was necessary for him to leave the country. Ralegh sent him to the
Netherlands, with letters of introduction to Prince Maurice. Ben Jonson
is said to have acted as his governor abroad. That is impossible at the
date, 1593, assigned by Aubrey to their association. It is not
impossible a year or two after 1613, if not in 1613, when Jonson appears
to have been in France. Poet and pupil are said to have parted 'not in
cold blood.' It is likely enough, if Drummond's tale be true, as Mr.
Dyce seems to believe, that Walter had Jonson carted dead drunk about a
foreign town. According to another not very plausible story, retailed by
Oldys, the exposure of the tutor's failing was at the Tower, and to
Ralegh, to whom Walter consigned Jonson in a clothes-basket carried by
two stout porters. Though the particular tales are hardly credible,
Jonson's revelries may have laid him open to lectures by the father, and
disrespect from the son, which would have something to do with the
dramatist's sneer at the memory of Ralegh, as one who 'esteemed more
fame than conscience.' At all events, Walter, now just twenty-three, was
back from the Continent in time to command his father's finely-built and
equipped flagship, the Destiny. He was as full of life as Edward
Hastings of disease, and as death-doomed.
[Sidenote: _Commission with Omissions._]
Ralegh was liberated expressly that he might work out his Guiana plans.
He was not pardoned. A royal commission was granted him in August, 1616.
He had understood that he was to have a commission under the Great Seal,
which would be addressed to him as 'trusty and well-beloved.' Actually,
though he and others often seem to have forgotten the difference, it was
under the Privy Seal, and he was described as plain 'Sir Walter Ralegh.'
The honorary epithets are known to have been inserted originally, and
afterwards erased. Similarly, in a warrant for the payment to him in
November, 1617, of the statutable bounty of 700 crowns for his
construction of the Destiny, an erasure precedes his name. The space it
covers would suffice for the expression, 'our well-beloved subject,'
usual in such grants. The withholding at any rate of a pardon excited
apprehensions. It was matter of common talk. Carew wrote to Roe on March
19, 1616, that Ralegh had left the Tower, and was to go to Guiana, but
'remains unpardoned until his return.' Merchants, it was stated,
required security, 'Sir Walter Ralegh being under the peril of the law,'
that they should enjoy the benefits of the expedition. His kinsmen and
friends, it was said, were willing to serve only 'if they might be
commanded by none but himself.' Their scruples had to be pacified by the
issue of an express licence to him to carry subjects of the King to the
south of America, and elsewhere within America, possessed and inhabited
by heathen and savage people, with shipping, weapons and ordnance. He
was authorised to keep gold, silver, and other goods which he should
bring back, the fifth part of the gold, silver, pearls, and precious
stones, with all customs due for any other goods, being truly paid to
the Crown. Further, his Majesty, of his most special grace, constituted
Ralegh sole commander, 'to punish, pardon, and rule according to such
orders as he shall establish in cases capital, criminal, and civil, and
to exercise martial law in as ample a manner as our lieutenant-general
by sea or land.' The commission did not contain the authority conferred
by Ralegh's old Guiana commission to subdue foreign lands. It too is
reported to have been originally inserted, and to have been struck out
by James.
[Sidenote: _Unpardoned._]
[Sidenote: _Advice from, and avowal to, Bacon._]
Ralegh must, like his friends and creditors, have been conscious of the
risk of sailing without a pardon. Carew Ralegh many years afterwards
asserted, that Sir William St. John agreed to procure one for him for
L1500 beyond the sum paid for his liberty. According to the
_Observations on Sanderson's History_, the benefit was offered by St.
John and Edward Villiers jointly, and for as little as L700. A right to
abandon the voyage if he pleased was to have been added. Bacon's name is
connected with the matter. Incidentally Bacon, who had been appointed
Lord Keeper on March 7, 1617, is known to have met Ralegh after his
release. He himself relates that he kept the Earl of Exeter waiting long
in his upper room as he 'continued upon occasion still walking in Gray's
Inn walks with Sir Walter Ralegh a good while.' On the authority of
Carew Ralegh, as quoted in a letter to the latter from James Howell in
the _Familiar Letters_, he is reported, possibly on this occasion, to
have persuaded Ralegh to save his money, and trust to the implication of
a pardon to be inferred from the royal commission. 'Money,' said the
Lord Keeper, 'is the knee-timber of your voyage. Spare your money in
this particular; for, upon my life, you have a sufficient pardon for all
that is past already, the King having under his Great Seal made you
Admiral, and given you power of martial law. Your commission is as good
a pardon for all former offences as the law of England can afford you.'
That is the view of so sound a constitutional lawyer as Hallam. His
reason for the contention is that a man attainted of treason is
incapable of exercising authority. But it can scarcely be argued as a
point of law, and it is difficult to believe that a Lord Keeper should
have volunteered a dogma of an absolute pardon by implication. Moreover,
though, as will hereafter be seen, Sir Julius Caesar, who was Master of
the Rolls, fell into the same mistake in 1618, the misdescription,
imputed to Bacon, of the Commission as under the Great Seal, of itself
casts doubt upon the anecdote. On the whole, there is no sufficient
cause for disputing the statement in the _Declaration_ of 1618, that
James deliberately, 'the better to contain Sir Walter Ralegh, and to
hold him upon his good behaviour, denied, though much sued unto for the
same, to grant him pardon for his former treasons.'
In the course of this or another conversation, Bacon, according to Sir
Thomas Wilson's note of a statement made to him by Ralegh himself,
inquired, 'What will you do, if, after all this expenditure, you miss of
the gold mine?' The reply was: 'We will look after the Plate Fleet, to
be sure.' 'But then,' remonstrated Bacon, 'You will be pirates!' 'Ah!'
Ralegh is alleged to have cried, 'who ever heard of men being pirates
for millions!' The Mexican fleet for 1618 is in fact computed to have
conveyed treasure to the amount of L2,545,454. It is scarcely credible
that Ralegh, though never distinguished for cautious speech, should have
been so intemperately rash. Such a confession to Bacon, known to be
Winwood's antagonist, who would rejoice to have ground for thwarting the
anti-Spanish party at Court, is particularly unlikely. Mr. Spedding
himself, while he believes it, regards Ralegh's reply as 'a playful
diversion of an inconvenient question.' As a serious statement the
saying is not the more authentic that it emanates from Wilson. Naturally
it has been accepted by writers for whom Ralegh is a mere buccaneer.
[Sidenote: _Count Gondomar._]
From the first it is evident that Spain and the Spanish faction at the
English Court laboured to place upon the expedition the construction
which Ralegh's apocryphal outburst to Bacon would warrant. Don Diego
Sarmiento de Acuna, the Ambassador of Spain, better known by the title,
not yet his, of Count Gondomar, was the mouthpiece of the view. He
offered, as Ralegh in his _Apology_ virtually admits, to procure a
safe-conduct for Ralegh to and from the mine, with liberty to bring home
any gold he should find. The condition he imposed was that the
expedition should be limited to one or two ships. The reason Ralegh gave
in his paper for declining the arrangement, was that he did not trust
sufficiently to the Ambassador's promises to go unarmed. In view of the
way Spaniards were in the habit of treating English visitors, he clearly
could not with prudence. At all events, for its refusal, if the offer
were ever made in a practicable shape, James and his Government are
obviously as responsible as he. They might, if they chose, have
withdrawn his commission if he rejected those terms. Gondomar was a good
Spaniard. He had a patriotic hatred for 'the old pirate bred under the
English virago, and by her fleshed in Spanish blood and ruin.' His
influence with James was boundless. He could 'pipe James asleep,' it was
said, 'with facetious words and gestures.' They were the more diverting
from their contrast with his lank, austere aspect. James had supreme
faith in his wisdom, to the extravagant extent, according to his own
incredible letter in 1622 from Madrid to the King, of having appointed
him a member '_non seulement de votre Conseil d'etat, mais du Cabinet
interieur_.'
[Sidenote: _Disclosures to the Spanish Ambassador._]
Above all, he held for or against England the key to a family pact with
the Escurial. At first he hoped to stop Ralegh's enterprise altogether.
So late as the middle of March, 1617, Chamberlain wrote to Carleton that
the Spanish Ambassador had 'well nigh overthrown it.' If he could not
nip the undertaking in the bud, he had means of stifling it by
misinterpreting to James Ralegh's motives, and by informing the Spanish
Court how to meet force with force. Ralegh was ordered to explain the
details of his scheme, and to lay down his route on a chart. According
to Carew Ralegh, whose information may be presumed to have been derived
from Lady Ralegh, James promised upon the word of a King to keep secret
these accounts of the programme. At any rate, Gondomar, by his familiar
access to the King, was enabled to study the whole, whatever its value.
He forwarded all particulars to Madrid. When the fleet had been surveyed
by the Admiralty, he had a copy of the official report. He sent it by
express to his Government, which despatched it with instructions to
America. Cottington, the English Agent at the Spanish Court, was
directed to promise that no harm should be done by Ralegh's voyage. The
King in his _Declaration_ of 1618 said he had taken 'order that he and
all those that went in his company should find good security to behave
themselves peaceably,' though the intention, the King lamented, was
frustrated by 'every one of the principals that were in the voyage
putting in security one for another.' There even was a story that the
Court had obliged Lords Arundel and Pembroke to engage solemnly for
Ralegh's return, that he might be rendered personally liable for any
wrong. The foundation for this report may have been that, late in March,
as the Destiny was about to sail from the Thames, James, alarmed at
Gondomar's prognostications of evil, retailed them to his Council.
Ralegh's supporters at the Board reassured him by affirmations of their
willingness to give security that no harm should be done to lands of the
King of Spain. James, several weeks earlier, at the end of January, had
solemnly promised Gondomar, through Winwood, that, though he had
determined to allow the voyage, if Ralegh acted in it in contravention
of his instructions, he should pay for his disobedience with his head.
[Sidenote: _Ralegh's preparations against Violence._]
[Sidenote: _The Comte des Marets._]
Ralegh and his friends knew of the care taken to guard Spanish interests
at his cost. He had told Carew, as Carew writes to Roe, that 'the alarm
of his journey had flown into Spain, and sea forces were prepared to lie
for him.' He was nothing appalled, since, as Carew was informed, he had
a good fleet, and would be able to land five or as many as seven hundred
men; 'which will be a competent army, the Spaniards, especially about
Orinoque, being so poorly planted.' Carew evidently, it will be seen,
assumed that Ralegh must expect violence, and might lawfully meet it in
kind. James and his Councillors assumed it also, till Ralegh came back
empty handed. He openly was arming to be a match in battle for the
Spaniards; and his party in the Council with equal earnestness tried to
balance the weight there of Spain by another influence. Mr. Secretary
Winwood wished in all ways to break with Spain. He urged Ralegh to
capture the Mexico fleet. In support of his policy he favoured an
intimate alliance with the chief rival Power. He introduced Ralegh to
the Comte des Marets, the French Ambassador. Des Marets is supposed to
have grown apprehensive of a sudden diversion of Ralegh's forces to an
attack on St. Valery in the interest of the Huguenots against the Queen
Mother. He was glad, therefore, of an opportunity of judging for himself
of Ralegh's views. They may already have had communication by letter.
French influence had been, it is thought, employed on Ralegh's behalf
while he was in the Tower. He had never ceased to maintain relations
with the Huguenots, and the French Court appreciated the importance in
certain circumstances of his services. The Spanish, Savoyard, and
Venetian Envoys had inspected his squadron. On March 15, 1617, the Count
too visited the Destiny. He reported the interview to Richelieu a few
days later. He soon satisfied himself that St. Valery was not
threatened. He told Ralegh that the French Court had sympathised with
him in his long and unjust imprisonment, and the confiscation of his
property. From another quarter he had heard, he wrote to Richelieu, that
Ralegh especially resented the gift of Sherborne to Sir John Digby, who
lately had returned from his Spanish mission. He gathered that Ralegh
was discontented with James, and with the Court policy. Ralegh expressed
his desire for more talk at a less inconvenient time and place.
Richelieu had recently described him to Marshal Concini as 'grand
marinier et mauvais capitaine'; but he was far from discouraging his
overtures. A subsequent interview was held, and described in a despatch
several weeks after the meeting. If the Count's memory did not, as Sir
Robert Schomburgk thinks, deceive him, Ralegh said: 'Seeing myself so
badly and tyrannically treated by my own Sovereign, I have made up my
mind, if God send me good success, to leave my country, and to make to
the King your master the first offer of what shall fall under my power.'
Doubtless there was just so much truth in the Count's report that a
profusion of compliments passed. Des Marets would express his
astonishment at the treatment Ralegh had experienced, and regret that
France had not enjoyed the happiness of possessing such a hero, and the
opportunity of rewarding him properly. Ralegh would respond in the same
key, and assure his French sympathiser that, if an occasion presented
itself, he was well inclined to serve the noblest Court in Europe. He is
not to be held responsible for the positive summary the Frenchman
dressed up of the conversation weeks after it had passed to show
Ralegh's effusiveness and his own caution. Des Marets himself did not at
the time treat the talk seriously. He said he replied that Ralegh could
betake himself to no quarter in which he would receive more of courtesy
or friendship. 'I thought it well,' wrote des Marets, 'to give him good
words, although I do not anticipate that his voyage will have much
fruit.'
[Sidenote: _Understanding with France._]
Before Ralegh left English waters he had further negotiations with
France. A Frenchman, Captain Faige, was his companion on the voyage,
which commenced March 28, 1617, from the Thames to Plymouth. By this man
he sent in May a letter to a M. de Bisseaux, a French Councillor of
State. He wrote that he had commissioned Faige to take ships to points
in the Indies agreed on between them. The intention was to meet Ralegh
at the mine which he counted upon working. Faige, he said, could explain
his plan. He asked for a patent, promised, he said, by Admiral de
Montmorency, which would empower him to enter a French port, 'avec tous
les ports, navires, equipages, et biens, par lui traites ou conquis.'
One Belle reported himself to Montmorency as Faige's associate. In that
character he obtained Ralegh's letter, and carried it with other papers,
and a map of Guiana, to Madrid. There he told the story in the May of
the following year. Ralegh's letter to Bisseaux in his handwriting has
been seen and copied at Simancas. If he ever received, as is inferred
from his admissions to the Royal Commissioners next year, and to Sir
Thomas Wilson, the warrant he asked, it was a permit from the French
Admiralty. It was not a commission from the French Crown, and, whatever
it was, James and his Ministers were parties to its grant.
[Sidenote: _Mystifications._]
The whole secret history of the preliminaries to the Guiana expedition
forms a tangled skein. The negotiations of Ralegh with France were
certainly known to Winwood, and, there can be little doubt, to James
also. Ralegh taxed the King by letter in October, 1618, with privity and
assent to the arrangement, through Faige, for the co-operation of French
ships against the Spaniards at the mouth of the Orinoko. He was not
contradicted. Winwood and his section of the Council in good faith
preferred a French to a Spanish compact. They did not shudder at the
contingency of war. James and the pro-Spanish party concurred for the
moment in the playing off of France against Spain, in order to push
Spain into the English alliance which they coveted. From the double
motive the Government in general encouraged Ralegh to treat with France.
That Spain might be frightened he was instigated to an intimacy with
French Ministers and plotters. Though he never received a regular French
commission, it was allowed to be supposed that one had been issued to
him. No French ships were fitted out to aid him, or despatched to the
coast of Guiana. Nothing, it may confidently be asserted, was ever
farther from his thoughts than the surrender of territory he might
appropriate to any foreign Crown. All simply was a game of mystification
devised for one purpose by Winwood, and, for a different purpose, joined
in by James and the rest. The Spanish faction wished to give Spain cause
to fancy its foe was being unchained to do his worst against it at his
own discretion, and by any agency he chose, unless it should come to
terms speedily. A condition of the game, which Ralegh but imperfectly
understood, was that it should be played at his especial peril. He was
suffered to concert measures with one foreign ally of England against
another, at the direct instance of a leading Minister, and with the
connivance of the King himself. The King was informed of the intrigue,
and knew as much as his indolence permitted of its various steps. He was
never obliged to know so much, or to betray such signs of knowing
anything, as not to be in a position on an exigency to disavow the
whole. This was his idea of state-craft.
The negotiation with the French Government was but one of the threads in
the skein. James and his advisers were in a frame of mind in which any
foreign adventure had a chance of securing their support. Ralegh, and
the popular excitement which had wafted him from a prison to an
Admiral's command, were pawns moved by the political speculators of the
Court for their own purposes. Wild rumours circulated of objects to
which the expedition was about really to be directed. The circumstances
of the expedition, the character of its chief, his sudden liberation,
and the trust reposed in him, were so extraordinary that all Europe was
disturbed. Though Continental thought may, as the greatest of modern
historians has said, have visited the memory of Ralegh since with an
indifference more bitter than censure or reproach, it was very far from
indifferent in 1617. At home cynics disbelieved the sincerity of Ralegh.
They ridiculed the notion that, after the iniquitous treatment he had
experienced, he would have the folly to come back. Friends apparently
were not entirely free from the suspicion that he might be induced, if
he failed, to shake the dust of an ungrateful kingdom off his feet. Lord
Arundel at parting earnestly dissuaded him from yielding to any
temptation to a self-banishment, which assuredly he never contemplated.
A solicitation of authority to carry Spanish prizes in certain
circumstances into French ports is no evidence that he contemplated a
change of allegiance. Reports that he had asked the licence may explain
why it occurred to Arundel or Pembroke to pledge him against such an use
of it.
[Sidenote: _Plot against Genoa._]
If acquaintances who felt how ill he had been treated feared he might be
beguiled into abjuring his ungrateful country, others deemed the
ostensible gold digging aim of the expedition too simple and bounded for
his subtle and lofty ambition. Leonello, the Secretary to the Venetian
Embassy, writing to the Council of Ten on January 19 and 26, and
February 3, 1617, described communications between Ralegh, Winwood, and
Count Scarnafissi, the Ambassador of Savoy. The Duke of Savoy was waging
a war with Spain, which ended in the following September. He would have
liked Ralegh to pounce upon Genoa, which was become almost a Spanish
port. The project was discussed by Scarnafissi with Winwood and Ralegh,
whom Winwood had introduced to him. It is said by Leonello to have been
divulged by Winwood to James. James at first was inclined to adopt it.
After a few days he recalled his assent. Probably he had given it partly
out of pique against the Spanish Court; and now Spain was resuming
negotiations for the marriage of the Infanta to Prince Charles. He was,
moreover, said Leonello, suspicious that Ralegh might not give him his
just share of the anticipated twenty millions of booty. The entire
business is not very intelligible. Leonello's three secret despatches
disinterred by Mr. Rawdon Brown are the main evidence of the project,
and of the degree of Ralegh's participation in it. An examination of
the Piedmontese Archives might shed clearer light on the scope and
reality of the obscure intrigue. Leonello himself offers no testimony
but admissions alleged to have been extorted by him from Scarnafissi. At
any rate if credence is to be given to the somewhat suspicious account,
the worst guilt for the contemplated piratical perfidy attaches to the
crowned accomplice. Sir Thomas Wilson wrote to James on October 4, 1618:
'Sir Walter Ralegh tells me Sir Ralph Winwood brought him acquainted
with the Ambassador of Savoy, with whom they consulted for the surprise
of Genoa, and that your Majesty was acquainted with the business, and
liked it well.' The King never denied the truth of the imputation. From
first to last the negotiations, the plots for and against, were, on the
side of the English, French, Spanish, and Savoyard Governments, a mere
shuffle of diplomatic cards. The one thing in real earnest was the
universal propensity to intrigue at Ralegh's expense. Everybody's hands
were to be left loose but his.
[Sidenote: _Strength of the Armament._]
The preparations for the expedition on the original basis were little
affected by the speculative projects for turning it to strange purposes.
The Destiny, Jason, Encounter, Thunder, Southampton, and the pinnace
Page had sailed from the Thames at the end of March, 1617. Fears of a
countermand were said to have hastened their departure. They carried
ninety gentlemen, a few soldiers, and 318 seamen, beside captains and
masters. There were also servants and assayers. The _Declaration_ of
1618 contends, truly or untruly, that no miners were embarked. If it
were so, it is strange that the omission should not have been remarked
in the West, of all regions. Four ships had been fitted for sea at
Plymouth by Sir John Ferne, Laurence Keymis, Wollaston, and Chudleigh.
Others arrived later. Want of money caused delay. Captain Pennington of
the Star was detained off the Isle of Wight for provisions. He had to
ride to London to redeem, with Lady Ralegh's help, his ship's bread. To
eke out Captain Whitney's resources, Ralegh sold much of his plate. He
raised L300 for Sir John Ferne. No checks, temptations, or expenses
daunted him. While he knew, as he wrote to Boyle, 'there was no middle
course but perish or prosper,' his idea steeled him against forebodings.
He felt inspired to accomplish a national enterprise. 'What fancy,' he
exclaimed later, 'could possess him thus to dispose of his whole
substance, and undertake such a toilsome and perilous voyage, now that
his constitution was impaired by such a long confinement, beside age
itself, sickness, and affliction, were not he assured thereby of doing
his prince service, bettering his country by commerce, and restoring his
family to its estates, all from the mines of Guiana!' The spectacle of
his confidence is among the most pathetic tragedies in history.