THE STANHOPE ESSAY 
 1897 
 
 SIR WALTEin?ALEGH 
 
 JOHN BUCHAN 
 
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• SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 THE STANHOPE ESSAY, 189'. 
 
 JOHN BUCHAN 
 
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SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 I. 
 
 There are certain characters apparent on the page of 
 history which at a first glance seem to be treated with scant 
 justice or with an extravagant kindhness. We find them 
 dismissed with a curt note, assigned to a very httle niche in 
 the house of fame, and branded as insignificant : in which 
 case we are left to wonder at the extraordinary and dispro- 
 portioned vitality of such reputations in the popular mind. 
 Or, again, it may happen that out of deference to fame they 
 are treated at immoderate length, till we feel the compara- 
 tive smallness of their actual achievement, when added to 
 the lengthy narration of their lives, to be something in the 
 nature of an anti-climax. 
 
 The endowment of popularity, whether or not it be 
 allied with true and lasting greatness, is always a difficult, 
 elusive quality to estimate. Some have it in the highest 
 degree; others not at all: and in any case mere popular 
 favour is not in itself a thing of paramount importance. 
 Influence upon national institutions, upon the mechanism 
 of legal and political administration, upon public life and 
 character — these are the proper gifts with which history 
 credits the great ; and it is clear that none of these, save the 
 last, has any necessary connexion with the kindly notoriety 
 given by tradition and story. Hence, in the case of those 
 
 A 2 
 
4 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 elect spirits whose gifts or fate have had something of that 
 dazzling romantic quality which leads captive a people's 
 heart, it must be the part of history to use especial dis- 
 crimination. It is the historian's duty to explain such fame 
 by the attributes of the man, but further to enumerate 
 dispassionately his achievements and form some estimate of 
 character apart from the gaudy popular portrait. And the 
 task is a hard one, for often the honest inquirer is compelled 
 to trample upon cherished ideals and do violence to honest 
 sentiment, since the prevailing power of truth is not so 
 confidently admitted as her greatness. He is happy who 
 can use critical research only to brighten the colours and 
 make the lines more brilliant, and at the end find his task 
 to have been the justification and not the challenging of the 
 people's verdict. 
 
 The case of Sir Walter Ralegh has been somewhat after 
 this order. "^His fate it has been to live as a memory in 
 English hearts, to have his name used as a synonym for 
 high-hearted valour, and to shine resplendent in many 
 monographs ; while in serious history he has either usurped 
 a major place by virtue of his reputation, or suffered the 
 neglect of one who has left few tangible results. His many 
 biographers have almost invariably fallen into the fatal trick 
 of eulogy, and the ordinary reader is still perplexed with 
 a gallery of contradictory portraits. - The fair scholarly 
 history of his life and deeds is yet to be written — a history 
 which should attempt to build up from the multitudinous 
 records of the time the vigorous, complex character of the 
 man. This pre-eminently is the proper field for the 
 psychologist of history, the lover of strange souls and 
 mingled motives; for we have groaned too long under 
 the affliction of those who would leave historical portraiture 
 to the mere romancer or crush a manifold personality into 
 the bounds of a narrow theory. But in these pages we set 
 before ourselves a more modest task. It were needless to 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 5 
 
 enter into the minutiae of evidence on which the narrative 
 is founded. The facts of his hfe have already been ascer- 
 tained with tolerable certainty by more competent scholars, 
 and there is little need for an amateur's vain repetition. 
 We would seek rather to sketch hi s charac ter roughly and 
 crudely, to trace the war of motive which at all times beset 
 him; to find, in short, in hh temper and talents some 
 explanation of the cruel circumstances of his fate. 
 
 II. 
 
 By the end of the sixteenth century the family of Ralegh 
 had held lands in the west of England for upwards of three 
 hundred years, and in Devonshire had won a position of 
 power among the gentry of the country-side. There were 
 several families of the name, all men of good repute, allied 
 to the Champernouns, the Carews, and the Gilberts, and 
 other houses of renown in the place. At the manor of 
 Hayes, near the town of Budleigh Salterton, lived Walter 
 Ralegh of Hayes and Fardell, who married as his third wife 
 Katherine Champernoun, the widow of Sir Otho Gilbert of 
 Compton. Of this union two sons were born, Carew and 
 Walter. 
 
 Of the father we hear little save that he suffered in the 
 Catholic rising^ in the west, and that he was forced by 
 straitened circumstances to sell one of the family manors. 
 But we can make a guess at the manner of upbringing which 
 the young Walter would share in. He came of a fighting 
 stock and a godly, so he would be trained in all martial 
 exercises and bred in the strict tenets of the Protestantism 
 of his time. But to one born in Devonshire there fell 
 a richer boyhood than to the rest of England. The rule of 
 Mary in its season fell less hardly there, and the accession 
 
 ^ Holinshed, Chronicles of England^ continued by Hooker, anno 
 1549. 
 
6 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 of Elizabeth soon brought the needful hope and liberty. 
 Religious ardour was subtly mixed with the desire of adven- 
 ture and the sea ; the land was full of tales — the distorted 
 traditions of an oppressed sect on the eve of freedom as 
 well as the legends of the marvellous ocean. Spain was 
 already a hated name ; but the stories of Spanish adventure 
 were the first which kindled the ardent spirits of the time. 
 Cortes still lived, and the tale of his deeds would be known 
 to many. Enghshmen themselves had made like voyages, 
 had seen like wonders, had shown like daring. Living not 
 far from the coast, he could scarcely fail to hear the sailor- 
 tales of the coastmen, who were the hardiest and stoutest of 
 their kind in the land. All such influences would make for 
 high spirit and large intentions, also for a certain bragga- 
 docio eagerness which we never find wholly absent from 
 Ralegh the man. 
 
 In what year he went to Oriel, when he left it, and how 
 long thereafter he remained in France, we have no certain 
 information. It is probable that the year 1567 first saw 
 him at Oxford, and that early in 1569 he left for the French 
 wars. We know few details of his university life. A stray 
 apophthegm of Bacon's^ makes him the author of a pointless 
 repartee; and Anthony Wood^ tells us that 'his natural 
 gifts being strangely advanced by academical learning, under 
 the care of an excellent tutor, he became the ornament of 
 the juniors, and was worthily esteemed a proficient in 
 Oratory and Philosophy.' It was necessary, indeed, that 
 one of Ralegh's vigorous and adaptable mind should make 
 something of a college reputation ; but it was impossible 
 that such a one could settle down to any academical groove 
 when the whole land was already in a ferment of military 
 zeal. To one of so many talents, learning must have 
 seemed but a little one of the joys of life, and many years 
 
 1 Bacon, Apophthegms^ LXVI. 
 * Athenae Oxomenses, ii. 235. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 7 
 
 had to elapse ere scholarship again claimed her own. Of 
 his French career, as far as authentic records go, we know 
 little more. It seems tolerably certain that he made one of 
 a troop which his kinsman Henry Champernoun raised 
 to assist the Huguenots. We know that he was present at 
 Moncontour, and that he possibly made one of the small 
 English band in Paris on the Eve of St. Bartholomew. 
 The reason for this lack of knowledge is to be traced to the 
 secret and illicit nature of such warfare, waged as it was 
 with the connivance, but against the public command of the 
 Queen. From Hakluyt we know with fair certainty the date 
 of his return, in 1576, when he had already reached his 
 twenty-fifth year. 
 
 The record of such a training is varied enough, and forms 
 something of an index to the versatility of his manhood. 
 A hardy boyhood, two years of quiet study, and then 
 a sudden immersion in the full tide of guerilla warfare, may 
 fairly leave their stamp upon character. In him they 
 doubtless developed that shrewdness in affairs, energy in 
 action, and wide knowledge of men which distinguished his 
 after career. The short years of his Oxford life may be 
 supposed to have laid the seeds of something still more 
 valuable to his successors — that varied learning and power 
 to write well and wisely which would alone have made his 
 name worthy of memory. 
 
 III. 
 
 With his return, we pass at once from guesswork to 
 a record of action based upon reliable authority. The Irish 
 campaigns may be considered the real beginning of his 
 career, since there for the first time an opportunity was 
 given for the full and independent exercise of his talents. 
 Ireland for long had been the corpus vile on which each 
 new statesman exercised his untried powers and the young 
 
8 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 soldier his prowess. Its condition was curious and unhappy. 
 A country of a thousand sects and clanships, it had origin- 
 ally been conquered only in name. The invaders had sunk 
 to the condition of the invaded ; Bourkes and Fitzgeralds 
 were in no way different from M'Carthies and O'Neills ; and 
 centuries of internal warfare ensued, unchecked by the 
 feeble rule of the Lord Deputy at Dublin. The various 
 measures of subjugation served only to increase the dis- 
 content. It was useless to legislate in one way for the 
 degenerate English and in another for the Irish chieftains, 
 when both were in the bonds of a common interest. Around 
 the coast there were many oases of peace and prosperity, 
 such as the eighth Earl of Desmond created at Youghal, 
 where a seat of learning existed and commerce flourished. 
 It is easy to paint the state of Ireland in colours too black 
 in order to heighten the expediency of the English remedy. 
 The country was no worse than any other land where 
 a strong clan system is more than a match for the central 
 power. But the fact was only too apparent to every thinking 
 Englishman of the time that, in its present condition, the 
 country lay open to Spanish intrigues and was a dangerous 
 neighbour to any nation. For the great evil there was but 
 one remedy. In some way or other it was necessary that 
 the strength of the great native houses should be broken 
 and the land made subservient to an English government. 
 Apart from the constitutional danger, the rule of the chiefs 
 was not seldom mere rapine and injustice. The conserva- 
 tive feeling of the most conservative nation in the world 
 made the poorer folk cling to the last to their oppressors : 
 but the feeling was no more than sentimental, and if peace 
 and justice were to exist in the land they could only be 
 found under the English power. 
 
 The only question on which opinion could divide was as 
 to the precise nature of this subjugation. Could such 
 a result be brought about gradually and peaceably with the 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH g 
 
 smallest use of military force, or was the swift sharp remedy 
 of extermination the only one possible ? At this later day 
 it is easy for us who have learned the lesson of the years to 
 decide at once for the former, and talk wisely of the 
 inevitable reaction which follows violence and the folly of 
 neglecting national spirit. But to the men of that time no 
 such considerations were present. They had before them 
 a great difficulty which clamoured for immediate and final 
 settlement ; time did not permit of fine theories or humane 
 experiments; the crisis needed a resolute and unflinching 
 hand. So argued the Greys, Spensers, and Raleghs ; so 
 also at a later date the Mountjoys, Carews, and Chichesters. 
 There was one further side to the question. Ireland was 
 a Roman Catholic country where it was not pagan; her 
 ablest men were priests; so there entered into the war 
 something of the bitterness of religious strife. The existence 
 of the CathoHc Church in the eyes of the English captains 
 was incompatible with the material prosperity of any land ; 
 so, if for no other reason than this, a war of extermination 
 must be waged. 
 
 In such a tempest of affairs Ralegh entered upon his 
 work. It seems probable, from various pieces of evidence, 
 that he was first engaged in a small sea-venture with 
 Sir Humphrey Gilbert \ and it may even be assumed that 
 he saw something of the war in the Netherlands. At any 
 rate, we find him in Cork in the February of 1580, with 
 a small band of well-trained soldiers, chiefly from his native 
 Devonshire. Two years later Captain Appesley's band fell 
 to him, but at no time was his force large. The English 
 of that day, as Ralegh ^ himself is careful to explain, owed 
 their easy victories over huge Irish hordes to their superior 
 arms and lusty condition. 
 
 * Register Book of the Privy Council: Elizabeth, vol. iv. 
 ^ ' Discourse touching a War with Spain/ Works, vol. viii. pp. 304, 
 305. 
 
lO SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 '^ On the many details of his campaigns it is unnecessary to 
 enter. We hear of his presence at the condemnation of 
 James Earl of Desmond. At Rakele he laid an ambush 
 and won a moderate victory, and shortly after we find him 
 remonstrating with Lord Grey himself on certain errors of 
 policy. He was high in favour with the Deputy and 
 Council at Dublin, and was given a free hand in his work. 
 We hear of extraordinary gallantry shown at a ford between 
 Youghal and Cork, when, in the face of an Irish force, he 
 risked his life to save a soldier, fighting with pistol and 
 quarter-staff, one against twenty. But the two incidents in 
 his career which stand out most strongly are his capture of 
 Lord Roche and his share in the slaughter at Smerwick. 
 In the first, he boldly surprised the rebel lord in his house 
 of Bally, arrested him, and, in spite of the continuous hostile 
 ambuscades, succeeded in conveying his prisoner to Lord 
 Ormond's camp. The act was brilliant in plan and execu- 
 tion, but into it, as into all his Irish exploits, there enters 
 a tinge of treachery and false faith. The second has given 
 rise to endless defences and diatribes, all agreeing in con- 
 demning the details, but many defending the policy. The 
 fort of Smerwick was besieged by Grey on land and 
 Sir William Winter on sea. After two summonses to sur- 
 render, on the third day ' Captain Ralegh and Captain 
 M'Worth entered into the castle and made a great slaugh- 
 ter,' in spite of the fact that the rebels hung out a white 
 flag and cried for mercy. Six hundred at least — men, 
 women, and children — were slain, stripped, and laid out 
 upon the sands \ 
 
 It is very easy to condemn such an act unsparingly, and 
 let humanitarian considerations play havoc with fact. The 
 deed was no unconsidered butchery, but the result of 
 a definite poHcy of annihilation, adopted in some degree 
 
 ^ Hooker's Supple7nent to Holinshed. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH II 
 
 by all the captains then in the Irish service. Again, very 
 many of the massacred were the offscourings of Italian 
 prisons, liberated by the Pope expressly to serve in the 
 Irish wars. It was hardly to be expected that much mercy 
 should be shown to these. Yet the fact of its unspeakable 
 cold-blooded cruelty remains, and we may safely discredit 
 Camden's story of Grey's tears and Elizabeth's sighs and 
 regrets. Two letters from the Queen herself are preserved 
 among the State Papers, in the first of which she calls the 
 deed 'this so acceptable a service to us,' and in the second 
 describes it as 'the great good services done us chiefly in 
 the late exployt against the strayngers that had invaded 
 the realms, for the which we do carrye a thanckfull 
 remembraunce \' 
 
 Ralegh's share in the matter is less worthy of considera- 
 tion than his relation to the policy of which this was an 
 outcome. It is necessary to examine the view which he 
 took of the condition of the land and its possible remedy, 
 for on this must rest in part our view of his character. 
 What the current policy was we have already stated. The 
 Irish clan-system must be broken at any cost, the people 
 must be wholly brought under subjection, and the land 
 must fall into the hands of Englishmen and native lords of 
 approved loyalty, with the native population, greatly reduced 
 in number, working as labourers under severe disabilities. 
 To attain this lofty end all means were permissible — whole- 
 sale butchery, assassination, and treachery. Such practices 
 were sanctioned by the Queen and carried on by the Lord 
 Deputy himself. The O'Neills and Desmonds were plotted 
 against with the utmost pertinacity by successive captains. 
 It is certain from existing correspondence that Elizabeth 
 was aware of such attempts and still continued the Greys 
 and Sussexes in office. Cecil, as may be inferred from 
 
 ^ Sir J. Pope-Hennessy's Ralegh in Ireland, Appendix, pp. 214, 
 215. 
 
12 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 a letter of Ralegh's, looked askance at the state of affairs, 
 and it is clear that Burghley disapproved. ' The Flemings,' 
 he wrote to Sir Henry Wallop, ' had not such cause to rebel 
 against the oppression of the Spaniards as the Irish against 
 the tyranny of England \' He directed that confiscated 
 lands should be given not to persons, but to offices. He 
 saw the result which must follow from this criminally foolish 
 policy of murder and fraud ; but he was almost alone in his 
 time, and all his efforts were met and counteracted by Irish 
 officials. Nor was the feeling of the English nation at the 
 time otherwise than in favour of this regime of * Thorough,' 
 for Ireland was still too little known and too much suspected 
 to be an object for interest or pity. 
 
 In all this we know that Ralegh played an active part. 
 His feelings in the matter differed in no way from those of 
 the hundreds of English gentlemen who learned their trade 
 in those desultory wars. We might indeed suppose that his 
 action was only a soldier's obedience to orders, did we not 
 know that his hand was practically free. There remain, 
 too, some letters in which he gives an explicit account of 
 his pohcy. One to Sir Robert Cecil is a defence of the 
 practice of assassination. ' It can be no disgrace,' writes 
 this model of chivalry, ' if it were known that the killinge of 
 a rebel were practised ; for you see that the lives of anoynted 
 princes are daylye sought, and we have always in Ireland 
 geven head money for the killinge of rebels who ar ever- 
 more proclaymed at a price.' Again, he writes to Sir 
 Francis Walsingham ^, complaining bitterly of the unneces- 
 sary mildness of Ormond's rule. 'I would to God,' he 
 cries, ' that he looked more to the service of Sir Humphrey 
 Gilbert.' What the service of Sir Humphrey was we may 
 learn from a letter of his own to Sir Henry Sidney : ' After 
 my first summoning of a castle or fort, if they would not 
 
 ^ Fronde, History of England, x. p. 64. 
 
 2 Irish Correspondence : Elizabeth, vol. Ixxx. § 82. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 13 
 
 presently yield it, I would not thereafter take it of their 
 gift, but won it perforce — how many lives soever it cost; 
 putting man, woman, and child of them to the sword.' 
 
 From this two questions arise, which we may find it hard 
 to answer : — How could a man of Ralegh's stamp go through 
 such a catalogue of horrors without leaving us one hint of 
 sympathy with the distressed or compunction at the use 
 of such a method ; and how came it that one who in after 
 years was wise poHtically beyond most of his generation 
 should have given countenance to so ruinous a policy? 
 From his subsequent history we can learn something of 
 a sensitiveness bordering on the sentimental, and a tender- 
 ness of heart unusual to a man of his life. How comes it 
 then that the note of sorrow which rings through Spenser's 
 Sfafe of Ireland, when the tale is told of the thin, white 
 faces of the peasants, dying for lack of food, looking with 
 blind eyes on the places which had once been their home 
 — how comes it that all this is absent from Ralegh's schemes 
 and letters? Again, how does it happen that one who 
 showed in most things such far-sighted wisdom, who in 
 time to come wrote down political maxims whose truth we 
 still acknowledge, gave his sanction, aye, and his best ener- 
 gies, to the depopulation of Irish land, and the repeopling 
 with EngHsh settlers ? In some of the details even of his 
 Irish labours he showed good sense and penetration. In 
 a memorandum of Lord Burghley's Ralegh's opinions on 
 the forces to be kept in Munster ^ are noted, in which he 
 argues for the necessity of winning over some of the minor 
 Irish chieftains, and gives his reasons with admirable shrewd- 
 ness. How then is his Irish career, in spite of its brilliance 
 and gallantry, one long and dismal error ? 
 
 We can give but one answer to the question. When 
 a man in whom humane sentiment runs high forswears his 
 
 ^ Hennessy, Ralegh in Ireland, Appendix xvi. 
 
14 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 gods and shuts off his pity, when a rational and far-seeing 
 pohtician lends himself to a policy the most short-sighted 
 and futile, we can only attribute it to the expulsive power of 
 a stronger interest. The temper of the soldiers and adven- 
 turers, Ralegh among the rest, who have given so great 
 a glory to the age of Elizabeth, was fine gold compounded 
 with much clay. Scarcely one of their more absorbing 
 motives was wholly pure. In all there was a nervous desire 
 to attain honour, wealth, and power, a lust of adventure 
 and excitement, a hatred of slow monotonous toil, a passion 
 for the sw^ift, glittering methods of success. We can con- 
 ceive Ralegh as not at first without his scruples, moral and 
 intellectual. But all were soon choked by his triumphant 
 egotism. The way to success lay in bold unscrupulousness, 
 and this way had the sanction of all. Conscious of great 
 powers and fierce energies, he flung himself forthwith into 
 the struggle for name and wealth, and came out victorious. 
 Fame he got, and wealth which he was not destined to 
 enjoy long. Before passing from these years of Irish life, 
 their remain for consideration Ralegh's commercial schemes 
 and territorial acquisitions. 
 
 We find him in 1581 writing to Sir Francis Walsingham 
 and asking for the estate of Barry's Court at Queenstown, 
 which from its nearness to the sea was especially pleasant 
 to one who was no less sailor than soldier. On the Black- 
 water he had no less than forty-two thousand acres of richly 
 wooded country, so that he was already a proprietor of some 
 importance. To these estates he brought his Devonshire 
 farmers, and the band of Englishmen set themselves patiently 
 to the task of cultivating the neglected land. The Irishry 
 w^ere pressed into the service first by promises and then by 
 threats. But with it all we find incessant complaints in 
 Ralegh's letters of the hardships of his task, the obstinacy 
 of the peasants, and the folly of the Government at Dublin 
 Castle. The land question was as perplexing a problem to 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 15 
 
 Ralegh as to his late successors, and we read of his many 
 schemes for amelioration with a feeling of the pathetic hope- 
 lessness of it all. He failed grievously, as all must fail who 
 seek to rule a people of which they are ignorant by force of 
 the sword. 
 
 Indeed, through the whole history of his life as an Irish 
 landowner there runs a very ugly thread of desire for wealth. 
 We do not find him hesitating to share in the spoils of the 
 Geraldine College at Youghal, though to a man of his liberal 
 culture we might have assumed that letters would appear 
 above the reach of military oppression. Again, he did not 
 scruple to follow the disastrous English custom of cutting 
 down the fine Irish woods to serve his own purposes. 
 George Longe^ in 1588, asked Lord Burghley to transfer 
 thirteen English glass manufactories to Ireland, that the 
 Irish woods, ' the harbour of the rebels,' might be put to 
 some use. But Ralegh has no other aim than money- 
 making. He brought over English woodcutters, obtained 
 a monopoly for exporting wine-staves abroad, and furnished 
 hogsheads for the export to England of French, Spanish, 
 and Italian wines. The scheme was not uniformly pros- 
 perous. We find in many subsequent letters and papers, 
 notes of lawsuits, petitions, and quarrels with the Govern- 
 ment. But the whole affair is significant of the active 
 spirit which gave it birth, as well as the singular commercial 
 and utilitarian strain in a character otherwise tending to the 
 quixotic. 
 
 But meantime his affairs prospered in another quarter, 
 and preparations were being made for his entrance into 
 a very different life. We can see from the published cor- 
 respondence of the time how his influence with the Queen 
 had grown during these years. In a letter of 1582 to the 
 Lord Deputy she specially mentions him. In 1587 he is 
 'our well-bdoved Sir Walter Rawley.' He is placed first 
 ^ Hlis, Original Letters^ iii. p. 159. 
 
l6 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 in the list of Irish captains, and served as one of the six 
 in the Royal Commission against Tyrone \ Naunton has 
 a story that it was owing to a dispute with Lord Grey 
 before the Queen and Council that Elizabeth's attention 
 was first drawn to the young soldier; but whether or not 
 we accept this it seems clear that toward the end of his 
 service he had risen high in favour. We find a new cap- 
 tain's commission made out for him in the April of 1582, 
 but it seems probable that when he left Cork with the Lord 
 Deputy's dispatches in December, 1581, he closed his Irish 
 service. He returned to England with something of a 
 reputation and good recommendations at Court, which, with 
 a handsome presence and pleasing discourse, were destined 
 to carry him far. He never again returned to the country 
 in an official capacity, and in 1602 he sold almost all his 
 Irish estate to Richard Boyle, afterwards Earl of Cork. But 
 his advice was sought on Irish questions, and we find 
 him, still true to his old maxim of * Thorough/ vigorously 
 opposing the gentler policy of Essex. 
 
 IV. 
 
 We have already seen in some measure the character of 
 Ralegh at this new turn in the tide of his fortunes. A man 
 of unshaken self-confidence, bold, hardy, and in the main 
 self-seeking, he was possessed of a capacity for influencing 
 men and gifts of mind far in advance of the majority of his 
 rivals. Even his faults were brilliant — his impatience, his 
 love of the bizarre and coloured in life, his extravagance, 
 his intolerance of mediocrity. Leicester was the leading 
 figure of the time at Court, and Ralegh soon became 
 associated with him as a claimant . for the Queen's favour. 
 It is probable that the two had already met in France ; at. 
 
 * Hennessy, Ralegh in Irelatid, pp. 31, 32. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH I7 
 
 any rate no violent enmity ever arose between them, 
 however much their partisans may have bickered among 
 themselves. The Queen's affection was wide enough to 
 admit of two. 
 
 It is needless to enter at length into the string of brilliant 
 exaggerations which with Elizabeth did duty for character. 
 It is easy to recognize her uncommon ability, and to form 
 a tolerably accurate conception of her passionate temper, 
 her violence in love and hatred, her liking for dramatic 
 effect, her mania for the gorgeous, her woman's petulance 
 fighting ever with a more than statesmanlike sagacity. 
 Her Court was a place of tournaments and shows, a house 
 of wit and brave display. We can well understand how 
 this would fall in with the tastes of the young soldier fresh 
 from moorland wars ; how his handsome face and port, 
 joined to his growing fame, would soon win for him first 
 notice, then admission to the inner circle of the palace, and 
 finally more substantial tokens of favour. The tincture of 
 letters which pervaded the Royal society would give 
 a further opportunity to one who, like Ralegh, was always 
 a scholar and friend of scholars. 
 
 We have an accurate record of the growth of his fortunes 
 in the list of grants enumerated in the Do77iestic Corre- 
 spondence. He had various licences to export broadcloth, 
 from which the profits, as calculated by Burghley, were very 
 high^ He had a grant of the 'Farm of Wines,' and the 
 consequent power of granting licences. These gifts were 
 not unattended with trouble, but there is no doubt about 
 the size of the resulting income. In 1585 he was made 
 Lord Warden of the Stannaries in succession to the Earl of 
 Bedford; in the same year Lieutenant of Cornwall, and 
 soon afterwards Vice-Admiral of Cornwall and Devon. 
 In 1587 he became Captain of the Queen's Guard, a post 
 in which his passion for display would have full vent. 
 ^ Domestic Correspondence : Elizabeth, vol. ccxxix. § loi. 
 B 
 
1 8 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 Finally, on the discovery of Babington's conspiracy he was 
 gifted with nearly all the forfeited property, and became 
 a large landowner in several counties. Times were indeed 
 changed with one who a little before had been toiling in 
 the bogs of Munster. 
 
 It is unnecessary to linger long over the history of these 
 years. It is the history of multifarious duties well performed, 
 for Ralegh could ' toil ' both ' terribly ' and to good purpose, 
 of difficulties surmounted, of dazzling leaps into high place. 
 But the man is not at his best. His great powers of body 
 and mind needed fuller vent than the narrow round of 
 Court ceremonial could afford. With all his faults we feel 
 that if he could not be a great statesman, he was too much 
 of the man to sink into the mere courtier. But two 
 incidents deserve notice ere we turn to more stirring years. 
 One is the rise of the young Lord Essex, and the beginning 
 of the long game which was to end so disastrously. The 
 other is the visit of the little Lady Arabella Stuart to Court 
 as a child of twelve, when she met Ralegh at supper and 
 the names of the two were coupled in jest by her uncle, 
 Sir Charles Cavendish. Years after the same conjunction 
 was to bring forth dismal fruits for both. 
 
 Two causes led to the maritime exploits which make so 
 large a feature in Ralegh's history. One was his unconquer- 
 able hatred of Spain, bred in his bone as a boy in 
 Devonshire, fostered by sailor-tales and the French wars, 
 kindled fiercer by the facts of the Munster rebellion and the 
 difficulties of his Irish policy. But it was more than a local 
 prejudice or a dislike founded on the accidents of fortune ; 
 it was a firm, well-grounded belief that the interests of the 
 Spanish nation and of his own were eternally at variance, 
 that the Great Monarch represented all that was most 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 1 9 
 
 opposed to that intellectual, religious, and civil freedom 
 which was dear to his heart. The other was his belief in 
 colonization as a national policy. No man of his ardent 
 nature could fail to be roused to enthusiasm by the voyages 
 of the Gilberts and the Drakes to the West. The dream of 
 a great country beyond the sea, peopled with the English 
 race, an offshoot and ally of England, was ever before him. 
 He had already made some trial of colonizing schemes on 
 his land in Ireland, but there they had failed from opposi- 
 tion which could not be met with in that newer world. It 
 does credit to his statesmanship that his dreams of conquest 
 were always based on colonization. Order, government, 
 participation in some greater whole, were the things he 
 sought in his Utopias. 
 
 It is remarkable that his period of naval activity should 
 be so closely associated with the luxury of his Court life. 
 It seems to point to the craving of some part of his nature 
 which found no satisfaction in pageant and diplomacy. 
 He had always something of that love of the free face of 
 heaven, the salt wind, and the fierce delight of action, which 
 is the glory of his race. Over him and his like the old 
 glamour of the ' swan's path ' had fallen in all its power. 
 He and men of his kind at the very height of achievement 
 in other spheres seem always weary for the sting of wind 
 and rain and the ecstasy of motion. And for them in their 
 toils there was a richer hope than for others of the craft in 
 later times. For the world was not yet shorn and parcelled ; 
 treasure might still be looked for, portents awaited, and the 
 white harbour-wall of the Devon town was the boundary of 
 the unknown. 
 
 Sir Humphrey Gilbert had obtained a royal charter in the 
 year 1578, licensing him to 'hereafter discover such remote 
 heathen and barbarous lands not actually possessed of any 
 Christian prince or people.' Ralegh was eager to join his 
 half-brother, but was prevented by the Council, now grown 
 
 B 2 
 
20 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 timid over ceaseless Spanish complaints. To the expense 
 of that last and memorable expedition, which cost its gallant 
 leader his life, he advanced £2,000. As soon as the tragic 
 result was known in England, Ralegh assumed command, 
 and obtained a new charter from the Queen, ' admitting him 
 to the College of the Fellowship of the North-West Passage.' 
 The direct outcome of the undertaking was the discovery 
 and attempted colonization of the land to which he gave 
 the name of Virginia, he himself, as the seal of his arms 
 relates^ being dominus et gubernator Virginiae. He laboured 
 incessantly on behalf of the new colony, sending out 
 a fleet of seven sail under Sir Richard Grenville, with 
 a hundred householders on board to form the nucleus of 
 the new state. A series of mischances all but nipped the 
 undertaking in the bud. All the first crew soon fell sick of 
 their task and were taken by Sir Francis Drake to England. 
 Their successors quarrelled among themselves, and fell easy 
 victims to the native arrows. From 1587 to 1602 it seems 
 probable that Ralegh fitted out five separate expeditions 
 entirely at his own expense. At one time his hopes fell so 
 low that he leased out his patent to a merchant company in 
 the hope that public credit might succeed where private 
 resources failed. In every vicissitude of his own fortunes 
 he kept his interest fresh in the struggling colony oversea. 
 ' I shall yet live to see it in an English nation,' was ever his 
 comforting watchword. 
 
 In all this there is a minghng of motives. It is unlikely 
 that the graver considerations on the subject of such 
 enterprises, which he afterwards entertained in his enforced 
 retirement at Sherborne, were present in those early 
 experiments. He was not yet fired with the great dream of 
 an English America wider than any Spanish possessions, of 
 England as the protectress of the native races, leading them 
 upward to civilization and law. With that curious note of 
 political sagacity which was never quite absent from his 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 21 
 
 speculations, he regarded the lands as the home of peoples 
 and not the common ground of plunder. Nay, he went 
 further; he saw England enriched and strengthened by 
 such allies, righting the wrongs of Europe and leading the 
 van of the nations of the earth. But now his motive was 
 probably more personal and boyish. He was still in the 
 flush of young enthusiasm when a man's vanity prompts 
 him to admit of no obstacles in his course. The love for 
 display, for the rhetorical in word and design, had much 
 sway over his heart. It pleased him to think of himself 
 as not only the successful soldier and the accomplished 
 courtier, but as a pioneer in unknown places, a founder of 
 nations, at once a lawgiver and a captain. Yet we may 
 admit some such feeling to be the ruling motive and not 
 discredit others. The plain physical love of the sea and 
 the open air went for much; and there are not wanting 
 hints of that genuine love of country and his country's 
 greatness which redeems all, and that power of sound 
 political thinking, which was only prevented by his 
 subsequent misfortunes from realization in action. 
 
 The other side of his naval activity is to be found in his 
 hostility towards Spain, his share in the Armada, and his 
 subsequent buccaneering reprisals. His hatred of Spanish 
 claims may be traced to his Devon ancestry and up- 
 bringing, and to those qualities in his nature which at all 
 times were the most prominent — a love of liberty and 
 a vigorous enlightened nation of freemen. Through all the 
 intrigues and counter-intrigues which marked the early reign 
 of Elizabeth's successor, he preserved the same uncompro- 
 mising aversion to anything which savoured of Spain. In 
 the two Discourses on the Marriage of Prince Henry \ which 
 he wrote in the Tower, we find his scorn poured on the class 
 which with some felicity he called ^ Englishmen Hispaniol- 
 ized.' And this dislike^ as we have said, had more in it 
 * IVorks, vol. viii. (Oxford ed.) p. 236. 
 
22 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 than mere prejudice or natural antipathy. At the root 
 of all his political theories lay the conviction, based on 
 rational grounds, that if England were to maintain her 
 place and enlarge her coasts it must be in the teeth of 
 Spanish resistance. We need not inquire too closely into 
 the question whether or not such a belief has had historical 
 justification. Many new factors were to come to light 
 after Ralegh's day had passed, which gave the matter 
 another aspect. But it is certain that his view was shared 
 by some of the wisest of his time, and, starting from 
 the facts which were known to him, it seems the only 
 possible. 
 
 As soon as the news of the Armada came to him, Ralegh 
 hastened with what speed he might to Devon and Cornwall, 
 made considerable levies, and, as governor, increased the 
 fortifications of Portland Island. It was not till July 23 
 that he joined the fleet— two days after the actual 
 commencement of the fight. Of Ralegh's part in it we 
 know little more than that in popular belief he was well to 
 the front ^, and is credited with having advised the admiral. 
 Lord Howard, to refrain from the folly of grappling. At 
 any rate he has left us a record of his detestation of the 
 practice, and as an instance where its use would have been 
 fatal he cites this very scene ^. We are not yet in possession 
 of a full account of the reprisals which followed, but we can 
 make a tolerable estimate of the part Ralegh played. He 
 fitted out several ships and sent them to sea; they did 
 havoc among all and sundry ; and the result is that we find 
 many suits in the Admiralty Courts on the subject of these 
 
 ^ I have followed the ordinary tradition in ascribing to Ralegh 
 a share in the Armada's defeat, but the only apparent authority is the 
 extremely doubtful ' Copie of a letter sent out of England to Don 
 Bemardin Mendoza, 1588,' where the obvious mistake is made of 
 attributing a like share to Cecil. 
 
 2 Hist, of World, v. chap. i. § 6. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 23 
 
 expeditions \ He also bore a part in Drake's fruitless 
 voyage to Portugal, but it is unlikely that he had any say 
 in the management. In various enterprises he had money 
 embarked, and we find records of sums paid to him for the 
 sale of prizes. In all this there is something of the money- 
 lover, something of the pure soldier, and something of the 
 courtier. He seeks to add to his fortune, but he has always 
 his glance on the Queen, and his mind is constantly on the 
 figure he makes in that critical eye. But he has also 
 something of the ready pleasure in mere action, tempered 
 with gleams of insight and fragments of political projects. 
 At this juncture, in short, he is still the man of varied and 
 distinguished talents, who has raised himself to prominence, 
 but has not yet found an absorbing activity. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The next years of his life are filled with a record of 
 quarrels with the Queen, of labours undertaken in the 
 teeth of difficulties, and of the growth of his rivalry with 
 the young Earl of Essex. In 1589 we find him from no 
 apparent cause retiring to Ireland and living with Spenser 
 at Kilcolman. Colin Clout ^s come home again was the 
 result, and we know not what effect this short stay had on 
 the production of the slender stock of poetry which the 
 ' Shepherd of the Ocean ' has left us. We know that he 
 gave the poet much help and encouragement in the writing 
 of the Faerie Queejte, and on his return won something of 
 royal favour for its author. Soon we find Ralegh again at 
 Court, extending a hand of help to the Puritan Udall, and 
 sharing the protectorate of that party with Essex, who is 
 supposed by many to have been the cause of his previous 
 
 * Edwards' Ralegh, vol. ii. pp. 55 sqq. Register of the Privy Council: 
 Elizabeth^ vol. viii. Part I. p. 212, also vol. xi. pp. 57, 70, 71. 
 
24 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 retirement. In all the history of those early relations 
 between the two favourites there is something unintelligible. 
 At one moment they are at drawn daggers, engaged to fight 
 a mortal duel, at the next they are coadjutors in some 
 scheme or companions in misfortune. 
 
 The latter was soon to be the fate of both, for in 1592 
 Ralegh by his marriage with Ehzabeth Throgmorton roused 
 the same wrath in the Queen which Essex had stirred up 
 two years before by his marriage with Frances Walsingham. 
 The lady was a maid of honour, and her seduction, and still 
 more her marriage, roused Elizabeth's deepest resentment. 
 The breach of the special royal virtue in the maid seemed 
 almost a slur upon the Queen ; and the resulting marriage 
 was doubly bitter to one who loved the presence of hand- 
 some young men with unmaidenly ardour. The character 
 of Lady Ralegh is one of the most attractive in the whole 
 history of the times. A strong, brave woman, full of honesty 
 and good sense, endowed with a fair face and a valiant 
 temper, she was at all times a fitting companion to her 
 husband ; and her courage and gentleness shone forth the 
 more brightly in the darkest hour of his fortunes. ' I chose 
 you and I loved you in my happiest times,' wrote Ralegh 
 long afterwards, and rarely has choice been more justified 
 or love better deserved. 
 
 The result of the affair was his instant dismissal from 
 favour and imprisonment in the Tower. At no time did he 
 appear to less advantage. The strain of rhetoric, which 
 was never far absent from his nature, led him into wild 
 extravaganzas. He fought with his keepers and bemoaned 
 himself to the grim Sir Robert Cecil. ' I, that was wont to 
 behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, 
 walking like Venus ; the gentle air blow^ing her fair hair 
 about her pure cheeks like a nymph ; sometime, sitting in 
 the shade like a goddess ; sometime, singing like an angel ; 
 sometime, playing like Orpheus. All these times past — the 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 25 
 
 loves, the sighs, the sorrows, the desires.' But no dithy- 
 rambics could relax the frown of the stony-hearted goddess ; 
 and we have the unedifying spectacle of this gentleman and 
 scholar descending into the lackadaisical clown. 
 
 His solitary meditations were first broken in upon by the 
 royal command to go down to Dartmouth to assist in the 
 division of the Spanish spoils. An expedition under 
 Lord Thomas Howard and Ralegh had been planned in 
 1 59 1, but on account of the pressure of his Warden's work, 
 Ralegh had to send Sir Richard Grenville in his stead. 
 The result was the Thermopylae of our English history, 
 w^hen Grenville in his own ship the Revenge kept fifteen 
 Spanish ships at bay for fifteen hours, and fell himself with 
 words on his lips like a Viking's war-song. In the greater 
 expedition of 1592 Ralegh was prohibited by the Queen's 
 express command from sharing to the full ; the reason at 
 first probably being mere anxiety for a favourite, and then 
 anger at his offence. But he had sufficient share in the 
 matter to make the attempt a brilliant success. The 
 Madre de Dios^ one of the greatest of the Indian galleons, 
 was taken, and, w^ith her, treasures that surpassed all hopes. 
 England w^as flooded with foreign money and foreign goods, 
 and Sir Robert Cecil, with his family love of the lion's share, 
 rode post haste to the west to superintend the distribution. 
 
 In all this Ralegh was incapacitated from benefiting by 
 the ban of the Queen's displeasure. He naturally grew 
 restive at the silly caprice which deprived the nation of the 
 services of the one man most fitted to rule in the matter. 
 Nor were his sailors in a better frame of mind at the 
 reported disgrace of their captain. It soon became evident 
 that there could be no settlement till Ralegh was summoned 
 to help. Accordingly Lord Burghley obtained permission 
 for his journey to the west with a keeper as befitted a 
 prisoner of state. Few things show better the affection 
 which the man's personality could inspire than the letter 
 
26 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 of Sir Robert Cecil's which tells of the welcome Ralegh 
 received. 'I assure you, Sir, his poor servants to the 
 number of a hundred and forty goodly men, and all the 
 mariners, came to him with such shouts and joy, as I never 
 saw a man more troubled to quell them in my life. But 
 his heart is broken ; for he is very extreme pensive longer 
 than he is busied, in which he can toil terribly ^.' 
 
 The sharing of the spoils was another drop in the cup 
 of Ralegh's grievances. The Queen's greed made the 
 division extremely unequal, and to the poor projectors of 
 the enterprise there fell a very small share indeed. Lord 
 Cumberland made £17,000 of profit on his venture; Ralegh, 
 to whom the success was owing, who bore the toils and 
 burden of it all, was considerably the loser. His money 
 losses may not command our sympathy, for as he had risen 
 to affluence by royal favour, so also he might look to fall. 
 But the circumstances of his imprisonment and the galling 
 hindrances set in the way of his free action at a time when 
 he was most eager to serve his country, had something in 
 them peculiarly irksome to his restless mind. His anti- 
 Spanish policy may have been little better than free piracy, 
 but at any rate we can understand his feelings at its 
 frustration. 
 
 There is no precise information on the date of his release 
 from imprisonment; but we find him early in 1593 in 
 retirement at the manor of Sherborne in Dorset. Freedom 
 from confinement did not bring with it a return of the royal 
 graciousness, and for some years he was practically an exile 
 from the Court. Of the way in which he spent his time 
 of leisure we have some information, and can guess the rest. 
 The mere delights of country life occupied him much, and 
 to the aforetime man of many toils the pleasant woods 
 and gardens were a haven of content. He busied himself 
 with building and planting after the regal fashion of the 
 
 ' Domestic Correspondence : Elizabeth^ September, 1593. 
 
SIR IF ALTER RALEGH 27 
 
 courtier in retirement, and made the place dear to him with 
 a thousand devices and improvements of his own. Perhaps 
 he returned to his early love of poetry, and 
 
 ' took in hand 
 The pipe— before that emuled of many — 
 And played thereon (for well that skill he conned); 
 Himself as skilful in the art as any.' 
 
 Of one pursuit we know from after results. The records 
 of the early navigators, English and Spanish, the narrative 
 of the first Hakluyt, the histories of Alfinger and Perez de 
 Quesada, of von Hutten and Pedro de Ursua, would be 
 his constant study. The present failure of his courtiership 
 would lead a man of his nature to a more eager search for 
 new activities, where his hand might be free and the work 
 demand his best talent. He turned instinctively to the 
 domain of naval enterprise. It seems probable from a letter 
 of Lady Ralegh's to Cecil ' that thoughts of a new expe- 
 dition in search of El Dorado were occupying his attention. 
 'We poor souls,' she writes with genuine entreaty, 'that 
 have bought sorrow at a high price, desire, and can be 
 pleased with the same misfortunes we hold ; fearing altera- 
 tions will but multiply miseries. I know only your per- 
 suasions are of effect with him, and held as oracles tied 
 together by love. Therefore, I humbly beseech you, rather 
 stay him than further him.' But whatever the date at which 
 the desire came upon him, we know that with the months 
 it grew to a great resolution. All his mingled hopes of 
 colonization, conquest, and personal aggrandisement were 
 joined to a desire to increase the national welfare ; and to 
 all were added a thirst for sudden fame, and the delight 
 of the imagination in perhaps the most romantic quest 
 mankind has ever sought. It is easy at this time of day to 
 laugh at those dreams of a Golden City, and explain the 
 
 ^ Cecil Papers, vol. xxii. § 50. 
 
28 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 fabled lake of Parima by the floods of the Orinoco, and 
 the story of precious metals by the mica in the rocks. But 
 to Ralegh and his contemporaries incredulity in the matter* 
 was almost inconceivable. The glamour of the poetic and 
 the marvellous made expeditions, seeking no more than 
 piracy or ordinary commerce, seem noble to the eyes of all 
 men of imagination. We can well understand how Ralegh 
 among his Dorset fields would grow sick once more for 
 action and the sea, and look to the Guiana expedition as 
 the satisfaction of all that was best in his nature and least 
 sordid in his aims. 
 
 But it is reasonable to ask at this juncture what Ralegh 
 sought in his multifarious plans. The probability is that he 
 was content to go on realizing the demands which a singu- 
 larly energetic nature made without seeking to combine 
 all to some great end. It may indeed have been that at 
 one time he sought to attain such a place in statesmanship 
 as Burghley held and Cecil afterwards won, and that the 
 hostility of the old Lord Treasurer and the coldness of the 
 son can be explained by such a clashing of interests. But 
 if such a scheme ever entered Ralegh's mind it did not long 
 keep its place. It was one of the defects in his character 
 that he could never abide the monotonous, that he was 
 incapable of dogged, persistent struggling through the 
 arduous and the dull to an appointed end. We may explain 
 it by a certain largeness of mind, which set mere rewards 
 in their proper light, and preferred to strive rather than to 
 attain. But we are immediately confronted with the fact 
 that he loved in an exceptional degree the luxuries and 
 pomps of life. Yet something of this magnanimity is to be 
 found, if not in conscious purpose, at least in the nature 
 of the man at his better moments. He was at his happiest 
 in work when he had no prize held before him. He found 
 reward in the mere exercise of magnificent gifts ; and we 
 shall not err in saying that to him versatility was an end in 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 29 
 
 itself, and a hundred little successes dearer than supreme 
 power. It is the defect of a generous nature, and, as his 
 intellectual keynote, does much to explain future incon- 
 sistencies of word and deed. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The details of the first and most successful Guiana 
 expedition are happily made plain to us by Ralegh's own 
 narrative. In 1594 a certain Captain Whiddon was sent 
 as pioneer to Trinidad, where the governor, De Berreo, put 
 such obstacles in his way that he returned with little in- 
 formation. On Feb. 9, 1595, Sir Walter himself set sail 
 from Plymouth, bound for the same port. He arrived 
 about the end of March, after some piracy on the high 
 seas by which he increased his slender equipment. He 
 at once laid hands on Berreo, and proceeded to conciliate 
 the Indian inhabitants and learn the details of Orinoco 
 navigation. Meantime the governor's lieutenant, De Vera, 
 had gone on a mission to Spain to collect funds for a new 
 Spanish exploration of Guiana. The floating rumours of 
 treasure and El Dorados had been carefully gathered by 
 the Spaniards, and were magnified into astounding declara- 
 tions with which the people of Seville were roused to the 
 same fever of expectancy. The result was that De Vera set 
 out from home with, ample supplies and liberal grants of 
 prerogative. There is evidence that Ralegh himself was 
 shown some of the more wonderful proofs of the great 
 unknown land which lay beyond the trackless forests — par- 
 ticularly that strange story of Juan Martinez, which told 
 how he was led bhndfolded by Indian captors to the city 
 of Manoa the Golden, and found it so mighty that he 
 entered the gates at noon and did not reach the palace 
 of the king till the evening of the next day. All this was 
 so much fresh fuel to the already kindled fire of enterprise, 
 
30 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 and it was with new zeal that the small English crew 
 embarked on their perilous boat-voyage on the Orinoco. 
 
 Of the full hardships of such a journey we can guess 
 better from the reports of later explorers than the simple 
 narrative of Ralegh. They first crossed a piece of sea 
 as large as that between Dover and Calais with a great 
 tempest blowing in their teeth. Then came the terrible 
 rowing of several hundred miles against a powerful current. 
 They were fortunate enough at the outset to capture an 
 Indian pilot who knew the tortuous maze of channels 
 and tributaries. Their chief afflictions were the frequent 
 shallows, the sudden and terrible floodings when the 
 stream swept on them ' like a mountain/ and the constant 
 exposure to heat and cold. By day the thick woods shut 
 in the air and the rowers fainted at their tasks ; the banks 
 were so dense with thickets that at night they were often 
 unable to land, and had to endure the heavy dews of 
 a tropical darkness under no shelter. At last, as the 
 glowing narrative tells us, the black forests ceased, and 
 they came out into a pleasant country of far-stretching 
 meadows and green woods, as at home in England, while 
 the shy deer looked mildly at them from the water's edge. 
 
 Finally, they arrived at the dwelling of an old chief 
 Topiawari, whose nephew had been put to death by 
 Berreo. He gladly welcomed Ralegh as an enemy of 
 Spain, and told him all he knew of the treasures of the 
 country. With his help the Englishmen went among the 
 neighbouring tribes, and so noble a memory did Ralegh 
 leave behind him that long afterward he was still spoken 
 of to chance travellers. They saw gold in various places 
 and took with them many specimens, but they never seem 
 to have found it in any extraordinary quantity. One 
 incident is worth recording for the great influence which 
 it exercised over the leader's mind in days when his 
 thoughts turned wearily to those lands. He heard from 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 3 1 
 
 his lieutenant, Keymis, that as he was being led by a shorter 
 road to join the others, his Indian guide at a certain place 
 wished to lead him aside. Supposing it to be some natural 
 beauty or other Keymis refused and continued in his path. 
 In after years that wayside halting-place was the point on 
 which rested the destinies of both master and man. 
 
 In all these inquiries there is something more than 
 a mere search for gold. Ralegh looked to this only as 
 a means to an end, the proof with which he was to per- 
 suade the English nation of the value of the land for 
 colonizing or conquest. ' I could indeed have returned 
 a good quantity of gold ready cast, if I had not shot at 
 another mark than present profit \' We find him holding 
 grave discourse with Topiawari on the best means of pene- 
 trating to the interior. In his dealings with the natives, 
 in his insistence upon payment for all commodities re- 
 ceived, and generally in his orderly and moderate counsels, 
 we discern far more of the colonizer than the treasure- 
 hunter. Moreover, even in those strange latitudes, his 
 mind was full of his Virginian colony, and it was part 
 of his intention, but for the severity of the weather, to go 
 thither 'for the relief,' as he tells us, 'of those English 
 I have planted there.' 
 
 The actual results effected in the expedition may seem 
 small when compared with the expenditure of time, money, 
 and energy ; but they were none the less real. A path had 
 been formed for some considerable way into the interior, 
 the presence of gold had been ascertained, the rich and 
 productive nature of the land was known, and many of 
 the native tribes had been won to the English interest. 
 The return to England was full of hardships, but otherwise 
 unimportant, and in the August of 1595 they sighted the 
 the shores of Devon. There is no doubt that Ralegh was 
 bitterly disappointed with the reception he met with. He 
 
 ^ Discoverie of Guiana, p. 60. 
 
32 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 returned with what he considered sufficient proof of suc- 
 cess, and renewed enthusiasm for the cause of Guianian 
 exploration. He found the Queen still cold and irre- 
 sponsive, his enemies ready with malicious suggestions, 
 and even his best friends looking askance at the small 
 issue of great expectations. His wondrous stories were 
 currently looked upon as fabrications, and a slander was 
 circulated that he had never been further from home than 
 Cornwall. Even such results as were undeniable had their 
 value lessened by the insinuations of envy. To defend 
 himself, and further his schemes, Ralegh published his 
 famous Discoverie of Guiana^ in which he answered his 
 enemies calumnies, and told in glowing words the wonders 
 of that new land oversea. No one of his works has the 
 same fresh interest as this. It sprang at once into 
 popularity, and amused and delighted thousands whom no 
 arguments could convince. But nothing could alter the 
 unfavourable view taken even by the best men in that day 
 of Ralegh's aims and character. The variety of his pur- 
 suits made him cross the purposes of many, and brilliance 
 has always a foe in mediocrity. Nor is it worth while to 
 give a thought to the accusation of indiscriminate falsehood, 
 which was current at the time, and was revived in after days 
 by Hume. The mind of the man was already open to 
 marvels, and the evidence on which he related his details 
 was in his eyes perfectly unimpeachable — the testimony 
 of such natives as Topiawari, whom he had no reason to 
 distrust, as well as the accounts of so highly civilized 
 a nation as Spain. 
 
 Many causes kept Ralegh at home, but his mind was 
 still on his ventures. In the February of 1596, Keymis 
 was dispatched on a mission similar to the last, but with 
 inefficient forces and under widely different conditions. 
 He found that the Spanish reinforcements expected by 
 De Berreo had come, and that some of the routes were 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 33 
 
 blocked. With some difficulty he made his way to the 
 mouth of the Coroni, and found that Topiawari was dead 
 and the English connexion broken. But one thing he 
 discovered of unique importance — he found that the path 
 among the hills, where the Indian guide had wished him 
 to turn aside, led to a gold-mine of great richness. But 
 he had too small a force to attempt to reach it, so with 
 the news he returned to England. 
 
 Towards the end of the same year Ralegh dispatched 
 a single ship on the same errand, under the command 
 of a Captain Leonard Berry, but the vessel returned without 
 having effected anything of value \ In all the years of active 
 anxious life which succeeded he never lost sight of his 
 plans, and strove as best he might to keep up his con- 
 nexion with old acquaintances. We have not yet complete 
 knowledge of all the forces which detained him at home. 
 Untoward events which affected his own safety happened ; 
 the men in power, the Queen herself, were always some- 
 what' sceptical and wholly uneager; and he lacked the 
 private wealth necessary to make any attempt a lasting 
 success. We know that at one time Burghley gave him £50 
 for a new voyage, and Sir Robert Cecil ventured a ship 
 of which the hull alone was valued at £800. But it has 
 been argued, with considerable probability, that the Cecils 
 aided Ralegh in his plans merely to be quit of his presence 
 at home, and opposed him whenever they found that he 
 intended to send another. But we know that then and 
 ever after it was Ralegh's opinion that, by such neglect, 
 a great opportunity had been passed over for extending 
 and enriching his land, and giving new scope to the 
 energies of his people. 
 
 ^ Hakhiyt^ xiii. 692, 
 
34 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 VIII. 
 
 We have seen that Ralegh on his return was immersed 
 in pubhc business, and was unable to continue his Guiana 
 enterprises on account of the many demands on his labour. 
 The source of it all was the Cadiz expedition, which 
 we may regard as his most successful naval or military 
 achievement, though he shares with other men the honour 
 of the victory. Originally a plan of Sir John Hawkins', 
 it was revived in 1596 by the Lord Admiral Howard as 
 the most effective means of striking a blow at the Spanish 
 power. Essex was joined with him in the supreme com- 
 mand, and Ralegh (whose value was known, though he 
 was still in disfavour at Court) and Lord Thomas Howard 
 were added as councillors. The plans of the enterprise 
 were varied from day to day till the leaders were well- 
 nigh distracted. It is probable that the original com- 
 mission was directed more to the destruction of the 
 Spanish navy than to the acquirement of spoil by the sack 
 of a rich city. The former interpretation of the mandate 
 was stoutly upheld by Ralegh as the more statesmanlike, 
 but subsequent events showed that no blow more crushing 
 than the taking of Cadiz could have been levelled at the 
 strength and pride of Spain. Ralegh was delayed in 
 joining the others owing to the extreme difficulty he found 
 in making his levies ' — a delay which his enemies did not 
 fail to turn to malicious account I 
 
 The English fleet consisted of seventeen Queen's ships 
 and seventy-six hired transport vessels, and was divided 
 into four squadrons. A Dutch squadron of some twenty- 
 four ships was also present, but took little part in the 
 actual battle. It is hard to arrive at an exact estimate of 
 
 ^ Ralegh to Cecil. Cecil Papers, vol. xl. § 60, cited in Edwards' 
 Ralegh, ii. p. 129. 
 
 ^ Archbishop Tenison, Baconiana, DCLVii. 8. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 35 
 
 the Spanish strength which blocked the bay of Cadiz, 
 but there seem to have been present nearly sixty tall 
 vessels, with from eight to twenty galleys attending. On 
 the way Ralegh's squadron was directed to sail well out 
 to sea, and take up a position at the mouth of Cadiz 
 harbour to prevent the escape of any of the enemy's ships. 
 This almost led to a disaster, for in an over-confident 
 temper Essex and Howard determined to make a raid 
 on the town before attacking the fleet. Fortunately for 
 the success of the venture, Ralegh returned in the nick 
 of time, and by argument and expostulation succeeded in 
 turning the admirals from such ruinous policy \ Every 
 preparation was made for immediate batde. Ralegh from 
 his vessel cried out to Essex ' Intramus,' and the perfervid 
 earl in his excitement flung his plumed cap into the sea. 
 
 The arrangements for the fight were made with difficulty. 
 Ralegh wrote hurriedly to the Lord Admiral, and by ten 
 o'clock at night it was settled that he should lead the van, 
 while the others advanced with the body of the fleet. 
 The first dawn saw the opening of the fight. Ralegh in 
 the IVarspight made straight for the greater galleons. 
 Then ensued the tempest of attack and repulse, shot and 
 fire and carnage, which mark a decisive naval engagement. 
 He had many old scores to avenge on Spain, and the 
 death of Sir Richard Grenville was still fresh in his 
 memory. He had orders not to board till the promised 
 fly-boats were sent to his aid, but as none came he set out 
 to meet Essex in a skifl", and cried that, orders or none, 
 he would board at once. ' I will second you on my soul,' 
 the admiral said, and the Warspight with generous rivalry 
 was forced once more to the front of the battle. The 
 
 * This is the account given in his own narrative ; but his share may 
 easily be exaggerated, and is flatly contradicted by Sir William 
 Monson, the captain of Essex' ship. (' Naval Tracts ' in Churchill's 
 Voyages, 1704, iii. 185.) 
 
 C 2 
 
36 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 Spaniards grounded, and the issue of the day was clear. 
 Then came the attendant horrors of massacre and rapine ; 
 Mf any man had a desire to see Hell itself, it was there 
 most livelily figured ^' 
 
 In the sea-fight Ralegh was so terribly wounded that he 
 could take little share in the land-attack, but from his litter 
 he saw enough to bear testimony to the wisdom and valour 
 of Essex. He returned home in August with an authentic 
 account of the engagement, and was able to set at rest the 
 perplexed mind of the Council. 
 
 The result of the great English victory was the paralysis 
 of the Spanish nation, a shock from which her recovery was 
 slow. Ralegh's anti-Spanish policy had received abundant 
 realization. But the immediate consequence at home was 
 a succession of wretched squabbles on the division of the 
 Cadiz spoils. The men who had led the battle, the Essexes 
 and Raleghs, were content with meagre portions, but the 
 under-officers lined their purses well ere ever the sum was 
 estimated. The Queen was naturally angry, but she showed 
 it by copying the same fault on a more regal scale. She 
 haggled and cheated with the avarice of one half-ashamed 
 of the part, and the treasury was augmented, while the poor 
 captains went penniless. 
 
 But for Ralegh the expedition, if it brought little gain, 
 was fruitful of one important consequence. The affair at 
 Cadiz had brought together Essex and his rival, and in the 
 common joy of success something of the old jealousy was 
 forgotten. It was through this late-resumed friendship that 
 Ralegh's return to Court was effected, though the suit of 
 Essex was not made with the best of graces and was rather 
 passive permission than active help. In May 1597 he had 
 an interview with the Queen and resumed his duties as 
 Captain of the Guard. Once more his old favour seemed 
 to be returning, and we find him united with Essex and 
 ^ Relation of Cadiz Action , p. 72. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 37 
 
 Cecil in a sort of diplomatic triumvirate. This was the 
 beginning of that close connexion with Essex' fortunes 
 which lowered Sir Walter so greatly in the popular esteem, 
 and became the fount of most of the calumnies with which 
 his name has been associated. The character of one at 
 least of the trio is not hard to read. Essex is the current 
 type of high instincts and a generous heart joined to a sin- 
 gularly passionate and unthinking nature. His powers of 
 mind were considerable, his honour was never seriously 
 questioned; but by an accident of fate he was placed in 
 that very position in all the world for which nature had 
 least fitted him. He was baited by Elizabeth from private 
 caprice ; his sudden rise and the brilliance of his fame 
 brought round him a crowd of enemies; and his friends 
 were either of his own stamp or foes in disguise who urged 
 him to his ruin by fostering his natural impulses. , The 
 position craved wary walkings and the earl was scarcely 
 the man to see it. He did not recognize the insecure basis 
 on which his power rested ; he never quite realized that by 
 the Queen he stood or fell, nor followed Bacon's quaintly- 
 quoted advice against his arrogance, 'Martha, Martha, 
 attendis ad plurima ; unum sufficit \' The tragic issue was 
 always at hand, and it is with something of dramatic irony 
 that he goes the precipitate path to his fall. His relation 
 to Cecil is hard to understand on the insufficient information 
 which we possess. The two were diametrically opposed in 
 nature, and could not long work in the same harness. We 
 shall have occasion to discuss more fully the question of 
 Cecil's character in connexion with his subsequent dealings 
 with Ralegh, but for the present it seems undeniable that 
 he had a hand in inciting the unhappy earl to rush head- 
 long to his doom. With Ralegh, on the other hand, the 
 relations of Essex seem tolerably clear. Both had a great 
 capacity for enthusiasm, both were in love with swift, brilliant 
 * Bacon, Works, xi. pp. 179-185. 
 
38 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 action, and intolerant of the common. We have seen that 
 their early dislike sprang from opposing interests. We shall 
 see that the renewed ill-feeling which lasted to the end 
 owed its origin to this fatal kinship in temper. 
 
 But the new connexion seemed to begin in perfect amity. 
 Wild rumours came from abroad of a new Armada, muster- 
 ing to revenge Cadiz. Ralegh, in his Opi?iion upon the 
 Spanish Alarum, declared that the best way of frustrating 
 any Spanish attack was to strike beforehand at some portion 
 of her power. A new expedition was determined upon 
 with Ralegh and Essex in joint command; and on July lo, 
 1597, the fleet sailed from Plymouth Sound. At first 
 nothing but misfortune was its fate — the death of men and 
 the loss of ships. We find that Essex took the untoward result 
 sorely to heart, and Ralegh in a sudden kindness wrote 
 to Cecil asking some 'comfort from her Majesty to the 
 Lord General, who is dismayed by these mischances even 
 to death, although there could not be more done by any 
 man upon the earth ^' Once more, on August 1 7, after many 
 expenses which fell solely on Essex, the fleet set sail. 
 There is little need to enter into the details of the voyage. 
 Ralegh separated himself from the rest, and on his meeting 
 with Essex at Flores learned that his absence had been the 
 ground of an attempt by busybodies to stir up a quarrel 
 between the two commanders. Once more they separated, 
 and on Ralegh's arrival at Fayal he waited three days on 
 the rest. On the fourth he lost patience, attacked, and 
 took the town with his single squadron. 
 
 We cannot choose but exempt him from all blame in the 
 matter. The moment needed action ; to wait was not to 
 risk but to ruin all, and give the fame of the achievement, 
 if it actually took place, to some other than the Enghsh 
 fleet. But none the less did he commit a breach of military 
 disciphne, and we can understand the anger of Essex when 
 ^ Domestic Correspondence : Elizabeth, ccv. § 177. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 39 
 
 he heard the tale. He wisely refused to punish the offender, 
 but he let the thing rankle in his heart, and the Meyrickes 
 and Blounts of his party kept the offence from falling into 
 the background. All ostensible quarrel was healed by the 
 intervention of Lord Thomas Howard, but the earl's 
 wounded pride and disappointment, as well as the clamour- 
 ing of his retainers, first gave rise to the open and recog- 
 nized hostility which began to exist between himself and 
 Ralegh. In October the fleet came home with considerable 
 plunder, and the Queen was satisfied for the moment. 
 Ralegh's reputation among men of affairs was notably 
 increased, and we find the Council commending to his 
 care the south coast naval defences. 
 
 But from the moment of his return the predominant 
 interest of his mind was less warlike enterprise than the 
 dangerous game of courtiership. But for the mischief- 
 makers on both sides, it is probable that the rivalry with 
 Essex would have been conducted with respect and some 
 degree of friendship. As it was, he did him one friendly 
 service, for in persuading the Queen to make him Earl 
 Marshal he settled the vexed question of precedence between 
 Essex and the Lord High Admiral. 
 
 The special circumstances of the time, and the imminency 
 of a war with Spain, had brought about a strange conjunc- 
 tion between Cecil, Essex, and Ralegh. Of the three Cecil 
 went his solitary path unmoved by the hopes and visions 
 of his coadjutors. It is reasonable to suppose that the 
 union gave Ralegh a knowledge of his rival's character, 
 an insight into his aims and desires, which coloured his 
 subsequent conduct towards him. The countenance which 
 he gave to the Southampton marriage, and his strange out- 
 burst of contempt in the Queen's presence, had already 
 placed the earl's fortunes on a tottering base. Then came 
 the offer and acceptance of the Irish governorship, and the 
 long catalogue of catastrophes which throng the last years 
 
40 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 of his life. It is hard to decide whether Essex' Irish poHcy 
 was indeed in advance of his time and proceeded from 
 statesmanlike foresight, or whether it was but the easy 
 toleration of the man. At any rate he could not escape 
 opposition from Ralegh, the administrator who had begun 
 his career with the strictest coercion. The man who sought 
 the conciliation rather than the conquest of rebels could 
 not have much in common with the man who had been 
 unscrupulous in the cause of annihilation. There is little 
 need to wonder if opposition in policy became the parent 
 of distrust and fear. 
 
 On Ralegh's part, in the last scene of the tragedy there 
 seems no reason for indecision. The reports of the intended 
 murder of Essex and Ralegh at the hands of one another 
 may be set down to the excitement of followers. Blount's 
 confession on the scaffold is the coping-stone on our pile of 
 counter-evidence. But the famous letter ^ to Cecil is posi- 
 tive proof that Ralegh's feelings in the matter were full of 
 bitterness. The question of life and death was not then 
 before the Council ; the matter was simply whether pardon 
 should be granted or such incapacities laid on the prisoner 
 as would render him powerless to meddle with the affairs of 
 England. Of all Ralegh's correspondence this letter is least 
 admirable. It is full of malicious worldly wisdom and 
 a perfectly gratuitous unfairness to the unhappy earl. 
 There is no need to censure the writer for the lack of 
 virtues which he never laid claim to, but we are driven 
 to confess that such language was an ungracious return for 
 past unkindness. More it is needless to say, and it is pure 
 folly to assume Ralegh's partnership in the more bitter 
 extravagance of the sentence of death. But it was clearly 
 stamped upon the popular mind that in the whole matter 
 he had played a part which, if not actually base, was wholly 
 unworthy ; and at the last hour of his life he thought fit to 
 ^ Edwards' Ralegh^ vol. ii. (_ Letters) pp. 222, 223, 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 41 
 
 clear himself of some part of the blame which men had cast 
 upon him. He had been accused of mocking Essex in his 
 last moments, and blowing tobacco smoke at him. Nay, 
 rather, he said, ' I take God to witness that I shed tears for 
 him when he died. I confess I was of a contrary faction. 
 But I knew that my Lord of Essex was a noble gentleman, 
 and that it would be worse with me when he was gone. 
 For those that set up against him did afterwards set them- 
 selves against me.' The confession is ample for our purpose. 
 Towards Essex he felt an admiration mingled with affection, 
 and a jealousy not without malice. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The death of Essex marked the acme of Ralegh's Court 
 favour; thereafter came doubtful years and the crash of 
 a new regime. It is worth while to halt for one moment 
 and consider the way in which his contemporaries regarded 
 him, his rivals in office as well as the mass of the people. 
 He had fought his way to a great position in the realm, and 
 it is a curious question how men looked upon the steps of 
 his upward course. His fame with posterity has been so 
 great that we are apt to think of him as the admired of all, 
 the seer and enthusiast who led a delighted nation in the 
 paths of wisdom. 
 
 It comes with something of a shock to most to find out 
 how httle this opinion is true. It is possible to find men 
 who have had smaller circles of friends, but it is hard to 
 find one with a larger crowd of virulent foes. He was 
 hated by all and sundry, from the citizens of London to 
 the courtiers who jostled him in the Queen's antechamber. 
 And the reason of it is not hard to seek, if we look shrewdly 
 at his life. 
 
 He was above all things a man of action, and as such 
 was loved by his soldiers and sailors, and the folk of Devon 
 
42 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 and the West who shared in his spirit. But the men who 
 found themselves outstripped in the Queen's favour by one 
 who owed his success to audacity and uncommon cleverness 
 may be pardoned if they felt little love for the intruder. 
 The ruck of Court followers were too heartily despised by 
 the busy man of affairs to be kindly affectioned towards 
 him. Nor did he succeed better with the grave councillors. 
 With the swift intuition of genius he saw things far off, 
 and with the arrogance of genius he laughed at the slow 
 plodders who were toiling at their routine tasks. Moreover, 
 he was a firebrand in any council-chamber. The Queen's 
 policy in her later years was all for peace, and her statesmen 
 took the colour of her views ; but this man hankered always 
 for battle and enterprise, and laughed at vain measures of 
 conciliation. Nor must we forget that this chivalrous 
 gentleman of subsequent history did not always preserve 
 either his chivalry or his gentility. We have abundant 
 evidence of the extraordinary charm of Ralegh's intercourse 
 with his friends, the ' exceeding good parts of nature in 
 him"; but it seems equally clear that he could show 
 abundant discourtesy to an enemy. In his dealings with 
 ordinary men he was frequently insolent, rash, and capricious, 
 and such unadvised conduct was soon to rebound to his 
 own disgrace. 
 
 Of his place in the mind of the people we can form 
 a similar estimate. He had risen by Court favour to great 
 ostensible wealth and power, and his success had been 
 redeemed by no such lavish popular outlays as had gilded 
 the careers of others. To the ordinary man he must have 
 seemed one who had risen by unscrupulous means and had 
 kept his place by an unequally unsparing avarice. Again, 
 his great deeds in the Indies and the Spanish wars would 
 scarcely be put to his credit, when his motive was always 
 believed to be self-aggrandisement. His very popularity 
 
 ^ Northumberlaud's Correspondence ^ cited by Gardiner, i. p. 59. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 43 
 
 with his followers would militate against him, for the crafts- 
 man and the trader look with suspicion on the man who is 
 a lord among paid servants. Rumours of his unscrupulous- 
 ness and ambition, as well as the extraordinary charge of 
 atheism, would filter down from their betters; and their 
 feelings towards him would have all the bitterness of the 
 virtuous and dull against wicked talent. His currently- 
 reported part in the death of the popular favourite Essex 
 would not help his reputation. Finally, he would be injured 
 by the attitude he assumed towards the people and popular 
 claims. He had always a contempt for the homage of the 
 crowd, and would never go one step from his path to seek 
 it. With the spirit of a grandee he scorned the rabble, and 
 never deferred to its opinion. Like Bacon, he might have 
 said, ' I do not love the word people' We believe him to 
 have been liberal in the truest sense, to have loved the 
 freedom of the English race as his own life, and come 
 forward as the champion of what was just and reasonable in 
 popular demands. But he had no rhetorical artifices to 
 win applause, and his genuine services met with scant 
 recognition. 
 
 Of his true attitude to the people and their interests we 
 can learn in the incidents of his Parliamentary life. He sat 
 in the House of Commons from 1585 to 1602, first for 
 Devon and then for Cornwall, and took considerable part 
 in the conduct of business. In this sphere, as in every 
 other in which he laboured, he laboured hard and well. 
 We find him taking part in the thankless toil of committee- 
 making, and becoming something of an authority on the 
 minutiae of Parliamentary procedure. In 1593, and again 
 in 1 60 1, he spoke at length on the Spanish question, 
 sketched the extent and importance of the power of Spain 
 and its probable conduct if unchecked, and offered valuable 
 advice on the manner in which the subsidies should be 
 levied. He answered Cecil's sentimental plea for a uniform 
 
44 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 payment by showing the extreme injustice of the poor 
 paying the same as the rich, an injustice not alleviated by 
 extreme necessity. On the question of the incidence of 
 taxation, Ralegh took the popular side at a time when little 
 credit was attached to the advocacy of a reformed financial 
 policy. On the question of religious toleration he spoke 
 with a certain voice. He opposed the measures against the 
 Brownists, and in his words there is one sentence which is 
 admirable as a concise statement of a great political maxim. 
 ' The law is hard which taketh life, or sendeth into banish- 
 ment, where men's intentions shall be judged by a jury ; 
 and they shall be judges what another man meant^.' On 
 one other question we have some record of his views. 
 He was utterly opposed to statutes like the Statute of 
 Tillage, which laid restrictions and commandments on the 
 farmer. ' For my part,' said he, ' I do not like the con- 
 straining of men to use their ground at our wills.' The 
 current Labourage et Pdturage maxim, which the statesmen 
 of his day borrowed from France, had little power over his 
 mind. On the contrary, he advocated the entire freedom 
 of trade. ' I think the best course is to set corn at liberty, 
 and leave every man free; which is the desire of a true 
 EngHshman.' 
 
 It is impossible to attribute such words and actions to 
 a definite political policy. The man's mind was too busy 
 in other spheres to be able to afford the concentration and 
 the labour necessary for a great statesman. His politics 
 were the outcome of his natural love of fairness and liberty, 
 and partly of his power of shrewd perception and accurate 
 generalization. But in matters which closely affected his 
 own or his friends' interests he was swayed by less states- 
 manlike considerations. He defended the grants of patents 
 on Cornish tin as the only means of keeping the metal at 
 a proper value and giving the workmen fair wages for their 
 
 ^ Ti'Ewts, Journal of the Parliament of Queen Elizabeth, p. 76. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 45 
 
 labour. It is not the people of England whom he is 
 thinking of now. It is the people of Cornwall, the men of 
 his own countryside, whose interests had always lain nearest 
 to his heart. And indeed we cannot blame him for it ; his 
 thoughts were always concrete and local ; and even when 
 he attempts to consider general results, he is swayed by 
 personal feelings and a thousand memories. 
 
 But in spite of this we may assert that Ralegh's Par- 
 liamentary policy was liberal and popular beyond any 
 statesman's of the time. And yet it in no way served to alter 
 the common verdict. The proceedings of Parliament were 
 too little known to have much interest for the ordinary 
 citizen, and to him and his class Ralegh remained the 
 ambitious courtier, the able and unscrupulous soldier, and 
 the man who wrought ever for his own ends. 
 
 X. 
 
 The history of Ralegh's life is now complicated by 
 a thousand difficulties and entangled in the maze of doubt 
 which shrouds the death of Elizabeth and the first months 
 of James' reign. As the hours of the Queen drew to their 
 close, the minds of her councillors were perplexed by many 
 plots and petty diplomacies. To the popular mind the 
 accession of James seemed indisputable, but to the Court 
 the question was still open. It has been estimated that 
 some fourteen claimants aspired to the crown of England, 
 and of these three at least were considerable enough to give 
 grave anxiety. The more extreme Catholics upheld the 
 claims of the Spanish Infanta as tracing her descent direct 
 from the Plantagenets. But such a far-away genealogy 
 could have little attraction for a nation never given to 
 antiquarian research. The Parliamentary title, again, lay 
 with the family of Suffolk, since, by the will of Henry VIII, 
 the House of Stuart had been excluded from the throne, 
 
46 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 which was to pass to the children of his niece, Lady Frances. 
 The death of the Queen of Scots deprived this claim of the 
 argument of necessity, and the Parliament were willing 
 enough to recognize the Stuart title. But even here arose 
 a difficulty, for by a curious legal quibble James' claim 
 seemed less valid than that of his cousin Arabella Stuart, 
 inasmuch as by English law no alien could inherit land in 
 England. Yet it was patent to all that a ruling monarch 
 with power to make good his title was the only possible 
 successor, and to James the eyes of the nation turned. It 
 was impossible to negotiate with him as heir-apparent, since 
 Elizabeth to the last refused to nominate her successor; 
 and, in consequence, the history of the last months of her 
 life is a history of networks of plot and intrigue carried on 
 by her ministers with the Court of Scotland. 
 
 The two men who figured most prominently in these 
 negotiations were Lord Henry Howard, a younger son of 
 the Earl of Surrey, and Cecil himself. As for the first, 
 of all the evil characters of the time there is none whose 
 villainy is better authenticated. A man of considerable 
 learning and native shrewdness, he early saw the direction 
 in which his interests lay, and began a correspondence with 
 James, which for gross adulation and mendacity stands by 
 itself in the annals of intrigue. In consequence, James 
 looked to him as one of the warmest supporters of his 
 claim, and set him apart for special honour in the event of 
 his success. But Cecil was not long behind, and, taking 
 advantage of Lord Mar's embassy to London, he entered 
 into communications with the King of Scots. James saw 
 clearly the importance of this new help, and availed himself 
 of it gladly. It is certain that at first the name of Cecil, as 
 the foe of Essex and the sworn confidant of Elizabeth, was 
 particularly obnoxious to him; but James had the rare 
 merit of recognizing the possibility of conversion in others, 
 and though he never entertained a great affection for his 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 47 
 
 new adviser, he gave him his full confidence and raised 
 him to the summit of power. 
 
 In such a condition of affairs the position of Ralegh was 
 that of an alien. He had no claims to friendship with 
 Howard, and to Cecil he was never more than a respected 
 rival. He saw in the approaching end of Elizabeth the 
 death of many of his brightest hopes. Already he knew 
 something of the character of the King of Scots, and he 
 could not hope that James would lend a ready ear to his 
 great schemes of colonization or anti-Spanish enterprise. 
 Further, he was a holder of many well-paid offices, and he 
 could not expect to continue to enjoy them. There is 
 evidence that he sought an alliance with Cecil, but the 
 minister was deaf to his plans, and in something like despair 
 he turned to the only man of rank with whom he had any 
 influence, and allowed his name to be coupled with that of 
 Lord Cobham. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the busy correspondence with Scotland, 
 his reputation was being shadowed and calumniated. There 
 is no evidence that Cecil in his letters had any more sinister 
 intention than to remove an opponent from power whom he 
 considered dangerous to the national welfare. In all the 
 relations of the two an honourable rivalry was maintained, 
 and Ralegh at all times upheld the uprightness of Cecil's 
 conduct while he censured its unkindness. But with 
 Howard the case was different. There is the clearest proof ^ 
 that he purposed by fair means or foul to implicate Ralegh 
 in a treasonable plot, that his ruin might be secured. The 
 result was not quite equal to his expectations; but one 
 thing at least he achieved, that James came to the south 
 with a mind filled with the profoundest distrust of Ralegh 
 and his friends. 
 
 ^ See especially 'Howard to Lord Mar,' p. 44 sqq., and 'Howard 
 to Cecil, contra Ralegh and Cobham,' printed in the Appendix to 
 Edwards' Ralegh^ vol. ii. 
 
48 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 Then came the wretched story of his meeting with the 
 King at Burghley, and his subsequent loss of his Captaincy 
 of the Guard. He was compensated for it by the remission 
 of a payment of £300, chargeable upon his governorship 
 of Jersey. He saw his fate clearly from the beginning. 
 The loss of one of his offices was merely the prelude to 
 a general disgrace. For one brief moment the baser parts 
 of his nature got the pre-eminence. It was clear that Cecil 
 and Howard had influenced the King in his decision, but 
 it was no less clear that the former had acted from suf- 
 ficiently honourable motives. But Ralegh was crazed with 
 anxiety and disappointment, and forthwith wrote a letter 
 to James, accusing Cecil of the chief part in Essex' death, 
 a piece of malice as unwise as it was ineffectual. 
 
 The immediate result of these misfortunes was to ally 
 Ralegh more closely with Cobham. Meanwhile, the air 
 was charged with plots and rumours of plots. A small 
 body of malcontent Catholics, consisting of a mad priest 
 named Watson, Sir Gervase Markham, and George Brooke, 
 a brother of Cobham, entered into a conspiracy to wring 
 from the King a universal toleration. Following a bad 
 Scots precedent, they resolved to kidnap James, and keep 
 him in their hands till he granted their petition. Lord 
 Grey, who, Puritan as he was, had at first joined their 
 ranks, withdrew as soon as the preposterous nature of the 
 scheme was apparent. The affair was doomed from the 
 first; the leaders only half believed in it; and when it 
 finally broke up on the rumour that the Government had 
 news of it, the conspirators were taken with the greatest 
 ease. 
 
 About the same time the Count d'Arenbergh had come 
 over as an ambassador on behalf of the Archduke Albert, 
 the governor of the Spanish Low Countries, to negotiate 
 for a peace between England and Spain. For some reason 
 or other, Cobham was brought into close connexion with 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 49 
 
 this Spanish envoy, and was made the recipient of an offer 
 of money to try and further the peace proposal. Fragments 
 of plots had been drifting in his vain and empty mind, and 
 now he seemed to see a way to their realization. His first 
 dealings with the foreign ambassador were perfectly open, 
 but soon we find him engaged on more doubtful business. 
 He had a vague design of placing Arabella Stuart on the 
 throne, and at the same time he proposed that a sum of 
 six hundred thousand crowns should be placed at his 
 disposal to carry on his work. He asked his brother, 
 George Brooke, to join him, but he refused, being already 
 busied with all the conspiracy he desired. 
 
 It is an ascertained fact that Cobham now turned his 
 attention to Ralegh, and sought to make him a participant 
 of his schemes. On at least two occasions he offered him 
 money, and it is probable that he communicated most of 
 his plans. Of Ralegh's conduct, though every detail has 
 been discussed for three hundred years, we can only guess. 
 At this time he was in a state of great despondency and 
 bitterness. He had been compelled to resign his dearest 
 office, the Wardenship of the Stannaries, and his wine 
 licences seemed on the verge of recall. The matter of 
 Durham House had given him acute annoyance, and on 
 all sides he saw his enemies triumphant, and his aims 
 frustrated. It is not to be wondered at if he listened 
 to Cobham's wild talk with a sort of capricious enjoyment. 
 Mr. Gardiner's admirable conjecture seems the truest ex- 
 planation of this difficult point, and this, or something like 
 this, seems to have been the order of events. The fact 
 that Brooke was engaged in Watson's treason made Cecil 
 suspect that his brother could not be guiltless. Conse- 
 quently he summoned Ralegh before the Council and 
 cross-questioned him on his friend's conduct. Ralegh, 
 with his mind full of dark sayings and vague hints which 
 he had always looked on with contempt, spoke what he 
 
 D 
 
50 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 believed to be the plain truth, and declared that he knew 
 nothing of Cobham's actions. Then he reflected after- 
 wards that Cobham was none the less guilty of treason, 
 and that, if he wished to be free, it was his duty to tell 
 what he knew. With some disgust at the thankless task, 
 he wrote to Cecil telling him that he beheved Cobham 
 to be engaged in a plot with d'Arenbergh to set the Lady 
 Arabella on the throne. Cobham was arrested, whether 
 on this letter or on his brother's confession we cannot tell, 
 and lodged in the Tower. Then Ralegh began to realize 
 the full danger of his position, and remembered how he 
 had often talked wildly in Cobham's presence of his 
 grievances against the Government. He sent Keymis with 
 a letter to the prisoner, bidding him hold his tongue and 
 remember that the only witness against him was his brother, 
 and one witness was not sufficient for a condemnation. But 
 meantime, Cobham had seen Ralegh's first letter to Cecil ; 
 he was naturally enraged, and, showing the letter to the 
 Council, denounced Ralegh as a traitor and conspirator. 
 
 To the mind of the Council the affair looked more than 
 suspicious. Ralegh was arrested on July 17, and sent 
 to join the other conspirators in the Tower. This was 
 the finishing touch to his misery. His body was worn 
 with toils, and his mind had long been harassed with 
 a thousand cares. Above all, the fate of his wife and 
 family was ever before him. For their sake he must end 
 this wretched farce, and in a fortnight so low had he sunk 
 in health and spirits that he attempted suicide, after writing 
 a touching farewell to Lady Ralegh. Happily he failed in 
 his purpose, and was left to bide the brunt of his trial. 
 
 Of the trial it is possible to write only with the greatest 
 caution. The main incidents and the result are perfectly 
 clear, but the exact amount of evidence on each side, and 
 the impression produced by such evidence on the jurors, 
 remain and must remain in the deepest obscurity. Four 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 5 1 
 
 matters must be considered by any one who would examine 
 the case — the exact nature of the accusation and the proof 
 brought forward to support it, the prisoner's defence, the 
 justice of the whole proceedings tried by modern notions 
 of equity, and their legality tried by the existing law of 
 England. 
 
 The accusation as stated by Coke was that of complicity 
 in a plot in some way connected with Watson's treason, 
 with the object of setting Arabella on the throne by the 
 help of a Spanish army, in return for which the supremacy 
 of the Spanish over the English power was to be established. 
 An accurate account was given of Ralegh's negotiations 
 with Cobham at a supper-party, depending for its truth 
 solely on the fact that the two were known friends, and 
 that such a thing might possibly have happened. He was 
 further accused of connivance at an attempt of Cobham's to 
 antedate a letter, apparently on no ground whatever. He 
 was accused of having listened to or accepted an offer of 
 a bribe from d'Arenbergh, and as proof Keymis' confession 
 was produced, in which he told of an interview between 
 Ralegh and Cobham at a time when the latter was in 
 communication with the Spanish envoy. 
 
 The evidence brought forward was of three kinds — un- 
 authenticated rumours, depositions and examinations of 
 various prisoners, and the avowed conduct of the accused. 
 The members of Watson's plot had always held, it seemed, 
 that Ralegh and Cobham were really of their number. 
 This evidence pointed more particularly to Cobham, but it 
 was held to refer to Ralegh on the ground of close friend- 
 ship. Watson in especial had made the direct statement 
 that he had always heard from Brooke that both Ralegh 
 and Cobham were strongly inclined to the Spanish interest. 
 Again, there remained the confession of Cobham, in which 
 he clearly implicated Ralegh ; the deposition of Keymis, 
 who swore to meetings between the two ; Ralegh's own 
 
 D 2 
 
52 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 confession of the offer of money made to him ; and the 
 evidence of a sailor who had heard talk on the quay at 
 Lisbon of Ralegh's friendhness to Spanish claims. In the 
 third class there was the known disaffection of Ralegh 
 consequent on the loss of place and money, sundry unwise 
 words spoken in the ears of untrustworthy friends, and 
 his singularly suspicious letter to Cobham in which he had 
 advised him to secrecy. 
 
 Little, if any, of such evidence is important or relevant 
 according to our ideas, but it seemed otherwise to his 
 judges. It was necessary for Ralegh to prove that there 
 was no reason why he should have any part in such 
 a conspiracy as Cobham's, that any proof of a particular 
 act of complicity was false, and that those actions of 
 his which seemed open to suspicion could be simply 
 explained. 
 
 The trial took place at Winchester on the seventeenth of 
 November and the days following. Coke, as Attorney- 
 General, conducted the prosecution with a barbarity 
 and confusion remarkable even in one who considered 
 that a blunt honesty and a phenomenal acquaintance with 
 the law of England counterbalanced the entire absence 
 of all other virtues. To his harshness Ralegh replied 
 with modesty and good temper, and we have it on record 
 that the feelings of the spectators, at first violently hostile, 
 were converted by his demeanour into friendliness. His 
 defence he conducted alone, and with no little skill and 
 good sense. The argument on the inherent probability 
 of his being engaged in such a plot he answered well by 
 pointing to his past record. Was it likely, he asked, that 
 he who had all his life been the bitterest foe of Spain 
 should now be found conspiring in her interest? Was 
 it likely that he who knew the character of Arabella should 
 seek to set her on the throne at a time when all was 
 prosperous at home and abroad, and a lawful successor was 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 53 
 
 present in the reigning king? Was it likely, too, that he 
 would make a confidant of a man like Cobham ? 
 
 The second, and more formidable, proof from Cobham's 
 depositions he met in two ways. He utterly denied the 
 truth of the evidence, and argued reasonably enough that 
 Cobham had contradicted himself so frequently that his 
 word was of no value. Then he demanded to be brought 
 face to face with his accuser. This request was supported 
 by Cecil, but the judges without exception declared it 
 unjustified by law. They saw too well what would be the 
 result of such a meeting, how the unhappy Cobham would 
 still further confuse his statements and make a conviction 
 on his evidence seem palpably absurd. Finding at last 
 that the Court intended to abide by the particular confession 
 of Cobham's which accused his friend, Ralegh tried a new 
 line, and questioned the legality of the course which the 
 prosecution was taking. Two statutes of Edward VI, 
 confirmed by a subsequent statute of Philip and Mary, 
 had declared that no man could be convicted of treason 
 except by two witnesses \ But Popham rephed with the 
 quibble, which was nevertheless universally accepted at 
 the time, that the second statute limited the action of the 
 first to certain specified treasons and abolished it in regard 
 to others. 
 
 The third proof, based on his avowed offer from Cobham, 
 and the highly suspicious letter he had sent by Keymis, 
 Ralegh found the hardest to deal with. He could only 
 say that Cobham's offer had been made before d'Arenbergh's 
 arrival in England, and that such money was intended 
 to assist only in the furtherance of the negotiations. In 
 the matter of the letter he foolishly denied the whole 
 business, and as Keymis' veracity was perfectly well known 
 this action did considerable harm to his own cause. To 
 
 ^ I Ed, VI. cap. 12, and 6 Ed. VI. cap. 11 ; i and 2 Phil, and 
 Mary, cap. 10. 
 
54 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 the minds of his judges it was clear that at least he was 
 not wholly truthful. 
 
 The proofs from the a priori possibility and from the 
 various depositions had not been substantiated, but two 
 things had been made evident, — that an offer of money 
 had been made, and that throughout the trial he had 
 not spoken all he knew. Consequently the question, as 
 Serjeant Phelps declared, lay between the truthfulness of 
 Cobham and Ralegh. Cobham had been proved utterly 
 false, and Ralegh had not shown himself free from the same 
 fault. If we grant the assumptions made in any treason 
 trial, that one witness could bring about a verdict of guilty, 
 and that the mere listening to treasonable proposals con- 
 stituted a treasonable offence, we can understand the 
 feelings in the minds of the jury. After an absence of 
 fifteen minutes they returned a verdict of guilty, and 
 Popham pronounced sentence of death. 
 
 To us the whole affair has an element of the fantastic 
 and absurd. The proof was flimsy in the extreme. It is 
 probable that Cobham in his folly had made half-plans for 
 some plot or other, and the French ambassador Beaumont's 
 dispatch^ to his master seems to give certainty to the 
 supposition; but no reliable evidence on the matter has 
 been brought forward. As to Ralegh's connexion with 
 Cobham we have already considered its possible extent. 
 That he committed a fault which at any time could be 
 construed into treason is doubtful at the best; but it 
 is perfectly certain that the Court were in possession of no 
 proof of such treason. The whole conduct of the case, 
 the private examinations, the refusal to bring the accuser 
 and accused face to face, are repugnant to our ideas 
 of justice. The one thing proved, that Ralegh had 
 received an offer of money before d'Arenbergh's arrival and 
 
 * Beaumont to the King of France, from the King's MSS., quoted in 
 a note to Gardiner, vol. i. p. 103. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 55 
 
 immediately refused it, was in no way treason ; and if 
 Ralegh had shown himself to have dabbled in falsehood, 
 we should consider that Cobham's evidence fell utterly 
 to the ground from its frequent contradictions. There 
 could be no question between the veracity of a man who 
 was driven by hard straits into a trivial prevarication and 
 one whose contempt of the truth came near to insanity. 
 Looking back from the vantage-ground of years we see 
 clearly that Ralegh was wholly guiltless of the charge and 
 that his condemnation was a miracle of injustice. 
 
 On the other hand we must acquit his judges of any 
 wilful false practice. Judging him by the letter of the law 
 of treason as it then stood, and taking into consideration 
 the light in which treason was regarded, we acknowledge 
 that his condemnation was not illegal. Treason was 
 regarded as so terrible an offence, not only against the 
 king but against the peace of the nation and the prosperity 
 of private citizens, that for an acquittal it was necessary not 
 that a man should not be proved guilty, but that he should 
 clearly estabhsh his entire innocence. Cross-examination 
 of a witness was not permitted that there might be no 
 chance for a bold criminal to overawe a more timid 
 accuser. Again, it was regarded as established by law that 
 one witness was sufficient to secure a conviction. In such 
 circumstances it was a judge's duty to consider Cobham's 
 deposition true in spite of his known character, if the 
 conduct of Ralegh could not be proved entirely free from 
 falsehood. The fact of Cobham's repeated disavowals 
 they might set down to terror or the old kindness for 
 a friend. 
 
 We know now that Ralegh's character was honourable 
 and truthful beyond his time, but to his contemporaries 
 it appeared far otherwise. His narrative of Guiana enter- 
 prise had not improved the reputation for veracity of one 
 who was always looked upon as unscrupulous. In the 
 
56 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 course of his trial he had made one wholly false statement, 
 and in various matters had not spoken the complete truth. 
 This was sufficient and more than sufficient for his judges. 
 Their action, always within the letter of the law, was justified 
 by popular feeling and past experience. 
 
 The sentence of death was never executed. Ralegh, 
 Cobham, and Grey, as they stood on the scaffold at 
 Winchester, received a reprieve from the King. It seems 
 unlikely that James ever intended that they should die, and 
 in any case the entreaties of the foreign ambassadors and 
 the intercession of friends had altered his mind. Ralegh 
 himself, both through his wife and various letters to the 
 Lords of Council, begged for life with an urgency of which 
 he was afterwards ashamed. But James had a desire to 
 hear the last confessions of his prisoners, and he wished 
 to deliver the pardons with some dramatic effect. So the 
 scaffolds were prepared, the dying testimonies written 
 and delivered, before the gracious monarch interfered. 
 With this pathetic piece of mock-heroic Ralegh passed 
 from the stage of active life to the enforced quiet of the 
 Tower. 
 
 In all these calamitous changes it is possible to see the 
 effect of Ralegh's previous deeds and native qualities. He 
 had ever been haughty and rash of tongue, and a crowd 
 of enemies sprang up around him in the day of misfortune. 
 He had sought wealth and added place to place with the 
 result that he loomed in the popular mind as a self-seeking 
 adventurer, and when a great crisis had come the loss 
 of his honours inclined him to turbulent despair. Above 
 all, he had used his great gifts in that domain for which 
 he was least suited ; the glamour of Court display was 
 always about him; and it was not till late in the day, 
 when the grey walls of a prison sobered his fancy, that 
 he turned his mind to work worthy of his powers. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 57 
 
 XI. 
 
 For fourteen years the Tower claimed its prisoner, and 
 in the history of his hfe we are removed from the world 
 of deeds to the inner life of study and speculation. His 
 position was thick with gratuitous hardships ; he had bare 
 quarters, and such little liberty as he at first enjoyed was 
 soon restricted by the malice of enemies. From the year 
 1606 onward we know that his health declined \ and his 
 mind was tormented with the misfortunes of his family and 
 the blank wall which seemed to have stopped his once 
 hopeful career. But it is not the nature of men of Ralegh's 
 type to give way to the settled despondency which is the 
 resort of less virile minds. He had still some measure 
 of bodily health, and his powers of intellect were as 
 vigorous as ever. So we find him even in the chaos of his 
 destiny taking stone walls for his heritage, and gaining 
 some surcease of his troubles. 
 
 Rumours of contemporary events penetrated to his 
 retreat, and we can imagine with what feelings he heard 
 of the struggle between the King and the Commons, the 
 wars in Ireland, the bungling attempts towards American 
 colonization, and at a later date the negotiations for 
 a Spanish aUiance. All were matters in which his dearest 
 hopes were involved, and to one of his tireless energy 
 inaction in such times would be doubly bitter. Indeed 
 external events had some slight bearing on his own life, for 
 a preposterous suspicion of share in the Gunpowder Plot 
 rested upon him for some time ; and the intimacy which 
 he formed with the young Prince Henry brought him hope 
 of release and a keen sorrow when death cut short the 
 prince's blameless hfe. But on the whole his hand was 
 
 * Domestic Correspondence : James /, vol. xix. § 112. 
 
58 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 Stayed, and he sat in his room and heard of the course 
 of events with an interest embittered by his utter impotence 
 to play any part. 
 
 His first intellectual interest was chemistry, which had all 
 the fascination of an occult mystery newly bound with the 
 bonds of an exact science. In Sir George Harvey's garden 
 he set up a laboratory, and betook himself to experiments. 
 But the place was an open one, and the jealous governor 
 thought fit to make complaints of its publicity, with the 
 result that the chemical experiments ceased, and Ralegh 
 began gradually to find all his occupation in the practice 
 of letters. During his imprisonment he produced the 
 greater part of what is now printed as his work ; and his 
 activity showed itself in the writing of pamphlets of con- 
 temporary interest as well as in the preparation of his 
 voluminous History of the World. The pamphlets resemble 
 the papers which Bacon composed in his early days, his 
 letter to the Queen on the Roman Catholic interest and 
 his essay on Controversies in the Church. Such tracts 
 were the magazine articles of the period, and influenced 
 and reflected public opinion. Of Ralegh's productions the 
 two most important, judged by their contemporary interest, 
 are the Discourses on the Savoyan Matches. They were 
 written at the direct request of Prince Henry ; and though 
 the proposal of which they treat ended fruitlessly, they are 
 none the less valuable as furnishing the fullest exposition 
 we have of Ralegh's ideas on foreign policy and inter- 
 national relations. His talent for historical summaries 
 nowhere shows so clearly, and his arguments, if tinged 
 with his excessive dislike of Spain and blindness to any 
 possibility of co-operation, are yet on the whole cogent and 
 reasonable. Briefly, they are these : that a Savoyan 
 alliance would mean an alliance with a dependent country, 
 a prince of alien religion, a weak and comparatively 
 unimportant kingdom, and above all a kingdom so situated 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 59 
 
 by nature that it could give little aid to England in peace 
 or war. In addition, he argues the old question of the 
 Dutch independence, and concludes with a warm advocacy 
 of the claims of the Palatine. His Spanish hostility may 
 partly be attributed to his imprisonment and consequent 
 ignorance of the trend of affairs. He brought into 
 Jacobean times ideas and catchwords which had died 
 with Elizabeth. However we may deplore the relations 
 of England with Spain during these years, we cannot shut 
 our eyes to the fact that the idea of an alliance was in itself 
 perfectly reasonable, and with the altered state of national 
 feeling calculated to produce many advantages. 
 
 Ralegh's knowledge of naval affairs gave rise to a Discourse 
 on the Invention of Ships and Observations concerning the 
 Royal Navy, both in all likelihood fragments of a larger 
 Treatise on Naval Warfare which the author did not live to 
 complete. A Breviary of the History of England under 
 William the First followed, a work in which he seems to 
 have had the help of Samuel Daniel. It is impossible at 
 this hour of day to be more than remotely interested in 
 these tractates. They read like the hack-work of a man 
 of vigorous and cultivated mind, and are mote interesting 
 for the light which they cast upon the author's feelings and 
 opinions at the time than for any extraordinary insight or 
 learning. 
 
 But the magnum opus of these weary prison days, the 
 work on which Ralegh's claim to a position in literature 
 depends, was the History of the World. The fact that he 
 should have entertained such a project is a singular 
 commentary on the ambitious, comprehensive nature of the 
 man. It was the age of far-reaching designs, when men, 
 fired with the wide vistas which the new philosophy opened 
 to them, desired to 'take all knowledge for their province.' 
 It was an eminently uncritical age, since curiously enough, 
 the dawnings of the scientific spirit are usually found in 
 
6o SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 conjunction with thoroughly unscientific methods. Learning 
 was still a vast aggregate of facts, which were repeated with 
 painstaking diligence from book to book. It was an age 
 when extent of knowledge, combined with imposing 
 generalizations^ chiefly won the admiration of men. In 
 some such spirit Ralegh conceived his plan and embarked 
 upon his task. He was heavily handicapped, for besides 
 paucity of books, he had scarcely the linguistic attainments 
 to enable him to compass the earher part of his work 
 successfully. But he had one notable endowment — an 
 honest desire to write the truth and a mind untinged by the 
 parasitic respect for traditions ecclesiastical and political 
 which hampered so many of his contemporaries. Nor had 
 he that equal vice, which later historians have not been 
 free from, that adulation of the populace, that respect for 
 democracy and the idols of the market-place, which turns 
 sober history into shrieking rhetoric. 
 
 Of the matter of the History we can only say that it shows 
 much unsifted knowledge, and a certain grandness of 
 conception which raises it above its class. The scholar 
 will find little of importance in the rabbinical learning and 
 superficial classical acquirements. It is the incidental 
 passages which redeem it, when the author leaves his 
 narrative to draw some analogy of contemporary interest or 
 moralize on the frailties of human life. But even here we 
 are on the verge of error, for nothing can be more delusive 
 than the ordinary popular conception that it is one long 
 piece of exalted and stately English. That such passages 
 exist every lover of good English prose knows well, but the 
 ordinary level of writing is pedestrian and dull, and little 
 better than much obscure contemporary work. Yet all 
 dullness and pettiness is forgotten when we turn a page and 
 come to some such passage as the famous one in the sixth 
 chapter of the fifth book, where he turns aside for one 
 moment, and from the plenitude of experience and sorrow 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 6i 
 
 lays bare in noble words the triviality of man's life and the 
 pathos of its close. 
 
 Two qualities of the man stand out clear on the face of 
 his work — his laborious and persistent carefulness, and the 
 great heart which he bore through his misfortunes. That' 
 a man in the later days of a busy hfe, in the midst of ill- 
 health and many griefs, and with no hope of reward, should 
 set about such a task as this with tireless industry may well 
 surprise us, and that he should show throughout a large 
 and kindly magnanimity may well shame us of idleness and 
 complaint. 
 
 But through all his labours Ralegh clung to the faint 
 hope of some future release. Once and again he was on 
 the eve of freedom, and always the cup was dashed from 
 his lips. The death of Prince Henry cut short his 
 expectations in one quarter, and the death of Salisbury in 
 another; but he turned elsewhere, and in his letters to 
 Queen Anne, Lord Carew, Lord Haddington, and the 
 Secretary Winwood, he strove to awake interest in a scheme 
 which would mean liberty and possible honour for himself 
 and aggrandizement to the country. He had never for- 
 gotten Guiana, and in the long leisure of these years the 
 story which Keymis had brought back with him from his 
 second voyage was often before him. The gold-mine among 
 the hills so grew upon his imagination that he believed that 
 if he could but win James' consent to an expedition thither 
 he might yet retrieve his credit and his fortunes. ' My Lord,' 
 he wrote to Haddington, 'leaving the success to God's 
 providence, it is a journey of honour and enterprise I offer 
 you, a venture feasible and certain \' His health broke 
 down under an attack of apoplexy, brought on by his new 
 labours. But still he kept to his scheme, and wrote to the 
 Lords of the Council, offering to fit out two ships at his own 
 
 * Hatfield MSS. 6177, fol. 241 (British Museum), printed in 
 Edwards' Ralegh, vol. ii. p. 393. 
 
62 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 expense, to entrust the expedition to Keymis, and to remain 
 himself as hostage in the Tower. The King refused from 
 his habitual caution and dislike of possible war. But when 
 Villiers succeeded Somerset in the royal favour, a new 
 opportunity was created. To two of the favourite's brothers 
 Ralegh gave £750 each, and the voice of Villiers was 
 enlisted in his favour. Secretary Winwood himself was 
 a bitter hater of Spain, and any appeal of Ralegh's fell on 
 friendly ears. The combined forces of Winwood and 
 Villiers worked the desired effect, and the Queen lent her 
 aid. On March 19, a minute of the Privy Council declared 
 that ' His Majesty, out of his gracious inclination, had been 
 pleased to release Sir Walter Ralegh to go abroad with 
 a Keeper to make provision for his intended voyage \' 
 
 XII. 
 
 To see what Ralegh's release and projected expedition 
 signified in the history of the time it is necessary to go 
 back a little to the beginning of the English and Spanish 
 negotiations. Phihp III of Spain and Lerma, his minister, 
 had the same end in view which guided the policy of their 
 predecessor, but a greater prudence inspired their methods. 
 The hand of the Infanta, with the possibility of the matri- 
 monial crown of the great Spanish empire, was a coveted 
 prize among the sovereigns of Europe. A marriage with 
 the son of the King of England had long been talked of, 
 which would bring the two countries into harmonious 
 relations and in time further the cause of Catholicism, 
 which the Spanish monarch had made his own. James' 
 own view on the matter was at all times practically the 
 same. He wished to see the nations of Europe dwelling in 
 unity; nothing was more abhorrent to him than the 
 
 ^ Edwards' Ralegh^ vol. i. p. 563 ; Gardiner, Prince Chas. and 
 Span. Mar. i. p. 48. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 63 
 
 buccaneering and swashbuckling spirit which had taken 
 captive EHzabethan minds and had crept even into the 
 counsels of Elizabethan statesmen. Further, he felt the 
 rottenness of the ground beneath his feet in his dealings 
 with the Parliament and his whole attitude to the people 
 which he governed. He could only be well disposed to an 
 aUiance with Spain if it furthered his designs of peace, 
 refilled his exchequer, and provided him with a strong 
 external aid in the case of domestic difficulties. 
 
 Any such natural predilections in the King's mind were 
 jealously fostered by Diego Sarmiento de Acuna, afterwards 
 Count of Gondomar, a diplomatist of singular tact and a 
 man of the most resolute character. In all the bickerings 
 with the Commons he adroitly suggested to the King the 
 need of a strong supporting power, and by alternate use 
 of threats and persuasion he achieved his end. 
 
 At the precise moment of Ralegh's liberation the in- 
 fluence of Sarmiento was counteracted by others. It is 
 true that the marriage was practically arranged and on the 
 eve of being publicly proclaimed, but there was a strong 
 faction in the country, to which Villiers lent his great 
 authority, which was vehemently opposed to the Spanish 
 negotiations. With such men Ralegh's proposal found 
 a ready welcome. Of James' own view of the matter it 
 is impossible to speak with certainty. He felt that the 
 Spanish match was necessary in the position in which he 
 found himself, but none the less he dared not risk the 
 opprobrium which w^ould follow a strenuous advocacy of 
 Spanish claims. Further, he did not admit the right of 
 Spain to the whole of the Americas, and he regarded 
 Guiana, in such parts as were not yet occupied by Spanish 
 settlements, as the right of the first comer. It was true 
 that Sarmiento had bitterly remonstrated and striven to 
 counteract the permission given, but a large part of the 
 Court declared that no war with Spain would follow 
 
64 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 Ralegh's attempt, but that by his successful return the 
 King's empty coffers might be filled and the nation appeased. 
 It is vain to look to James for any high considerations or 
 clear-sighted political wisdom. He might well have re- 
 membered that all previous quests for treasure had been 
 futile, and that it was in the highest degree impolitic to 
 scatter the national energies on two continents, when in 
 Virginia was an Enghsh settlement which needed all the 
 care and help which the home country could afford. But 
 James was incapable of such reflections ; he found himself 
 between two stools, anxious to bring the Spanish match 
 to a successful issue and fearful of offending the strong 
 anti-Spanish faction in the country. To authorize Ralegh's 
 expedition would temporarily satisfy them; and if the 
 unhappy man failed there remained for him summary 
 punishment. So on August 26 he issued a commission 
 giving him power to search for gold in any territory not 
 already occupied by a Christian monarch. Ralegh had 
 previously pledged his word that the mine which he sought 
 was not in Spanish territory; if anything miscarried the 
 fault was his and he should bear the blame. 
 
 Few men have ever found themselves in a position more 
 fraught with difficulties than was Ralegh's at this moment. 
 He had staked all on Keymis' word of a gold-mine in the 
 hills, which by this time might be exhausted or already in 
 Spanish hands. It is important to notice a fact^ which 
 Mr. Gardiner seems to have abundantly proved, that the 
 mine which Ralegh had for his goal was not, as far as he 
 knew, in close proximity to any Spanish settlement; and 
 consequently there is no reason to believe that he perjured 
 himself in his declaration to the King. But he was ham- 
 pered on all sides with galling restrictions. He knew 
 something of the country, and he must have known that 
 to penetrate far without a conflict with Spanish troops 
 * Prince Chas. and Span. Mar., vol. i. pp. 53 and 54 note. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 65 
 
 bordered on the impossible. He knew that the sHghtest 
 breach of his orders would be construed on his return into 
 a crime, and that nothing short of the most brilliant success 
 would ensure his safety. His crews were untrustworthy, 
 for the weight of royal disapproval lay upon him, and his 
 old sailors did not rally round him. He embarked on his 
 enterprise under the cloak of a dehberate falsehood, for 
 we know of his avowed intention to justify his course by 
 the capture of the plate fleet, if all else failed. But we 
 can well pardon him, for to one who had lain long between 
 four walls the thought of being once more on the open 
 sea and among men was sufficient to make the most 
 chimerical scheme seem fair and reasonable. 
 
 We can well understand, too, how, situated as he was, 
 he should have let other alternative schemes occupy his 
 mind, to which he might turn in the event of failure. 
 A chance arose of making a breach with Spain by aiding 
 the Duke of Savoy in his struggle with the greater 
 monarchy. Ralegh proposed the seizure of Genoa by 
 English troops, which would cripple the Spanish resources 
 and bring funds to the needy king. He sent word to 
 Scarnafissi asking him to obtain James' consent to the 
 scheme, and for some little while it seemed as if success 
 were possible. But James' continued distrust of Ralegh, 
 his reluctance to engage in the inevitable Spanish war, and 
 the tidings that the difficulties between the Duke and 
 Spain were likely to be settled by arbitration, broke off 
 the negotiations and threw Ralegh once more upon his 
 old designs. But he had other strings to his bow, and 
 he was urged by foolish friends to plans which were not 
 only impolitic but in gross violation of his plighted word. 
 He had always been in communication with the Huguenots, 
 and there were not wanting those who urged him to sail 
 for the coast of France and join his forces in the opposition 
 to the Queen Mother. He told Desmarets, the French 
 
 E 
 
66 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 ambassador, that he had intentions of leaving his own 
 country and offering his services to the King of France \ 
 and on the eve of his departure he sent a letter to Mont- 
 morency by a Frenchman called Faige, asking him to 
 obtain permission for his taking refuge under certain con- 
 tingencies in a French port^ The same emissary and 
 another Frenchman Belle were commissioned to follow 
 him to the Indies with four French ships which were being 
 prepared at Havre and Dieppe. They subsequently be- 
 trayed their trust and informed the Spanish Government 
 that Ralegh intended to use the French vessels in an attack 
 upon San Thome, that then he was to attack Trinidad and 
 Margarita, and finally return to Europe. It is possible that 
 in the crisis of his affairs such plans were part of his scheme, 
 and that he allowed his integrity to be overcome by his 
 old desire of crippling Spain in the west and earning the 
 King's pardon for any outrage by a lavish treasure. 
 
 Before the fleet actually set sail Sarmiento made one 
 more strenuous effort to obtain his recall. A meeting of 
 the Council was called to consider the matter, but Ralegh's 
 friends outweighed the Spanish faction and he was allowed 
 to depart in peace. Doubts of his honour seem to have 
 troubled even his best friends. Ere he left the Thames 
 Arundel asked him to pledge his word that he would 
 return to England whatever befell. It shows how far the 
 man had gone in his desperation that, although at the very 
 moment he was intriguing with France, he unhesitatingly 
 gave the desired promise. 
 
 The details of the voyage are dreary reading. His men 
 were mutinous and raw, the weather was always against 
 them, and disease made ravages in their number. Every- 
 thing evil seemed fated to befall the unhappy squadron. 
 They encountered difficulties at the Canaries. Ralegh him- 
 
 ^ Edwards' Ralegh, i. 595 note. 
 
 2 Gardiner, Frin. Charles^ p. 63 note. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 67 
 
 self fell sick, and for ten days lay tossing with fever. The 
 one thing which cheered him was the discovery that his 
 name and deeds were not forgotten among the Indians, 
 and that they were willing to help any Englishman for his 
 sake. 
 
 As soon as he could leave his bed he anchored opposite 
 the Isles de Salut to consider his steps. He had ten vessels 
 left, but five only were serviceable for river navigation. 
 Extreme ill-health and the wishes of his men compelled 
 him to wait at the river mouth ; but he prepared a force of 
 four hundred, over whom he put Keymis in command. 
 The choice was one of necessity ; the servant had proved 
 himself gallant and trustworthy, but it remained to be seen 
 whether he had any of the higher qualifications of a leader. 
 It is clear that through all this the chance of an engage- 
 ment with the Spaniards was ever present in Ralegh's mind. 
 Indeed, we find him actually contemplating the assault of 
 San Thome, and replying to the objections of his officers 
 by the extraordinary statement ^, ' I have order by word of 
 mouth of King and Council to take the town if it is any 
 hindrance to the digging of the mine.' We can understand 
 his frame of mind; worn by sickness and despair, all the 
 minor moralities of life sank out of his consideration, and 
 the end of his vision seemed limited to a courageous 
 death. 
 
 He sent off the band of pioneers with words which ring 
 like the last bravado of a doomed man. ' You shall find 
 me on your return at Punto Gallo, dead or alive ; and if 
 you find not my ships there at least you shall find their 
 ashes. For I will fire with the galleons if it comes to 
 extremity; but run away I will never I' How much the 
 success of the expedition meant to him we can guess, for it 
 contained his son Walter as a leader of a company, and on 
 
 ^ Bacon's Declaration and Ralegh's Address to Lord Carew. 
 ^ Ralegh to Keymis. Cayley, Life of Ralegh, ii. 125. 
 E 2 
 
68 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 its issue hinged his hope of hfe. So he set himself to wait 
 patiently, while a raw and ill-led band sought to achieve the 
 impossible. 
 
 The history of Keymis' expedition is one long record of 
 disaster. After three difficult weeks, in which two vessels 
 were left stranded behind, the three English ships came in 
 sight of the new settlement of San Tomas. The sight, so 
 utterly unlooked for, filled them with dismay. Keymis 
 seems to have lost his wits, and instead of passing the town 
 and making an effort to reach the mine, he resolved to 
 attack it, in defiance of what he knew to have been the 
 wishes of his commander. That evening the attempt took 
 place. The Spaniards were found prepared, but after some 
 desperate fighting the English set fire to the houses and 
 drove out the defenders. In the melee Walter Ralegh, the 
 general's son, fell fighting bravely. 
 
 For some days the invaders kept their position, while the 
 chances of ever reaching the mine grew smaller and smaller. 
 The Spaniards blocked all the approaches, while the men 
 themselves lost heart and bitterly reproached their leader. 
 Keymis soon lost all hope, and even if it had still been 
 possible to reach the mine it is doubtful if he could have 
 persuaded his band to follow him. He gave up all thought 
 of success, and with a hopeless heart led his shattered 
 forces back to Ralegh in the Gulf of Paria. 
 
 The sad news had already been brought there by a wan- 
 dering Indian, and Keymis' letter confirmed it. Keymis 
 himself on his arrival did not mend matters, for he pleaded 
 as his excuse that the gold would have done Ralegh no 
 good even if he had secured it. In anger at his lieutenant's 
 stupidity and heart-broken at his son's death, Ralegh lost all 
 his self-command, and upbraided him in bitter words which 
 were cruel to one of Keymis' services. It was the last drop 
 in the cup of the unhappy man's humiliation. He saw the 
 full mischief he had wrought, he saw his beloved master's 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 69 
 
 affections estranged for ever; and in his desolation hfe 
 sought his cabin and drove a knife into his heart. 
 
 His heutenant's suicide was the final destruction of 
 Ralegh's hopes. Nothing remained but a blank wall of 
 despair, and he had recourse to desperate expedients. He 
 tried to persuade his men to follow him to a fresh attack 
 on the mine, in which he might succeed or fall gloriously ; 
 but the proposal met deaf ears. Then his thoughts turned 
 to the Mexican plate-ship, and he entreated his captains to 
 follow him in an attack upon it. If such were successful, 
 all might yet be well\ His French commission, which 
 empowered him to take anything beyond the Canaries, 
 might satisfy the King. But his men knew the futility of 
 such reasoning, and gave no welcome to the project. Then 
 the unhappy fleet drifted slowly homewards, to the tribunal 
 which should judge its captain's deeds. In this, the blackest 
 hour of Ralegh's fate, it is to his honour that the idea of 
 suicide, present to him on a former occasion, seems never 
 to have entered his mind. His son was buried in the 
 Guiana woods, a hostile court and king awaited him, and 
 a trial of which there could be only one result. But in this 
 stormy twilight of his life a serener dignity seemed to be 
 with him, and he set his face to his doom with a settled 
 and heroic resolution. We hear of him at St. Christopher 
 with only four ships and deserted by two of his most trusted 
 captains. Again, he is at Newfoundland, and then we hear 
 of a mutiny in the open seas and Ralegh persuading his 
 men with difficulty to steer for Plymouth. At length, in 
 the beginning of June, the Destiny entered the English port. 
 
 Meanwhile in England all things were ready for his recep- 
 tion. The news of the hostilities in Guiana had given 
 Gondomar the opportunity he desired. He went at once 
 to James and reminded him of his promise, the conditions 
 on which Ralegh had sailed, and the course to be taken if 
 * Sir T. Wilson's Report. Gardiner, iii. p. 131 note. 
 
70 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 friendship with Spain were to be maintained. The Spanish 
 match was still dear to James' heart. He assured the 
 ambassador that justice would be done, that if the charge 
 were proved Ralegh would be delivered up to the King of 
 Spain for such punishment as he willed. On June ii 
 a proclamation was issued, inviting all who had evidence 
 against the accused to come before the Council; and the 
 Lord High Admiral ordered the seizure of the Destiny as 
 soon as she appeared in English seas. 
 
 When Ralegh arrived at Plymouth and was in the act of 
 setting out for London, he was met by his cousin, Sir Lewis 
 Stukely, the Vice-Admiral of Devon. By him he was 
 detained at Plymouth, but only under the loosest restraint. 
 The idea of escape grew on his mind, and he commissioned 
 a Captain King to find him a vessel. But Ralegh could 
 not bring himself to a step by which he should leave the 
 land dishonoured and obscure, and soon he was removed 
 to London. On the road his fear got the better of him, and 
 he feigned illness to delay the journey. When he reached 
 the city the thought of escape returned, and he besought 
 King to get him a ship at Gravesend. 
 
 Meanwhile a system of espionage was practised incessantly 
 upon the prisoner by Stukely and a French physician Man- 
 nourie, in the hope of finding particulars of his suspected 
 plot with France. Le Clerc, the King of France's agent, 
 had sent a message by an interpreter, La Chesnee, oifering 
 him his assistance in his escape across the Channel. On 
 his arrival he was lodged in his house in Bread Street, and 
 thither Le Clerc came and repeated the offers. Stukely, 
 feigning willingness to aid him, accompanied him the next 
 morning to a boat, which he had already arranged should 
 be stopped at Woolwich. There accordingly Ralegh was 
 arrested and conveyed to the Tower. So closed his brief 
 space of freedom, and now there remained only the denoue- 
 ment of the whole tragi-comedy. 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 7^ 
 
 . it 
 
 XIII. 
 
 On the eve of his imprisonment, in the days of his 
 counterfeited sickness, Ralegh had drawn up a statement 
 which was to be at once his report and his defence. The 
 Apologie for the Voyage to Guiana may fairly rank among 
 the best of his works. All his old tenets are defended, and 
 his distrust of Spain is expounded in words so noble and 
 strong as to give a fair colour even to the hazardous transac- 
 tions wrought in its name. It was the full statement of 
 a life-long policy, and we at a later day, with some know- 
 ledge of the innate greatness of the man, accept it as the 
 final criticism on his life. But at the same time few things 
 could be more damaging to his cause. He confessed that 
 he had broken the terms on which he sailed, and his defiance 
 of Spain could not be grateful to those who sought an alli- 
 ance. It was with this clear admission of guilt that Ralegh 
 entered upon his trial. 
 
 The Commission appointed to inquire into the charges 
 against him were sadly nonplussed by the extraordinary 
 mass of contradictions, and Ralegh's conflicting testimony 
 did not reassure them. With natural exasperation they 
 came to the conclusion that he was guilty in the fullest 
 sense, and that he had deliberately deceived the King and 
 Council by talk of a mine which did not exist and which he 
 had no intention of seeking. On August 1 7 he was brought 
 before them and confronted with the full charge. With the 
 skill of one who had already had some experience of capital 
 trials, he centred his defence on the weakest part of the 
 accusation, and showed the honesty of his intentions. But 
 he was driven to confess that he had proposed to seize the 
 'Mexican fleet, and it was hardly likely that men, already 
 versed in his duplicity, would give him credit for sincerity, 
 which at the best was only possible. 
 
72 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 There was still another class of charges — those of com- 
 plicity in a French plot — which a suspicious Government 
 urged against him. After long equivocations he was com- 
 pelled to own that he had set out with a French commission, 
 that the French ambassador had offered to assist him in his 
 escape, and that he had at various times entertained thoughts 
 of a refuge in France. All this was trivial enough in itself, 
 but it acquires significance from the circumstances of the 
 time. The relation to France was the most difficult problem 
 of statesmanship, and a man who was found in negotiations 
 with a French Government, who was a notorious liar con- 
 victed by his own words, might well be supposed to have 
 entered into further treasonable matters. This hint of 
 a French connexion played no small part in influencing 
 the minds of the judges. 
 
 At length the commissioners, under Bacon's guidance, 
 drew up and presented their report. The offences which 
 he had committed, they said, were more than sufficient to 
 warrant his death ; but as he had never been pardoned, 
 he was still an attainted man, and as such could be executed 
 only on the old charge. But it was necessary that the 
 people should know this clearly, and so they proposed two 
 alternatives. A complete statement of his offences might 
 be published, that all might know that his death was 
 attributed to his former charge only by a legal formality. 
 Or, better still, let a public trial take place. Let the 
 prisoner appear before the Council and a select body of 
 judges, the house being thrown open to certain peers and 
 private gentlemen, who would act as public witnesses of the 
 transaction. The second alternative James could not 
 entertain. He had no desire to hear the tissue of absurdities 
 which he called his policy denounced with the unsparing 
 force of one who was beyond any earthly fear. It was 
 possible even that the Spanish proposals might suffer in 
 consequence. So he contented himself with directing the 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 73 
 
 judges of the King's Bench to give judgement on the old 
 sentence. 
 
 On October 28 Ralegh was brought before the bar to 
 hear his doom. He was told by Yelverton that he was 
 to be condemned on the previous Winchester verdict, unless 
 he could show a clear pardon from the King. Ralegh in 
 vain brought forward the plea that his commission stood 
 in lieu of a pardon, and finding this of no avail, declared 
 that he threw himself upon the King's mercy. Accordingly 
 Montague pronounced the sentence of death. 
 
 In all this the thread of motive is perfectly clear. James 
 had brought himself into a position which demanded either 
 Ralegh's sacrifice or his own humiliation. He had been 
 largely responsible for the ill-fated expedition, but he chose 
 not to recognize an obligation which depended only upon 
 honour. It is clear, too, that Ralegh had erred grossly 
 both in judgement and conduct. We may pardon his 
 readiness to engage in an all but hopeless errand when we 
 think of his nature and his long captivity, but we cannot 
 wonder that he had to bear the consequences. We can 
 find, too, abundant excuse for the graver fault of his 
 broken promise and deliberate falsehood, but we do not 
 wonder that he had to pay the penalty. The peculiar 
 hardship of his position lay in the fact that he was con- 
 demned with doubtful law and more than doubtful justice. 
 An expedition had been undertaken with certain expectation 
 of failure, but yet with the connivance of the King. On 
 this expedition he had been guilty of faults worthy of death, 
 but it is almost certain that if he had been tried on this 
 question he would have been condemned illegally. His 
 judges would have centred their indictment on their assump- 
 tion of his consistent falsehood, and not only would they 
 have failed to substantiate it, but a strong chain of counter- 
 evidence could have been produced. Again, it is possible 
 that if this had been his only crime James would have 
 
74 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 risked a breach with Spain rather than admit of a trial 
 which would inevitably have shown himself and his designs 
 in an odious light. As it was, the real point of his offence 
 was concealed under a legal quibble. Here, too, there was 
 a rankling injustice, for most judges would admit the force 
 of Ralegh's plea that the King's commission represented 
 a pardon. Yet, apart from the tortuous unfairness of the 
 methods employed, we are compelled to admit that his 
 condemnation was broadly a just one. He had broken 
 the law of the realm in more ways than one — with abundant 
 cause it is true, and in an heroic fashion, but still with 
 criminal purpose. The ends of common justice could only 
 be satisfied with his death. 
 
 Throughout these last days his conduct was at first 
 querulous and uncertain. He upbraided his best friends, 
 accused Winwood of betrayal of confidence, and suffered 
 his sorrows to cloud the natural kindliness of his temper. 
 The life of intrigue and falsehood which he had lately lived 
 had not been without its effect. But the near approach 
 of death seemed to raise him to a lofty and settled calm. 
 Indeed, the death of Ralegh, with its note of rhetoric and 
 its clear sound of genuine heroism, is a singular commentary 
 on his eager, turbid life. With the bravado which had 
 always been a feature of his character, he used his last 
 speech as both an apology and a defence. Every step of 
 his progress to the scaffold has been made the centre 
 of a tale, which was told to succeeding generations of 
 Englishmen who had forgotten the great captain's faults in 
 his achievements. Ere he turned to the executioner he 
 closed his declaration with a brief prayer for pardon. 
 * I have been a man full of vanity, who has lived a sinful 
 life in such callings as have been most inducing to it; 
 for I have been a soldier, a sailor, and a courtier, which 
 are courses of wickedness and vice. I pray that His 
 Almighty Goodness will forgive me ; that He will cast away 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 75 
 
 my sins from me, and that He will raise me into everlasting 
 life.' With such words we ' shut up the story of his days.' 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The immediate result of his death was that his name 
 became at once foremost in men's thoughts and affections. 
 His great national services, the zeal with which he had 
 urged war against the national enemy, the last pathetic 
 scenes of his life, were all remembered, and the causes of 
 his former unpopularity were forgotten. It was with some- 
 thing like vengeful satisfaction that the nation witnessed the 
 luckless fate of Ralegh's enemies— Stukely, Mannourie, and 
 Cobham. So strong was the national feeling that Bacon, 
 under the direction of the Court of Commissioners, pro- 
 ceeded to prepare his statement of the reasons which led to 
 Ralegh's death. Eulogists have lavished much undeserved 
 abuse upon this production, but it is hard to regard it with 
 complete equanimity. Reasonable and fair though it is in 
 many parts, it has the central fault that it assumes Ralegh's 
 intended fraud from the beginning, and, proceeding upon 
 this assumption, distorts facts and discolours motives. 
 
 Nor did this popularity wane during the succeeding 
 generations. The new school of politicians who were to 
 fight the battle of constitutional freedom found in Ralegh 
 a precursor and an exemplar. 'AH history,' wrote Eliot, 
 who witnessed the execution, 'scarcely contains a parallel 
 to the fortitude of our Ralegh,' and a sense of intellectual 
 kinship endeared his name to Pym, Hampden, Cromwell, 
 and Milton. In him they saw a martyr to the cause of 
 liberty, one done to death by a tyrant king. Yet it cannot 
 be too strongly emphasized that Ralegh's death had scarcely 
 any political significance. He fell in consequence of his 
 own errors, through the treachery of enemies, but certainly 
 through no arbitrary decision of a king. His importance 
 
76 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 lay not in his championship of a political cause, but in the 
 influence which a life so brilliant, and at its best so worthy, 
 exercised upon the national mind. 
 
 After the reputation which accrued to him as a supposed 
 friend of liberty or as the uncompromising foe of Spain had 
 died away, there remained the attraction of a singularly 
 gifted personality and the glamour of a bold career. When 
 we have weighed his work in the balances, and found its 
 final value to be this or that, little or great as it may be, 
 there still remains the figure of a great man. His fame is 
 infinitely greater than the exact place which he fills in history. 
 Through all the imperfections and failures of his life there 
 shines out a soul, rich and essentially of noble quality. To 
 us he is still the type of the living and heroic spirit which 
 filled a great epoch of time. 
 
 And it is this, this spiritual quality, which makes any 
 estimate of the man according to the success which he 
 obtained in his various activities radically unfair. The 
 popular verdict is still the truer. We call him a great 
 scholar, humanist, and man of letters, but what proofs has 
 he left us ? His History is full of noble things, but inverte- 
 brate, inadequate, and uncritical. Few of the poems which 
 go by his name can be proved conclusively to be his, and 
 even these are little above the level of a minor lyricist. He 
 is ranked with Bacon as one of the leaders of the new 
 learning, and all he has left us consist of two metaphysical 
 treatises. The Sceptic and the Treatise on the Soul, which are 
 peculiarly barren and conventional. He is believed to be 
 one of our great commanders by land and sea, and on what 
 grounds ? A few minor successes in desultory Irish wars, 
 the report of good advice given to Essex at Cadiz, a few 
 secondary positions competently filled, and a great and 
 signal failure on the one occasion on which he was wholly 
 unfettered. He is the founder of English colonies, but his 
 particular attempts in Guiana ended disastrously, and it was 
 
SIR WALTER RALEGH 77 
 
 many years after his death before the Virginian settlement 
 was fully established. 
 
 The Same difficulty — this contrast between hard fact and 
 popular reputation — meets us in any consideration of his 
 character. If not like Sir Philip Sidney, a 'model of 
 harmonious gentleman,' he is at least to most men a type of 
 strenuous, high-souled, and single-eyed patriotism, of all the 
 more heart-stirring virtues. But history shows him mean 
 and all but treacherous on many occasions, unscrupulous in 
 ambition, many times cruel and self-seeking. And even 
 in the minor qualities our estimate must waver. He loved 
 his wife, but he began by wronging her; he was a good 
 master to his servants, but at times he could show hardness 
 and injustice. His devoutness has been made the subject 
 of eloquent eulogy, but there seems abundant proof that in 
 his own day his piety was regarded as doubtful at the best\ 
 His character has always been supposed to rest upon his 
 sterhng honesty of purpose, and yet we find him on more 
 occasions than one in palpable falsehood. 
 
 Yet all this damning evidence does not substantially alter 
 the truth of the popular judgement. He was great in gifts 
 and great in character. That resolute desire which can 
 alone raise a man to the highest place was never his, and 
 consequently, in spite of a hundred talents and an indomit- 
 able will, he fell short of actual attainment. If he had 
 curbed his aims and centred his interests on almost 
 any human activity, on literature, statesmanship, warfare, 
 
 * He was accused in company with Marlowe and others of being 
 a member of an atheistical society. Archbishop Abbot attributed his 
 death to his questioning ' God's being and omnipotence.' (Abbot to 
 Roe, Feb. 19, 1618-19.) But this report had probably its only founda- 
 tion in the active inquiring character of his mind. On one occasion he 
 is said to have sat up all night talking on religious topics with the 
 Jesuit John Comatius (Foley's Jesuits, iii. 461-462). We have also 
 Harrington's testimony {Niigae Antiquae,\\. 132) that 'in religion he 
 hath shown in private talk great depth and good reading.' 
 
78 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 colonizing, on the mere life of the Court, his influence 
 would sooner or later have become dominant. But the 
 multiplicity of his interests, while it renders him an in- 
 finitely brilliant and romantic figure, hindered him from 
 tangible achievement. 
 
 This over-wide mental activity finds its counterpart, if 
 not its source, in his defects of character. To such we 
 must attribute his greater misfortunes. The broad qualities 
 of honour and charity were always present, but he lacked 
 that nice scrupulousness which carries them into all the 
 details of life. His unpopularity and his hardships were 
 more directly consequent upon his frequent pride and 
 asperity of manner, his more frequent lack of pride in 
 undertaking unworthy business, his use of ignoble means, 
 and his ill-judged temper, than upon the tricks of fate or 
 a malignant king. He failed of success and he fell upon 
 trouble from the same lack of consistent purpose. 
 
 But his great worth, his dazzling career, and his natural 
 faults serve only to make him more attractive, more human. 
 For his life is great tragedy in the fullest sense, a profound 
 and moving presentment of the nature of man. In a 
 singular degree he realizes the Greek conception of the 
 ideal tragic hero, a man of like qualities with our own, 
 yet transcending them in a certain nobleness, who suffers 
 not through deliberate wrong-doing, but from a flaw in 
 character, a certain fatal error in conduct, and whose very 
 virtues, in the irony of life, serve to hasten his fate. And 
 after the consideration of his career we come back to the 
 popular verdict to acknowledge its truth, and see in this 
 great Englishman one who loved his country well and 
 fought in difficult days a good fight for her well-being, — 
 above all a man, who through frequent stumbling lived 
 his life bravely and fully, and bequeathed to his countrymen 
 the legacy of a great example. 
 
oxford: HORACE HART 
 PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY