Part 4

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_ These years are Raleigh's noon--stormy enough at best, yet brilliant. There is a pomp about him, outward and inward, which is terrible to others, dangerous to himself. One has gorgeous glimpses of that grand Durham House of his, with its carvings and its antique marbles, armorial escutcheons, 'beds with green silk hangings and legs like dolphins, overlaid with gold': and the man himself, tall, beautiful, and graceful, perfect alike in body and in mind, walking to and fro, his beautiful wife upon his arm, his noble boy beside his knee, in his 'white satin doublet, embroidered with pearls, and a great chain of pearls about his neck,' lording it among the lords with an 'awfulness and ascendency above other mortals,' for which men say that 'his naeve is, that he is damnable proud'; and no wonder. The reduced squire's younger son has gone forth to conquer the world; and he fancies, poor fool, that he has conquered it, just as it really has conquered him; and he will stand now on his blood and his pedigree (no bad one either), and all the more stiffly because puppies like Lord Oxford, who instead of making their fortunes have squandered them, call him 'jack and upstart,' and make impertinent faces while the Queen is playing the virginals, about 'how when jacks go up, heads go down.' Proud? No wonder if the man be proud! 'Is not this great Babylon, which I have built?' And yet all the while he has the most affecting consciousness that all this is not God's will, but the will of the flesh; that the house of fame is not the house of God; that its floor is not the rock of ages, but the sea of glass mingled with fire, which may crack beneath him any moment, and let the nether flame burst up. He knows that he is living in a splendid lie; that he is not what God meant him to be. He longs to flee away and be at peace. It is to this period, not to his death- hour, that 'The Lie' belongs; {4} saddest of poems, with its melodious contempt and life-weariness. All is a lie--court, church, statesmen, courtiers, wit and science, town and country, all are shams; the days are evil; the canker is at the root of all things; the old heroes are dying one by one; the Elizabethan age is rotting down, as all human things do, and nothing is left but to bewail with Spenser 'The Ruins of Time'; the glory and virtue which have been-- the greater glory and virtue which might be even now, if men would but arise and repent, and work righteousness, as their fathers did before them. But no. Even to such a world as this he will cling, and flaunt it about as captain of the guard in the Queen's progresses and masques and pageants, with sword-belt studded with diamonds and rubies, or at tournaments, in armour of solid silver, and a gallant train with orange-tawny feathers, provoking Essex to bring in a far larger train in the same colours, and swallow up Raleigh's pomp in his own, so achieving that famous 'feather triumph' by which he gains little but bad blood and a good jest. For Essex is no better tilter than he is general; and having 'run very ill' in his orange-tawny, comes next day in green, and runs still worse, and yet is seen to be the same cavalier; whereon a spectator shrewdly observes that he changed his colours 'that it may be reported that there was one in green who ran worse than he in orange-tawny.' But enough of these toys, while God's handwriting is upon the wall above all heads.

Footnote: {4} It is to be found in a MS. of 1596.

Raleigh knows that the handwriting is there. The spirit which drove him forth to Virginia and Guiana is fallen asleep: but he longs for Sherborne and quiet country life, and escapes thither during Essex's imprisonment, taking Cecil's son with him, and writes as only he can write about the shepherd's peaceful joys, contrasted with 'courts' and 'masques' and 'proud towers' -

'Here are no false entrapping baits
Too hasty for too hasty fates,
Unless it be
The fond credulity
Of silly fish, that worlding who still look
Upon the bait, but never on the hook;
Nor envy, unless among
The birds, for prize of their sweet song.

'Go! let the diving negro seek
For pearls hid in some forlorn creek,
We all pearls scorn,
Save what the dewy morn
Congeals upon some little spire of grass,
Which careless shepherds beat down as they pass
And gold ne'er here appears
Save what the yellow Ceres bears.'

Tragic enough are the after scenes of Raleigh's life: but most tragic of all are these scenes of vain-glory, in which he sees the better part, and yet chooses the worse, and pours out his self- discontent in song which proves the fount of delicacy and beauty which lies pure and bright beneath the gaudy artificial crust. What might not this man have been! And he knows that too. The stately rooms of Durham House pall on him, and he delights to hide up in his little study among his books and his chemical experiments, and smoke his silver pipe, and look out on the clear Thames and the green Surrey hills, and dream about Guiana and the Tropics; or to sit in the society of antiquaries with Selden and Cotton, Camden and Stow; or in his own Mermaid Club, with Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, and at last with Shakspeare's self to hear and utter

'Words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whom they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest.'

Anything to forget the handwriting on the wall, which will not be forgotten. But he will do all the good which he can meanwhile, nevertheless. He will serve God and Mammon. So complete a man will surely be able to do both. Unfortunately the thing is impossible, as he discovers too late: but he certainly goes as near success in the attempt as ever man did. Everywhere we find him doing justly and loving mercy. Wherever this man steps he leaves his footprint ineffaceably in deeds of benevolence. For one year only, it seems, he is governor of Jersey; yet to this day, it is said, the islanders honour his name, only second to that of Duke Rollo, as their great benefactor, the founder of their Newfoundland trade. In the west country he is 'as a king,' 'with ears and mouth always open to hear and deliver their grievances, feet and hands ready to go and work their redress.' The tin-merchants have become usurers 'of fifty in the hundred.' Raleigh works till he has put down their 'abominable and cut-throat dealing.' There is a burdensome west-country tax on curing fish; Raleigh works till it is revoked. In Parliament he is busy with liberal measures, always before his generation. He puts down a foolish act for compulsory sowing of hemp in a speech on the freedom of labour worthy of the nineteenth century. He argues against raising the subsidy from the three-pound men--'Call you this, Mr. Francis Bacon, par jugum, when a poor man pays as much as a rich?' He is equally rational and spirited against the exportation of ordnance to the enemy; and when the question of abolishing monopolies is mooted he has his wise word. He too is a monopolist of tin, as Lord Warden of the Stannaries. But he has so wrought as to bring good out of evil; for 'before the granting of his patent, let the price of tin be never so high, the poor workman never had but two shillings a week'; yet now, so has he extended and organised the tin- works, 'that any man who will can find work, be tin at what price soever, and have four shillings a week truly paid . . . Yet if all others may be repealed, I will give my consent as freely to the cancelling of this as any member of this house.' Most of the monopolies were repealed: but we do not find that Raleigh's was among them. Why should it be if its issue was more tin, full work, and double wages? In all things this man approves himself faithful in his generation. His sins are not against man, but against God; such as the world thinks no sins, and hates them, not from morality, but from envy.

In the meanwhile, the evil which, so Spenser had prophesied, only waited Raleigh's death breaks out in his absence, and Ireland is all aflame with Tyrone's rebellion. Raleigh is sent for. He will not accept the post of Lord Deputy and go to put it down. Perhaps he does not expect fair play as long as Essex is at home. Perhaps he knows too much of the 'common weal, or rather common woe,' and thinks that what is crooked cannot be made straight. Perhaps he is afraid to lose by absence his ground at court. Would that he had gone, for Ireland's sake and his own. However, it must not be. Ormond is recalled, and Knollys shall be sent: but Essex will have none but Sir George Carew; whom, Naunton says, he hates, and wishes to oust from court. He and Elizabeth argue it out. He turns his back on her, and she gives him--or does not give him, for one has found so many of these racy anecdotes vanish on inspection into simple wind, that one believes none of them--a box on the ear; which if she did, she did the most wise, just, and practical thing which she could do with such a puppy. He claps his hand--or does not--to his sword, 'He would not have taken it from Henry VIII.,' and is turned out forthwith. In vain Egerton, the Lord Keeper, tries to bring him to reason. He storms insanely. Every one on earth is wrong but he: every one is conspiring against him; he talks of 'Solomon's fool' too. Had he read the Proverbs a little more closely, he might have left the said fool alone, as being a too painfully exact likeness of himself. It ends by his being worsted, and Raleigh rising higher than ever.

I cannot see why Raleigh should be represented as henceforth becoming Essex's 'avowed enemy,' save on the ground that all good men are and ought to be the enemies of bad men, when they see them about to do harm, and to ruin the country. Essex is one of the many persons upon whom this age has lavished a quantity of sentimentality, which suits oddly enough with its professions of impartiality. But there is an impartiality which ends in utter injustice; which by saying carelessly to every quarrel, 'Both are right, and both are wrong,' leaves only the impression that all men are wrong, and ends by being unjust to every one. So has Elizabeth and Essex's quarrel been treated. There was some evil in Essex; therefore Elizabeth was a fool for liking him. There was some good in Essex; therefore Elizabeth was cruel in punishing him. This is the sort of slipshod dilemma by which Elizabeth is proved to be wrong, even while Essex is confessed to be wrong too; while the patent facts of the case are, that Elizabeth bore with him as long as she could, and a great deal longer than any one else could. Why Raleigh should be accused of helping to send Essex into Ireland, I do not know. Camden confesses (at the same time that he gives a hint of the kind) that Essex would let no one go but himself. And if this was his humour, one can hardly wonder at Cecil and Raleigh, as well as Elizabeth, bidding the man begone and try his hand at government, and be filled with the fruit of his own devices. He goes; does nothing; or rather worse than nothing; for in addition to the notorious ill-management of the whole matter, we may fairly say that he killed Elizabeth. She never held up her head again after Tyrone's rebellion. Elizabeth still clings to him, changing her mind about him every hour, and at last writes him such a letter as he deserves. He has had power, money, men, such as no one ever had before. Why has he done nothing but bring England to shame? He comes home frantically--the story of his bursting into the dressing-room rests on no good authority--with a party of friends at his heels, leaving Ireland to take care of itself. Whatever entertainment he met with from the fond old woman, he met with the coldness which he deserved from Raleigh and Cecil. Who can wonder? What had he done to deserve aught else? But he all but conquers; and Raleigh takes to his bed in consequence, sick of the whole matter; as one would have been inclined to do oneself. He is examined and arraigned; writes a maudlin letter to Elizabeth. Elizabeth has been called a fool for listening to such pathetical 'love letters': and then hardhearted for not listening to them. Poor Lady! do what she would, she found it hard enough to please all parties while alive; must she be condemned over and above in aeternum to be wrong whatsoever she did? Why is she not to have the benefit of the plain straightforward interpretation which would be allowed to any other human being; namely, that she approved of such fine talk as long as it was proved to be sincere by fine deeds: but that when these were wanting, the fine talk became hollow, fulsome, a fresh cause of anger and disgust? Yet still she weeps over Essex when he falls sick, as any mother would; and would visit him if she could with honour. But a 'malignant influence counteracts every disposition to relent.' No doubt, a man's own folly, passion, and insolence has generally a very malignant influence on his fortunes; and he may consider himself a very happy man if all that befalls to him thereby is what befell Essex, namely, deprivation of his offices and imprisonment in his own house. He is forgiven after all; but the spoilt child refuses his bread and butter without sugar. What is the pardon to him without a renewal of his licence of sweet wines? Because he is not to have that, the Queen's 'conditions are as crooked as her carcase.' Flesh and blood can stand no more, and ought to stand no more. After all that Elizabeth has been to him, that speech is the speech of a brutal and ungrateful nature. And such he shows himself to be in the hour of trial. What if the patent for sweet wines is refused him? Such gifts were meant as the reward of merit; and what merit has he to show? He never thinks of that. Blind with fury, he begins to intrigue with James, and slanders to him, under colour of helping his succession, all whom he fancies opposed to him. What is worse, he intrigues with Tyrone about bringing over an army of Irish Papists to help him against the Queen, and this at the very time that his sole claim to popularity rests on his being the leader of the Puritans. A man must have been very far gone, either in baseness or in hatred, who represents Raleigh to James as dangerous to the commonweal on account of his great power in the west of England and Jersey, 'places fit for the Spaniard to land in.' Cobham, as Warden of the Cinque Ports, is included in his slander; and both he and Raleigh will hear of it again.

Some make much of a letter, supposed to be written about this time by Raleigh to Cecil, bidding Cecil keep down Essex, even crush him, now that he is once down. I do not happen to think the letter to be Raleigh's. His initials are subscribed to it; but not his name and the style is not like his. But as for seeing 'unforgiveness and revenge in it,' whose soever it may be, I hold and say there is not a word which can bear such a construction. It is a dark letter: but about a dark matter and a dark man. It is a worldly and expediential letter, appealing to low motives in Cecil, though for a right end; such a letter, in short, as statesmen are wont to write nowadays. If Raleigh wrote it, God punished him for doing so speedily enough. He does not usually punish statesmen nowadays for such letters; perhaps because He does not love them as well as Raleigh. But as for the letter itself. Essex is called a 'tyrant,' because he had shown himself one. The Queen is to 'hold Bothwell,' because 'while she hath him, he will even be the canker of her estate and safety,' and the writer has 'seen the last of her good days and of ours after his liberty.' On which accounts, Cecil is not to be deterred from doing what is right and necessary 'by any fear of after-revenges' and 'conjectures from causes remote,' as many a stronger instance--given- -will prove, but 'look to the present,' and so 'do wisely.' There is no real cause for Cecil's fear. If the man who has now lost a power which he ought never to have had be now kept down, then neither he nor his son will ever be able to harm the man who has kept him at his just level. What 'revenge, selfishness, and craft' there can be in all this it is difficult to see; as difficult as to see why Essex is to be talked of as 'unfortunate,' and the blame of his frightful end thrown on every one but himself: the fact being that Essex's end was brought on by his having chosen one Sunday morning for breaking out into open rebellion, for the purpose of seizing the city of London and the Queen's person, and compelling her to make him lord and master of the British Isles; in which attempt he and his fought with the civil and military authorities, till artillery had to be brought up and many lives were lost. Such little escapades may be pardonable enough in 'noble and unfortunate' earls: but readers will perhaps agree that if they chose to try a similar experiment, they could not complain if they found themselves shortly after in company with Mr. Mitchell at Spike Island or Mr. Oxford in Bedlam. However, those were days in which such Sabbath amusements on the part of one of the most important and powerful personages of the realm could not be passed over so lightly, especially when accompanied by severe loss of life; and as there existed in England certain statutes concerning rebellion and high treason, which must needs have been framed for some purpose or other, the authorities of England may be excused for fancying that they bore some reference to such acts as that which the noble and unfortunate earl had just committed, as wantonly, selfishly, and needlessly, it seems to me, as ever did man on earth.

I may seem to jest too much upon so solemn a matter as the life of a human being: but if I am not to touch the popular talk about Essex in this tone, I can only touch it in a far sterner one; and if ridicule is forbidden, express disgust instead.

I have entered into this matter of Essex somewhat at length, because on it is founded one of the mean slanders from which Raleigh never completely recovered. The very mob who, after Raleigh's death, made him a Protestant martyr--as, indeed, he was--looked upon Essex in the same light, hated Raleigh as the cause of his death, and accused him of glutting his eyes with Essex's misery, puffing tobacco out of a window, and what not--all mere inventions, so Raleigh declared upon the scaffold. He was there in his office as captain of the guard, and could do no less than be there. Essex, it is said, asked for Raleigh just before he died: but Raleigh had withdrawn, the mob having murmured. What had Essex to say to him? Was it, asks Oldys, shrewdly enough, to ask him pardon for the wicked slanders which he had been pouring into James's credulous and cowardly ears? We will hope so; and leave poor Essex to God and the mercy of God, asserting once more that no man ever brought ruin and death more thoroughly on himself by his own act, needing no imaginary help downwards from Raleigh, Cecil, or other human being.

And now begins the fourth act of this strange tragedy. Queen Elizabeth dies; and dies of grief. It has been the fashion to attribute to her, I know not why, remorse for Essex's death; and the foolish and false tale about Lady Nottingham and the ring has been accepted as history. The fact seems to be that she never really held up her head after Burleigh's death. She could not speak of him without tears; forbade his name to be mentioned in the Council. No wonder; never had mistress a better servant. For nearly half a century have these two noble souls loved each other, trusted each other, worked with each other; and God's blessing has been on their deeds; and now the faithful God-fearing man is gone to his reward; and she is growing old, and knows that the ancient fire is dying out in her; and who will be to her what he was? Buckhurst is a good man, and one of her old pupils; and she makes him Lord Treasurer in Burleigh's place: but beyond that all is dark. 'I am a miserable forlorn woman; there is none about me that I can trust.' She sees through Cecil; through Henry Howard. Essex has proved himself worthless, and pays the penalty of his sins. Men are growing worse than their fathers. Spanish gold is bringing in luxury and sin. The last ten years of her reign are years of decadence, profligacy, falsehood; and she cannot but see it. Tyrone's rebellion is the last drop which fills the cup. After fifty years of war, after a drain of money all but fabulous expended on keeping Ireland quiet, the volcano bursts forth again just as it seemed extinguished, more fiercely than ever, and the whole work has to be done over again, when there is neither time nor a man to do it. And ahead, what hope is there for England? Who will be her successor? She knows in her heart that it will be James: but she cannot bring herself to name him. To bequeath the fruit of all her labours to a tyrant, a liar, and a coward: for she knows the man but too well. It is too hideous to be faced. This is the end then? 'Oh that I were a milke maide, with a paile upon mine arm!' But it cannot be. It never could have been; and she must endure to the end.

'Therefore I hated life; yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun; because I should leave it to the man that shall be after me. And who knows whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have showed myself wise, in wisdom, and knowledge, and equity . . . Vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit!' And so, with a whole book of Ecclesiastes written on that mighty heart, the old lioness coils herself up in her lair, refuses food, and dies. I know few passages in the world's history more tragic than that death.

Why did she not trust Raleigh? First, because Raleigh, as we have seen, was not the sort of man whom she needed. He was not the steadfast single-eyed statesman; but the many-sided genius. Besides, he was the ringleader of the war-party. And she, like Burleigh before his death, was tired of the war; saw that it was demoralising England; was anxious for peace. Raleigh would not see that. It was to him a divine mission which must be fulfilled at all risks. As long as the Spaniards were opposing the Indians, conquering America, there must be no peace. Both were right from their own point of view. God ordered the matter from a third point of view.

Besides, we know that Essex, and after him Cecil and Henry Howard, had been slandering Raleigh basely to James. Can we doubt that the same poison had been poured into Elizabeth's ears? She might distrust Cecil too much to act upon what he said of Raleigh; and yet distrust Raleigh too much to put the kingdom into his hands. However, she is gone now, and a new king has arisen, who knoweth not Joseph.

James comes down to take possession. Insolence, luxury, and lawlessness mark his first steps on his going amid the adulations of a fallen people; he hangs a poor wretch without trial; wastes his time in hunting by the way;--a bad and base man, whose only redeeming point--if in his case it be one--is his fondness for little children. But that will not make a king. The wiser elders take counsel together. Raleigh and good Judge Fortescue are for requiring conditions from the newcomer; and constitutional liberty makes its last stand among the men of Devon, the old county of warriors, discoverers, and statesmen, of which Queen Bess had said that the men of Devon were her right hand. But in vain; James has his way; Cecil and Henry Howard are willing enough to give it him.

So down comes Rehoboam, taking counsel with the young men, and makes answer to England, 'My father chastised you with whips; but I will chastise you with scorpions.' He takes a base pleasure, shocking to the French ambassador, in sneering at the memory of Queen Elizabeth; a perverse delight in honouring every rascal whom she had punished. Tyrone must come to England to be received into favour, maddening the soul of honest Sir John Harrington. Essex is christened 'my martyr,' apparently for having plotted treason against Elizabeth with Tyrone. Raleigh is received with a pun--'By my soul, I have heard rawly of thee, mon'; and when the great nobles and gentlemen come to court with their retinues, James tries to hide his dread of them in an insult; pooh-poohs their splendour, and says, 'he doubts not that he should have been able to win England for himself, had they kept him out.' Raleigh answers boldly, 'Would God that had been put to the trial.' 'Why?' 'Because then you would have known your friends from your foes.' 'A reason,' says old Aubrey, 'never forgotten or forgiven.' Aubrey is no great authority; but the speech smacks so of Raleigh's offhand daring that one cannot but believe it; as one does also the other story of his having advised the lords to keep out James and erect a republic. Not that he could have been silly enough to propose such a thing seriously at that moment; but that he most likely, in his bold way, may have said, 'Well, if we are to have this man in without conditions, better a republic at once.' Which, if he did say, he said what the next forty years proved to be strictly true. However, he will go on his own way as best he can. If James will give him a loan, he and the rest of the old heroes will join, fit out a fleet against Spain, and crush her, now that she is tottering and impoverished, once and for ever. But James has no stomach for fighting; cannot abide the sight of a drawn sword; would not provoke Spain for the world--why, they might send Jesuits and assassinate him; and as for the money, he wants that for very different purposes. So the answer which he makes to Raleigh's proposal of war against Spain is to send him to the Tower, and sentence him to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, on a charge of plotting with Spain.

Having read, I believe, nearly all that has been written on the subject of this dark 'Cobham plot,' I find but one thing come brightly out of the infinite confusion and mystery, which will never be cleared up till the day of judgment, and that is Raleigh's innocence. He, and all England, and the very men who condemned him, knew that he was innocent. Every biographer is forced to confess this, more or less, in spite of all efforts to be what is called 'impartial.' So I shall waste no words upon the matter, only observing that whereas Raleigh is said to have slandered Cecil to James, in the same way that Cecil had slandered him, one passage of this Cobham plot disproves utterly such a story, which, after all, rests (as far as I know) only on hearsay, being 'spoken of in a manuscript written by one Buck, secretary to Chancellor Egerton.' For in writing to his own wife, in the expectation of immediate death, Raleigh speaks of Cecil in a very different tone, as one in whom he trusted most, and who has left him in the hour of need. I ask the reader to peruse that letter, and say whether any man would write thus, with death and judgment before his face, of one whom he knew that he had betrayed; or, indeed, of one who he knew had betrayed him. I see no reason to doubt that Raleigh kept good faith with Cecil, and that he was ignorant till after his trial that Cecil was in the plot against him.

I do not care to enter into the tracasseries of this Cobham plot. Every one knows them; no one can unravel them. The moral and spiritual significance of the fact is more interesting than all questions as to Cobham's lies, Brooke's lies, Aremberg's lies, Coke's lies, James's lies:- Let the dead bury their dead. It is the broad aspect of the thing which is so wonderful; to see how

'The eagle, towering in his pride of place,
Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed.'

This is the man who six months ago, perhaps, thought that he and Cecil were to rule England together, while all else were the puppets whose wires they pulled. 'The Lord hath taken him up and dashed him down;' and by such means, too, and on such a charge! Betraying his country to Spain! Absurd--incredible--he would laugh it to scorn: but it is bitter earnest. There is no escape. True or false, he sees that his enemies will have his head. It is maddening: a horrible nightmare. He cannot bear it; he cannot face--so he writes to that beloved wife--'the scorn, the taunts, the loss of honour, the cruel words of lawyers.' He stabs himself. Read that letter of his, written after the mad blow had been struck; it is sublime from intensity of agony. The way in which the chastisement was taken proves how utterly it was needed, ere that proud, success-swollen, world-entangled heart could be brought right with God.

And it is brought right. The wound is not mortal. He comes slowly to a better mind, and takes his doom like a man. That first farewell to his wife was written out of hell. The second rather out of heaven. Read it, too, and compare; and then see how the Lord has been working upon this great soul: infinite sadness, infinite tenderness and patience, and trust in God for himself and his poor wife: 'God is my witness, it was for you and yours that I desired life; but it is true that I disdain myself for begging it. For know, dear wife, that your son is the son of a true man, and one who, in his own respect, despiseth death and all his ugly and misshapen forms . . . The everlasting, powerful, infinite, and omnipotent God, who is goodness itself, the true life and light, keep thee and thine, have mercy upon me, and teach me to forgive my persecutors and accusers, and send us to meet in His glorious kingdom.'

Is it come to this then? Is he fit to die at last? Then he is fit to live; and live he shall. The tyrants have not the heart to carry out their own crime, and Raleigh shall be respited.

But not pardoned. No more return for him into that sinful world, where he flaunted on the edge of the precipice, and dropped heedless over it. God will hide him in the secret place of His presence, and keep him in His tabernacle from the strife of tongues; and a new life shall begin for him; a wiser, perhaps a happier, than he has known since he was a little lad in the farmhouse in pleasant Devon far away. On the 15th of December he enters the Tower. Little dreams he that for more than twelve years those doleful walls would be his home. Lady Raleigh obtains leave to share his prison with him, and, after having passed ten years without a child, brings him a boy to comfort the weary heart. The child of sorrow is christened Carew.

Little think those around him what strange things that child will see before his hairs be gray. She has her maid, and he his three servants; some five or six friends are allowed 'to repair to him at convenient times.' He has a chamber-door always open into the lieutenant's garden, where he 'has converted a little hen-house into a still-room, and spends his time all the day in distillation.' The next spring a grant is made of his goods and chattels, forfeited by attainder, to trustees named by himself, for the benefit of his family. So far, so well; or, at least, not as ill as it might be: but there are those who cannot leave the caged lion in peace.

Sanderson, who had married his niece, instead of paying up the arrears which he owes on the wine and other offices, brings in a claim of 2000 pounds. But the rogue meets his match, and finds himself, at the end of a lawsuit, in prison for debt. Greater rogues, however, will have better fortune, and break through the law- cobwebs which have stopped a poor little fly like Sanderson. For Carr, afterwards Lord Somerset, casts his eyes on the Sherborne land. It has been included in the conveyance, and should be safe; but there are others who, by instigation surely of the devil himself, have had eyes to see a flaw in the deed. Sir John Popham is appealed to. Who could doubt the result? He answers that there is no doubt that the words were omitted by the inattention of the engrosser--Carew Raleigh says that but one single word was wanting, which word was found notwithstanding in the paper-book, i.e. the draft--but that the word not being there, the deed is worthless, and the devil may have his way. To Carr, who has nothing of his own, it seems reasonable enough to help himself to what belongs to others, and James gives him the land. Raleigh writes to him, gently, gracefully, loftily. Here is an extract: 'And for yourself, sir, seeing your fair day is now in the dawn, and mine drawn to the evening, your own virtues and the king's grace assuring you of many favours and much honour, I beseech you not to begin your first building upon the ruins of the innocent; and that their sorrows, with mine, may not attend your first plantation.' He speaks strongly of the fairness, sympathy, and pity by which the Scots in general had laid him under obligation: argues from it his own evident innocence; and ends with a quiet warning to the young favourite not to 'undergo the curse of them that enter into the fields of the fatherless.' In vain. Lady Raleigh, with her children, entreats James on her knees: in vain again. 'I mun ha' the land,' is the answer; 'I mun ha' it for Carr.' And he has it; patching up the matter after a while by a gift of 8000 pounds to her and her elder son, in requital for an estate of 5000 pounds a year.

So there sits Raleigh, growing poorer day by day, and clinging more and more to that fair wife, and her noble boy, and the babe whose laughter makes music within that dreary cage. And all day long, as we have seen, he sits over his still, compounding and discovering, and sometimes showing himself on the wall to the people, who gather to gaze at him, till Wade forbids it, fearing popular feeling. In fact, the world outside has a sort of mysterious awe of him, as if he were a chained magician, who, if he were let loose, might do with them all what he would. Certain great nobles are of the same mind. Woe to them if that silver tongue should once again be unlocked!

The Queen, with a woman's faith in greatness, sends to him for 'cordials.' Here is one of them, famous in Charles the Second's days as 'Sir Walter's Cordial':-

 
B.  Zedoary and Saffron, each       0.5 lb.
Distilled water                       3 pints.
Macerate, etc., and reduce to       1.5 pint.
Compound powder of crabs' claws      16 oz.
Cinnamon and Nutmegs                  2 oz.
Cloves                                1 oz.
Cardamom seeds                      0.5 oz.
 Double refined sugar                  2 lb.
        Make a confection.

Which, so the world believes, will cure all ills which flesh is heir to. It does not seem that Raleigh so boasted himself; but the people, after the fashion of the time, seem to have called all his medicines 'cordials,' and probably took for granted that it was by this particular one that the enchanter cured Queen Anne of a desperate sickness, 'whereof the physicians were at the farthest end of their studies' (no great way to go in those days) 'to find the cause, and at a nonplus for the cure.'

Raleigh--this is Sir Anthony Welden's account, which may go for what it is worth--asks for his reward, only justice. Will the Queen ask that certain lords may be sent to examine Cobham, 'whether he had at any time accused Sir Walter of any treason under his hand?' Six are sent. Cobham answers, 'Never; nor could I: that villain Wade often solicited me, and not so prevailing, got me by a trick to write my name on a piece of white paper. So that if a charge come under my hand it was forged by that villain Wade, by writing something above my hand, without my consent or knowledge.' They return. An equivocation was ready. 'Sir, my Lord Cobham has made good all that ever he wrote or said'; having, by his own account, written nothing but his name. This is Sir Anthony Welden's story. One hopes, for the six lords' sake, it may not be true; but there is no reason, in the morality of James's court, why it should not have been.

So Raleigh must remain where he is, and work on. And he does work. As his captivity becomes more and more hopeless, so comes out more and more the stateliness, self-help, and energy of the man. Till now he has played with his pen: now he will use it in earnest; and use it as few prisoners have done. Many a good book has been written in a dungeon--'Don Quixote,' the 'Pilgrim's Progress': beautiful each in its way, and destined to immortality: Raleigh begins the 'History of the World,' the most God-fearing and God-seeing history which I know of among English writings; though blotted by flattery of James in the preface: wrong: but pardonable in a man trying in the Tower to get out of that doleful prison. But all his writings are thirty years too late; they express the creed of a buried generation, of the men who defied Spain in the name of a God of righteousness,--not of men who cringe before her in the name of a God of power and cunning. The captive eagle has written with a quill from his own wing--a quill which has been wont ere now to soar to heaven. Every line smacks of the memories of Nombre and of Zutphen, of Tilbury Fort and of Calais Roads; and many a gray-headed veteran, as he read them, must have turned away his face to hide the noble tears, as Ulysses from Demodocus when he sang the song of Troy. So there sits Raleigh, like the prophet of old, in his lonely tower above the Thames, watching the darkness gather upon the land year by year, 'like the morning spread over the mountains,' the darkness which comes before the dawn of the Day of The Lord; which he shall never see on earth, though it be very near at hand; and asks of each newcomer, 'Watchman, what of the night?'

But there is one bright point at least in the darkness; one on whom Raleigh's eyes, and those of all England, are fixed in boundless hope; one who, by the sympathy which attracts all noble natures to each other, clings to the hero utterly; Henry, the Crown Prince. 'No king but my father would keep such a bird in a cage.' The noble lad tries to open the door for the captive eagle; but in vain. At least he will make what use he can of his wisdom. He asks him for advice about the new ship he is building, and has a simple practical letter in return, and over and above probably the two valuable pamphlets, 'Of the Invention of Ships,' and 'Observations on the Navy and Sea Service'; which the Prince will never see. In 1611 he asks Raleigh's advice about the foolish double marriage with the Prince and Princess of Savoy, and receives for answer two plain-spoken discourses as full of historical learning as of practical sound sense.

These are benefits which must be repaid. The father will repay them hereafter in his own way. In the meanwhile the son does so in his way, by soliciting the Sherborne estate as for himself, intending to restore it to Raleigh. He succeeds. Carr is bought off for 25,000 pounds, where Lady Raleigh has been bought off with 8000 pounds; but neither Raleigh nor his widow will ever be the better for that bargain, and Carr will get Sherborne back again, and probably, in the King's silly dotage, keep the 25,000 pounds also.

In November 1612 Prince Henry falls sick.

When he is at the last gasp, the poor Queen sends to Raleigh for some of the same cordial which had cured her. Medicine is sent, with a tender letter, as it well might be; for Raleigh knew how much hung, not only for himself, but for England, on the cracking threads of that fair young life. It is questioned at first whether it shall be administered. 'The cordial,' Raleigh says, 'will cure him or any other of a fever, except in case of poison.'

The cordial is administered; but it comes too late. The prince dies, and with him the hopes of all good men.

* * *

At last, after twelve years of prison, Raleigh is free. He is sixty- six years old now, gray-headed and worn down by confinement, study, and want of exercise: but he will not remember that.

'Still in his ashes live their wonted fire.'

Now for Guiana, at last! which he has never forgotten; to which he has been sending, with his slender means, ship after ship to keep the Indians in hope.

He is freed in March. At once he is busy in his project. In August he has obtained the King's commission, by the help of Sir Ralph Winwood, Secretary of State, who seems to have believed in Raleigh. At least Raleigh believed in him. In March next year he has sailed, and with him thirteen ships, and more than a hundred knights and gentlemen, and among them, strange to say, Sir Warham St. Leger. This is certainly not the quondam Marshal of Munster under whom Raleigh served at Smerwick six-and-thirty years ago. He would be nearly eighty years old; and as Lord Doneraile's pedigree gives three Sir Warhams, we cannot identify the man. But it is a strong argument in Raleigh's favour that a St. Leger, of a Devon family which had served with him in Ireland, and intimately connected with him his whole life, should keep his faith in Raleigh after all his reverses. Nevertheless, the mere fact of an unpardoned criminal, said to be non ens in law, being able in a few months to gather round him such a party, is proof patent of what slender grounds there are for calling Raleigh 'suspected' and 'unpopular.'

But he does not sail without a struggle or two. James is too proud to allow his heir to match with any but a mighty king, is infatuated about the Spanish marriage; and Gondomar is with him, playing with his hopes and with his fears also.

The people are furious, and have to be silenced again and again: there is even fear of rioting. The charming and smooth-tongued Gondomar can hate, and can revenge, too. Five 'prentices who have insulted him for striking a little child, are imprisoned and fined several hundred pounds each. And as for hating Raleigh, Gondomar had been no Spaniard (to let alone the private reasons which some have supposed) had he not hated Spain's ancient scourge and unswerving enemy. He comes to James, complaining that Raleigh is about to break the peace with Spain. Nothing is to be refused him which can further the one darling fancy of James; and Raleigh has to give in writing the number of his ships, men, and ordnance, and, moreover, the name of the country and the very river whither he is going. This paper was given, Carew Raleigh asserts positively, under James's solemn promise not to reveal it; and Raleigh himself seems to have believed that it was to be kept private; for he writes afterwards to Secretary Winwood in a tone of astonishment and indignation, that the information contained in his paper had been sent on to the King of Spain before he sailed from the Thames. Winwood could have told him as much already; for Buckingham had written to Winwood, on March 28, to ask him why he had not been to the Spanish Ambassador 'to acquaint him with the order taken by his Majesty about Sir W. R.'s voyage.' But however unwilling the Secretary (as one of the furtherers of the voyage) may have been to meddle in the matter, Gondomar had had news enough from another source; perhaps from James's own mouth. For the first letter to the West Indies about Raleigh was dated from Madrid, March 19; and most remarkable it is that in James's 'Declaration,' or rather apology for his own conduct, no mention whatsoever is made of his having given information to Gondomar.

Gondomar offered, says James, to let Raleigh go with one or two ships only. He might work a mine, and the King of Spain would give him a safe convoy home with all his gold. How kind. And how likely would Raleigh and his fellow-adventurers have been to accept such an offer; how likely, too, to find men who would sail with them on such an errand, to be 'flayed alive,' as many who travelled to the Indies of late years had been, or to have their throats cut, tied back to back, after trading unarmed and peaceably for a month, as thirty-six of Raleigh's men had been but two or three years before in that very Orinoco. So James is forced to let the large fleet go; and to let it go well armed also; for the plain reason, that otherwise it dare not go at all; and in the meanwhile letters are sent from Spain, in which the Spaniards call the fleet 'English enemies,' and ships and troops are moved up as fast as possible from the Spanish main.

But, say some, James was justified in telling Gondomar, and the Spaniards in defending themselves. On the latter point there is no doubt.

'They may get who have the will,
And they may keep who can.'

But it does seem hard on Raleigh, after having laboured in this Guiana business for years, and after having spent his money in vain attempts to deliver these Guianians from their oppressors. It is hard, and he feels it so. He sees that he is not trusted; that, as James himself confesses, his pardon is refused simply to keep a hold on him; that, if he fails, he is ruined.

As he well asks afterwards, 'If the King did not think that Guiana was his, why let me go thither at all? He knows that it was his by the law of nations, for he made Mr. Harcourt a grant of part of it. If it be, as Gondomar says, the King of Spain's, then I had no more right to work a mine in it than to burn a town.' An argument which seems to me unanswerable. But, says James, and others with him, he was forbid to meddle with any country occupate or possessed by Spaniards. Southey, too, blames him severely for not having told James that the country was already settled by Spaniards. I can excuse Southey, but not James, for overlooking the broad fact that all England knew it, as I have shown, since 1594; that if they did not, Gondomar would have taken care to tell them; and that he could not go to Guiana without meddling with Spaniards. His former voyages and publications made no secret of it. On the contrary, one chief argument for the plan had been all through the delivery of the Indians from these very Spaniards, who, though they could not conquer them, ill-used them in every way: and in his agreement with the Lords about the Guiana voyage in 1611, he makes especial mention of the very place which will soon fill such a part in our story, 'San Thome, where the Spaniards inhabit,' and tells the Lords whom to ask as to the number of men who will be wanted 'to secure Keymish's passage to the mine' against these very Spaniards. What can be more clear, save to those who will not see?

The plain fact is that Raleigh went, with his eyes open, to take possession of a country to which he believed that he and King James had a right, and that James and his favourites, when they, as he pleads, might have stopped him by a word, let him go, knowing as well as the Spaniards what he intended; for what purpose, but to have an excuse for the tragedy which ended all, it is difficult to conceive. 'It is evident,' wisely says Sir Robert Schomburgk, 'that they winked at consequences which they must have foreseen.'

And here Mr. Napier, on the authority of Count Desmarets, brings a grave charge against Raleigh. Raleigh in his 'Apology' protests that he only saw Desmarets once on board of his vessel. Desmarets says in his despatches that he was on board of her several times--whether he saw Raleigh more than once does not appear--and that Raleigh complained to him of having been unjustly imprisoned, stripped of his estate, and so forth; and that he was on that account resolved to abandon his country, and, if the expedition succeeded, offer himself and the fruit of his labour to the King of France.

If this be true, Raleigh was very wrong. But Sir Robert Schomburgk points out that this passage, which Mr. Napier says occurs in the last despatch, was written a month after Raleigh had sailed; and that the previous despatch, written only four days after Raleigh sailed, says nothing about the matter. So that it could not have been a very important or fixed resolution on Raleigh's part, if it was only to be recollected a month after. I do not say--as Sir Robert Schomburgk is very much inclined to do--that it was altogether a bubble of French fancy. It is possible that Raleigh, in his just rage at finding that James was betraying him and sending him out with a halter round his neck, to all but certain ruin, did say wild words--That it was better for him to serve the Frenchman than such a master--that perhaps he might go over to the Frenchman after all--or some folly of the kind, in that same rash tone which, as we have seen, has got him into trouble so often already: and so I leave the matter, saying, Beware of making any man an offender for a word, much less one who is being hunted to death in his old age, and knows it.

However this may be, the fleet sails; but with no bright auguries. The mass of the sailors are 'a scum of men'; they are mutinous and troublesome; and what is worse, have got among them (as, perhaps, they were intended to have) the notion that Raleigh's being still non ens in law absolves them from obeying him when they do not choose, and permits them to say of him behind his back what they list. They have long delays at Plymouth. Sir Warham's ship cannot get out of the Thames. Pennington, at the Isle of Wight, 'cannot redeem his bread from the bakers,' and has to ride back to London to get money from Lady Raleigh. The poor lady has it not, and gives a note of hand to Mr. Wood of Portsmouth. Alas for her! She has sunk her 8000 pounds, and, beside that, sold her Wickham estate for 2500 pounds; and all is on board the fleet. 'A hundred pieces' are all the ready money the hapless pair had left on earth, and they have parted them together. Raleigh has fifty-five and she forty-five till God send it back--if, indeed, He ever send it. The star is sinking low in the west. Trouble on trouble. Sir John Fane has neither men nor money; Captain Witney has not provisions enough, and Raleigh has to sell his plate in Plymouth to help him. Courage! one last struggle to redeem his good name.

Then storms off Sicily--a pinnace is sunk; faithful Captain King drives back into Bristol; the rest have to lie by a while in some Irish port for a fair wind. Then Bailey deserts with the 'Southampton' at the Canaries; then 'unnatural weather,' so that a fourteen days' voyage takes forty days. Then 'the distemper' breaks out under the line. The simple diary of that sad voyage still remains, full of curious and valuable nautical hints; but recording the loss of friend on friend; four or five officers, and, 'to our great grief, our principal refiner, Mr. Fowler.' 'Crab, my old servant.' Next a lamentable twenty-four hours, in which they lose Pigott, the lieutenant-general, 'mine honest frinde, Mr. John Talbot, one that had lived with me a leven yeeres in the Tower, an excellent general skoller, and a faithful and true man as ever lived,' with two 'very fair conditioned gentleman,' and 'mine own cook Francis.' Then more officers and men, and my 'cusen Payton.' Then the water is near spent, and they are forced to come to half allowance, till they save and drink greedily whole canfuls of the bitter rain water. At last Raleigh's own turn comes; running on deck in a squall, he gets wet through, and has twenty days of burning fever; 'never man suffered a more furious heat,' during which he eats nothing but now and then a stewed prune.

At last they make the land at the mouth of the Urapoho, far south of their intended goal. They ask for Leonard the Indian, 'who lived with me in England three or four years, the same man that took Mr. Harcourt's brother and fifty men when they were in extreme distress, and had no means to live there but by the help of this Indian, whom they made believe that they were my men'; but the faithful Indian is gone up the country, and they stand away for Cayenne, 'where the cacique (Harry) was also my servant, and had lived with me in the Tower two years.'

Courage once more, brave old heart! Here at least thou art among friends, who know thee for what thou art, and look out longingly for thee as their deliverer. Courage; for thou art in fairyland once more; the land of boundless hope and possibility. Though England and England's heart be changed, yet God's earth endures, and the harvest is still here, waiting to be reaped by those who dare. Twenty stormy years may have changed thee, but they have not changed the fairyland of thy prison dreams. Still the mighty Ceiba trees with their wealth of parasites and creepers tower above the palm-fringed islets; still the dark mangrove thickets guard the mouths of unknown streams, whose granite sands are rich with gold. Friendly Indians come, and Harry with them, bringing maize, peccari pork, and armadillos, plantains and pine-apples, and all eat and gather strength; and Raleigh writes home to his wife, 'to say that I may yet be King of the Indians here were a vanity. But my name hath lived among them'--as well it might. For many a year those simple hearts shall look for him in vain, and more than two centuries and a half afterwards, dim traditions of the great white chief who bade them stand out to the last against the Spaniards, and he would come and dwell among them, shall linger among the Carib tribes; even, say some, the tattered relics of an English flag, which he left among them that they might distinguish his countrymen.

Happy for him had he stayed there indeed, and been their king. How easy for him to have grown old in peace at Cayenne. But no; he must on for honour's sake, and bring home if it were but a basketful of that ore to show the king, that he may save his credit. He has promised Arundel that he will return. And return he will. So onward he goes to the 'Triangle Islands.' There he sends off five small vessels for the Orinoco, with four hundred men. The faithful Keymis has to command and guide the expedition. Sir Warham is lying ill of the fever, all but dead; so George Raleigh is sent in his place as sergeant-major, and with him five land companies, one of which is commanded by young Walter, Raleigh's son; another by a Captain Parker, of whom we shall have a word to say presently.

Keymis's orders are explicit. He is to go up; find the mine, and open it; and if the Spaniards attack him, repel force by force: but he is to avoid, if possible, an encounter with them: not for fear of breaking the peace, but because he has 'a scum of men, a few gentlemen excepted, and I would not for all the world receive a blow from the Spaniards to the dishonour of our nation.' There we have no concealment of hostile instructions, any more than in Raleigh's admirable instructions to his fleet, which, after laying down excellent laws for morality, religion, and discipline, go on with clause after clause as to what is to be done if they meet 'the enemy.' What enemy? Why, all Spanish ships which sail the seas; and who, if they happen to be sufficiently numerous, will assuredly attack, sink, burn, and destroy Raleigh's whole squadron, for daring to sail for that continent which Spain claims as its own.

Raleigh runs up the coast to Trinidad once more, in through the Serpent's Mouth, and round Punto Gallo to the lake of pitch, where all recruit themselves with fish and armadillos, 'pheasant' (Penelope), 'palmitos' (Moriche palm fruit?), and guavas, and await the return of the expedition from the last day of December to the middle of February. They see something of the Spaniards meanwhile. Sir John Ferns is sent up to Port of Spain to try if they will trade for tobacco. The Spaniards parley; in the midst of the parley pour a volley of musketry into them at forty paces, yet hurt never a man; and send them off calling them thieves and traitors. Fray Simon's Spanish account of the matter is that Raleigh intended to disembark his men, that they might march inland on San Joseph. He may be excused for the guess; seeing that Raleigh had done the very same thing some seventeen years before. If Raleigh was treacherous then, his treason punished itself now. However, I must believe that Raleigh is not likely to have told a lie for his own private amusement in his own private diary. _

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