Sir Walter Ralegh Part 11

CHAPTER XVI.

COBHAM AND CECIL (1601-1603).

[Sidenote: _Impatience of Subordination._]

[Sidenote: _The Privy Council._]

He did not know it, but he was now at the culmination of his prosperity.

His kinsman, the learned Richard Carew, dedicated to him at the beginning of 1602 the _Survey of Cornwall_, in terms, which, however exalted, were not exaggerated. He had a n.o.ble estate, his sovereign's renewed confidence, and many important offices. In politics he was still among those who followed rather than led, who executed, and did not direct. Of constant subordination he was become impatient. He was not content to be nothing more than 'a swordsman,' an instrument, though highly distinguished and favoured. His aim was to force his entrance within the citadel of administrative power. As a counsellor he exerted commanding weight on two main branches of national policy, Ireland and armaments. His Irish policy has been refuted by events. It is open to all the accusations which have been brought against it of cruelty and remorselessness. But its temper was that of a large body of English statesmen; and he understood much better than the rest the true method of putting it in practice. Had he been a Minister, and not only a royal confidant, he might have succeeded for a time in establis.h.i.+ng in Ireland a peace of silence. He held as fixed and more generous views on the subject of national defences, and on the proper strategy in dealing with Spain. He fretted at being condemned to urge them from the outside instead of within. His exclusion from partners.h.i.+p in responsible authority was, he felt, perpetual, unless he could break in. Probably at no period did he aspire after supremacy, or expect to dispossess Cecil.

His ambition, though restricted to the hope of admittance to a.s.sociation, would not the less bring him into collision with the jealous Secretary. He was reported in 1598 to be ambitious of a peerage.

He cared more for power than t.i.tles, and his ancient friends, like his ancient rivals, thwarted his plans. We know that Cecil could not bear even so moderate an approximation for him to official trust as his regular introduction into the Privy Council. For that he had so long been craving and looking, that, according to Henry Howard's taunt, he by this time 'found no view for Paradise out of a Council board.' In June, 1601, there had been, as in 1598, a prospect of his nomination. Lords Shrewsbury and Worcester instead were sworn in. Cecil intimated his satisfaction. He told Sir George Carew that Ralegh should never have his consent to be a Councillor, unless he surrendered to Carew the Captaincy of the Guard.

Ralegh's efforts for a line of his own in statesmans.h.i.+p, and Cecil's consequent antagonism, are the special features of the coming chapter in his biography. His relations to the Cecils had always been intimate.

Lord Burleigh, notwithstanding differences concerning Ireland, encouraged him as a counterpoise to Leicester. He repaid the kindness, it will be recollected, by interceding for the Lord Treasurer's son-in-law. He was a guest at the entertainment Burleigh gave to Arabella Stuart. With Robert Cecil Ralegh's connexion was much closer.

Cecil valued his help at Court, and his society. In February, 1598, during his mission to France, he mentions him to Burleigh as one 'with whose kindness he has been long and truly fastened.' 'If some idle errand,' he writes word, 'can send over Sir Walter, let us have him.'

With seeming sincerity he wrote in 1600 of him as one 'whose judgment I hold great, as his person dear.' He was a companion of Ralegh in several of his privateering speculations. Lady Ralegh wrote of Lady Cecil as of a sympathetic friend. Perpetually she was appealing to her 'cousin'

Cecil as a support against Sir Walter's tribulations and hers. He is 'a comfort to the grieved.' She 'presumes of his honourable favour ever.'

She confided to him her view of her Mistress the Queen as, like herself, 'a great believer.' In January, 1597, Ralegh condoled as a most loving comrade with Cecil on gracious Lady Cecil's death. His letter exhorting to implacability testifies to the closeness of their league against Ess.e.x. The Earl's fiery anger had burnt against both alike. Had his mad freak of treason succeeded, both would have been sacrificed in company.

[Sidenote: _Intimacy with Robert Cecil._]

After Ess.e.x succ.u.mbed the alliance appeared as strict as before. The two households, as well as the masters, were affectionately familiar.

Cecil's son, William, was a most welcome guest at Sherborne. No stronger proof of trust, it might have been thought, could be given by the father. There is talk how 'the beloved creature's stomach is altogether amended, and he doth now eat well and digest rightly;' how 'he is also better kept to his book.' As one intimately conversant with Cecil's affairs, Ralegh undertook in August, 1601, the supervision of his recently purchased estate at Rushmore. Pleasant postscripts are interposed on Lady Ralegh's behalf: 'Bess returns you her best wishes, notwithstanding all quarrels.' 'Bess says that she must envy any fingers whosoever that shall wear her gloves but your own.' There are threats from her that for the breach of a recent engagement he shall on his next visit have plain fare. Ralegh relied on Cecil to protect his monopoly of Virginian trade under his patent against unlicensed Adventurers. They cheapen, he complained, by their imports sa.s.safras from its proper price of 20s. to 12s. a pound; they 'cloy the market;' 'they go far towards overthrowing the enterprise' of the plantation of Virginia, 'which I shall yet live to see an English nation.' In addition they introduced contraband cedar-trees. These, if the Lord Admiral would order their seizure, Ralegh intended to divide 'into three parts--to ciel cabinets, and make bords, and many other delicate things.' He asked for Cecil's aid; 'but what you think unfit to be done for me shall never be a quarrel either internal or external. If we cannot have what we would, methinks it is a great bond to find a friend that will strain himself in his friend's cause in whatsoever--as this world fareth.'

[Sidenote: _Cecil's Sentiments._]

Throughout Elizabeth's reign, and beyond it, Ralegh's language to Cecil keeps the same tone of implicit faith. In words Cecil was not behind his more fluent and continuous correspondent. At heart he would appear, from his communications to others, to have come to regard Ralegh as a dangerous rival before the Queen's death. Shrewd observers detected the growth of the sentiment, in spite of the alliance against the common foe, and even, for reasons which are not obvious, in consequence of it.

'Cecil,' wrote Harington, who had been a trusted comrade of Ess.e.x, in his _Nugae_, 'doth bear no love to Ralegh in the matter of Ess.e.x.' An important letter found among the Burleigh papers, without date or signature, but for good cause attributed to Lord Henry Howard, and probably written towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, shows how eagerly Cecil and Ralegh were regarded by their respective partisans as hostile compet.i.tors. Probably its genesis resembled that of Ralegh's argument for the thorough overthrow of Ess.e.x. It seems to have been an elaborate written embodiment of a policy which the Minister may have heard before from its author's mouth. It differs from Ralegh's letter in being absolutely in harmony with Howard's conduct at the time and after. In it the writer, with the 'Asiatic endless' prolixity which James himself ridiculed, propounded a plan for arranging that 'Cobham, the block all mighty that gives oracles, and Ralegh, the cogging spirit that prompteth it,' should be set in responsible positions in which they would be sure to fail. There is no reason to suppose that Cecil accepted the particular advice. He would be inclined to doubt the certainty of Ralegh's failure, should an opportunity of distinction be afforded him.

But the doc.u.ment could not have been written unless its author had been positive of Cecil's sympathy with its object, the reduction of Ralegh, by whatever means, to a condition of confirmed obscurity and dependence.

[Sidenote: _Rival Camps._]

As the termination of the Queen's reign more manifestly approached, the interests of Cecil and Ralegh seemed to grow more and more widely separated. Researches into the secret history of the final year or two reveal Ralegh and Cobham on one side, and Cecil and Lord Henry Howard on the other, as chiefs of opposite camps, with a converging outlook upon King James. Cecil, like his father, had been regarded by James as hostile to his proclamation as Elizabeth's heir. The death of 'my martyr Ess.e.x' increased his dislike. He was not a.s.sured of the baselessness of Ess.e.x's cry as he rode through the city: 'The crown of England is sold to the Spaniard!' He may have suspected the existence of schemes for the elevation of Arabella Stuart. Henry Howard brought him and Cecil to a mutual understanding. Howard, now remembered chiefly as the builder of Northumberland House, took a leading part in the machinations of Elizabeth's and James's reigns. As a Catholic, though at times conforming, and as brother of the hapless Duke of Norfolk, he had hated the Cecils. His dislike of Robert Cecil had been inflamed by partizans.h.i.+p for his kinsman Ess.e.x; notwithstanding, with his insatiable love of intrigue, he is said to have played off the two against one another. Now, convinced that Cecil was too strong, or too necessary, to be discarded, and possessing James's full confidence, he set himself to the cure of the King's distrust. Finally Cecil became for James 'my dearest Cecil.' James accepted him so entirely as to promise that Cecil's friends and foes should be his. Thenceforward a league was formed, and a correspondence was opened, between the King on one side and Cecil and Howard on the other, which are equally discreditable to all three.

[Sidenote: _The Succession._]

The compact was not the work of a moment, and Cecil's rivals do not appear to the end to have understood how absolute it was. Neither was it of very old standing. For long Elizabeth's councillors hesitated to throw in their lot with the Scottish claim to the succession. They could not read clearly the national inclination. The country had been undecided. As Cecil confessed he had once said, there were several compet.i.tors for whose right it was possible to argue. The Suffolk family possessed some sort of Parliamentary t.i.tle. Arabella Stuart was not, like James, an alien, or a foreign sovereign. Discussion, or even advocacy, of either t.i.tle, whether by Cecil, Ralegh, or Cobham, was, till the actual proclamation of James, not treasonable. But after the death of Mary Stuart, and, more plainly still, after that of Ess.e.x, it became manifest that the English people meant to crown the King of Scots. Cecil and Ralegh equally discerned the certainty. Both acted accordingly, and each suspected the other's procedure. Both started evenly with the same stain, in James's eyes, of enmity to Ess.e.x. Cecil, however, had the advantage of partners.h.i.+p with Henry Howard, and Ralegh the disadvantage of partners.h.i.+p with Cobham. He had to overcome the more invincible obstacle of his possession of a character, demeanour, and policy, in good features as well as bad, essentially distasteful to the Prince he had to conciliate.

[Sidenote: _Prejudices of King James._]

Without Elizabeth's knowledge, Cecil kept up an active correspondence with the Scottish Court. Ralegh had his concealed relations with it too.

Neither is to be severely blamed for feeling an attraction to the nearest heir to the throne. Something even of personal enthusiasm at the prospect was not so absurd a sentiment as it seems to posterity. The nature of James was not well understood, and hope was placed in his youth. Contrasts were drawn, as Ralegh expressed it at his trial, between a lady whom time had surprised, and an active king. Ralegh had recognised that no other successor was possible. Lord Northumberland, writing to persuade James to be courteous to him, declared that he 'must allow Ralegh's ever allowance of the King's right.' Ralegh indeed had never favoured any rival candidate, Arabella Stuart as little as the Infanta. About Arabella there is no cause to doubt the veracity of his a.s.sertion, reported by Dudley Carleton, that 'of all women he ever saw he never liked her.' Simply he had opposed, as Elizabeth herself opposed, and in his character of her faithful servant, the termination of the abeyance of the dignity of heir presumptive. In the interest of her tranquillity he had addressed to Elizabeth a written argument against the announcement of a successor. Eventually, some time before Elizabeth's death, he had perceived that it was useless to act as if any successor but James were possible. With his sanguine temperament he acquiesced in the inevitable as if it were positively advantageous. He saw his way to render as excellent service to the State under King James as he was rendering now. He was conscious of the obstacles in his path; he was unconscious that they were insuperable. He knew he had been always ranked as of the anti-Scottish party. He knew the specific meaning James would put upon his resistance to the formal declaration of a successor. His antagonism to Ess.e.x, he was aware, had created a strong repulsion against him in the King's mind. But he overrated the amount of the resources at his disposal for his protection from the weight of aversion he had excited. He equally underrated the inveteracy of the dislike, and the degree of additional suspicion which his measures of self-defence would awaken. James had long looked forward to a day when he should 'have account of the presumption of the base instruments about the Queen who abused her ear.' That was his way of thinking of the Queen's favourite councillors. Cecil knew how to purchase his pardon.

Ralegh, gathering strength about him to render his friends.h.i.+p worth buying, only deepened the king's conviction that he could be mischievous; he did not implant a conviction that he was a desirable auxiliary. The 'consultations of Durham House' became notorious. They alarmed both Howard and James just sufficiently to induce them to temporise. They fixed the resolution sooner or later to ruin the promoter. The Duke of Lennox came to London in November, 1601. He cultivated Ralegh's acquaintance through Sir Arthur Savage. James characterized Savage in a letter of 1602 to Howard as 'trucheman,' or interpreter, 'to Raulie, though of a nature far different, and a very honest plain gentleman.' Terms were offered by the Duke which Ralegh boasted he had rejected. To Cecil he protested that he had been over-deeply engaged and obliged to his own mistress to seek favour anywhere else. According to Howard, Ralegh asked Cecil to divulge this to the Queen; but Cecil, with good sense, represented to him that the Queen 'would rather mark a weakness than praise his resolution.'

[Sidenote: _Lord Henry Howard._]

Whatever he had done or left undone, whatever promises had been made, and however they had been entertained, the end would have been the same.

Henry Howard inflamed the instinctive aversion which James had long felt for Ralegh. Howard hated Ralegh with a virulence not easily explicable, which appeared to be doubled by its abatement towards Cecil. He had resolved to destroy both Ralegh and Cobham. On the testimony of his own letters it is clear he did not mind how tortuously and perfidiously he worked. He calculated upon Cobham's weakness, and upon the inflammation of Ralegh with 'some so violent desire upon the sudden as to bring him into that snare which he would shun otherwise.' He poisoned James's mind incurably against 'those wicked villains,' 'that crew,' and its 'hypocrisy,' the 'accursed duality,' or 'the triplicity that denies the Trinity.' By the triplicity he signified Ralegh, Cobham, and Northumberland. Ralegh had other enemies besides. Among them was Cobham's new wife, Frances Howard, Countess dowager of Kildare, daughter of the Lord Admiral. Henry Howard, who did not like her, admitted that she had helped in persuading Cecil to side with King James. She and Lady Ralegh had 'an ancient acquaintance,' which had resulted in mutual detestation.

[Sidenote: _Spite against Lady Ralegh._]

[Sidenote: _Ralegh's 'Humours.'_]

Lady Ralegh in March, 1602, reminded Cecil how 'unfavourable my Lady Kildare hath dealt with me to the Queen. I wish she would be as ambitious to do good as she is apt to the contrary.' Lady Kildare had infused her own animosity into her father, whose official 'weakness and oversights' it is very likely Ralegh was, as Henry Howard had said, given to 'studying.' 'My Lord Admiral,' wrote Howard to Mar, James's amba.s.sador, 'the other day wished from his soul he had but the same commission to carry the cannon to Durham House, that he had this time twelve months to carry it to Ess.e.x House, to prove what sport he could make in that fellows.h.i.+p.' In its larger sense the alleged fellows.h.i.+p comprised the Earl of Northumberland, who played fast and loose with it, Lady Shrewsbury, known as Lady Arabella's custodian, and Lady Ralegh, in addition to her husband and Cobham. Howard honoured Lady Ralegh with his particular hostility. 'She is a most dangerous woman,' he exclaims, 'and full of her father's inventions.' He was much alarmed at the possible success of some project for bringing her to her old place in the Privy Chamber. To its failure he ascribed her determination to 'bend her whole wit and industry to the disturbance of the possibility of others' hopes since her own cannot be settled.' He urged Cecil to arrange that it should be brought to Elizabeth's knowledge 'what canons are concluded in the chapter of Durham, where Ralegh's wife is president.' Ralegh himself and Cobham were, however, the universal objects of his copious invectives: 'You may well believe,' he wrote, 'that h.e.l.l did never vomit up such a couple.' Cecil's own language to James was almost as vituperative. He was furious at the bare notion that any should vie with him for the heir's confidence. He represented Cobham and Ralegh, who were trying to obtain a share of James's favour, as mere hypocrites who hated the King at heart. If they held themselves out as his friends, or he held himself out as theirs, James was not to believe it. He excused himself for 'casting sometimes a stone into the mouth of these gaping crabs' to prevent them from 'confessing their repugnance to be under his Majesty's sovereignty.' He hoped to be pardoned if from ancient 'private affection' he had the semblance of supporting Ralegh in particular, 'a person whom most religious men do hold anathema,' who had, moreover, shown 'ingrat.i.tude to me.' He could not imagine that he owed as much to Ralegh as Ralegh to him. But that was natural. If James should hear that he had not checked demonstrations by Ralegh, in his 'light and sudden humours,' against the King, he prayed James to ascribe it to a desire to retain sufficient influence over him 'to dissuade him, under pretext of extraordinary care of his well doing, from engaging himself too far.' He warned James especially against being beguiled into thinking Ralegh a man of a good and affectionate disposition. If 'upon any new humour of kindness, whereof sometimes he will be replete,' he should write in Cecil's favour, 'be it never so much in my commendation,' James was not to believe it. The correspondence of Howard and Cecil with James breathes throughout a jealous terror that Cobham and Ralegh, and chiefly Ralegh, might either supersede them in James's kindness, or steal into his confidence under the pretext of fellows.h.i.+p with them, and claim a share in the advantages. Ralegh's correspondence with the King, as theirs implies, has no such malignant, envious features. The King, however, was already incurably prejudiced. Howard's and Cecil's imputations only confirmed an impression of long standing.

[Sidenote: _Character of Cobham._]

Against two enemies of this force and animosity Ralegh had no actual ally except Lord Cobham. Henry Howard had mentioned Northumberland as a confederate. How far the Earl, who had married Ess.e.x's sister, Dorothy, widow of Sir Thomas Perrot, could be reckoned upon may be judged from his description of Ralegh to James as 'a man whose love is disadvantageous to me in some sort, which I cherish rather out of constancy than policy.' Cobham was Cecil's brother-in-law, and their interests had long been inseparable. Ralegh would originally have desired his friends.h.i.+p as a means of cementing the intimacy with his potent connexion. He had been of the league against Ess.e.x. In opposition to Ess.e.x's solicitations for Sir Robert Sidney he had obtained the Lord Wardens.h.i.+p of the Cinque Ports. Ess.e.x had joined him with Cecil and Ralegh in the charges of perfidy. His personal favour with Elizabeth had been useful to the family compact. He was wealthy, and Cecil valued wealth in his domestic circle. Houses and lands brought him in 7000 a year; and he had woods and goods worth a capital sum of 30,000 besides.

His furniture was as rich as any man's of his rank. One piece of plate was priced at 3500, and a ring at 500. He spent 150 at a time upon books. He was not devoid of good instincts; for he could repent of a misdeed or unkindness, and, after repeating it, repent again. But he was garrulous, puffed up with a sense of his own importance, full of levity and pa.s.sion, and morally, if not physically, a coward. Ralegh, whom some social brilliancy in the man, as well as his rank and fortune, may have dazzled, can at no time have been wholly unconscious of the defects which later he resentfully characterized: of the 'dispositions of such violence, which his best friends cannot temper'; 'his known fas.h.i.+on to do any friend he hath wrong, and then repent it'; and 'his fas.h.i.+on to utter things easily.' Cecil regarded a nature like this scornfully.

Infirmities might be tolerated in a brother-in-law who was a trusty ally. They could not be endured in a compet.i.tor.

[Sidenote: _Cecil's Jealousy._]

Neither Ralegh nor Cobham appears to have detected the growth of rancour in Cecil. Ralegh maintained confidential intercourse with him on affairs of state. Together they were, as has been seen, conferring privately with Elizabeth on the policy to be adopted towards Munster rebels a few months before her death. Ralegh's correspondence with him betrays no suspicion of estrangement. It keeps throughout the old amiable style.

There is talk of the price of timber at Rushmore. Salutations were sent so late as July 20, 1602, to 'my Lord Cobham and you, both in one letter,' with vows to 'do you both service with all I have, and my life to boot.' Ten weeks before Elizabeth's death Cecil was writing to Ralegh about partners.h.i.+p in a privateer. Ralegh in a memorable letter to his wife in July, 1603, spoke of the business a.s.sociation as still subsisting. It is difficult to believe that Cecil reciprocated, unless from complaisance and policy, the ferocity against Ralegh and Cobham, or either, which inspired Henry Howard's venomous canting mystifications, and was echoed by James. His correspondence with Ralegh's cousin, George Carew, countenances the view that his hostility had something in it of hurt affection. He was capable of tenderness for men who were willing to be his auxiliaries, who at all events would not be, and could not be, his rivals. But he was mistrustful. He readily confused any increased intimacy between friends of his with enmity to himself. He wrote to Carew in Ireland in June, 1601, to excuse himself, in his enigmatical manner, for an appearance of unkindness: 'If I did not know that you do measure me by your own heart towards me, it might be a doubtfulness in me that the mutinies of those I do love and will--howsoever they do me--might incite in you some belief that I was ungrateful towards them.

But, sir, for the better man, the second always sways him, and to what pa.s.sion he is subject who is subject to his lady, I leave to your judgment and experience.' Later, in 1602, he complained to Carew: 'Our two old friends do use me unkindly. But I have covenanted with my heart not to know it. In show we are great. All my revenge shall be to heap coals of fire on their heads.' He carried out his promise, and his coals scorched. Yet it may be questioned if he were conscious of a virulent humour towards his friend and his brother-in-law. Merely they were in his way, and threatened to embarra.s.s the career which was his life. They were presuming to act independently. They pursued schemes which, if successful, would disturb his monopoly of power. If unsuccessful, they might, through his connexion with them, compromise him. He would not be sorry if circ.u.mstances combined against them, and brushed them as politicians from his path.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FALL (April-June, 1603).

[Sidenote: _Death of the Queen._]

[Sidenote: _Introduction to the Successor._]

Elizabeth died on March 24, 1603. In the previous September Howard had reported her 'never so gallant many years, nor so set upon jollity.'

James set out from Scotland on April 5. Ralegh at the Queen's death was in the West. He returned hastily to London. There is a legend, countenanced by Sir John Hawles, that, with Sir John Fortescue and Cobham, he tried a movement for 'articling' with James before proclaiming him. Unsuspicious Aubrey narrates that at a consultation at Whitehall he went to the length of recommending the establishment of a 'commonwealth.' His object, he is said to have explained, was to save Englishmen from being subject to a needy, beggarly nation like the Scotch. Neither story rests on any foundation, except some possible light taunt of his. His name was not appended to the Proclamation, as he was not a Privy Councillor; but he was present at a meeting in the evening, when a loyal letter of welcome to the King was drawn up, and he signed it. Immediately afterwards he started, like many others, northwards, and met the King at Burleigh House. Cecil had taken credit for having stayed, he said, the journey of the Captain of the Guard, who was conducting many suitors to James. Ralegh did not suffer himself to be stopped either by Cecil's advice or by a Proclamation against the resort to the King of persons holding public offices, to the injury of public business. He a.s.signed as the cause of his arrival the need of a royal letter to authorize the continuance of legal process in the Duchy of Cornwall, and to check the waste of royal woods and parks within it.

Unmannerly James is said by Aubrey to have received him with a poor rude pun on his name: 'Rawly! Rawly! true enough, for I think of thee very rawly, mon.' Isaac D'Israeli credits the story. He superfluously thinks it settles, as without better authority than the King's broad Scotch it certainly could not, the proper p.r.o.nunciation of the name. In itself it may be rather more plausible than Aubrey's tale of Ralegh's reply to the King's boast that he could have won the succession by force: 'Would G.o.d,' cried Ralegh, 'that had been put to the trial!' 'Why?' asked James. 'Because,' was the oracular answer--'never,' says Aubrey, 'forgotten or forgiven'--'your Majesty would then have known your friends from your foes.' It is much easier to agree with the apparent meaning of Aubrey's interrupted general reflection on the first meeting of King and subject: 'Sir Walter Ralegh had that awfulness and ascendency in his aspect over other mortals that the K---- '. At all events, the King ordered the speedy delivery of the authorization, that Ralegh might have no excuse for delay. The unwelcome guest took the hint. Acting-Secretary Sir Thomas Lake reported to Cecil that he was gone, having 'to my seeming taken no great root here.'

[Sidenote: _Odium._]

At a council held by James at Cecil's seat of Theobald's, monopolies granted by Elizabeth were called in. The measure was based by its authors upon the need of popularity for the new reign. They were not sorry to hit Ralegh with the same stone. A question was raised at the Board whether the office of wine licenser were not a monopoly. Until the Council should have decided, the levy of all dues was suspended. A large part of Ralegh's income was at once cut off. He was summoned a few days later to the Council Chamber at Whitehall, to be informed that the King had appointed Sir Thomas Erskine, afterwards Earl of Kellie, Captain of the Guard. To this he is related to have in very humble manner submitted himself. His enemies knew they could in this as in other ways wound him with a certainty of applause for the gratification of their spite.

Within a month of the Queen's decease a prayer of 'poor men' had been addressed to James against monopolies. The manifesto contained an especial allusion to Ralegh, of whom it wildly spoke as about to be created Earl of Pembroke. So, on the occasion of the dismissal from the command of the Guard, Beaumont, the French Amba.s.sador, informed his Court that Cecil had induced the King to make the change on the ground of Ralegh's unpopularity, which would render his removal highly acceptable to the country. Henry Howard, before the demise of the Crown, when the effect of Ralegh's blandishments upon James was feared, had preached to the King on the same text. He reported a refusal by Elizabeth of the command of a regiment to Northumberland, for the reason that 'Ralegh had made the Earl as odious as himself, because he would not be singular, and such were not to be employed by princes of sound policy.'

For the present a semblance of consideration was preserved. The loss of the Captaincy was apparently sweetened by the elimination from his patent for the Governors.h.i.+p of Jersey of the reservation of 300 a year to the Crown or Seymour, and by the condonation of some arrears due from him. His fall elicited from him no symptom of anger against the King. If a letter purporting to be addressed by him to James be genuine, though the evidence for it is not strong, he was not as placid with respect to others. There the loss of his captaincy is angrily imputed to Cecil, who is accused of having brought about the deaths both of Ess.e.x and Queen Mary. Chronology must have forbidden James to attach weight to the latter allegation, if he had cared for it. On the former he would be better inclined to credit Howard, who a.s.serted that Cecil had worked for Ess.e.x's deliverance. Cecil himself could produce the letter of 1600-1, signed 'W.R.' Soon Ralegh experienced a fresh proof of his helplessness, in a notice of ejectment from Durham House. Bishop Tobias Matthew of Durham met James at Berwick, and gained his ear. He used his influence and Ralegh's odium to procure an order for the restoration of the London episcopal residence. It was retaliation for his loss of the See of Sarum through Ralegh. On May 31 a royal warrant was issued for the removal of the present occupants, Ralegh and Sir Edward Darcy. Ralegh wrote on June 8 or 9, asking permission to stay till Michaelmas. He pleaded the 2000 he had spent on the structure during the twenty years of his tenancy. He recounted his outlay on autumn and winter provisions for a household of forty persons and twenty horses. He complained to no purpose. He was ordered to quit by Midsummer.

[Sidenote: _Inopportune Advice._]

[Sidenote: _The Fourth Party._]

Notwithstanding rebuffs, he continued to frequent the Court. He was at Beddington Park when the King on his Progress visited Sir Francis Carew, Lady Ralegh's uncle. Ralegh previously had laid before James a _Discourse touching a War with Spain, and of the Protecting of the Netherlands_. It is a most forcible, and, from its own point of view, sagacious disquisition in favour of persistency in the war with Spain, and the alliance with Holland, as well for offensive purposes against the Spaniards, as for defence, whether against Spain or France. As a controversial pamphlet it evinces none of the want of judgment with which Hallam charges Ralegh, though the defect appears plainly in his obtrusion of such views upon James. At Beddington he had an opportunity of clenching his argument, and the King's suspicions, by an offer, of which he subsequently boasted, to invade the Spanish dominions, at no cost to the King, with 2000 men. In the treatise he opposed the conclusion of any hasty peace with Spain. He referred to another essay, now lost, and never published, in which he had indicated _How War may be made against Spain and the Indies_. Spain was anxious for peace, and desired to consolidate it by separating England from France and Holland.

The negotiations had begun in the lifetime of Elizabeth. They had excited much party spirit at Court, where Cobham already was conspicuous as their advocate, and Ralegh as their opponent. James's accession infused additional keenness into the contest. France was apprehensive of the King's proclivity towards an alliance, not merely peace, with Spain.

Henry IV was not disinclined to the restoration of tranquillity in Europe. He was afraid of an Anglo-Spanish pacification of a character so cordial as to affect the league between the French and English Governments as it had existed in the late reign. He sent Sully over to cement the good understanding of the two States by arguments and gifts to the leading courtiers. Sully found the new Court honeycombed with intrigues. His fixed idea was that Spain was meditating much beyond the simple alienation of England from her ancient allies; 'qu'il se tramait quelque chose de bien plus important.' By means of the competing factions he tried to discover this great secret design. His researches were not confined to statesmen in authority, like Cecil, whom he characterizes in his candid _Memoirs_ as 'tout mystere,' caring for no combination except so far as it might serve his individual political interests. He pursued his inquiries also among politicians out of power.

They composed, he says, a 'Fourth Party,' with no basis of agreement, unless that its members could agree with no other party. He names as its leaders Northumberland, Southampton, c.u.mberland, Cobham, Ralegh, and Griffin Markham. They are described by him as 'gens seditieux, de caractere purement Anglais, et prets a tout entreprendre en faveur des nouveautes, fut-ce contre le Roi.' Northumberland he induced by a large pension to collect for him secret intelligence, though he did not believe it. All he obtained from 'Milords Cobham et Raleich' was that, when he broached to them his notion of the dark schemes of Spain, they replied 'conformement a cet avis.'