Sir Walter Ralegh Part 22

[Sidenote: _Weakness of the Case._]

It is a large indictment resting upon a very slender basis. The question of the alleged schemes of freebooting, none of which issued in action, has been considered already. For the present its relevancy depends on the answer to the main charge of an unlicensed and deliberate rupture by Ralegh of the peace between his own Sovereign and the King of Spain.

For a determination of the point it must be remembered how much Mr.

Gardiner concedes in Ralegh's favour, as well as how much he decides adversely. If San Thome had remained in 1618 where it was in 1596, and Spanish troops, having taken up a temporary post a score or so of miles lower down, had from that barred the quiet pa.s.sage of young Walter and Keymis, Mr. Gardiner apparently must have exonerated Ralegh. He would have been safe within his commission, which appointed him leader of an armed force for the obvious purpose of resisting impediments to his progress about Guiana, unless where Spaniards were in immediate possession. Warfare with Spaniards in Guiana is not in itself represented as criminal. His sole offence was in combating them voluntarily on ground they positively occupied. The same defence which he might have conclusively urged if soldiers, descending from the original San Thome, had blocked his transit, is justly pleadable for his men's voyage on the Orinoko past the new town. Guiana in general being free to Englishmen, it is manifest that a settlement on the bank could not appropriate the channel. The whole question of the guilt or innocence of Ralegh on James's reading of international law, is narrowed to the minute issue whether the Spaniards or the Englishmen on the particular scene of the fight were the aggressors. Whatever the decision upon that, it is difficult to see how it could properly affect Ralegh.

His right and his duty were to find and take possession of the Mine, if it were not in Spanish hands, as n.o.body alleges it was. He was ent.i.tled to break through obstacles in his way, so long as he did not violate actual Spanish soil. Lawfully he sent his comrades along the Orinoko. If on their road the Spaniards compelled a contest, neither Ralegh nor his subordinates were in fault. If his captains compelled it, he cannot have been liable, unless he be proved, as he has not been, to have so instructed them. In any event, when all Spanish officers in America notoriously deemed an Englishman a pirate who entered the Orinoko without their leave, and King James claimed authority to send his subjects wherever in Guiana Spaniards were not permanently planted, it is unreasonable to throw the liability for an armed brawl between Spaniards and Englishmen in Guiana upon the English chief. His Sovereign, who with eyes open despatched him with an armament to work a mine of prodigious value, cannot be permitted to s.h.i.+ft on him the odium of a b.l.o.o.d.y struggle because the goal turned out to be some eight miles off, instead of the twenty more or less at which both master and subject had judged it to be.

[Sidenote: _Difficulties of the Government._]

The design of the Government had been to discover proof of fresh crimes since Ralegh's liberation in 1616, and to try him for them. It had failed. Much of the testimony it had painfully collected was dubious, vague, bia.s.sed, interested, or plainly corrupt. Such as it was the Council either would not, or could not, rely upon it for a conviction.

Ralegh's transactions with the Frenchmen were unwarrantable, if its view of them were correct. But they had resulted in nothing, and they were a continuation of relations which it had itself promoted. At San Thome, if he were liable for his men, as partially he did not deny, though he might have denied it, he had broken the King's peace by an invasion of Spanish territory, if Guiana were Spanish. He maintained that it was as much English as it was Spanish, if not more; and they neither dared, in the existing state of national opinion, nor perhaps cared, to gainsay the doctrine. His alleged schemes for the maritime spoliation of Spaniards may well have been to his mind lawful. All English seamen, and the nation at large, believed that the articles of peace between the two kingdoms did not extend beyond the Equator. In the latest treaty with Spain, that of 1604, the Indies and their trade were intentionally not mentioned, on account of the insoluble difficulties arising out of the Spanish determination to shut the region to free European trade. For Ralegh and a mult.i.tude of Englishmen, and Spaniards also, England and Spain were in America always at war. Neither national nor international law countenanced the doctrine. Any Englishman who had devastated Spanish commerce in the West Indies, would, during a large part of Elizabeth's reign, have been amenable to criminal justice, if the State had prosecuted. But the State then was not inclined to prosecute for such acts. During the next reign some statesmen continued to hold, like the people, that there was no peace beyond the Line. If there were peace, the State could not have proceeded against Ralegh for the thought of breaking it. The single criminal act proved was his attempt at escape. For it he might have been tried and punished. But the most triumphant prosecution on such a charge would not have given the Government the pound of flesh it owed to Spain. Nothing less was of use.

[Sidenote: _Ralegh's real Motive._]

[Sidenote: _The Rest Talk._]

The administration floundered about in futile efforts. Perpetually it was deluded by a sensation of solid ground which immediately slipped from under its feet. It was the more enraged with Ralegh that he seemed to be ever offering clues, which only led astray. It imputed its embarra.s.sment to his cunning. He had no intention to deceive, or even to abstain from promoting a revelation of the truth, which he did not fear.

Simply he and it were radically at cross purposes. They were mutually unintelligible. The sincerity of his ardour for the attainment of a footing in Guiana is unquestionable. He was honestly eager for it in the Tower, in Trinidad after the return from San Thome, at Plymouth, when he was grovelling in counterfeit madness at Salisbury, and when he was a fugitive on the Thames. But Guiana was not his real end. Guiana was the means he had finally and deliberately chosen to inflame the English people and Crown with an inextinguishable ambition for the creation of an American empire. He did not much mind how the national imagination was kindled, provided that it caught fire. His motive was patriotic and vast, and his judges and accusers, conscientious men like Caesar and Abbot, as well as others, had not the faintest understanding of it. All except the motive was talk, much of it reprehensible talk, but much not truly reported; and his censors let their prejudices seduce them into treating the entire ma.s.s as evidence of facts and acts. If he ever instructed his officers to commence the expedition to the Mine by taking the initiative in an attack on San Thome, the direction was confined to talk. If, whether before or after the San Thome incident, he spoke of the capture of the plate fleet, that was nothing but talk. Captain Parker's report of the project of Ralegh and St. Leger for lying in wait for homeward bound s.h.i.+ps referred, if not wholly untrue, to talk, like his own and Whitney's similar plans. When Ralegh told his wife he hoped for something ere his return, that was talk. If he ever said he should not come back, that was talk. If he boasted of a French commission, and affirmed his preference for France, that was talk. The entire pile of charges against him, proved, unproved, or disproved, was talk. All began and ended in talk, unless that Bayley captured French boats, and Ralegh redeemed them; that the Lancerota islanders murdered English sailors, and he did not retaliate; that the San Giuseppe Spaniards were aggressors, and he bore it; and that the garrison of San Thome laid an ambush for his men, to hinder their access to a district which his Sovereign had commissioned him to enter, and were soundly beaten for their hostility.

The Government was in a dilemma. It meant to put Ralegh to death, and the process was as behindhand as at Ralegh's return to Plymouth, or more so. Spain had the promise of his blood, as soon as it should decide whether itself or England were to provide the scaffold. On October 15 the Spanish Legation in London received the answer of the Escurial.

Philip III had no mind to accept the odium before Europe of murdering a redoubtable foe. He expressed his preference for an execution in England, and at once. Only in one way could the object be effected.

Ralegh must be put to death, not ostensibly for San Thome, but for the Main Plot. Both for Ralegh and his heroic wife the immediate results were solacing. There was no need for tormenting either further for the concoction of a fresh indictment, if the original indictment retained strength to do the work. A warrant was addressed to Wilson for Lady Ralegh's release from his supervision. By another he was discharged from attendance upon her husband. Ten days earlier he had pretended to pray the King's leave to give up his trust at the Tower. He said he was anxious to resume the arrangement of the State papers of the previous six or seven years. For Ralegh at all events it was a happy respite to be restored, for the last dozen days of his Tower life, to the honest keeping of Sir Allen, and the charitable offices of Lady Apsley.

CHAPTER XXIX.

A SUBSt.i.tUTE FOR A TRIAL (October 22, 1618).

[Sidenote: _Two Courses._]

Bacon, his fellow Commissioners, and the Law Officers were consulted by the Crown on the fitting procedure for the setting up of the old conviction. c.o.ke seems to have been deputed by the other Commissioners to embody in legal form their unanimous opinion, which Bacon, as Lord Chancellor, delivered to James on October 18. The only copy in existence is in c.o.ke's handwriting. It was to the purport that Ralegh, being attainted already of high treason, could not be drawn in question judicially for any crime since committed. The Commissioners recommended one of two courses. The first was for the King to issue his warrant for execution upon the conviction of 1603. At the same time, as Ralegh's 'late crimes and offences were not yet publicly known,' a printed narrative of them might be published. The Commissioners agreed that such a course could legally be pursued. Some among them would see as clearly, though they might not feel as indignantly, as the modern Whig historian, that 'no technical reasoning could overcome the moral sense which revolted at carrying the original sentence into execution.'

Consequently, an alternative method, to which the Commissioners 'rather inclined,' was suggested in c.o.ke's paper; one 'nearest to a legal procedure.' There was a precedent in certain proceedings against Lady Shrewsbury. According to it, Ralegh might be called before the whole body of the Council of State, with the addition of the princ.i.p.al Judges, some n.o.blemen and gentlemen of quality being invited to act as audience. He should be told he was brought before the Council rather than a Court of Justice, because he was already civilly dead. Then he should be charged in regular form by counsel with his acts of hostility, depredation and abuse. He should be heard in his defence; and adverse witnesses should be confronted with him, as Cobham had not been. With that which concerned the Frenchmen the Commissioners thought he should not be charged. Therein he had been pa.s.sive rather than active; and without it the case appeared to the Commissioners to be complete.

Moreover, they doubtless suspected Ralegh could show that in the French negotiations he had not acted alone. Finally, said the memorial, the Council and the Judges a.s.sisting would advise whether his Majesty might not with justice and honour give warrant for Ralegh's execution upon his attainder, in respect of his subsequent offences.

[Sidenote: _Objections to an open Inquiry._]

[Sidenote: _Sir Julius Caesar._]

James dictated a reply to the Commissioners, which is extant in the writing of the secretary of Villiers. He objected to the second proposal in its original form for two main reasons. The procedure, though proper against a Countess, would be too great honour against one of Ralegh's state. It would not be 'fit, because it would make him too popular, as was found by experiment at the arraignment at Winchester, where by his wit he turned the hatred of men into compa.s.sion.' Consequently, the King modified the arrangement by an omission of the Judges, and of the element of partial publicity through the presence of a selected audience. The members of the Council who had conducted the previous examinations were directed to sit as a quasi-criminal Court. But they sat with closed doors, and their sitting was kept strictly private. From a letter at Simancas, written on November 6 by a Spanish Agent in London, Julian Sanchez de Ulloa, to his Government from hearsay, it may be gathered that the inquiry was held on October 22, and lasted for four hours. No complete account has been discovered of the course it took, in consequence, Mr. Spedding, in his _Life of Bacon_, supposes, of the destruction of a ma.s.s of Council Chamber papers in the fire of January 12, 1619, at the Banqueting House. That is possible. As the Commission sat as a Court, not as a Council, the explanation is not incompatible with the circ.u.mstance that the Council Register for 1618, which, as it happens, did not suffer from the conflagration, contains no allusion to a meeting of the Council on October 22. Nevertheless it is more likely that the want of official record is due to the extreme anxiety of the King's advisers for secrecy. They were afraid of popular feeling. The fact of the imitation trial might have been itself doubtful, but for a fragmentary sketch in a volume of Sir Julius Caesar's notes, preserved among the Lansdowne Ma.n.u.scripts in the British Museum. The report, which breaks off in the middle of a sentence, is on Council paper, and may have been drawn up for official use, if not with a view to ultimate insertion in the Privy Council Register. In Mr. Spedding's opinion only the first sheet has been kept, and the condition of the paper seems to me clearly to favour the hypothesis. He believes that the full note contained additional evidence against Ralegh, for instance, on the question of the expedition's provision of mining tools, with his replies to it, and the decision of the Commissioners upon the whole. The report, in its existing form, needs to be eked out with the suggestions, necessarily not very sympathetic, in the subsequent Royal _Declaration_ of Ralegh's line of defence against the charges. Such as it is, it must be read with caution and uncertainty. Caesar, who was Master of the Rolls, was generous, and, for a Jacobean placeman, just. The only grave imputation on his memory is his connivance, as a Commissioner, at the collusive divorce of Lady Ess.e.x. It is not impugning the good faith of any reporters of proceedings, like the present, against Ralegh, to look sceptically at their narrative. Law reporters in general had lax notions in those days of the distinction between actual statements and inferences by themselves as to the construction they bore. c.o.ke's Reports show it abundantly. Caesar in particular would feel in no way bound to mechanical accuracy. His endeavour would be to give the prevailing force and significance of the charges, of the defence, and of the evidence; the impression they made upon him with a view to his judicial conclusion. We know the judgment formed in advance by him and his colleagues on the mendacity of Ralegh's account of the motive of his enterprise. That could not but warp a compendium by him of an investigation inst.i.tuted in order to find a legal justification for a capital sentence on a presumed impostor and pirate.

[Sidenote: _Charges and Defence._]

Sir Henry Yelverton, the Attorney-General, leading for the Crown, took for his theme the conduct of the expedition. He was obliged to try to excuse the King for his authorization of an adventure alleged by himself to be an imposture. His Majesty had been induced, by the hope of 'his country's good,' to grant a commission, which, it should be noted, Caesar describes as 'under the Great Seal.' The King, Yelverton was not ashamed to suggest, had been the dupe of Ralegh, who invented the Mine to regain his liberty. He could not, it was argued, have meant to mine, since he carried no miners or instruments. He had a French commission to a.s.sail Spaniards. In reliance on that he had ventured to direct an attack on San Thome. On its failure he was in a mood to depart, and leave his poor company behind him helpless. He had antic.i.p.ated lucrative booty from the town. Disappointment at its meagreness helped to incite him to schemes for the capture of the Mexico fleet. Much indignation was spent by Sir Thomas Coventry, the Solicitor-General, in his turn, on 'vile and dishonourable speeches, full of contumely to the King,' which, on the word of Stukely and Manourie, he supposed Ralegh to have uttered.

Coventry stigmatized them as marking especial and flagitious ingrat.i.tude. 'Never was subject so obliged to his Sovereign as he.'

Ralegh, in his reply, repudiated with his wonted courtesy the a.s.sertion that he had received extraordinary marks of royal lenity. His release from the Tower he claimed as a tardy reparation for a protracted wrong.

'I do verily believe,' he exclaimed, 'that his Majesty doth in his own conscience clear me of all guiltiness in regard to my conviction in the year 1603. Indeed, I know that his Majesty hath been heard to say, in speaking of these proceedings, that he would not wish to be tried by a Middles.e.x jury.' He added Dr. Turner's report to him of Mr. Justice Gawdy's death-bed censure of his condemnation. But he denied that he had in fact uttered the abuse imputed to him by Stukely and Manourie. His only ill speech of his Majesty had been: 'My confidence in the King is deceived.' It was deceived. The charge that he had never meant to work a mine he met by references to refiners, and tools and a.s.saying apparatus, costing him 2000, that he had conveyed with him. To the accusation that he had broken the King's peace with Spain, he retorted that the aggression proceeded from the Spaniards. He had not directed any attack upon them. His only object in despatching an armed force had been that the soldiers might take up a position between the town and the Mine while the rest were at work. The mere attempt to reach the Mine was no offence, unless Spaniards had an absolute territorial t.i.tle to the soil of the region in which it lay.

[Sidenote: _Designs against the Plate Fleet._]

[Sidenote: _The Explanation._]

The Commission could not affirm an absolute claim on behalf of Spain. It was reduced to rely upon accusations that he had from the beginning harboured piratical intentions, and counted upon the a.s.sistance of France for their accomplishment. Sir John Ferne, who had left him, reported to the Commission talk by him as if he had meant to turn buccaneer, and also to enter the French service. Apparently that was the belief of some of his officers, though several may have alleged it simply to excuse their desertion, and to guard against counter charges by him. In any case the theory seems to have been founded upon the most superficial proofs. Of any piratical acts of his, or practical service rendered to France, he could confidently challenge the Law Officers to produce the smallest proof. But on the solitary charge of a design to seize the plate fleet the Commission was in possession of a morsel of corroborative evidence. It confronted him with another of his runaway captains, Pennington, and also with Wareham St. Leger. They testified to admissions of his intention to lie in wait for the plate fleet.

According to Caesar's note, after their testimony he could no longer adhere to his denial, and 'confessed that he proposed the taking of the Mexico fleet if the mine failed.' How far he positively admitted it, and how far Caesar inferred to his own satisfaction from Ralegh's mode of receiving the evidence that he could not really contradict it, cannot be ascertained. As has been remarked, all depends on how the thing was said. If Caesar's summary of the proceedings had been handed down in a more complete form, it might itself have impressed posterity otherwise than the evidence impressed him. By the allusions in the Royal _Declaration_ it may be seen that Ralegh was far from being overwhelmed by St. Leger's and Pennington's testimony. In the first place he appears to have a.s.serted that the words concerning the plate fleet were spoken after, and not before, the search for the Mine had been defeated, and that the plan was propounded by him merely to keep the fleet together through the tempting vision. If he had ever before said anything to the same effect, 'it was but discourse at large.' Without regard to the strength or weakness, the sufficiency or insufficiency, of his defence, as to which Mr. Spedding concedes that the remains of Caesar's note afford scanty materials for a conclusion, there can be no question that the Commissioners paid little respect to his arguments. If they ever embodied their opinion, as Mr. Spedding thinks probable, in words, he certainly is correct in his conjecture that it was wholly condemnatory.

According to Ulloa's account, Bacon wound up the proceedings by addressing a solemn rebuke to Ralegh for the injury he had done to Spanish territories, and by telling him that he must die. Perhaps, however, the Spaniard's informant antedated the Lord Chancellor's announcement, which may be identical with that, hereafter to be mentioned, of October 24. At all events, a privy seal seems to have been sent to the Judges, 'forthwith to order execution.' Jacobean Judges could commit monstrous injustices. They liked to be unjust according to precedent. They demurred, and a conference of them was called. At this, on October 23, it was decided that a privy seal was not enough. It was determined that Ralegh should be brought to bar on a writ of Habeas Corpus addressed to the Lieutenant of the Tower. He was to be asked if he could urge any objection to an award of execution; 'for he might have a pardon; or he might say that he was not the same person.' As a preliminary he was called next day before the Council at Whitehall. He was informed that he was to be executed on his old sentence. His reply is not recorded. If he argued on behalf of his life, it was to no purpose. He was more fortunate with his pet.i.tion that he might be beheaded, and not hanged. For that amount of benevolence the Council intimated its willingness to hold itself responsible.

[Sidenote: _Before the King's Bench._]

A second privy seal came to the Justices of the King's Bench. Their Chief, c.o.ke's successor, much more polished and discreet than he, was Sir Henry Montagu, afterwards Lord Treasurer, Lord President, and Earl of Manchester. His Court was simply commanded to proceed according to law, as it was called. Ralegh had been suffering from an attack of ague.

On October 28, at eight, he was awakened with the fit still upon him. He was served with a summons to appear forthwith at Westminster. As he pa.s.sed along the corridor an old servant, Peter, met him. While he was under Wilson's custody his own domestics had been withdrawn. They had since been allowed to attend him. One of Peter's duties had been to comb the hair, no longer flowing and thick, of his head, and his beard, for an hour a day. Ralegh had left off the practice for a time. As he told Wilson, 'he would know first who should have his head; he would not bestow so much cost of it for the hangman.' Peter had doubtless at his return brought his master back to the old usage. He now reminded Ralegh that he was going forth with his head undressed. Ralegh replied with a good-humoured question, 'Dost thou know, Peter, of any plaster that will set a man's head on again, when it is off?'

[Sidenote: _Execution granted._]

He was at Westminster soon after nine. After the Winchester conviction had been read, Yelverton, as Attorney-General, briefly demanded execution. He was more courteous than c.o.ke had been in his place, and more dignified. 'Sir Walter Ralegh,' he said, 'hath been a statesman, and a man who, in regard to his parts and quality, is to be pitied. He hath been as a star at which the world hath gazed; but stars may fall, nay, they must fall when they trouble the sphere wherein they abide. It is therefore his Majesty's pleasure now to call for execution of the former judgment, and I require order for the same.' Ralegh held up his hand. He told the Court that 'his voice was grown weak by his late sickness, and an ague he had at that instant upon him; therefore, he desired the relief of a pen and ink.' Montagu told him he spoke audibly enough. So he proceeded with his defence. He argued, as Bacon is rumoured to have argued at Gray's Inn, that the King's commission for the late voyage, with the power of life and death, amounted to a pardon.

Montagu interrupted him. Nothing about his voyage was, he said, to the purport. Treason was never pardoned by implication. On this Ralegh put himself on the King's mercy. He urged that in that judgment which was so long past, both his Majesty was of opinion, and there were some present who could witness, that he had hard usage. If his Majesty had not been anew exasperated against him, he was sure he might, if he could by nature, have lived a thousand and a thousand years before advantage would have been taken of the judgment. Montagu answered that for all the past fifteen years he had been as a man dead in the law; but the King in mercy spared him. He might think it heavy if it were done in cold blood.

But new offences had stirred up his Majesty's justice to revive what the law had formerly cast upon him. The Chief Justice continued in a solemn strain, not without eloquence: 'I know that you have been valiant and wise; and I doubt not but you retain both these virtues, for now you shall have occasion to use them. Your faith hath heretofore been questioned; but I am resolved you are a good Christian; for your book, which is an admirable work, doth testify as much. I would give you counsel; but I know you can apply it unto yourself far better than I am able to give it you. Fear not death too much, nor fear death too little; not too much lest you fail in your hope, nor too little lest you die presumptuously.' He ended: 'Execution is granted.'

Ralegh said he had no desire 'to gain one minute of life; for now being old, sickly, in disgrace, and certain to go to it, life was wearisome to him.' But he prayed for a reasonable delay; he had something to do in discharge of his conscience, something for the satisfaction of his Majesty, and something for that of the world. Above all, he besought their Lords.h.i.+ps that, when he came to die, he might have leave to speak freely at his farewell. He called G.o.d, before whom he was shortly to appear, to witness that he was never disloyal, as he should justify where he need not fear the face of any King on earth. So, with an entreaty to them to pray for him, he was led away to the Gate-house.

[Sidenote: _The Queen's Intercession through Villiers._]

[Sidenote: _Other Pet.i.tioners._]

James and his confidants were not allowed to carry out their iniquity without remonstrances. Already the Queen had exerted once more her waning influence for Ralegh. He had appealed to her in solemn verse from his prison in the name of his innocence and friendlessness. She was now on her death-bed, dropsical, gloomy, and neglected. It was whispered that she was disturbed in her reason. She preserved at least sufficient intelligence to be horrified at the wrong which was being prepared, and the stain threatened to the memory of her husband's reign. She responded to Ralegh's pet.i.tion by an earnest letter to George Villiers. She had, at Archbishop Abbot's solicitation, recommended Villiers to the favour of James. He exhibited the most obsequious deference to her as well as to the King. Her letter, of which the precise date is unknown, is addressed to 'My kind Dogge.' That was the name by which Villiers affected to like both of them to call him. She wrote: 'If I have any power or credit with you, I pray you let me have a trial of it, at this time, in dealing sincerely and earnestly with the King, that Sir Walter Ralegh's life may not be called in question.' Her intercession with her truant Consort through his favourite was not more successful than her pleadings with himself had been. As vainly young Carew Ralegh prayed, without date or superscription, for the life of 'my poor father, sometime honoured with many great places of command by the most worthy Queen Elizabeth, the possessor whereof she left him at her death, as a token of her goodwill to his loyalty.' The lad, now about thirteen, or rather they who dictated his memorial, must have been very simple to suppose that Elizabeth's favour was a pa.s.sport to James's compa.s.sion. On his death-bed James Montague, who died in July, 1618, Bishop of Winchester, and is transformed by Wilson in his journal into the Earl of Winchester, had previously begged of James one thing, the life of Ralegh; 'a great offender,' Montague called him, 'who yet was dearly respected of the late n.o.ble Queen.' In his choice of reasons the prelate seems to have been as injudicious as the boy. As fruitlessly were solicitations addressed to the King by Lady Ralegh, and by persons described generally as in great favour and esteem with him. All were repulsed. James, says Francis...o...b..rn in his _Traditional Memoirs_, 'did so far partic.i.p.ate of the humour of a pusillanimous prince as to pardon any sooner than those injured by himself.' He was unconscious of any such malignity. It is pathetic to observe his utter freedom from suspicion that posterity could help characterizing him as resolute, wise, and just for his persecution of Ralegh, and not as a wretched trickster.

Ralegh's own main anxiety was to settle his affairs in the first place, and to secure that none suffered pecuniary detriment, much or little, through his fault or negligence. When that was a.s.sured, he next longed to clear his fame, in death, of every slur and taint. In November, for discharge of his conscience, he gave to Wilson a testamentary note, that he had never let to Captain Caulfeild land near Sherborne Castle, which John Meere claimed by a counterfeit grant of his to Caulfeild. He mentioned further that, before his departure from Cork to Guiana, he had written in prejudice of H. Pyne's lease of Mogile Castle, and in favour of Lord Boyle's claim. Since that time, better bethinking himself, he desired the opinion he gave at Cork might be no evidence in law, and that it should be left to other proofs on both sides. He requested Lady Ralegh, 'if she should enjoy her goods,' to be kind to Hamon's wife, and in any case to the wife of John Talbot, his servant in the Tower, who had died in Guiana: 'I fear me, her son being dead, she will otherwise perish.' He added that an account ought to be exacted from Stukely of the tobacco he had sold at Plymouth, and also of the parcel he had sent down the river, 'the Sunday that we took boat.'

[Sidenote: _Warrant for Execution._]

When he prayed a 'respite,' it was not that he was scared at the approach of death. His mind was never brighter and happier. To this moment may well be attributed, as it has been by popular tradition, his composition of the couplet:

Cowards may fear to die, but courage stout, Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.

a.s.suredly he was not one of the cowards. But his career had been confused and tumultuous. He would have been glad of a little leisure and quiet for unravelling some of the knots. He understood his enemies and events too well to be surprised that his shrift was to be short. Before his appearance at the King's Bench, Bacon had drawn the warrant for execution, and James had signed it. Naunton wrote to Carleton, the general depositary of confidential gossip, on October 28, that the warrant for execution had been drawn up, and sent to the King for signature; only, 'it had better not be talked about, as it is de futuro contingente.' James, meanwhile, was restlessly hunting to and fro between Oatlands, Theobalds, and Hampton Court. He was composing meditations on the Lord's Prayer, and dedicating them to Villiers. The warrant, though he was then in Hertfords.h.i.+re, was dated the day of the scene in the King's Bench. It was directed to the Chancellor. It dispensed with 'the manner of execution according to his former judgment, and released Sir Walter Ralegh of the same to be drawn, hanged, and quartered.' The royal pleasure instead thereof was to have the head only of the said Sir Walter Ralegh cut off at or within the Palace of Westminster.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

RALEGH'S TRIUMPH (October 28-29, 1618).

[Sidenote: _The Gate-house._]