THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF JAMES I. 141 



this were done in cold blood, to call you to execution. But it is not 

 so. For new offences have stirred up his majesty's justice to re- 

 member to revive what the law hath formerly cast upon you." 

 " With those new offences, however," observes an acute and learned 

 writer, " whatever they might be, he was never publickly charged ; 

 yet was he accused without a public prosecutor, and condemned 

 without a trial."* These few short facts illustrate the cruelty and 

 illegality of his sentence. After fourteen years imprisonment, Sir 

 Walter received from the king the command of a fleet, to be em- 

 ployed in discovering a gold mine in South America. The expedi- 

 tion proved unsuccessful ; and upon his return home, after a solemn 

 mockery of conference, held by all the judges, upon his case, he was 

 decapitated under the authority of a special warrant, signed by the 

 king, in direct opposition to the soundest principles of justice and 

 humanity. For if the conclusion of the law be true, that authority 

 and confidence cannot be bestowed upon a traitor condemned to 

 death, then the royal commission of admiralt was equivalent to a 

 formal pardon. But as a crowning characteristic of the black depo- 

 sit of inveterate antipathy and pernicious passion that was lodged 

 in the bosom of James against Raleigh, % it may be mentioned, that 

 he absolutely made it a merit with the court of Madrid § that he 



• Philips's State Trials, vol. i, p. 79. 



+ Confirmatory of this position, is the following addiess of Bacon to Sir 

 Walter : — " Sir, The knee limber of your voyage is money. Spare your 

 purse in this particular, for, upon my life, you have a sufficient pardon for 

 what is past already, the king having, under his broad seal, made you admiral 

 of the fleet, and given you power of martial law over your officers and sol- 

 diers." — See Howell's Letters. 



% How bent James must have been in pursuing his victim to death, when 

 Queen Anne penned the following curious letter to Buckingham, and yet 

 neither she nor the favourite could elicit a particle of compassionate feeling 

 in the royal breast towards the prisoner. " My kind dog, If I have any pow- 

 er 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 Raleigh's life 

 may not be called in question. If you do it, so that the success answer my 

 expectation, assure yourself that I will take it extraordinary kindly at your 

 hands, and rest one that wisheth you well, and desires you to continue still, 

 as you have been, a true servant to your master." — Dalrymple, vol. i, p. 78. 



§ In the following extracts, the infamous policy of James, in this respect, 

 will appear to be fully developed : — " But withal, I shall judge them (the 

 Spaniards) the most unworthy and perfidious people of the world ; and the 

 more for that his majesty hath given them so many testimonies of his sincere 

 intention toward them, which he daily continueth, as now of late, by the 

 causing Sir Waller Baluigh to be put to death, clurji;/ for ylviiKj them salis- 



