570 



RALEIGH 



carracks before his eyes. His spirited Relation of 

 Cadiz Action remain! the beat history of the 

 exploit. Despite his heroic conduct, it was almost 

 the midsummer of 1597 before Raleigh was again 

 admitted to court and allowed to take up lii- place 

 as Captain of the Guard. Cecil showed himself 

 friendly to him, and Essex was glad of his support 

 in his desire for a. more active op|M>sitinn to Spain. 

 Raleigh at once set himself to prepare and victual 

 ships for the projected expedition, which at length, 

 in July 1597, was permitted by the queen to set 

 sail from Plymouth. A desperate storm compelled 

 many of the ships to put hack for shelter, hut at 

 length Raleigh met Essex off the island of Floras. 

 They agreed to attack together the Isle of Fayal, 

 and Essex sailed off first, but Raleigh reached the 

 iiarlxmr before him, ami. after waiting three days, 

 on the fourth landed hU men and carried the town by 

 storm. Next morning the squadron of Essex made 

 the harbour, to find all the laurels of the 'Island 

 Voyage ' already reaped. Essex's mortification was 

 great, and was made greater by his cold reception at 

 home. His surly temper grew upon him, and soon 

 his helpless failure in dealing with Tyrone's rebel- 

 lion in Ireland and his insane attempt at an insur- 

 rection in the streets of London brought him to 

 the block. His hat red of Raleigh had become so 

 desperate that he charged him, together with Cecil 

 and Cobham, with a plot to murder him in his 

 house an absurd accusation, which Sir Christopher 

 Blount on the scaffold confessed was ' a word cast 

 out to colour other matters." In 1600 Raleigh suc- 

 ceeded Sir Anthony Paulet as governor of Jersey, 

 and in his three years' rule did much to foster its 

 trade and relieve its fiscal burdens. About this 

 time also he was active in parliament, advocating 

 freedom of tillage, and of church-going, and the 

 repeal of the more vexatious monopolies. His 

 Irish estates he sold in 1602 to Richard Boyle. 



In the dark intrigues about the succession that 

 filled the closing years of Elizabeth's reign Raleigh 

 took little part, while the crafty Cecil and the 

 faithless Lord Henry Howard got the ear of James, 

 and for their own advantage poisoned his mind 

 against Raleigh and Cobham. The king had long 

 been an admirer of Essex, and no doubt knew from 

 the beginning that Raleigh was indifferent to his 

 cause. The cowardice, timid love of peace, and the 

 whole personal habit* of the royal pedant, as well 

 as his overweening conceit of his own judgment in 

 affairs of state, were all naturally repugnant to the 

 bold, self-reliant hero who had so long been a trusted 

 confidant of the great-hearted queen. He met 

 James on his southward progress at Burghley in 

 Lincolnshire, and was greeted with a wretched pun 

 worthy of its source ' On my soul, man, I have 

 heard but rawly of thee.' Ere long he was stripped 

 of, or forced into resigning, all his offices, the 

 captaincy of the Guard, the wardenship of the Stan- 

 naries, the wine-license monopoly, the governor- 

 whip of Jersey. All this must have cut Raleigh to 

 the heart, and as he was at no time guarded in his 

 tongue it is possible enough he may have in his haste 

 spoken, or at least listened to, words expressing a 

 preference for Arabella Stuart to the rule of the 

 Scottish king. But the only witness against him 

 was the miserable Lord Cohham, and he made and 

 unmade his eight several charges with such facility 

 as to make them of no value at all. Neither in the 

 'Main' nor the 'Bye' Plot was there any really 

 adequate evidence o? Raleigh's complicity, and the 

 refusal of the crown to allow him to ! confronted 

 with his accuser is of itaelf almost enough to just it v 

 belief in his innocence. ' But one thing,' Hays 

 Kingnley, 'comes brightly out of the infinite 

 confusion and mystery of this dark Cobham 

 plot, and that Is Raleigh's innocence.' Raleigh 

 was arrested on the 17th July, and in his first 



despair tried to kill himself. The trial began at 

 Winchester on November 17th, the prosecution con- 

 ducted by the attorney -general, Sir Edward Coke, 

 who disgraced his robe by a brutality almost 

 beyond belief. Raleigh's defence was splendid, and 

 for the first time in his life he made his way into 

 the hearts of all Englishmen liv the dauntlessnessof 

 his bearing and the burning eloquence of life words. 

 Coke could call him 'a monster,' 'a viper,' 'the 

 rankest traitor in all England,' 'damnable atheist.' 

 and ' a spider of hell,' and Chief-justice Popham 

 could jeer at him as an atheist as well as traitor ; 

 but it was too much for Englishmen to believe that 

 the hero of Cadiz and of Fayal had ' a Spanish hem i , 

 and all his unpopularity fell from him from that 

 hour. Dudley Carletun, who heard the trial, wrote 

 that when it began he would have gone a hundred 

 miles to see Raleigh hanged, but ere it was closed 

 he would have gone a thousand to save his life. 

 Yet he was condemned to death, and only on the 

 scaffold was his sentence commuted to perpetual im- 

 prisonment. Sherborne he had conveyed to trustees 

 lor his wife and eldest son, but an invalidity in the 

 deed of conveyance was soon found, and the unhappy 

 wife's application to the king was met with the 

 words, ' I maun hae the lond, I maun hae it for Carr.' 

 In January 1609 it was given to the favourite, a pay- 

 ment of 8000 being made as compensation. Within 

 the Tower Raleigh employed himself with study 

 and with chemical experiments, and was treated on 

 the whole with fair indulgence. The young prince 

 Henry came often to him, for he greatly admired 

 the noble captive: 'No man but my lather would 

 keep such a liird in a cage, 'said he. But he died in 

 Movemlier 1612, and the promise he had wrung from 

 his father to release Raleigh the next Christinas was 

 only remembered to be forgotten. The chief fruit 

 of Raleigh's imprisonment was his History of the 

 World, the first and only volume of which, extend- 

 ing to over 1300 folio pages, although coming down 

 but to the second Roman war with Macedon 

 (170 B.c. ), was published in 1614. It Is written 

 throughout in admirable English ; lint the preface 

 is the most interesting portion, for the subject 

 itself is dreary, though lightened by glimpses of 

 autobiography and occasional flashes of fire 

 scorching satire wrapped in ambiguous phrase. Its 

 sale was suppressed in January 1615 a- ' too saucy 

 in censuring the acts of kings.' Oliver Cromwell, 

 writing to his son Richard, in 1650, says, ' Recreate 

 Yourself with Sir Walter Raleigh's History ; it is a 

 body of history, and will add much more to your 

 understanding than fragments of story.' The book 

 was written tor the young prince, and his death 

 took from the author all heart to complete his work. 

 Other writings of Raleigh's captivity were The Pre- 

 rogative of Parliament (written 1615, published 

 in 1628), which must have goaded the king Mill 

 further ; The Cabinet Council, published by John 

 Milton in 1658; A Discourse iff Win, one of his 

 most perfect pieces of writing ; and (Jlisi-rr<i<in* on 

 Trade and Commerce, an appeal for free trade, 

 suppressed like the rest. 



On January 30, 1616, Raleigh was released from 

 the Tower through the influence of Sir Ralph 

 Winwood and Villiers, expressly to make prepara- 

 tions for an expedition to the Orinoco in search 

 of a gold-mine which he maintained existed there. 

 He engaged not to molest the dominion of the 

 king of Spain, but he had been brought up on the 

 old Elizabethan theory of no i>eace lieyond the 

 line, and doubtless he thought he had everything 

 to gain and nothing to lose bv a desjierate venture, 

 and that the gold he would bring home would gild 

 over any formal breach of his promise. It seems 

 difficult to understand how James can have ex- 

 pected that such an expedition could be made 

 without a collision with Spain, and we find that he 



