Sir Walter Raleigh and His Time

by Charles Kingsley

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	½ lb.
Distilled water	3 pints.
Macerate, etc., and reduce to	1½ pint.
Compound powder of crabs’ claws	16 oz.
Cinnamon and Nutmegs	2 oz.
Cloves	1 oz.
Cardamom seeds	½ oz.
Double refined sugar	2 lb.
Make aconfection.

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, where Lady Raleigh has been bought off with £8000; 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 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.