English Lands, Letters and Kings, vol. 2: From Elizabeth to Anne

by Donald Grant Mitchell

This was the man who was to succeed the great and courtly Elizabeth; this was the man toward whom all the place-hunters of the court now directed their thoughts, and (many of them) their steps too, eager to be among the foremost to bow in obsequience before him; besieging him, as every United States President is besieged, and will be besieged, until the disgraceful hunt for spoils is checked by some nobler purpose on the part of political victors than the rewarding of the partisans.

There was Sir Robert Cary—a far-away cousin of Elizabeth’s—who was so bewitched to be foremost in this agreeable business that he dashes away at a headlong gallop, night and day—before the royal couriers have started—gets thrown from his horse, who gave him a vicious blow with his heels, which he says “made me shed much blood.” But he pushes on and carries first to Edinburgh the tidings of the Queen’s death. Three days of the sharpest riding would only carry the news in those days; and the court messenger took a week or so to get over the heavy roads between the Scotch capital and London.

It does not appear that James made a show of much sorrow; he must have remembered keenly, through all his stolidity, how his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had suffered at Fotheringay; and remembered through whose fiat this dismal tragedy had come about. He hints that perhaps the funeral services had better not tarry for his coming;—writes that he would be glad of the crown jewels (which they do not send, however) for the new Queen’s wearing.

Then he sets off at leisure; travels at leisure; receiving deputations at leisure, and all manner of prostrations; stopping at Berwick; stopping at Belvoir Castle; stopping at York; stopping wherever was good eating or lodging or hunting; flatterers coming in shoals to be knighted by him; even the great Bacon, wanting to be Sir Francised—as he was presently: and I am afraid the poets of the time might have appeared, if they had possessed the wherewithal to make the journey, and were as hopeful of fat things.

Curiously enough, the King is grandly entertained in Huntingdonshire by one Oliver Cromwell, to whom James takes a great liking; not, of course, the great Cromwell; but this was the uncle and the godfather of the famous Oliver, who was to be chief instrument in bringing James’ royal son, Charles, to the scaffold. Thence the King goes for four or five days of princely entertainment to Theobalds, a magnificent seat of old Burleigh’s, where Elizabeth had gone often; and where his son, Cecil, now plies the King with flatteries, and poisons his mind perhaps against Raleigh—for whom Cecil has no liking;—perhaps representing that Raleigh, being in Parliament at the time, might have stayed the execution of Queen Mary, if he had chosen. The King is delighted with Theobalds; so far delighted that a few years after he exchanges for it his royal home of Hatfield House, which magnificent place is still held by a descendant of Cecil, in the person of the present Earl of Salisbury.

That place of Theobalds became afterward a pet home of the King; he made great gardens there, stocked with all manner of trees and fruits: every great stranger in England must needs go to see the curious knots and mazes of flowers, and the vineries and shrubbery; but the palace and gardens are now gone. At last King Jamie gets to London, quartering at the Charter-house—where is now a school and a home of worn-out old pensioners (dear old Colonel Newcome died there!) within gunshot of the great markets by Smithfield;—and James is as vain as a boy of sleeping and lording it, at last, in a great capital of two realms that call him master.

Walter Raleigh.

I said that his mind had been poisoned against Raleigh;[1] that poison begins speedily to work. There are only too many at the King’s elbow who are jealous of the grave and courtly gentleman, now just turned of fifty, and who has packed into those years so much of high adventure; who has written brave poems; who has fought gallantly and on many fields; who has voyaged widely in Southern and Western seas; who has made discovery of the Guianas; who has, on a time, befriended Spenser, and was mate-fellow with the gallant Sidney; who was a favorite of the great Queen; and whose fine speech, and lordly bearing, and princely dress made him envied everywhere, and hated by less successful courtiers. Possibly, too, Raleigh had made unsafe speeches about the chances of other succession to the throne. Surely he who wore his heart upon his sleeve, and loved brave deeds, could have no admiration for the poltroon of a King who had gone a hunting when the stains upon the scaffold on which his mother suffered were hardly dry. So it happened that Sir Walter Raleigh was accused of conspiring for the dethronement of the new King, and was brought to trial, with Cobham and others. The street people jeered at him as he passed, for he was not popular; he had borne himself so proudly with his exploits, and gold, and his eagle eye. But he made so noble a defence—so full—so clear—so eloquent—so impassioned, that the same street people cheered him as he passed out of court—but not to freedom. The sentence was death: the King, however, feared to put it to immediate execution. There was a show, indeed, of a scaffold, and the order issued. Cobham and Gray were haled out, and given last talks with an officiating priest, when the King ordered stay of proceedings: he loved such mummery. Raleigh went to the Tower, where for thirteen years he lay a prisoner; and they show now in the Tower of London the vaulted chamber that was his reputed (but doubtful) home, where he compiled, in conjunction with some outside friends—Ben Jonson among the rest—that ponderous History of the World, which is a great reservoir of facts, stated with all grace and dignity, but which, like a great many heavy, excellent books, is never read. The matter-of-fact young man remembers that Sir Walter Raleigh first brought potatoes and (possibly) tobacco into England; but forgets his ponderous History.

I may as well finish his story here and now, though I must jump forward thirteen and more years to accomplish it. At the end of that time the King’s exchequer being low (as it nearly always was), and there being rumors afloat of possible gold findings in Raleigh’s rich country of Guiana, the old knight, now in his sixty-seventh year, felt the spirit of adventure stirred in him by the west wind that crept through the gratings of his prison bringing tropical odors; and he volunteered to equip a fleet in company with friends, and with the King’s permission to go in quest of mines, to which he believed, or professed to believe, he had the clew. The permission was reluctantly granted; and poor Lady Raleigh sold her estate, as well as their beloved country home of Sherborne (in Dorset) to vest in the new enterprise.