Raleigh

by Edmund Gosse

It was in the same spirit of rigour that Raleigh had for two years past advised the retention of the gentle and learned Florence MacCarthy in the Tower, as 'a man reconciled to the Pope, dangerous to the present State, beloved of such as seek the ruin of the realm;' and this at the very time when MacCarthy, trusting in his twenty years' acquaintance with Raleigh, was praying Cecil to let him be his judge. Raleigh little thought that the doors which detained Florence MacCarthy would soon open for a moment to inclose himself, and that in two neighbouring cells through long years of captivity the History of the World would grow beside the growing History of the Early Ages of Ireland.

In this year, 1602, Raleigh parted with his vast Irish estates to Richard Boyle, afterwards Earl of Cork, and placed the purchase-money in privateering enterprises. It is known that Cecil had an interest in this fleet of merchantmen, and as late as January 1603 he writes about a cruiser in which Raleigh and he were partners, begging Raleigh, from prudential reasons, to conceal the fact that Cecil was in the adventure. There was no abatement whatever in the friendliness of Cecil's tone to Raleigh, although in his own crafty mind he had decided that the death of the Queen should set the term to Raleigh's prosperity. On March 30, 1603, Elizabeth died, and with her last breath the fortune and even the personal safety of Raleigh expired.

We may pause here a moment to consider what was Raleigh's condition and fame at this critical point in his life. He was over fifty years of age, but in health and spirits much older than his time of life suggested; his energy had shown signs of abatement, and for five years he had done nothing that had drawn public attention strongly to his gifts. If he had died in 1603, unattainted, in peace at Sherborne, it is a question whether he would have attracted the notice of posterity in any very general degree. To close students of the reign of Elizabeth he would still be, as Mr. Gardiner says, 'the man who had more genius than all the Privy Council put together.' But he would not be to us all the embodiment of the spirit of England in the great age of Elizabeth, the foremost man of his time, the figure which takes the same place in the field of action which Shakespeare takes in that of imagination and Bacon in that of thought. For this something more was needed, the long torture of imprisonment, the final crown of judicial martyrdom. The slow tragedy closing on Tower Hill is the necessary complement to his greatness.

All this it is easy to see, but it is more difficult to understand what circumstances brought about a condition of things in which such a tragedy became possible. We must realise that Raleigh was a man of severe speech and reserved manner, not easily moved to be gracious, constantly reproving the sluggish by his rapidity, and galling the dull by his wit. All through his career we find him hard to get on with, proud to his inferiors, still more crabbed to those above him. If policy required that he should use the arts of a diplomatist, he overplayed his part, and stung his rivals to the quick by an obsequiousness in speech to which his eyes and shoulders gave the lie. With all his wealth and influence, he missed the crowning points of his ambition; he never sat in the House of Peers, he never pushed his way to the council board, he never held quite the highest rank in any naval expedition, he never ruled with only the Queen above him even in Ireland. He who of all men hated most and deserved least to be an underling, was forced to play the subordinate all through the most brilliant part of his variegated life of adventure. It was only for a moment, at Cadiz or Fayal, that by a doubtful breach of prerogative he struggled to the surface, to sink again directly the achievement was accomplished. This soured and would probably have paralysed him, but for the noble stimulant of misfortune; and to the temper which this continued disappointment produced, we must look for the cause of his unpopularity.

It is difficult, as we have said, to understand how it was that he had the opportunity to become unpopular. From one of his latest letters in Elizabeth's reign we gather that the tavern-keepers throughout the country considered Raleigh at fault for a tax which was really insisted on by the Queen's rapacity. He prays Cecil to induce Elizabeth to remit it, for, he says, 'I cannot live, nor show my face out of my doors, without it, nor dare ride through the towns where these taverners dwell.' This is the only passage which I can find in his published correspondence which accounts in any degree for the fact that we presently find Raleigh beyond question the best-hated man in England.[8]

CHAPTER VII.

THE TRIAL AT WINCHESTER.

Raleigh was in the west when the Queen died, and he had no opportunity of making the rush for the north which emptied London of its nobility in the beginning of April. King James had reached Burghley before Raleigh, in company with his old comrade Sir Robert Crosse, met him on his southward journey. It was necessary that he should ask the new monarch for a continuation of his appointments in Devon and Cornwall; his posts at Court he had probably made up his mind to lose. One of the blank forms which the King had sent up to be signed by Cecil, nominally excusing the recipient from coming to meet James, had been sent to Raleigh, and this was of evil omen. The King received him ungraciously, and Raleigh did not make the situation better by explaining the cause of his disobedience. James, it is said, admitted in a blunt pun that he had been prejudiced against the late Queen's favourite; 'on my soul, man,' he said, 'I have heard but rawly of thee.' Raleigh was promised letters of continuance for the Stannaries, but was warned to take no measures with regard to the woods and parks of the Duchy of Cornwall until further orders. After the first rough greeting, James was fairly civil, but on April 25 privately desired Sir Thomas Lake to settle Raleigh's business speedily, and send him off.

In the first week of May, Sir Walter Raleigh was informed by the Council that the King had chosen Sir Thomas Erskine to be Captain of the Guard. It was the most natural thing in the world that James should select an old friend and a Scotchman for this confidential post, and Raleigh, as the Council Book records, 'in a very humble manner did submit himself.' To show that no injury to his fortunes was intended, the King was pleased to remit the tax of 300l. a year which Elizabeth had charged on Raleigh's salary as Governor of Jersey. There does not seem to be any evidence that Raleigh was led into any imprudent action by all these changes. Mr. Gardiner appears to put some faith in a despatch of Beaumont's to Villeroi, on May 2, according to which Raleigh was in such a rage at the loss of one of his offices, that he rushed into the King's presence, and poured out accusations of treason against Cecil. I cannot but disbelieve this story; the evidence all goes to prove that he still regarded Cecil, among the crowd of his enemies, as at least half his friend. On May 13, Cecil was raised to the peerage, as a sign of royal favour.