Raleigh thus went back to England in sorrow for the loss of his son, and with little hope left that his own life would be spared. When he landed in England he found that the king was very angry with him for having attacked the Spaniards, because he was at peace with their sovereign; and that he intended to renew all his former accusations against him. This King James was led to do by Gondemar, the Spanish ambassador, who bore an extreme hatred to Raleigh; it is even supposed that the Spaniards in Guiana had been secretly told to prepare to resist. James made a proclamation to the effect that he had forbidden all acts of hostility on land belonging to the Spaniards. Directly Raleigh heard this he wrote a letter to the king in defence of his conduct. He was repairing to London, and was met on the road by Sir Lewis Stukely, one of his relations, who told him that he was to arrest him. Then it was that Raleigh yielded to weakness which he repented of in after hours. He pretended that he was ill, that he had lost his reason, anything to delay the moment of his arrest.
Once he planned an escape to France, but when he had got in disguise from the Tower Docks as far as Woolwich he was overtaken by some people in the pay of the Government; and at Greenwich was formally arrested by his kinsman, who had accompanied him in his flight. The next morning, August 7th, he was conducted to the Tower, where he took a kind farewell of the king, and remained imprisoned there until the 28th of October. And on that day, as he was lying ill, the king's officers came at eight o'clock in the morning to convey him to Westminster. Thence he was taken to Gate House, and the next morning to the Old Palace Yard, where the scaffold was erected on which he was to die, that the king might preserve peace with Spain! The people of England thought James was very unkind to condemn a man whose guilt had never been proved, and who was the most valiant and spirited in the whole land. And indeed the execution of Raleigh has ever been considered unjust.
He appeared upon the scaffold with a smiling countenance, and saluted all of his friends and acquaintances who were present. Then he spoke in his own defence, but notwithstanding the deep silence around, his words were not heard by the Lords Arundel and Doncaster, and some other lords and knights who sat at a window looking into the yard, and he begged them to come upon the scaffold. When he had saluted them all he thanked God for having brought him into the light to die, instead of suffering him to die in the dark prison of the Tower. Then he defended himself eloquently against the numerous charges that had been made against him, and ended by entreating all his friends to pray for him, because he said that since he had been a soldier, a captain, a sea-captain, and a courtier, he must needs have fallen into many sins.
The lords and knights departed sorrowfully from the scaffold, and Raleigh prepared for death; he gave away his hat, his wrought night-cap, and some money to some of those who remained near him. "I have a long journey to go," he said, "and therefore I will take my leave." And when he had taken off his black velvet gown and his satin doublet, he called to the headsman, and examined the axe, saying, as he felt along its edge, "This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all disorders." Being asked which way he would lay his head on the block, he said, "So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth." A minute later his head was severed with two blows from his body; the story of his life was ended, and the unjust king could keep the peace he had purchased with the sacrifice of a man who, although faulty, had many of the attributes of true greatness.
The body of Sir Walter Raleigh was buried in St. Margaret's Church. His sorrowing widow kept his head in a case during her lifetime; it was afterwards buried with her son Carew at West Horsley, in Surrey. Raleigh was tenderly attached to his wife, and wrote her an affectionate and solemn letter during the early part of his imprisonment, in which he gave her some good advice. "If you can live free from want," he said, "care for no more, for the rest is but vanity. Love God, and begin betimes; in Him you shall have everlasting felicity. When you have travelled and wearied yourself with all sorts of worldly cogitations, you shall sit down in sorrow at the end.... Teach your son also to serve and fear God whilst he is young, that the fear of God may grow up in him."
FOOTNOTES:
[23] This story is mentioned in the "British Biography."
[24] Guiana was originally discovered to the Europeans by Vincent Pinzon before the end of the fifteenth century. It was Juan Martinez, a Spaniard, who first gave the name of El Dorado to the city of Manoa, in Guiana.
[25] A species of palm.