Great Ralegh

by Hugh De Sélincourt

On the surface nothing was changed. Ralegh continued to make efforts to rouse fresh interest in his colonization schemes, both in Virginia and in Guiana, but without success. He joined with Cecil in organizing privateering enterprises. He wrote to Cecil about the threatened invasion of Ireland by Spain, and warned him on no account to put trust in the friendly protestations of Florence McCarthy, whom he well knew to be a rebel. He continued to devote much energy to the duties which his Governorship of Jersey entailed. And all the while Howard and Cecil were watching him and planning his destruction. They were waiting for him to fall into one of the snares which were set for him; it mattered not whether the decoy was Arabella Stuart or the Infanta and her husband, the Count Arembergh. Cobham about this time was in communication with the Count, who was Archduke of the Netherlands, and who desired to make a peace between England and Spain. James and Cecil too desired peace with Spain, but did not wish it to come through any other channel but their own. So they watched Cobham that they might surprise him in an indiscretion, as they had watched him in his dealings with Arabella Stuart. And once they held him they could easily lay hands on the friend who had influenced the poor impressionable fellow to take a traitorous step. It would be incredible to all that such a man as Cobham was known to be could have taken such a step on his own initiative.

Failure is the cause of many crimes. While a great financier is successful, everything is forgotten in the rush to make his acquaintance and to make money. No one is indiscreet enough to inquire into his methods. If he should fail to be successful, it fares ill with him. The rush to leave him is as swift as the previous rush to be near him. His methods are exposed relentlessly, and men blush with shame to think that such a scoundrel could have been in their midst. The blush is the token of innocence (easily paid) to morality. That was recognized to be the position in all the various projects about the Succession. Whoever failed became a traitor. Exactly what Ralegh did or did not do, is not known. It is enough that he eventually got into the power of Cecil. He failed, that is to say, he was not sufficiently alert to suspect the intrigues of his friends against him.

The last years of the Queen's reign are as tragic as the last years of the woman's life. The strength of the country was in a strange way bound up with the strength of Elizabeth, and as her strength declined so did the greatness of the country. Never has a woman used her power with such magnificent results. England was the husband, for whom her life was lived, and all the greatest men in England lived fiercely to win glory and her smile of approval; and they strove the harder because within them was the knowledge (such knowledge was an inspiration) that their great Queen could also be a beautiful woman to the man who found favour in her eyes. She lived greatly, and created almost an age of great men with such puissance did she employ one side of a woman's creative power. A child is not the only new life which a woman may produce, if she has once outgrown the little limits of what is miscalled purity. Coarse, as in many ways the Elizabethan age undoubtedly was, men did not fall into the fantastic error of confusing celibacy with chastity. The body had full scope, and in consequence the spirit throve untrammelled.

But Elizabeth was growing old. To the end she kept her grip on life; but effort was necessary. In that effort alone weakness became apparent. Strength was used not to plunder life as she had plundered it hitherto, but to withstand its encroachments. She would not yield. There is something great and yet something infinitely pathetic, childish even, in her indomitable will to resist the slow inevitable power of Time.

At last illness, which she had always dreaded with superstitious horror, and against which she had always defended herself with every charm which superstition could devise, laid hold on her.

Sir Robert Carey, who was Lord Warden of the Border, came to the Court, which was then at Richmond, in March, 1603, to see his friends and to renew his acquaintance. He found the Queen ill-disposed. "I found her in one of her withdrawing rooms sitting low upon her cushions. She called me to her. I kissed her hand, and told her, It was my chiefest happiness to see her in safety and health, which I wished might long continue.

"She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said, 'No, Robin, I am not well!' and then discoursed with me of her indisposition, and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days: and in her discourse, she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs.

"I was grieved at the first to see her in this plight: for in all my lifetime before, I never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded.... I used the best words I could to persuade her from this melancholy humour; but I found by her, it was too deep rooted in her heart, and hardly to be removed. This was upon a Saturday night: and she gave command that the Great Closet should be prepared for her to go to Chapel the next morning."

But they waited in vain for her coming, she was not well enough to attend the service. From that day her body grew weaker and weaker. She felt that death was approaching, and grimly she welcomed the approach of death. With a kind of fierce disdain she refused all food, and she refused to leave the chair in which she sat waiting. Night and day in silence she sat staring in front of her, face to face with death. Music was played to her in the hope that it might dispel the black gloom which had settled upon her. She did not hear the music. She sat motionless in her chair staring in front of her, greater than Cleopatra, but without the solace of the asp's quick kiss. Her eyes had no expression in them now. Her waiting-women were terrified. Cecil came to her and told her "to content the people she must go to bed." Then she spoke, saying that "must was not a word fit to be used to princes;" she dismissed Cecil from her presence, and as he went away she spoke again. "Little man, little man," she said, "if your father had lived ye durst not have said so much, but ye know I must die, and that makes ye so presumptuous." Lord Admiral Howard, Earl of Nottingham, remained with her. At last she spoke to him. "My lord, I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck." He bade her have courage, but she answered in a low voice, "I am tied, I am tied, and the case is altered with me."

Her waiting women were terrified. The powers of darkness seemed at play in the Palace at Richmond. Lady Southwell affirms that the queen of hearts was nailed under the Queen's chair, the nail through the forehead; "they durst not pull it out remembering that the like thing was used to the old Countess of Sussex and afterwards proved a witchcraft for which certain persons were hanged as instruments of the same." Lady Guildford left the Queen, as she thought, sleeping, but saw her walking from one room to another; she hurried back, and there she found the Queen still, as she thought, sleeping. Lady Guildford swore that it must have been the Queen's ghost which she had seen, while the Queen was yet living.