James was not slow in compassing Ralegh's downfall. Two weeks passed by and Ralegh was summoned to the Council Chamber, where the Lord President informed him that James no longer desired his services as Captain of the Guard; that the honour had been conferred upon the King's countryman, Sir Thomas Erskine, to whom Ralegh was bidden to hand all appurtenances of the office.
Ralegh had increased James's dislike of him by suggesting that articles should be framed which should prevent the King's countrymen from devouring the kingdom like locusts. The advisability of such a measure became manifest to all later, when it was too late. Naturally the first man to suffer was Ralegh himself. But the indignity was glossed over—not for Ralegh's sake so much as to hinder unpleasant gossip about the new appointment—by increasing Ralegh's salary as Governor of Jersey by three hundred pounds per annum. Ralegh's loss was directly due to Cecil, to whom James had given the disposal of the office, and who gained new favour with James by electing a Scotchman. For seven weeks Ralegh enjoyed the added emolument.
His last interview with James took place at Beddington Park, in Surrey, which was the seat of his uncle, Sir Nicolas Carew. There Ralegh, anxious to prove his loyalty to the King, gave him his "Discourse touching a War with Spain, and of the protecting of the Netherlands," and offered to carry on his enterprises against Spain (he always had his great Guiana scheme in the front of his mind) by offering "to carry two thousand men to invade him without the King's charge." He could not have made a more inauspicious suggestion to the timorous James; but Ralegh did not realize how the King was influenced against him to such an extent that he would be quick to think that the man who could raise so many men to fight the Spaniard, could at less expense raise them to fight his own Majesty. Moreover, James, from no high motives, but merely from terror at the sight even of a drawn sword, hated war and fighting of any kind, and distrusted, as is shown by his choice of favourites, the quality of bravery in others. All Ralegh's grip of a situation, his clearness of exposition, his courage would be against him in a conference with James. The standard by which a man was judged had changed, now that the great Queen was in her grave. The clever Gondomar summed James up to a nicety when he wrote, without any need (for once) of diplomacy, "James has a vanity so enormous that, in order to make him play his adversary's game, you have simply to let James believe that it is from himself that the adversary has learnt to know how to play." His favourites were men who were more adroit in the use of poison than in the use of the sword. It is easy to imagine what were the feelings of James as Ralegh propounded his masterly exposition of the Spanish situation, and offered his own services. There would be something burlesque in this interview between the brave man and the coward, if absolute power of life and death were not in the hands of the coward, and if the coward had not already determined to use his power to the detriment of the brave man.
The carefully planned toils were closing round Ralegh. Copley was arrested in Sussex, and in consequence of his first examination, which was dated July 12, George Brooke was arrested two days afterwards, and orders were given for the arrest of Lord Grey and Sir Griffin Markham. On the 14th or 15th, Cobham, George Brooke's brother, was examined by the Council. They were accused of complicity with the "Treason of the Priests." Now, treason at that time was formidable, and it was necessary to treat it in a summary fashion. In every nation there must be a large number of discontented people who would combine if there was a man of sufficient influence to lead them in any way; very little was known in spite of spies; man dealt with man; there was no proper way of gauging public opinion; a spark might set all the disaffected into a dangerous fire. Now discontent is aired in the newspapers; every one can read what happens in Parliament. Treason is no longer a thing to dread. But then it was a constant danger, and the least suspicion of treasonable practices was sufficient to condemn a man to a death of horrible ignominy. Justice was swift but not unerring. A man had not only to keep clear of treason, but must have the wit to avoid even the suspicion. It is easy to see how the power thus put into the hands of the Government, though such power was essential to its safety and the welfare of the citizens, could be abused. And there is probably no instance in history where its abuse is more conspicuous than in the treatment of Ralegh. Cecil feared Ralegh; James feared Ralegh. There is nothing so unscrupulous, nothing so dangerous and so cruel as fear. The world lay obscured by the dark cloud of Time and of Space; and terrible scope was given to fear by the insuperable darkness.
The suspected man was shut up alone, and a Bishop or a Judge or a Councillor was told off to examine him; and the man knew quite well that his answers might be made more satisfactory by the help of the rack, and that his examiner would earn reward and distinction by discovering treason and his associates in treason. The promise, too, of a pardon was often dangled before his eyes to loosen his tongue. Such promises were not often kept. Brooke implicated Cobham, and Cobham implicated Ralegh.
George Brooke, Cobham's brother, was a light-hearted fellow, who was drawn into listening to the priest's conspiracy, because he had been disappointed of some small office upon which he had set his heart. To Bishop Bancroft was assigned the task of examining him. Large rewards were offered the Bishop if he were successful in finding out the details of the conspiracy. "The only way to procure favour is to open all that possibly you can" were the words with which the good Bishop began his inquiry. And gradually he played upon the fears and hopes of the prisoner to such an extent that the wretched man burst into a kind of rapture of confession, stating all he knew and all he imagined to be fact, about the treason against King James. Day after day the examination was continued relentlessly; statements made by other prisoners, or said to have been made, were told him; lists of written questions were given him. It would have taken a man of extraordinary strength and control to have kept his balance under such circumstances. George Brooke was a very ordinary man. On July 17 he said: "The conspirators among themselves thought Sir Walter Ralegh a fit man to be of the action." The good Bishop did not leave such an important statement undeveloped; under his careful management the statement by the end of August had grown; Brooke was ready to swear that Ralegh and Cobham had resolved to kill the King and his cubs.
Cobham, too, was examined in the same relentless manner. He was a little stronger than his brother, George Brooke, but no match for the examiners. He began by steadfastly denying everything; his nerves, however, could not bear the terrible suspense. He had been suddenly removed to solitary confinement; the horror of a dreadful death loomed over him. He did not know who might be arrested, who might desire his death. At length some of the confessions of his brother were disclosed to him; but the examiners named Ralegh, not Brooke, as the authority; and Cobham, knowing that Ralegh must have invented or guessed at such things, broke into an outcry of disgust (who can blame him!), "Oh traitor, oh villain! I will now tell you all the truth." And he said that he had never entered into these courses but by Ralegh's instigation, and that Ralegh would never let him alone. It was very cleverly done by the examiner. Cobham was led into confessing, helped by questions from George Brooke's statements, that "he had conferred with Arenberg about procuring 500,000 or 600,000 crowns from the King of Spain; and that nothing should be done with the money until he had spoken with Sir Walter Ralegh, for distribution of the money to them which were discontented in England." Then part of a letter from Ralegh to Cecil—for Cecil knew much of the intercourse between Arenberg and England in his official capacity—was shown to Cobham, in which it was written, "If da Renzy were not secured, the matter would not be discovered, for da Renzy would fly; yet if he were then apprehended, it would give matter of suspicion to Lord Cobham." Naturally Cobham, reading such words at the moment when they were shown him, constructed them into his death sentence, and broke out into fury of denunciation sufficient for the bad purpose of the examiners—to close the net round Ralegh. Lord Henry Howard justly remarks in his "Adversaria," "It is an old observation of jugglers to make others give fire to the piece after they themselves have charged it, and thereby put them into the peril of recoil or breaking, if any mischief follow." Lord Henry Howard may be taken as an authority on this subject.
Immediately after Cobham's outbreak, Ralegh was arrested and sent to the Tower, to await the slow, strange process of justice. His arrest took place at the beginning of August. Almost immediately the Government of Jersey was transferred to Sir John Peyton, Governor of the Tower. James in his grant stated that the post was forfeited by Sir Walter Ralegh through the grievous treason against the Crown. With the King thus quickly convinced of his guilt, Ralegh knew that he had small chance of proving his innocence. Dismay came upon him and despair. His hopes fell from a great height and were broken. Suddenly shut closely in by four stone walls, he was obliged to wait the slow approach of an ignominious death—a death which would involve the ruin of his family, and the immediate disgrace of his name. He was a man of action; he could not sit and do nothing but think. Despair brought madness to him; he tried to kill himself in a fit of impotent despair. This is the way in which Cecil, once Ralegh's friend, writes of it. "Although lodged and attended as well as in his own house, yet one afternoon, while divers of us were in the Tower examining these prisoners, Sir Walter Ralegh attempted to have murdered himself. Whereof, when we were advertised, we came to him and found him in some agony, seeming to be unable to bear his misfortune, and protesting innocency, with carelessness of life. In that humour he had wounded himself under the right pap, but no way mortally; being in truth rather a cut than a stab."
On August 13, Ralegh was examined about Cobham's negotiations with Arenberg. His statement was: "Lord Cobham offered me 10,000 crowns of the money, for the furthering of the Peace between England and Spain; and he said that I should have it within three days. I told him, 'When I see the money I will make you an answer.' For I thought it one of his ordinary idle conceits, and therefore made no account thereof. But this was as I think before Count Arenberg's coming over." And in a letter written to the Lords of the Council a few days after this examination, in which he proclaims his innocence of any treasonable practice, he breaks out, after enumerating his exploits against Spain, in bitterness at the irony of the charge. "Alas, to what end should we live in the world if all the endeavours of so many testimonies shall be blown off with one blast of breath, or be prevented by one man's charge."
Lord Cobham had made several retractions of his outburst against Ralegh, both at Ralegh's instigation and on his own initiative. Sir George Harvey, the Governor of the Tower, was discreet enough to keep back the latter retraction until one month after the trial, when he showed Cecil a letter in which Cobham wrote of his accusation, "God is my wittness, it doth troble my contiens." Terror had unhinged Cobham's mind, he accused Ralegh and retracted his accusations in such a way that one retraction more or less mattered little; Sir George Harvey's sense of duty, however, is significant.