Great Ralegh

by Hugh De Sélincourt

HENRY PRINCE OF WALES

The position, however, suddenly changed. Cecil died. Car was sent to the Tower for complicity in the poisoning of Overbury. Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton died, the bitterest of Ralegh's enemies. Sir Ralph Winwood, who was kindly disposed towards Ralegh and an honest man, became Secretary of State. A new favourite of the same stamp as Car, one George Villiers rose to power, and he, for his own reasons, hated the Howards. Ralegh approached him in the usual way. He gave £750 each to his brothers, and obtained in consequence the regard of George Villiers.

Through all the years of his imprisonment Ralegh had continued quietly to urge—through the Prince, through the Queen, through Cecil—how foolish it was to keep imprisoned a man like himself, who could fill the treasury of England with gold from a mine in Guiana, of which he alone knew the site. He persisted always upon the wealth of Guiana, so that little by little it grew to be common talk. To Ralegh, as to Cecil Rhodes, gold meant power; but, more than gold, he desired the sensation of freedom on the wide sea, and the long journey to the unknown land. More than gold, he desired the attainment of the great dream which had become inextricably part of his life. That was his life's object, and nothing could keep him from any possible means of its fulfilment. The quiet labour in the Tower at his history and in the little laboratory only served to lull the pain of captivity, and gave scope to but a part of his great nature, though many men, and many by no means inferior men, have spent their lives in doing work less excellent and less valuable than Ralegh packed into the years of his imprisonment.

For twelve years Ralegh had been in prison. He was sixty-three years old when he regained his liberty. Most men would have been content to continue the quiet habit of work formed during his long imprisonment. Ralegh's spirit was, however, undaunted; not even habit could deaden his unconquerable vitality. His release had been gained that he might arrange and lead an expedition to Guiana. Indeed, he was still under the charge of a keeper, and his sole permitted business was to arrange the detail for the fitting out of the expedition—ships, men, supplies and so forth.

It would throw a light on all life if we could know what were Ralegh's feelings as he left the Tower; if we could know how long the first exhilaration of freedom held him, and when that exhilaration yielded to intense unutterable consciousness of the stress and the pain of life; for he must surely have felt as if he were beginning the whole business of life again, and many moments must have come even to Ralegh when he asked himself, "Is it good enough?" and looked back to the quiet of his room in the Tower with active regret—the room where he had dreamed and worked, had had the satisfaction of a persistent desire, and from which he had watched great ships making their way down the Thames to the sea. The same detail of his old life awaited him, in transacting the manifold business which he knew so well—countless interviews with innumerable men, endowed with the same amount of ignorance, or astuteness, or malice, or knowledge, or good-will. In some ways the world must have appeared to him to have remained very dully the same; but its aspect must have changed amazingly. Different fashions were in vogue; different favourites caught the public eye; new faces showed everywhere. The streets had been widened; many were better paved. They were more crowded with carriages than they were twelve years before. New buildings had arisen, among which the New Exchange, close to Durham House, and the Banqueting House at Whitehall were the most notable. The first thing Ralegh did was to walk round London. In the twentieth century, an active man might, by clever arrangement of train and tube and electric tram, traverse the extent of London in a day without seeing any of the sights, and but few of the streets. Ralegh could see everything in London, poor walker as he was, in three or four hours, less than three hundred years ago. For London clung to the banks of the river which was the main way, and by which watermen thronged at countless landing-stages with innumerable boats and barges. It must have been a strange experience for Ralegh to notice the new fashions of the Court, to pass among men unknown, himself almost unheeded, who had been the great Queen's lover, and to see faces of new favourites, acclaimed at their passing through the streets. For he had become to the people little more than a name and a tradition; he would be recognizable at his window in the Tower, but in the ordinary surroundings of life he would be regarded with surprise rather than recognition. And men who recognized would hesitate to notice his presence, not knowing whether suspicion might not cling to them of treasonable intentions if they appeared too glad at his release.

To this time belongs probably a story which Aubrey tells, and which, like other stories of that inimitable gossip, bears the stamp of truth. Its telling lightens the gloom that these first months of freedom, with their terrible realization of time gone, inevitably raise. Aubrey had it from his old friend, James Harrington, who was well acquainted with Sir Benjamin Ruddyer, a friend of Ralegh's. In Aubrey's own delightful words the story runs as follows: "Sir Walter Ralegh, being invited to dinner to some great person where his son was to go with him, he sayd to his son 'Thou art expected to-day at dinner to goe along with me, but thou art such a quarrelsome affronting ... (Aubrey has forgotten the exact word) that I am ashamed to have such a beare in my company.' Mr. Walter humbled himself to his father and promised he would behave himself mighty mannerly. So away they went, and Sir Benjamin I think with them. He sate next to his father and was very demure at least halfe dinner time. Then sayd he 'I this morning not having the feare of God before my eyes but by the instigation of the devil went....' Sir Walter being strangely surprised and put out of countenance at so great a table gives his son a damned blow over the face. His son, as rude as he was, would not strike his father, but strikes over the face the gentleman that sate next him, and sayd 'Box about; it will come to my father anon.' Tis now a common proverb."

The story is far too good to be false. Gossip needs no verification. It stands or falls unsupported by the props which the stern matter of history demands, like an authentic relic which has survived to please.

Meanwhile the business of the expedition went on apace. Ralegh had from King James a commission which empowered him to voyage "to places in South America, or elsewhere, inhabited by heathen and savage people, etc." The commission was very similarly worded to others which he had had from Queen Elizabeth, and Ralegh set no greater store by the clause which forbade him to attack the subjects of any European king, especially of the King of Spain, than he had done before. Ralegh did not realize how much things had changed since his Queen ruled. He knew as well as every one else that the Spaniards in Guiana would not allow him to land and proceed quietly to the mine without a determined effort to stop his progress. But he did not know what a hold Sarmiento, the Spanish ambassador, had acquired over James, and how well-disposed James had become towards Spain. He did not understand that he was the last man in England who upheld the Elizabethan tradition, and that therefore he was the man whom Spain best hated.

One month after Ralegh's release Sarmiento wrote to the King of Spain warning him that another company was being prepared "for Guiana and the river Orinoco, which is near Trinidad, the prime promoter and originator of which is Sir Walter Ralegh, a great seaman.... I am informed that he will sail in the month of October with six or eight ships of 200 to 500 tons, some belonging to himself, some to his companions, all well provided. He will also take with him launches in which to ascend the Orinoco, and he is trying to get two ships of very light draught to take them as high up the river as possible. He has already been in the country and assures people here that he knows of a mine that will swell all England with gold." He urges the King of Spain to increase the navy and not to allow any merchant to sail without a proper convoy; and assures him that he in England will do all in his power to prevent the expedition. Sarmiento's power was very great.