[LXXIV.] <recorded by> J. Stowe, I thinke.
I remember I heard old father ... Symonds (è Societate Jesu) say, that ..., a father, was at his execution[828], and that to his knowledge he dyed with a lye in his mouth: I have now forgott what 'twas. The time of his execution was contrived to be on my Lord Mayer's day (viz. the day after St. Simon and Jude) 1618, that the pageants and fine shewes might drawe away[829] the people from beholding the tragoedie of one of the gallants worthies that ever England bred. Buryed privately under the high alter at St. Margaret's church, in Westminster, on ... (vide Register); in which grave (or neer) lies James Harrington, esq., author of Oceana.
Mr. Elias Ashmole told me that his son Carew Ralegh told him he had his father's skull; that some yeares since, upon digging-up the grave, his skull and neck-bone being viewed, they found the bone[830] of his neck lapped over so, that he could not have been hanged. Quaere Sir John Elowys for the skull, who married Mr. Carew Ralegh's daughter and heire.
[831]Sir W. Raleigh—Baker's Chronicle, p. 441—'A scaffold was erected in the Old Palace Yard, upon which, after 14 yeares reprivement, his head was cutt off. At which time such abundance of bloud issued from his veines that shewed he had stock of nature enough left to have continued him many yeares in life though now above 3-score yeares old, if it had not been taken away by the hand of violence. And this was the end of the great Sir Walter Raleigh, great sometimes in the favour of queen Elizabeth, and (next to Sir Francis Drake) the great scourge and hate of the Spaniard; who had many things to be commended in his life, but none more than his constancy at his death, which he tooke with so undaunted a resolution that one might percieve he had a certain expectation of a better life after it, so far he was from holding those atheisticall opinions, an aspersion whereof some had cast upon him.'
[832]In the register of St. Margaret's, Westminster, in the moneth of October, Sir Walter Raleigh is entred, and is the last of that moneth, but no dayes of the moneth are sett downe, so that he being beheaded on the Lord Mayer's day, was buryed the.... He was buryed as soon as you are removed from the top of the steps towards the altar, not under the altar.—from Elias Ashmole, esq.
On Sir Walter Rawleigh.
Here lieth, hidden in this pitt,
The wonder of the world for witt.
It to small purpose did him serve;
His witt could not his life preserve.
Hee living was belov'd of none,
Yet in his death all did him moane[LXXV.].
Heaven hath his soule, the world his fame,
The grave his corps, Stukley his shame.
[LXXV.] Horat. ep. 1, lib. 2:—Extinctus amabitur idem.
This I found among the papers of my honoured friend and neighbour Thomas Tyndale, esq., obiit ... 167-, aet. 85. This Stukely was....