Judicial murder of Raleigh, 1618.
In 1603, not long after King James's arrival in England, Raleigh had been charged with complicity in Lord Cobham's abortive conspiracy for getting James set aside in favour of his cousin, Lady Arabella Stuart. This charge is now proved to have been ill-founded; but James already hated Raleigh with the measure of hatred which he dealt out to so many of Elizabeth's favourites. After a trial in which the common-law maxim, that innocence must be presumed until guilt is proved, was read backward, as witches were said to read the Lord's Prayer in summoning Old Nick, Sir Walter was found guilty of high treason and condemned to death. The wrath of the people was such that James, who did not yet feel his position quite secure, did not venture to carry out the sentence. He contented himself with plundering Sir Walter's estates, while the noble knight was kept for more than twelve years a prisoner in the Tower, where he solaced himself with experiments in chemistry and with writing that delightful History of the World which is one of the glories of English prose literature. In 1616, at the intercession of Villiers, Raleigh was set free. On his expedition to Guiana in 1595 he had discovered gold on the upper waters of the Caroni River in what is now Venezuela. In his attempt to dispense with parliaments James was at his wits' end for money, and he thought something might be got by sending Raleigh back to take possession of the place. It is true that Spain claimed that country, but so did James on the strength of Raleigh's own discoveries, and if any complication should arise there were ways of crawling out. Raleigh had misgivings about starting on such an adventure without first obtaining a pardon in set form; but Sir Francis Bacon is said to have assured him that the king, having under the privy seal made him admiral of a fleet, with power of martial law over sailors and officers, had substantially condoned all offences, real or alleged. A man could not at one and the same time be under attaint of treason and also an admiral in active service. Before Raleigh started James made him explain the details of his scheme and lay down his route on a chart, and he promised on the sacred word of a king not to divulge this information to any human creature. It was only the sacred word of a Stuart king. James may have meant to keep it, but his evil genius was not far off. The lifelike portrait of Count Gondomar, superbly painted by the elder Daniel Mytens, hangs in the palace at Hampton Court, and one cannot look on it for a moment without feeling that Mephistopheles himself must have sat for it. The bait of the Infanta, with a dowry of 2,000,000 crowns in hard cash, was once more thrown successfully, and James told every detail of Raleigh's plans to the Spaniard, who sent the intelligence post-haste to Madrid. So when the English fleet arrived at the mouths of the Orinoco, a Spanish force awaited them and attacked their exploring party. In the fight that ensued Raleigh's son Walter was slain; though the English were victorious, the approaches to the gold fields were too strongly guarded to be carried by the force at their command, and thus the enterprise was baffled. The gold fields remained for Spain, but with the fast increasing paralysis of Spanish energy they were soon neglected and forgotten; their existence was denied and Raleigh's veracity doubted, until in 1889 they were rediscovered and identified by the Venezuelan Inspector of Mines.[99] Since the expedition was defeated by the treachery of his own sovereign, nothing was left for the stricken admiral but to return to England. The Spanish court loudly clamoured for his death, on the ground that he had undertaken a piratical excursion against a country within Spanish jurisdiction. His wife cleverly planned an escape to France, but a Judas in the party arrested him and he was sent to the Tower. The king promised Gondomar that Raleigh should be publicly executed, either in London or in Madrid; but on second thought the latter would not do. To surrender him to Spain would be to concede Spain's claim to Guiana. Without conceding this claim there was nothing for which to punish him. Accordingly James in this year 1618 revived the old death sentence of 1603, and Spain drank a deep draught of revenge when the hero of Cadiz and Fayal was beheaded in the Palace Yard at Westminster; a scene fit to have made Elizabeth turn in her grave in the Abbey hard by. A fouler judicial murder never stained the annals of any country.[100]
The Company's election in 1620.
The king's attempt to interfere.
The silly king gained nothing by his vile treachery. Popular execration in England at once set him up in a pillory from which posterity is not likely to take him down. The Spanish council of state advised Philip III. to send him an autograph letter of thanks,[101] but the half-promised Infanta with her rich dowry kept receding like the grapes from eager Tantalus. A dwindling exchequer would soon leave James with no resource except summoning once more that odious Parliament. Meanwhile in the London Company for Virginia there occurred that change of political drift whereof the election of Sir Edwin Sandys over Sir Thomas Smith, aided though it had been by a private quarrel, was one chief symptom. That election revealed the alarming growth of hostility in the city of London to the king's pretensions and to the court party.[102] James had said just before the election, "Choose the Devil if you will, but not Sir Edwin Sandys." From that time forth the king's hostility to the Company scarcely needed Gondomar's skilful nursing. It grew apace till it became aggressive, not to say belligerent. At the election in 1620 it was the intention of the majority in the Company to reëlect Sandys, with whose management they were more than pleased. Nearly 500 members were present at the meeting. It was the custom for three candidates to be named and voted for, one after another, by ballot, and a plurality sufficed for a choice. On this occasion the name of Sir Edwin Sandys, first of three, was about to be put to vote, when some gentlemen of the king's household came in and interrupted the proceedings. The king, said their spokesman, positively forbade the election of Sir Edwin Sandys. His Majesty was unwilling to infringe the rights of the Company, and would therefore himself propose names, even as many as four, on which a vote might be taken. The names were forthwith read, and turned out to be those of Sir Thomas Smith and three of his intimate friends.
Reading of the charter.
This impudent interference was received with a silence more eloquent than words, a profound silence that might be felt. After some minutes came murmurs and wrathful ejaculations, among which such expressions as "tyranny" and "invasion of chartered rights" could be plainly heard. The motion was made that the king's messengers should leave the room while the situation was discussed. "No," said the Earl of Southampton, "let them stay and hear what is said." This motion prevailed. Then Sir Lawrence Hyde moved that the charter be read, and his motion was greeted with one of those dutiful but ominous cries so common in that age; from all parts of the room it resounded, "The charter! the charter!! God save the King!" The roll of parchment was brought forward and read aloud by the secretary. "Mr. Chairman," said Hyde, "the words of the charter are plain; the election of a treasurer is left to the free choice of this Company. His Majesty seems to labour under some misunderstanding, and I doubt not these gentlemen will undeceive him."
Withdrawal of Sandys.
Election of Southampton.
For a few minutes no one replied, and there was a buzz of informal conversation about the room, some members leaving their seats to speak with friends not sitting near them. One of our accounts says that some of the king's emissaries stepped out and sought his presence, and when he heard what was going on he looked a little anxious and his stubbornness was somewhat abated; he said of course he did not wish to restrict the Company's choice to the names he had mentioned. Whether this concession was reported back to the meeting, we are not informed, but probably it was. When the meeting was called to order, Sir Robert Phillips, who was sitting near Sandys, got up and announced that that gentleman wished to withdraw his name; he would therefore propose that the king's messengers should nominate two persons while the Company should nominate a third. The motion was carried, and the Company nominated the Earl of Southampton. The balloting showed an extremely meagre vote for the king's nominees. It was then moved and carried that in the earl's case the ballot should be dispensed with and the choice signified by acclamation; and then with thundering shouts of "Southampton! Southampton," the meeting was brought to a close. The rebuke to the king could hardly have been more pointed, and in such a scene we recognize the prophecy of the doom to which James's wrong policy was by and by to hasten his son.