From a memorandum drawn up by Sir Owen Hopton for the use of his successor, Sir Michael Blunt, in the Lieutenancy of the Tower in 1590, we find that the following prisoners were at that time confined in the fortress:—James Fitzgerald, the only son of the Earl of Desmond, who had come from Ireland as a hostage, Florence Macarthy, Sir Thomas Fitzherbert (who died in the Tower in the following year), Sir Thomas Williams, the Bishop of Laughlin, Sir Nicholas White, Sir Brian O’Rourke, “who hath the libertie to walk on the leades over his lodging,” and Sir Francis Darcy. All these prisoners were connected with the war in Ireland, or were suspected of conspiring against the Queen and her government.
The year 1592 is a memorable one in the life of the great Sir Walter Raleigh, for it was then that he began his long acquaintance with the prisons of the Tower, and from this time until his execution a quarter of a century later, Raleigh’s days were mainly passed within the walls of that building.
Raleigh’s first imprisonment in the Tower was owing to his marriage with Elizabeth Throgmorton, one of the Queen’s ladies, and the daughter of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton. Raleigh had wooed, won, and wedded his wife without Elizabeth’s knowledge or consent. The Queen, then over sixty years of age, was still as jealous and as vain as any young girl of sixteen, and for any of her favourites—and Raleigh at this time was the principal one—to marry without her august permission, and especially to marry one of her ladies, was in her eyes a most heinous crime, an aggravated form of lése-majestè, and it was only by the most fulsome flattery, the most grovelling abasement, that Sir Walter gained his freedom. In a letter from Sir Arthur Gorges, a cousin of Raleigh’s, to Sir Robert Cecil, there is an account of an extraordinary scene enacted by Sir Walter whilst in the Tower. “I cannot choose,” writes Gorges, “but advertise you of a strange tragedy that this day had like to have fallen out between the captain of the guard and the lieutenant of the ordnance, if I had not by great chance come at the very instant to have turned it into a comedy. For upon a report of Her Majesty’s being at Sir George Carew’s, Sir Walter Raleigh having gazed and sighed a long time at his study window, from whence he might discover the barges and boats about the Blackfriars stairs, suddenly he brake out into a great distemper, and swore that his enemies had on purpose brought Her Majesty thither to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus’s torment, that when she went away he might see death before his eyes, with many such like conceits. And as a man transported with passion, he swore to Sir George Carew that he would disguise himself, and get into a pair of oars to cure his mind with but a sight of the Queen, or else he protested his heart would break. But the trusty jailor would none of that, for displeasing the higher powers, as he said, which he more resented than the feeding of his humour, and so flatly refused to permit him. But in conclusion, upon this dispute they fell flat to choleric outrageous words, with straining and struggling at the doors, that all lameness was forgotten, and in the fury of the conflict, the jailor he had his new periwig torn off his crown, and yet here the struggle ended not, for at last they had gotten out their daggers. Which when I saw, I played the stickler between them, and so purchased such a rap on the knuckles, that I wished both their pates broken, and so with much ado they stayed their brawl to see my bloody fingers. At first I was ready to break with laughing to see them two scramble and brawl like madmen, until I saw the iron walking, and then I did my best to appease their fury. As yet I cannot reconcile them by any persuasions, for Sir Walter swears, that he shall hate him for so restraining him from the sight of his mistress, while he lives, for that he knows not (as he said) whether ever he shall see her again, when she is gone the progress. And Sir George on his side, swears that he would rather lose his longing, than he would draw on him Her Majesty’s displeasure by such liberty. Thus they continue in malice and snarling; but I am sure all the smart lighted on me. I cannot tell whether I should more allow of the passionate lover, or the trusty jailor. But if yourself had seen it, as I did, you would have been as heartily merry and sorry, as ever you were in all your life, for so short a time. I pray you pardon my hasty written narrative, which I acquaint you with, hoping you will be the peacemaker. But, good sir, let nobody know thereof, for I fear Sir Walter Raleigh will shortly grow to be Orlando Furioso, if the bright Angelica persevere against him.”
Here is a portion of a letter written by Sir Walter himself to Sir Robert Cecil, which the writer evidently wished should be shown to the Queen. “My heart,” he writes, “was never broken till this day, that I hear the Queen goes away so far off, whom I have followed so many years with so great love and desire, in so many journeys, and am now left behind her in a dark prison, all alone.” (This “dark prison” from which Raleigh writes, was probably the Brick Tower; in later years Sir Walter was to become acquainted with other prisons in the Tower.) “While she was yet at hand,” he continues, “that I might hear of her once in two or three days, my sorrows were the less, but even now my heart is cast into the depth of all misery. I, that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure face like a nymph, sometimes sitting in the shade like a goddess, sometimes singing like an angel, sometimes playing like Orpheus”—Alas! Sir Walter!
How long, in spite of the above fulsome letter, the Queen would have kept “her love-stricken swain,” as Raleigh called himself, within the Tower there is no knowing, if it had not been for the accident of his good ship, the Roebuck—which had escaped from the Spanish fleet sent to capture her—falling in, off Flores, with some great East Indian carracks bound for Lisbon. When the Roebuck had taken the great Spanish ship, the Madre de Dios, and brought her into Dartmouth with a huge treasure on board, which Raleigh himself estimated at half-a-million pounds, Elizabeth’s covetousness completely overmastered her resentment, and “her love-stricken swain” was set at liberty in September 1592, to arrange the disposal of the Spanish treasure—of which the Queen took the lion’s share.
Two attempts to poison Elizabeth were discovered in 1594. The first of these dastardly schemes was concocted by the Queen’s physician, a Spaniard or Portuguese named Lopez, who had been bribed by the Spanish governors of the Netherlands, Fuentes and Ibara, to administer poison to his royal mistress in some medicine. This plot is said to have been discovered by Essex. Lopez and two of his confederates met the fate they deserved, after being imprisoned in the Tower. According to Camden, Lopez declared on the scaffold that “He loved the Queen as much as he did Jesus Christ.” This sentiment coming from a Jew was received with much merriment by the spectators at the execution. The second plot was much more curious.
Walpole, a Jesuit priest, had bribed a groom in the royal stables, named Edward Squire, to rub some poison on the pommel of the Queen’s saddle, but, as may be supposed, the poison had no harmful effect, and priest and groom, being convicted, were hanged at Tyburn.
The last year of the sixteenth century saw the fall of one of Elizabeth’s most brilliant courtiers, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. After forty years of stern repression, Ireland, towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign, had become more Irish than ever. All the cruelties committed in that country by the Government of the Queen, cruelties in which Raleigh played so flagrant a part, had not crushed the Irish, and a larger army of occupation was found necessary.
Essex and Raleigh were bitter enemies. The chief cause of their dissension was the treatment of the Irish, Raleigh advising that they should be completely trodden under foot, whilst Essex urged a show of justice and some degree of goodwill towards the country and its inhabitants; but the favour shown by the Queen to both these remarkable men was also an additional cause for their mutual jealousy. Both were extremely self-willed, and their immense egotism, and lust for place and power, was the common ruin of each of them.
Essex was the youngest and last of that brilliant combination of soldier, statesman, and courtier, that added to the glory and charm of those “spacious days.”