“... that nor the good might be defrauded, nor the great so cured;
But both might know their ways are understood,
And the reward and punishment assured.”
No wonder that James disapproved of such sentiments and said of the “History,” “it is too saucy in censuring the acts of princes.”
To Raleigh, more than to any other of the great Elizabethan heroes, does England owe her mighty earth-embracing dominion. Sir Walter never ceased to urge the expansion of the empire, nor wearied in his efforts to make the English fleet the foremost in all the seas, not only as a check to Spain, but in order that the colonial possessions of the kingdom might be increased; and he, more than any of our great soldier-statesmen deserved those noble lines of Milton: “Those who of thy free Grace didst build up this Brittanick Empire to a glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter islands about her, stay us in this felicitie.”
In 1616 Raleigh was allowed to leave the fortress, but, as I have said before, in order to obtain his liberty he had been obliged to bribe George Villiers and his brother, who had roused James’s cupidity by persuading him that if Raleigh were allowed to lead a fresh expedition to the West Indies, he might return with a great treasure of which James would take the lion’s share. A warrant, dated the 19th of March of this year, was drawn up, giving Raleigh permission to go abroad in order that he might make the necessary arrangements for his voyage. The twelve years of imprisonment had sadly marred and aged the gallant knight, but his spirit was as bold and courageous as ever, and he employed the first days of his liberty in revisiting his old London haunts; many changes must have struck him in the city. In Visscher’s panoramic view of London, taken from Southwark nearly opposite to St Paul’s, a very clear general impression may be gained of the appearance of the English capital in that year of sixteen hundred and sixteen, the year when Shakespeare was dying at Stratford-on-Avon, when Raleigh was on his way to his last journey across the Atlantic, and when Francis Bacon was writing his famous essays in Gray’s Inn. Those quaint, circular, Martello-like buildings in the foreground are the Globe and Swan theatres, with the Bear Garden close by; but the former theatre, in Visscher’s view, is not the one so intimately connected with Shakespeare, for that was burned down in 1613, and the building represented here is the new one erected upon its site. Opposite to the Swan Theatre, on the Surrey side of the river, are Paris Garden Stairs, where was a much frequented ferry, Blackfriars Bridge now spanning the river where this ferry once used to ply. There was also a theatre at Blackfriars, and Shakespeare and his players must often have used the ferry on their way from the Globe Theatre across the river from Blackfriars, where the poet lived. In front is old St Paul’s, towering over all the surrounding buildings and dwarfing the highest; scores of spires and towers break the skyline as the eye follows the panorama towards the west, where stands the former old London Bridge, covered along its sides with picturesque houses. So large and massive are the great blocks of gabled buildings that span the bridge, that it presents the appearance of a little town crossing the river, such as is the Ponte Vecchio at Florence in little. The gates at its ends are covered with men’s heads, stuck all over their roofs like pins upon a pincushion. More steeples and towers crown the opposite bank, and as the eye travels farther eastward it is arrested by the Tower, with its encircling wall, and its river wharf all covered with cannon. The river is alive with vessels of every shape and size, State barges and little pinnaces, great galleons and small craft, appear in all directions, some with, some without sails. Beyond, the distant hills of Middlesex and Essex are dotted with villages and hamlets, whilst on the heights of Highgate cluster a group of windmills. It is a wonderful panorama that the old Dutch artist has handed down to us. Looking at it we see the same scene, the same picture of time-honoured churches and palaces, the noblest river in the world flowing beneath them, and bearing on its shining surface all the pleasure, commerce, industry, and travail of old London, that Shakespeare did, when, standing near his theatre at Bankside, he gazed upon that shifting scene. All is changed now, except the Tower. The great Gothic cathedral of St Paul’s and most of its surrounding churches, whose towers and spires helped to make old London an object of beauty, perished in the great fire which swept over the city fifty years after Visscher drew his panorama. Old London Bridge escaped the fire, and indeed remained until 1834, although the houses clustering over it had been removed at the close of the reign of George II., and the only prominent building in the panorama which Shakespeare or Raleigh would now be able to recognise, could they look across the rivers Styx and Thames, would be the great White Tower with its surrounding lesser towers and battlements. All the rest, like “the baseless fabric of a vision,” has passed away for ever.
But to return to Sir Walter Raleigh. He invested all that remained of his own and his wife’s fortunes in furnishing the expedition to Guiana, which proved so disastrous, on which he now embarked. On his return, a ruined man and a prisoner, he expressed his amazement at having thus in one desperate bid placed his life and all that he possessed in that unlucky venture. But before Raleigh had left England, Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, had told his master, the King of Spain, that Raleigh was a pre-doomed man. For James had not only revealed every detail relating to the Guiana expedition to Gondomar, but on condition that if any subject or property belonging to Spain were touched he had promised to hand over Raleigh to the Spanish Government in order that he might be hanged at Seville. To assure Gondomar of his good faith, James actually showed the ambassador a private letter written him by Raleigh, in which the exact number of his ships, men, and the place where the great silver mine was said to be located on the Orinoco, were all set forth. As the Spaniards claimed the whole of Guiana, it was evident that if Raleigh landed there he must infringe upon the Spanish possessions, and thus place himself, according to James’s promise to Gondomar, in the power of his enemies.
The expedition sailed from England at the end of March 1617, from Plymouth, and consisted of fourteen ships and nine hundred men. But its story was one of continued disaster, and on the 21st of June 1618, writing to his friend Lord Carew, Raleigh gives a detailed account of all his misfortunes. In the postscript he adds: “I beg you will excuse me to my Lords for not writing to them, because want of sleep for fear of being surprised in my cabin at night” (even on his own ship he was a prisoner, the crew having mutinied) “has almost deprived me of sight, and some return of the pleurisy which I had in the Tower has so weakened my hand that I cannot hold the pen.” Sir Walter’s eldest son was killed gallantly fighting in Guiana.
Then followed a miserable time, and on his road to London the hope of life at times impelled him to attempt escape, but he was doomed to drink the bitter cup of his King’s ingratitude to the dregs. On the 10th of August he again entered the Tower where so much of his life had been spent, and which was now to be his last abode on earth.
The next day the Council of State met to decide upon Sir Walter’s fate, and incredible as it seems, it was actually debated whether Raleigh should be handed over to the tender mercies of the Spaniards or executed in London. Surely if what passed on this earth could have been known to Elizabeth, she would have burst her tomb at Westminster to protest against this abomination, this unspeakable shame and disgrace to the name of England.