For the next twelve years the Tower was Raleigh’s home, and not till he had succeeded in bribing King James’s favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, by the payment of a large sum of money, did he again obtain his liberty. Before settling down in the Tower, and while the plague was still raging, Raleigh, with his wife and son, were taken to the Fleet Prison on several occasions. At length they were placed in the not uncomfortable rooms in the Bloody Tower, which he, with his family and servants, must have quite filled, for besides Lady Raleigh and her son Carew, there were two servants named Dean and Talbot, and a boy, who was probably a son of Talbot’s. Their imprisonment was not absolutely rigid, for they were allowed the visits of a clergyman named Hawthorne, a doctor, Turner, and a surgeon, Dr John, as well as those of Sir Walter’s agent, who came up from Raleigh’s place, Sherborn, so that he was kept in touch with his affairs; one or two other friends were also admitted. In addition to these privileges Sir Walter was allowed the run—the liberty as it would be called then—of the Lieutenant of the Tower’s garden, which lay at the foot of the Bloody Tower, as has already been mentioned in the description of that place.
In 1604 the penal laws against the Roman Catholics were re-enacted by Parliament, and in the following year the famous Gunpowder Plot was discovered, with the consequence that in the month of November of that year the Tower received many of the principal conspirators, and still more of those individuals who were in some way or other concerned in it. Foremost amongst the latter were the aged Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy, and with him were Henry, Lord Mordaunt, Lord Stourton, and three Jesuit priests, Fathers Garnet, Oldcorn, and Gerrard. Northumberland, besides having to pay an enormous fine, was kept a prisoner in the Tower for sixteen years; Mordaunt and Stourton were also heavily fined and remanded to the fortress during the King’s pleasure; Fathers Garnet and Oldcorn were hanged—the former at St Paul’s, in the usual manner, after being cruelly tortured, the latter at Worcester. As for the third priest, Gerrard, I have in another part of this work described the treatment he endured and his escape from the Tower.
The Byward Tower and Moat from the Wharf
Of the active conspirators, besides Guy Fawkes—who was executed with Thomas Winter, Rookwood, and Keyes in Old Palace Yard—Sir Everard Digby, the father of the accomplished Sir Kenelm, Robert Winter, Grant, and Bates, were drawn on hurdles to the west end of St Paul’s Churchyard, where they were done to death in the approved fashion of execution for high treason.
Guy Fawkes and most of his fellow-prisoners while in the Tower had been placed in the subterranean dungeons beneath the White Tower. Fawkes, besides being tortured by the rack, was placed in “Little Ease,” in which horrible hole he is supposed to have been kept for fifty days. Father Oldcorn was imprisoned in the lower room of the Bloody Tower, whilst Father Fisher was in the White Tower; Northumberland, the “Wizard Earl,” as he was called on account of his leaning towards chemical experiments, was lodged in the Martin Tower.
Until the month of August in that year (1605), Sir Walter Raleigh’s imprisonment in the Bloody Tower had not been very stringent. Sir George Harvey had filled the position of Lieutenant of the Tower, and Sir George and Sir Walter were on friendly terms. His lodging, for a prison, was comfortable enough; his wife and son were still with him, Lady Raleigh having been confined of a second son about this time. In addition to the attendance of his servants and the visits of his friends, as I have mentioned before, he was allowed to have all the books he required for the great literary labour that now began to occupy much of his time. When not working in his little garden by the Tower, or experimenting with his chemicals and decoctions in a small outbuilding which he had built in the garden, or taking exercise on the wall terrace which overlooked the wharf and the river beyond, he would be writing at his “History of the World,” that wonderful fragment which is one of the marvels of our literature.
Unfortunately for Sir Walter, his friend Sir George Harvey, with whom he often dined and passed the evening, ceased being Lieutenant at this time, being succeeded by Sir William Waad. Raleigh’s feelings towards the new Lieutenant appear to have resembled those of Napoleon to Sir Hudson Lowe. Waad, who had been Clerk of the Council, on his side seems to have had a personal dislike to the great captive over whom he was placed in charge, and to have done all he could—and he had the power of doing a great deal—to render Raleigh’s life as unpleasant and galling as possible. For instance, Waad ordered a brick wall to be built in front of the terrace where Raleigh walked, so that the captive could no longer watch the passing life beneath him on the wharf or river. Then Waad complained to Cecil of Raleigh making himself too conspicuous to the people who passed beneath the Bloody Tower, and, not content with annoying Sir Walter, pestered Lady Raleigh, and deprived her of the poor satisfaction of driving her coach into the courtyard of the fortress, a privilege that had hitherto been allowed her. In these and many other petty ways the new Lieutenant contrived to make himself as unpleasant as he possibly could to Raleigh and his wife.
During the alarm consequent upon the Gunpowder Plot, Raleigh was examined by the Council, probably in the Lieutenant’s, now the King’s House, but naturally nothing could be found to implicate him with the conspiracy, and the King had to bide his time before he could bring his great subject to the block. In 1610, for some unknown reason, Sir Walter was kept a close prisoner in his tower for three months, and Lady Raleigh was taken from him.
In Disraeli’s “Amenities of Literature” is the following interesting description of those friends of Sir Walter who shared his pursuits and studies in the Tower:—