Some time previously, when the affair of the marriage was first broached, the sentiments of the Marquis and his mother were, therefore, generally understood to be favourable, and the Lord Treasurer Cranfield, at that time, under their influence, was zealous in a cause so acceptable to the favourite.
In February, 1617, Nathaniel Brent wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton: “By the Marquis of Buckingham and his mother the Spanish match is much apprehended, though methinks there needs no such haste, the lady being yet scant eleven years old. In the meantime every man hopes or fears as he is affected, and they say the Lord Treasurer is so far possessed, that, like another Cato, that began to learn Greek at threescore years old, he hath got him a Spanish reader, and applies it hard.” The influence of the Countess of Buckingham doubtless, therefore, turned the scale against Ralegh, to the vexation of her son’s best friends. “She was,” writes Bishop Hacket, who knew her well, “mother to the great favourite, but, in religion, became a step-mother. She doated upon him extremely, as the glory of her womb, yet, by turning her coat so wantonly when the eyes of all the kingdom were upon her, she could not have wrought him a worse turn if she had studied a mischief against him.” “Many,” adds the same writer, “marvelled what rumbled in her conscience all that time; for, from a maid to a maiden, she had not every one’s good words for practice of piety.”[[240]] “Arthur Wilson complains also that the Countess of Buckingham was the cynosure that all the Papists steered by; but that it was above her ability to bear the weight of that metaphor.”
“The Countess was,” he adds, “a protectress of the Jesuits and Jesuitesses, the females of that order, of whom there were no fewer in England than two hundred English ladies of good families.” Her opinions were well known to affect her son, who now began to be accused by the Puritans of Armenianism, and became the friend and patron of Archbishop Laud. Gondomar saw well to what point to direct his insidious game. The Countess had a share in the management of State affairs; she, with her son, guided the helm, and as much court was paid to her as to Buckingham, whilst both received far more adulation than was thought necessary to bestow on the King himself. Wittily, though somewhat impiously, Gondomar wrote to the Spanish Court that “there never was more hope of the conversion of England than now; for there are more prayers and oblations offered here to the mother than to the son.”[[241]]
Under this complication of interests, Ralegh, on the 24th of October, 1618, was given to understand that it was the King’s intent that he should be put to death, and that he should therefore prepare himself for the same.[[242]] Between that intimation and the fulfilment of his doom, the courage of the broken-spirited and diseased prisoner, prematurely old with sorrow and disappointment, gave way. He sought to anticipate his fate, and attempted suicide, but the wound which he gave himself by stabbing—a cut, rather than a stab—was not fatal, and he recovered to address to his disconsolate wife one of the most eloquent and heart-rending letters that ever emanated from that tomb of the living in which he passed the close of his days.[[243]] How Buckingham could hear of this last act of a mind almost frenzied with misery, of a being, to use Ralegh’s own words, “not tempted with Satan,” but only “tempted with sorrow, whose sharp teeth devour my heart,” and not plead for this ornament of his age, it is scarcely possible to conceive. He would have culled golden opinions for such an interference; he would have established a source of proud and consolatory recollections for his own heart; but he lost that glorious opportunity, and left the illustrious prisoner, to use his own words, to be a “wonder and a spectacle,” and went on in his own perilous career, until the hour of retribution, even to him, arrived.
Ralegh’s execution was fixed to take place—so conscious was Government of the odium which it would incur—on the Lord Mayor’s Day, “that the pageants and fine shows might,” as Aubrey expresses it, “avocate and draw away the people from beholding the tragedie of the gallantest worthie that England ever bred.”[[244]]
On the twenty-third of October, a discussion took place in the Privy Council as to the mode in which prisoners who had been condemned for treason, and set at liberty, could be executed. The subject was one of much perplexity, but everything that was subservient and expedient could be accomplished in those days. It was, however, determined to send a Privy Seal to the judges on the King’s Bench, desiring them to try Sir Walter Ralegh “according to law.” The death to which he was doomed, by the hand of the executioner, was already impending over the illustrious prisoner in the form of disease. He had sent to the merciless Cecil his mournful manifesto of privation and sickness; his left side was numbed, his fingers on the same side were beginning to be contracted, his tongue and speech affected; he spoke feebly, and feared he might altogether lose the power of utterance. An application had therefore been made for his removal from his damp, cold lodging in the Tower, to a little room in the garden, which he had himself built, close to his laboratory, or, as it was styled, his stilhouse.[[245]]
But the time was at hand when his spirit should breathe in a freer atmosphere; and all that man could do to him should cease to be of a source of dread. “The world,” he calmly observed, “was but a large prison, out of which some were daily selected for execution.”
On the twenty-eighth of October, he was tried, and of course, condemned, in the King’s Bench. Henry Yelverton, then attorney-general, could not help again, in his address for the Crown, describing the prisoner as one who, for his parts and quality, was to be pitied; “one who had been a star, yea, and of such nature, that shineth far; but out of the necessity of state, like stars when they trouble the sphere, must indeed fall.” It is remarkable that Yelverton, who had been patronised by Somerset, did himself, in after days, fall, having incurred the enmity of Villiers.
The King, and of course Buckingham, were at this time in Hertfordshire, on the Royal progress, which was always a scene of festivity and amusement. The warrant for Ralegh’s execution was, however, produced directly after the sentence had been passed, dated the same day, signed, and addressed to Lord Bacon. The sentence was commuted from hanging to beheading: but no other favour was granted. James and his courtiers feared the effect of public indignation; no time, therefore, was allowed; on the day after his sentence, Ralegh met his death with simple, decorous tranquillity; as one who was going to take a long journey, for which he was well prepared. The streets were then thronged with the gay followers of the annual pageantry; and, amid the din of trumpets, and shouts of the people, the noble spirit of Ralegh passed to a better world. Perhaps, had he sued for life to Gondomar, as his friend Lord Clare recommended, the boon might have been granted. But those who loved his memory had not this act of humiliation to recall, as casting one shadow over the brightness of his departure from among them. “I am neither so old, nor so infirm,” was his reply, when urged to make this appeal to the Spaniard, “but that I should be content to live; and, therefore, this would I do, were I sure it would do my business; but if it fail, then I shall lose both my life and my honour; and both those I will not part with.”[[246]]
Since it was understood that Ralegh’s death was a sacrifice to Spanish councils, owing to a disputed territory, there can be no doubt but that this event embittered the minds of the public against the cherished schemes which James and Villiers had for some time conceived with regard to the Spanish alliance. Whilst all bore a smiling aspect, various sources of discontent were ready to break forth; and it was generally reported that James had, to his infinite disgrace, somewhat insisted on the sentence of hanging being put into execution, and that he could with difficulty be brought to consent to its being commuted.[[247]]