The grant included, beside the wine arrearages, money in the hands of the wine licenser's deputy, William Sanderson. The Sandersons. Sanderson was husband to Ralegh's niece, Margaret Snedale. He was father of Sir William Sanderson, writer in 1656 of a History of Queen Mary and King James, full of calumnies upon Ralegh. He denied the debt, and claimed £2000 from his principal. Thereupon Ralegh, 'in great anger,' sued him, apparently with success. It is unnecessary to credit the further allegation by the author, supposed to have been Ralegh's son Carew, though more probably somebody inspired by him, of the Observations, already cited, upon Sanderson's History, that the deputy was for the debt cast into prison, where he died a beggar. On the contrary, slender as is the authority of the historian, as of his critic, it is easier, as well as preferable, to accept Sir William Sanderson's statement, in answer to the Observations, that his father and his family continued to be prosperous, and, having resumed amicable relations with Ralegh, remained kind and faithful kinsfolk to the last. It is pleasant to be able to believe that Ralegh disappointed a relative's temporary calculations upon his incapacity of resistance, without acting the part of the insolvent steward of the Parable.
The mercy of the Crown extended for the present to the maintenance even of his rights over the estate of Sherborne itself. A dozen suitors had applied for it, Cecil told a Scotch courtier in October, 1603. But on July 30, 1604, in place of Ralegh's life interest, which was forfeited by the attainder, a sixty years' term of Sherborne and ten other Dorset and Somerset manors, with all other lands escheated, was conveyed by the Crown to trustees for Lady Ralegh and young Walter, should Ralegh so long live. This boon, following the rest, went far towards remedying the overwhelming pecuniary consequences of a judicial crime. The King is entitled to share the credit with Cecil. He was not incapable of caprices of beneficence. Pity, rather than a sense of justice, moved him. He loved to be magnanimous at small cost. He chose to regard Ralegh as a traitor when he was innocent. He reaped from the injustice the additional satisfaction of being exalted by his flatterers into a paragon of generosity for waiving part of the penalties for offences which had not been committed. Ralegh's estate was, however, indebted yet more to Cecil. If he would not, or could not, secure justice for his old ally, Cecil had no desire to see him reduced to beggary. Whatever the cause, Ralegh undoubtedly suffered in purse less than his condemned fellows. Cobham's and Grey's vast patrimonies were wholly confiscated. They subsisted on the charity of the Crown. Markham was sent into exile so bare of means that he had to barter his inlaid sword hilt for The Wreck
of his Estate. a meal. Ralegh was not thus stripped. Only, being guiltless, as they were not, and did not pretend to be, he was not always gratefully content with the morsels tossed back to him. Soon after his removal from Winchester he wrote to Cecil that £3000 a year, from Jersey, the Wine Office, the Stannaries, Gillingham, and Portland, was gone; there remained but £300 from Sherborne, with a debt upon it of £3000. His tenants refused to pay Lady Ralegh her rents. His woods were cut down, his grounds wasted, and his stock sold. Meanwhile he was charged at the Tower, at first, £4, and later, £5, a week for the diet of himself, his wife, child, and two servants. He had to urge the Council to stay the Commissioners at Sherborne, whose rapacious activity had again awoke. He told the Council that the estate, with the park and a stock of £400 in sheep, whatever its valuation by others, brought in but £666 13s. 4d. This has been estimated, perhaps somewhat excessively, as equivalent to an income now of £3333. Out of it he had to pay the Bishop of Salisbury £260. Fees and rates took another £50 a year. His personal property he reckoned at not worth a thousand marks, or £666 13s. 4d. His rich hangings were sold to my Lord Admiral for £500. He had but one rich bed, which he had sold to Lord Cobham before his misfortunes. His plate, which he describes as very fair, was all 'lost, or eaten out with interest at one Chenes', 'or Cheynes', the goldsmith, in Lombard-street.
He thought it hard to be robbed of his revenues. He declared that he could have endured the calamity if penury had been all. Early in 1604 he wrote that, if Sherborne could be assured, he should take his loss for a gain, nothing having been lost that could have bettered his family, 'but the lease of the wines, which was desperate before his troubles.' He did not wish for his wife and son, 'God knows, the least proportion of plenty, having forgotten that happiness which found too much too little.' His one desire was that they should be able to eat their own bread. The interruption of his career was the real and unappeasable wrong. All his virtues made him struggle indomitably against that. He was supported in the contest by the vice itself, if it were a vice, of his abounding egotism. His incapacity for believing that powers like his could be wasted by the Struggle for Freedom. State, buoyed him up against the direst persecutions. He was unable at heart, whatever his groanings, to regard them as more than passing checks in a game in which he had chanced upon losing cards. He fought for liberty more stubbornly than for his property, that he might resume his work in the world. He complained in January, 1604, that Papists who plotted to surprise the King's person had been liberated, while Cecil's poor, ancient, and true friend was left to perish 'here where health wears away.' Cecil had written kind but cautious lines in another hand, of which Ralegh 'knew the phrase.' They had raised his hopes. Cecil dashed them by declaring to Lady Ralegh early in 1604 that, 'for a pardon, it could not yet be done.' Ralegh did not therefore leave off seeking it. For some time he could not believe that his imprisonment was to be more than transitory. His efforts were directed to the negotiation of terms to which he might consent for the abridgment of the liberty he deemed his right. He did not ask to be 'about London—which God cast my soul into hell if I desire.' He would be content to be confined within the Hundred of Sherborne. If he could not be allowed so much, he was ready to live in Holland. There he thought he might obtain some employment connected with the Indies. Else he petitioned to 'be appointed to any bishop, or other gentleman, or nobleman, or that your Lordship would let me keep but a park of yours—which I would buy from someone that hath it—I will never break the order which you shall please to undertake for me.'
He fretted in mind; and he was ill in body. For several years his health had been impaired. Only periodical visits to Bath for its waters assuaged his ailments. He prayed in vain that he might be suffered to go thither in the autumn after his conviction. His prognostication that, if he 'could not go this fall, he should be dead or disabled for ever,' was not likely to alarm his foes. They affected at all times to be incredulous of the gravity of his infirmities. But there is no reason to question his statement that he was 'daily in danger of death by the palsy; nightly of suffocation by At the Fleet Prison. wasted and obstructed lungs.' His complaints began in the early summer of 1604. After a week's sojourn in the Tower he seems to have been sent to the Fleet, where Keymis was for a short time his fellow prisoner. There bills for his diet show that he was staying between Christmas 1603 and Lady Day, 1604, or rather a few days later. He cannot have gone back to the Tower precisely by Lady Day to stay, for reasons not of State, but of Court. On Monday, March 26, 1604, Easter games were to be performed before the Court at the Tower. Two mastiffs were to be let loose on a lion, and the King wanted to have his fortress-palace cleared, for the occasion, of melancholy captives. A custom prevailed at such festivities of releasing prisoners. There was no intention of liberating the Winchester convicts. So, according to the rumour of the Court, as sent home by the Venetian Embassy, they 'were removed from the Tower and placed in other prisons.' If this statement is to be accepted literally, and to be reconciled with the Fleet bills for food, they must, at some time before Easter, have returned from the Fleet to the Tower, and then, before March 26, been sent back for a brief space to the Fleet. Ralegh had no cause for rejoicing when the time arrived for his permanent establishment in the Tower. After his return it was again, as in 1603, visited by the Plague. He prayed to be taken elsewhere, on the ground that the pestilence was come next door. In the adjacent tenement, with a paper wall between, were, he told Cecil, lying a woman and her child, dying of it. When the Tower was free from the Plague it was still an unsuitable lodging for one of Ralegh's constitution. Moisture oozed constantly into the walls from the wide muddy ditch. The His Ailments. cells were bitterly cold, and Ralegh was chilled and benumbed. 'Every second or third night,' he reiterated to Cecil in 1605, 'I am in danger either of sudden death, or of the loss of my limbs and senses, being sometimes two hours without feeling a motion of my hand and whole arm.' In 1606 his physician, Dr. Peter Turner, certified that his whole left side was cold. His fingers on the same side began to be contracted, and his tongue in some sort, insomuch that he spoke weakly, and that it was to be feared he might utterly lose the use of it. Only in consequence of Turner's authoritative representations was Ralegh's chamber changed. In the little garden under the terrace was a lath and plaster lean-to. It had been Bishop Latimer's prison. Since it had been used as a hen-house. Ralegh had already been permitted to employ this out-house as a still room. He was allowed now to build a little room next it, and use it as his habitual dwelling.
Other alleviations of his confinement were granted, particularly in its earlier and again in its concluding years. For an inmate of a gaol, his treatment was commonly not very rigorous. His quarters themselves, though cold, were otherwise convenient. At his committal in July he had been put into the upper chamber of the Bloody tower. Formerly this was called the Garden tower. According to one authority it became known by the more ominous name after Lord Northumberland's death there in June, 1585. Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, who was born in the Tower, derives the appellation from a tradition of her childhood, that it was the scene of the murder of the Duke of Clarence. The assassination in it of Edward V and his brother seems to account for it more naturally. On Ralegh's return from Winchester, he was, says Lord de Ros, who was both Lieutenant of the Tower and one of his successors in the Captaincy of the Yeomen, placed in a semi-circular room, lighted by loopholes, in the White tower, and there remained all the years of his imprisonment. That, though a current local tradition, is grossly incorrect, as a Lieutenant of the Tower ought to have known. As, however, Lord de Ros also thought that Ralegh died on Tower Hill, it is the less In the Bloody Tower. surprising that he should not have known where in the Tower he lived. According to another legend equally baseless, he was lodged on the second and third floors of the Beauchamp tower. Really from Winchester he went back to the apartment he had previously inhabited. It had its advantages. A passage in the rear led by a door to the terrace, which has been christened Ralegh's Walk. From it he could look down on one side over a much-frequented wharf to the busy river. On the other it commanded the Lieutenant's garden and green. The suite of rooms accommodated Cottrell, and apparently also John Talbot, Talbot's son, and Peter Dean, who waited on Ralegh. There was space for Lady Ralegh, Walter, and Lady Ralegh's waiting maid. They occupied the room in which Edward V and his brother were murdered. When the Plague invaded their quarters they removed for a time to lodgings on Tower Hill, near the church of Allhallows, Barking. It is uncertain whether there, or in the room of the slaughtered Princes, a second son, Carew, was born to Ralegh and his wife in 1604. On the abatement of the epidemic, Lady Ralegh, with the children, returned.
Ralegh could entertain dependents and acquaintances. His Sherborne steward, John Shelbury, Hariot, his physician Dr. Turner, a surgeon Dr. John, and a clergyman named Hawthorn, were frequently with him. His Ralegh and Gilbert kinsfolk, we may be sure, did not desert him, though there was no especial reason to chronicle their visits. Had fuller details been preserved of his private life, we should doubtless have found mention of his brother Carew, who was living in apparent prosperity at Downton. His employment, as soon as he had the opportunity, of the naval and military services of his nephews, George Ralegh and Gilbert, shows that the family union survived unbroken. Admirers from the West and the Court came to listen to his conversation, and watch his chemical experiments. The Indians he had brought from Guiana had stayed in England. The register of Chelsea Church records the baptism of one of them by the name of Charles, 'a boy of estimation ten or twelve years old, brought by Sir Walter Rawlie from Alleviations
of Confinement. Guiana.' After his imprisonment they were lodged in the Tower, or near. He could amuse himself by catechising them on the wonders of their land. His freedom of movement in the early and late stages of his imprisonment, when he had 'the liberty of the Tower,' roused the envy of fellow prisoners. Grey murmured in 1611: 'Sir Walter Ralegh hath a garden and a gallery to himself.' In his deepest tribulations he had reverential valets and pages to comb by the hour his thick curling locks, to trim his bushy beard, and round moustache. Crowds thronged the wharf below to mark him pacing his terrace in the velvet and laced cap, the rich gown and trunk hose, noted by Aubrey's cousin Whitney, and the jewels, of which he retained an ample store.
But he was made in many respects, and at frequent intervals, to feel himself 'a dead man,' possessed of no rights, subject to all sorts of caprices. A kind-hearted Lieutenant might ameliorate his lot. He had fascinated Sir George Harvey, who had commenced ill with the suppression of Cobham's letter. They habitually dined together. Harvey had lent or let to him his garden. The door of the Bloody tower was suffered to stand habitually open. On August 16, 1605, Sir William Waad replaced Harvey. He had earned the post by his keen scent for plots. He came prepared to grudge privileges to the man who had foiled his inquisitorial cunning. A week after his appointment to the Lieutenancy he wrote to Cecil, to suggest the replacement of a lath fence, which ran past the Bloody tower gate, by a brick wall, as 'more safe and convenient.' His advice was taken, and a brick wall built. Still he was uneasy. In December, 1608, he complained indignantly to Cecil that 'Sir Walter Ralegh doth show himself upon the wall in his garden to the view of the people, who gaze upon him, and he stareth on them. Which he doeth in his cunning humour, that it might be thought his being before the Council was rather to clear than to charge him.' Waad took credit to himself that he had been 'bold in discretion and conveniency to restrain him again.' For Waad to reprove Ralegh ought to His Gaoler. have needed boldness. He desired to repress the wife as well as the husband. Lady Ralegh does not seem to have been sufficiently awed by the august associations of the Tower. He had to issue an order forbidding her to drive into the court-yard in her coach. By another solemn order aimed at Sir Walter, he decreed that, at ringing of the afternoon bell, all the prisoners, with their servants, were to withdraw into their chambers. They were not to go forth again for that night.
Until May, 1613, Ralegh had to endure this man's petty spite and disciplinary pedantry. Then Waad retired, to the great contentment of his prisoners, though, as it happened, from a cause which did him honour. Lady Arabella Stuart's chief pleasure during her iniquitous imprisonment was the increase of her stock of jewels. From an order of Council after her death, she would seem to have consulted Ralegh as an expert. Several stones of price had disappeared in 1613. Suspicion was cast upon Waad, or his wife and daughter. Probably they were entirely innocent. The real object was that Carr might introduce a more pliant instrument for foul play against Sir Thomas Overbury. Under pressure of the accusation based on the missing trinkets, Waad accepted £1400 from Sir Gervase Elways, with a promise of £600 more, and vacated his office. Elways became an accomplice in Overbury's murder, and was hanged on his own Tower Hill. But he was less of a martinet than his predecessor. Perhaps his patrons were engaged in too serious crimes to waste their energy in inciting him to petty persecutions of Ralegh. At all events, Ralegh recovered the liberty of the Tower; and the restrictions on the presence of his wife were relaxed.
At no period were his really formidable enemies inside the Tower. Waad himself would not have dared to harass and worry him, if he had not been confident that his tyranny would be approved at Court. His foes there were perpetually on the watch for excuses for tightening and perpetuating his Fresh Accusations. bonds. He had to defend himself from a suspicion of complicity with the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. Commissioners, of whom Waad was one, were appointed to inquire. Lord Northumberland had been sent to the Tower by the Star Chamber for misprision of treason, on the flimsy pretext of his intimacy with Thomas Percy. He was questioned on his communications at the Tower with Ralegh. Ralegh was questioned on his with the Earl. One day the French ambassador's wife, Madame de Beaumont, came to visit the lions in company with Lady Howard of Effingham. She saw Ralegh in his garden. The Tower contained no lion as wonderful. She asked him for some balsam of Guiana. He forwarded the balsam to the ambassadress by Captain Whitelocke, a retainer of Northumberland's, who happened to have been in her train. Several Lords of the Council were deputed to examine him on his intercourse with Whitelocke, a spy having deposed that he had noticed Whitelocke in the Archduke's company during the summer of 1605. Ralegh had difficulty in persuading the Council that he had seen little either of the Captain, who came only on an ordinary visit, of Northumberland, since the Earl's confinement, or of the French ambassador and his wife. He prayed their Lordships in the name of 'my many sorrows and the causes, my services and love to my country, not to suspect me to be knowing this unexampled and more than devilish invention.' Some of them, with their master, were capable of thinking, or affecting to think, any incredible evil of him, and all belonging to him. It was accounted an alarming circumstance that in the September of 1605 Lady Ralegh, during a visit to Sherborne, had the old arms in the castle scoured.