The Prince of Wales had at eighteen developed a will both resolute and impetuous, to which the death of a veteran statesman like Cecil was sure to have afforded freer scope. He did not disguise either his discontent at the policy of his father's favourite advisers, or his preference for ambitious projects such as Ralegh was known to cherish. Ralegh never had reason to doubt the sincerity of his admiration. There seemed no more ground for uncertainty as to the Prince's immediate influence on his behalf than as to the benefits to be derived from the youth's eventual accession to the throne. Henry was said to have extracted a promise from James of Ralegh's liberation at Christmas, 1612. November came, and the Prince lay dying of a raging fever. The Queen sent to the Tower for the medicine which had cured her. Ralegh despatched it with a letter, asserting that it would certainly heal this or any other case of fever, unless there were poison. A vehement debate followed among the Lords of the Council and the doctors, The Prince's Death. including the Genevese physician, Dr., afterwards Sir, Theodore Mayerne. Finally, the potion was administered. The patient, who had been speechless, revived sufficiently to speak. But it did not save his life. The populace and the Queen believed that it had been ineffectual because there had been poison. Forty years later, Carew Ralegh referred to the rumour as still credited. At the time it was repeated on the judicial bench. Sir Thomas Monson in 1615 was being tried for complicity in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Coke, become Chief Justice, insinuated with his usual discretion and fairness at the trial that Overbury was poisoned from fear that he might, through hostility to Carr, divulge his guilty knowledge of a similar crime against 'a sweet Prince.'
Prince Henry's death blasted the prospect of Ralegh's ultimate restoration to royal favour, as well as to immediate liberty. It inflicted a less, but very vexatious, disappointment. After a protracted struggle he had been stripped of his Dorsetshire estate. Sherborne, he might have reckoned, was indefeasibly safe. Its enjoyment for his life was covered by the term for sixty years. The settlement of 1602 seemed to have set the inheritance out of danger. But in the course, perhaps, of the legal investigation with a view to the grant of the term for the benefit of Ralegh's wife and children, a flaw was detected in the conveyance of the fee. Little cause as Ralegh had to respect the impartiality of Popham and Coke in criminal procedure, he retained full confidence in their legal learning. To them in 1604, at his own earnest request, the deed of 1602 was submitted by Cecil. Their opinion on it was clear and fatal. They could have given no other. The essential words of a conveyance in trust, that the trustees shall stand thereof seised to the uses specified, had, Popham wrote to Cecil on June 7, 1605, been omitted. Popham believed the omission to have been due to the carelessness of the engrossing clerk. Through it the estate had remained wholly in Ralegh. Consequently, by his attainder it was forfeited. Lady Ralegh sought an audience of James. She prayed him not to take advantage of the forfeiture. With the facility which was compatible equally with generosity and with rapacious injustice, he promised. He directed Cecil to have a grant to her and her children prepared. It never was. At first the preposterous suspicion of Ralegh's sympathy with the Gunpowder Plot may have caused delay. Later the King discovered that he wanted the property for his own purposes. Alarmed at his own propensity for indulging the caprice of the moment, and mindful of the extent to which the Scottish Crown had been pauperized by royal improvidence, he had accepted a self-denying ordinance. By this he bound himself not to grant away the patrimony of the Crown. For the endowment of favourites he had to rely, therefore, on windfalls from attainders and escheats. Robert Carr now had to be provided for. Sherborne happened to suit his taste, and the Ralegh family had to be ejected.
Lady Ralegh
and the King.
Proceedings were commenced in 1607 on the Attorney-General's Information to establish the claim of the Crown. Lady Ralegh again knelt before the King. She implored a waiver of the forfeiture in her and young Walter's favour. James rejected her petition either silently, or, according to Carew Ralegh, with the ejaculation, 'I mun have the land; I mun have it for Carr.' In a petition he addressed to the Long Parliament, Carew related that she fell down upon her knees, with her young sons beside her, and in the bitterness of her spirit invoked the vengeance of Heaven upon those who had so wrongfully exposed her and her poor children to ruin and beggary. James was used to her supplications for justice, and to repulsing them. In the previous autumn she had knelt to him at Hampton Court for her husband's liberty, and been passed without a word. Ralegh himself wasted upon Carr an eloquent prayer that he would not begin his first buildings upon the ruins of the innocent. He entreated him not to 'give me and mine our last fatal blow by obtaining from his Majesty the inheritance of my children and nephews, lost in law for want of words.' He made the attempt after his manner of neglecting no possibility. He can have put little trust in royal justice, and less in a worthless minion's magnanimity. Early in January, 1608, the Court of Exchequer decided against the validity of the conveyance. Chamberlain wrote on January 10, 1608, to Escheat of Sherborne. Dudley Carleton: 'Sir Walter Ralegh's estate is fallen into the King's hands by reason of a flaw in the conveyance. He hath bestowed it on Sir Robert Carr. And though the Lady Ralegh hath been an importunate suitor all these holidays in her husband's behalf, yet it is past recall. So that he may say, with Job, Naked came I into the world, &c. But, above all, one thing is to be noticed: the error or oversight is said to be so gross that men do merely ascribe it to God's own hand that blinded him and his counsel.'
Apparently the case was too technically plain against the deed for it to be seriously defended. Ralegh before the formal judgment had assented, under protest, to a proposal for the conveyance of his wife's and son's interest during his life to the Crown for a sum of £5000 to be paid the next year. For the remainder in fee he and she both struggled a while longer. Finally, formal judgment having been given for the Crown on October 27, 1608, they agreed to convey absolutely the entire interest for an annuity of £400, to be paid for the lives of lady Ralegh and young Walter, in lieu of Lady Ralegh's right to jointure out of the estate, and for a capital sum of £8000. In this the £5000 was to merge. The annuity was often in arrear. Part of the £8000 was paid down, and Ralegh lent it on mortgage to the dowager Countess of Bedford. For the rest the Exchequer not very regularly paid interest. The rental of the Sherborne lands was £750. This at sixteen years' purchase was £12,000. Consequently, it has been urged, the Crown did not drive a hard bargain. They who thus argue confess to some perplexity how the property could shortly afterwards have been, as it was, valued against Carr himself at £20,000 or £25,000. They have forgotten that the £750 rental does not allow for the worth of the house Ralegh had built, and for its costly embellishments.
Ralegh, with the certainty of a legal declaration of the forfeiture of the fee, had reluctantly assented to the compromise. He was weary and sick. He would be glad, he wrote, never to hear the place named thenceforth. Not so easily could he divorce himself from it. There was his old bailiff, whose insolent persecution tied him to the estate. In April, 1610, Meere had the effrontery to offer to prove by a letter, probably forged, that Ralegh had Vicissitudes
of Ownership. promised him £100 a-year to conceal a set of frauds. His own heart cherished a lingering hope of a restoration of the property after all. In 1612 it seemed to be on the point of returning to him. Prince Henry expressed his indignation that a place of so much strength and beauty should have been given away, and had begged it of his father in the summer. James consented, and compensated Carr with £25,000 or £20,000. Ralegh and his friends believed that the Prince meant to bestow it on him with his freedom. On the Prince's death in November it reverted to the Crown, which sold a lease of it to Sir Robert Phillips. The transaction was speedily cancelled, and James gave the place back to Carr for the sum of £20,000, which, if not more, he had received. Three years later Carr's attainder shifted it over once again. Villiers might have had it, and refused. He would not, he said, have his fortune built upon another man's ruins. His contemporaries thought he might have been influenced also by fear of Bishop Osmund's curse upon all who should take Sherborne from the bishopric. Had he accepted it, Felton's dagger would have been considered one of the curse's instruments. At all events, he did not lose by his generous sentiment. Eleven manors were bestowed upon him instead, as was recited in their grant, of the Manor Sale to Digby. of Sherborne intended for him. Thereupon the property was sold to Sir John Digby, subsequently Lord Digby of Sherborne and Earl of Bristol, for £10,000, supplemented by gratuitous diplomatic services in Spain. Long afterwards, as we shall see, Carew Ralegh tried to revive the hereditary claim. Ralegh himself ceased to prosecute it after Prince Henry's death.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Science and Literature (1604-1615).