Sir Walter Ralegh Part 15

REPRIEVE (December 10, 1603).

[Sidenote: _Bathos._]

[Sidenote: _Ralegh's Abas.e.m.e.nt._]

The nation was doing a great man justice, though tardily. Not even its hero's temporary self-abas.e.m.e.nt could put it out of conceit with him.

One of the many curious surprises in Ralegh's history is the manner in which a sudden change in his demeanour seemed to give the lie to the general admiration. Almost a worse grievance against the Court and its legal tools than their persecution is the effect it had in humiliating and degrading him for a time. Though the proceedings had been a travesty of justice, they had been invested hitherto with a scenic stateliness.

Ralegh had borne himself gallantly. He had kept and left the stage with unfailing dignity. The prosecution had at least evinced the respectable earnestness of stubborn hate. At the moment after the catastrophe the n.o.bility, whether of persecuted greatness or of murderous vengefulness, evaporated. Ralegh's enemies appeared to have lost their motive and plan. They seemed no longer sure why or how they wished to wreak their rage. He, from his condemned cell, demanded justice for wronged innocence in the accents of a detected cut-throat. To the Lords Commissioners he wrote: 'The law is pa.s.sed against me. The mercy of my Sovereign is all that remaineth for my comfort. If I may not beg a pardon or a life, yet let me beg a time. Let me have one year to give to G.o.d in a prison and to serve him. It is my soul that beggeth a time of the King.' He spoke of his fear that the power of law might be greater than the power of truth. He reminded Cecil that he was a Councillor to a merciful and just King, if ever we had any, and that the law ought not to overrule pity, but pity the law.' 'Your Lords.h.i.+p,' he proceeds, 'will find that I have been strangely practised against, and that others have their lives promised to accuse me.' In the same November in which he had told Cecil it would be presumption for him to ask grace directly of the King, he asked it. He a.s.sured his most dread Sovereign he was not one of the men who were greatly discontented, and therefore the more likely to be disloyal. He protested he had loved the King 'now twenty years'; that he had never invented treason, consented to treason, or performed treason. He invoked mercy in the name of English law, 'who knowing her own cruelty, and that she is wont to compound treasons out of presumptions and circ.u.mstances, does advise the King to be _misericorditer justus_.' In a rather loftier strain he exclaimed, 'If the law destroy me, your Majesty shall put me out of your power, and I shall then have none to fear, none to reverence, but the King of Kings.'

But the burden throughout is the pitiful 'Send me my life.'

[Sidenote: _Its motive._]

These prayers by Walter Ralegh to a most dread Sovereign, who happened to be James I, these genuflections of spirit to a Minister who must have been suspected of malevolent jealousy, if not of treason to ancient friends.h.i.+p, present a strange and sad spectacle. Excessive importance should not be attached to the phraseology. Not a little of the apparent abjectness was matter of style: 'What,' Ralegh himself has said, 'is the vowing of service to every man whom men bid but good morrow other than a courteous and Court-like kind of lying?' Much must be allowed for the fas.h.i.+on of the age in dealing with Princes and their Ministers. Grey, no more than Ralegh, could resist the impulse. The Puritan Baron had bidden a magnanimous farewell to his peers at Winchester: 'The House of the Wiltons have spent many lives in their Princes' service; Grey cannot beg his!' Within a few days he was grovelling in grat.i.tude for an insulting reprieve: 'As your mercy draws out my life, I cannot deny it the only object it aspires to, by unfeigned confession and contrition to diminish my offence, and your displeasure.' Not till the Civil War had cleared the atmosphere through which royalty was seen, was the demeanour of subjects to the Sovereign in general conformity with the modern standard of manliness. Ralegh, the Court favourite, the poet, was cast in a more plastic mould than Grey. The suddenness of his ruin may well have thrown him off his balance now, as at the original explosion of the tempest in the summer. The tendency of men endowed with genius like his to indulge in extravagances of dejection when fortune frowns is notorious. But his long course of importunities to all possessed of the means of helping or hindering in the years after 1603 is not to be explained either by style, or by spasms of despair. Both their impulse and something too of an apology for them are to be found in the basis of his character, which was tough as well as elastic. After the shock of the plunge into the depths he braced himself to the task of rising to the surface, and reaching sh.o.r.e. Life, freedom, wealth, career, were forfeited. He determined to redeem the whole. He availed himself of the instruments at hand, though they were tarnished. He did not scruple to soil his fingers in groping his way out of a sea of mud.

[Sidenote: _Doggedness of Purpose._]

It is necessary continually to remind ourselves, when we are tempted to be incensed at his deportment, of the mode in which he had been treated, of his consuming sense of a mission, and his determination, little short of monomania, to return to its service. He and everybody knew that his conviction was an act of legal violence. There was no prospect of rescue through the machinery of the law from an overwhelming disaster which demonstrated law to be without a conscience or sense of responsibility.

As soon as the law with its automatic violence had possession of his case, he felt himself held in a grasp not to be relaxed. He knew he must look outside law for justice as well as mercy. It and its ministers were not intentionally cruel. Simply their craft had a.s.sumed a scientific shape from which morality and common sense alike were absent. A defendant had a right to evade the penalties of the most manifest guilt by any loopholes and gaps he could discover in the works. It had the right to pursue him to the death, whether innocent or criminal, so long as the rules of the art were observed. Its point of honour was not to let the accused escape. Ralegh was penetrated with an acute and indignant consciousness of the iniquity of the Court intrigue from which he suffered. He despaired of correcting the wrong by the help of the law which had lent itself to be the agent. His struggle was to salve the malice of law with the remorse of the Prerogative which had been seduced into setting it in motion. The shape his efforts took was by no means admirable. Had he been more uniformly heroic, or less absolutely irrepressible, he would have gone to his prison, and laid himself down magnanimously or pa.s.sively mute. There, early or late, he would have died. Never would his foes have opened the doors of their own good will.

But his nature was not of that kind. He burnt with a longing to be up and doing. He knew he was caught in toils he could not burst by force.

For his career's sake, he condescended to plead with and beseech them through whom alone he could emerge into the daylight. They who have idealized him as a downtrodden martyr will find the Ralegh portrayed by his own pen in scores of letters to princes, statesmen, and n.o.bles, little to their taste. The real Ralegh will not cease to be honoured by all whom the sight of indomitable courage and doggedness in the accomplishment of a purpose moves. Only in his words and style could we wish him to have been less supple and less meek. That we have to wish in vain. He thought too highly both of the objects he meant to attain, and of the strength of those who kept him from them, to be sparing of such slight things as entreaties.

[Sidenote: _Reverence for Kings.h.i.+p._]

Life was the first article in his programme of ends to be pursued, or losses to be redeemed. He prized life more than most. He had so much to do with a life. Half his work still, as he reckoned, was incomplete. The world was young, and abounded in possibilities. To save himself for life and work was worth playing at servility. He could hardly see the pettiness in a James, in his parasites, in his Ministers, for absorption in their one essential quality, their ability, as holding headsman and gaolers in a leash, to keep alive or kill, to bind or let loose. To this age James is an awkward, ludicrous pedant. The spectacle of Ralegh's veneration is exasperating. For Ralegh he was a symbol of sovereign authority, a mysterious keeper of the scales of fate. He represented for Ralegh a power above courts of law, and ent.i.tled to set right their mistakes or misdeeds. Of his mere will he could free Ralegh from persecution. For Ralegh he was a redresser of grievances; and he was more. He impersonated potentiality to do as well as undo. The idea of the opportunities embodied in an occupant of the throne was too engrossing for Ralegh to weigh the character of the individual. He imagined himself not merely pardoned, but trusted by the depositary of boundless national resources, which he was conscious of an infinite competence to employ. His admiration of the capabilities of the royal Prerogative, if utilized as he perceived that they could be utilized, embraced its t.i.tular tenant whoever he might be. He was dominated by an intense sense of all he might accomplish for the indistinguishable duality of himself and his country, if the King would. Sincerely he could profess he had loved James ever since he beheld in him the heir of the national crown.

On November 29, 1603, the priests, Watson and Clarke, underwent the hideous doom which had been p.r.o.nounced upon Ralegh. They were drawn, hanged, and quartered. They still lived when the quartering began. On December 6 Brooke was beheaded. His last words were: 'There is somewhat yet hidden, which will one day appear for my justification.' Nothing ever has appeared. James at Wilton House signed warrants for the execution of Cobham, Grey, and Markham on Friday, December 10. He had not the hardihood to sign the warrant for Ralegh's execution; but it is believed to have been fixed for the Monday after. Queen Anne, it is said, was interceding for his life. So was the King's host, Lord Pembroke, at his mother's bidding. Cecil wrote to Winwood, afterwards Secretary of State, that the King 'pretended to forbear Sir Walter Ralegh for the present, till the Lord Cobham's death had given some light how far he would make good his accusation.' James, we will hope, had been staggered in conscience by the reports of his own messengers from Winchester. He and his courtiers had won from the criminal law Ralegh's condemnation. They were still hunting after apologies for the conviction. Watson, Clarke, and Brooke had supplied none of the missing links. In vain had Commissioners been examining and re-examining the prisoners. Their forlorn hope was the agony or recklessness of the two lords and Markham on the scaffold.

[Sidenote: _Farewell to his Wife._]

Meanwhile, in his prison in the Castle, Ralegh made ready for death. He had the spiritual a.s.sistance of Bishop Bilson of Winchester, whom the King had deputed to console or confess him. Bishop Bilson, who was said by an admirer to carry prelature in his very aspect, furthered later on the divorce of Lord and Lady Ess.e.x. Ralegh found no fault with his behaviour to him, and gratefully characterized him in his History as grave and learned. He satisfied the Bishop of his Christian state; he could not be persuaded to acknowledge the truth of any of the charges against him, unless, very partially, as to the pension. That, he said, was 'once mentioned, but never proceeded in.' The day appointed for his death, he thought, was December 13. He had penned a last farewell to his wife on December 9, 1603. It reads very unlike the All Souls' College paper. He sends his 'love, that, when I am dead, you may keep it, not sorrows, dear Bess; let them go to the grave with me, and be buried in the dust. Bear my destruction gently, and with a heart like yourself.'

He gives 'all the thanks my heart can conceive for your many troubles and cares taken for me.' He bids her, for the love she bare him living, not hide herself many days, but by her travail seek to help her miserable fortunes, and the right of her poor child. 'If you can live free from want, care for no more: for the rest is but vanity. Love G.o.d, and begin betimes to repose yourself on Him. When you have wearied your thoughts on all sorts of worldly cogitations, you shall sit down by sorrow in the end.' He does not know to what friend to direct her, for all his had left him in the time of trial. 'I plainly perceive,' he continues, 'that my death was determined from the first day.' He asks her, 'for my soul's health, to pay all poor men.' He warns her against suitors for her money; 'for the world thinks that I was very rich.' He prays her, 'Get those letters, if it be possible, which I writ to the Lords, wherein I sued for my life. G.o.d knoweth that it was for you and yours that I desired it; but it is true that I disdain myself for begging it. And know it, dear wife, that your son is the child of a true man, and who, in his own respect, despiseth Death, and all his misshapen and ugly forms. Beg my dead body, which living was denied you; and either lay it at Sherborne, if the land continue, or in Exeter church by my father and mother. I can write no more. Time and Death call me away.'

Yet he can hardly part with wife or child, and adds still something: 'G.o.d teach me to forgive my persecutors and false accusers. My true wife farewell. Bless my poor boy; pray for me. Yours, that was, but now not my own.'

[Sidenote: _The Pilgrimage._]

He was more than willing to live. He was not afraid to die. In the apparent presence of death his soul, as always, recovered its lofty serenity. With his head, as he thought, on the block, he burst into the grand dirge of the _Pilgrimage_. Such are the variances of taste that a writer of reputation has spoken of this n.o.ble composition as 'a strange medley in which faith and confidence in G.o.d appear side by side with sarcasms upon the lawyers and the courtiers.' That is a judgment with which few will agree. The poem in the most authoritative ma.n.u.script is described as having been composed the night before Ralegh was beheaded.

But it can scarcely be doubted that it belongs to the present period, when he was daily expecting the arrival of the warrant for his execution at Winchester. His spirit had 'quenched its thirst at those clear wells where sweetness dwells.' It was bound in quiet palmer's fresh apparel--

to Heaven's bribeless hall, Where no corrupted voices brawl; No conscience molten into gold, No forged accuser bought or sold, No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey; For there Christ is the King's Attorney.

And when the grand twelve-million jury Of our sins, with direful fury, Against our souls black verdicts give, Christ pleads his death, and then we live.

[Sidenote: _Royal Intervention._]

At ten in the morning of December 10 Sir Griffin Markham was conducted to the scaffold, which had been erected in the Castle yard. He had said adieu to his friends, prayed, and was awaiting the axe. Suddenly the spectators in the Castle yard saw the Sheriff, Sir Benjamin Tichborne, stay the executioner. John Gibb, a Scotch groom of the royal bedchamber, had arrived, almost too late, at the edge of the crowd. He was the bearer of a reprieve. James himself, on December 7, had drawn it, with a preamble: 'The two prestis and George Brooke vaire the princ.i.p.all plotteris and intisairs of all the rest to the embracing of the saiddis treasonabill machinations.' He had kept it back to the last, as well to multiply the chances of eliciting confessions of guilt, as for the sake of the vividness of the stage play. He admired greatly his own ingenuity, and his courtiers applauded enthusiastically. Of the detestable feline cruelty he and they had no shame. Ralegh's window in the Castle overlooked the scaffold. He would be sensible of the interruption of the proceedings. He could not have seen Gibb. He must, says Carleton, 'have had hammers working in his head to beat out the meaning of the stratagem.' Beaumont, the French amba.s.sador, was told by an imaginative reporter that he 'etait a la fenetre, regardant la comedie de ses compagnons avec un visage riant.'

[Sidenote: _Scenes on the Scaffold._]

The Sheriff performed his part with a ready gravity which secured the King's approval. He was already a favourite for having proclaimed James on the first news of the death of Elizabeth, before the Council had declared him her successor. For his deserts both now and then the custody of the Castle soon afterwards was bestowed upon him and his heirs. He said to Markham, 'You say you are ill-prepared to die; you shall have two hours' respite.' Then he led him away, and locked him in Arthur's Hall. Next Grey was brought on the scaffold. He a.s.serted that his fault against the King was 'far from the greatest, yet he knew his heart to be faulty.' He too was ready for the axe, when the Sheriff led him away to Arthur's Hall, saying the order of the execution was changed by the King's command, and Cobham was to precede Grey. Cobham came, with so bold an air as to suggest he had heard; but he prayed so lengthily that a bystander e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed he had 'a good mouth in a cry, but was nothing single.' He expressed repentance for his offence against the King. He corroborated all he had said against Sir Walter Ralegh as true 'upon the hope of his soul's resurrection.' The extortion of that confirmation of his calumnies had been a main object of the whole disgraceful farce. When he had thus bought his worthless life, the Sheriff brought back upon the scaffold Grey and Markham to stand beside him. All three were asked if their offences were not heinous, and if they had not been justly tried and lawfully condemned. Each answered affirmatively. Then said the Sheriff: 'See the mercy of your Prince, who of himself hath sent hither a countermand, and hath given you your lives.' At this the crowd burst into such hues and cries that they went from the Castle into the town, and there began afresh. Grey said, 'Since the King has given me my life without my begging, I will deserve life.'

Henry IV was sceptical as to the magnanimity of James. He wrote to Beaumont to discover if 'Spanish gold' were concerned in the reprieves; if Don Juan de Taxis and Cecil had used influence for them; 'for it is rumoured that these persons, backed by money expended by Ralegh, brought the thing about.' The faith in Ralegh's endless resources and skill prevailed in France as in England.

CHAPTER XXII.

A PRISONER (1604-1612).

On December 16, 1603, Ralegh, with his fellow convicts, returned to London. That would have been the close of an ordinary man's career. To him alone it did not seem the end, and he resolved it should not be. He had his life. Liberty and fortune were still to be regained. He looked around him, and endeavoured to retrieve the scattered fragments of his wealth. Like all his peers in arms and politics he had ever believed in the importance of riches. But now he was grasping at the possibility of continuing by money in lieu of his imprisoned self his schemes of a Guiana sovereignty. He was striving to construct out of the wreck of his grandeur a refuge for his wife and his boy from the anguish and dependence of penury. 'Poverty,' he preached to his son, 'is a shame, an imprisonment of the mind. Poverty provokes a man to do infamous and detested deeds.'

[Sidenote: _Civilly dead._]

[Sidenote: _Lord Nottingham's Rapacity._]

He was civilly dead. The division of his spoils had commenced before the trial. He had, as has been mentioned, been dismissed in July from his island government. In September G.o.dolphin, High Sheriff of Cornwall, had been directed to take the musters, 'the commission of Lieutenancy granted to Sir Walter Ralegh being become void and determined.' Early in 1604 he formally returned the seal of the Duchy of Cornwall to Cecil.

His successor was his connexion, Lord Pembroke. He was stripped of the Rangers.h.i.+p of Gillingham Forest, and of the Lieutenancy of Portland, though he would regret the loss of those offices the less that they remained in the hands of their joint tenant, his brother, Sir Carew. His enjoyment of his patent as wine licenser had been suspended, that it might be considered if the post were a monopoly. The Council came to the conclusion that it was not. But before Ralegh could collect the arrears from the vintners he was arraigned. Thereupon, not waiting for the result of the trial, the King revoked the patent, and granted it to the Lord Admiral. Nottingham, not content with the profit from new licenses, claimed the arrears. Lady Ralegh remonstrated. She indignantly computed to Cecil in 1604 that the Admiral 'hath 6000, and 3000 a year, by my husband's fall. And since it pleaseth G.o.d that his Lords.h.i.+p shall build upon our ruins, which we never suspected, yet the portion is great and, I trust, sufficient, out of one poor gentleman's fortune to take all that remains, and not to look back before his Majesty's grant, and take from us the debts past, which your Lords.h.i.+p knows were stayed from us by a proclamation before my husband was suspected of any offence.'

Sherborne was attached. Commissioners for it had been appointed, Serjeant Phillips and Meere. They had pounced upon the domain, and were selling stock, felling timber, and dismantling the castle. Cecil interfered peremptorily by letter, and for a time stayed all proceedings. He is likely to have 'spoken the one word' about the wine licence arrears which Lady Ralegh implored. No more is heard of the Lord Admiral's demand. A more important favour was obtained. In February, 1604, all Ralegh's goods, chattels, and money due to him, though forfeited for treason, were granted by the Crown to trustees for payment of debts owing before his attainder, and for the maintenance of his wife and child. The trustees named were Robert Smith and John Shelbury.

Shelbury was Ralegh's steward, 'a man I can better entreat than know how to reward.'

[Sidenote: _The Sandersons._]

The grant included, beside the wine arrearages, money in the hands of the wine licenser's deputy, William Sanderson. 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 princ.i.p.al. 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.

[Sidenote: _The Wreck of his Estate._]

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 ent.i.tled 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 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 13_s._ 4_d._ 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 13_s._ 4_d._ 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.

[Sidenote: _Struggle for Freedom._]

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 a.s.sured, 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, 'G.o.d 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 State, buoyed him up against the direst persecutions. He was unable at heart, whatever his groanings, to regard them as more than pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d cast my soul into h.e.l.l 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 pet.i.tioned to 'be appointed to any bishop, or other gentleman, or n.o.bleman, or that your Lords.h.i.+p 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.'

[Sidenote: _At the Fleet Prison._]

[Sidenote: _His Ailments._]

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 a.s.suaged 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 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 Emba.s.sy, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 const.i.tution. Moisture oozed constantly into the walls from the wide muddy ditch. The 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.

[Sidenote: _In the b.l.o.o.d.y Tower._]

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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.p.a.ce 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.