Sir Walter Ralegh Part 24

Ralegh's various persecutors were in the right to enjoy their victory betimes. They had not the opportunity for long. The country awoke at a bound to the injury which had been done it. On the miserable tools it first poured out its indignation. Long before the final catastrophe its anger had been gathering against Stukely. On August 20 Chamberlain wrote to Carleton that Sir Lewis Stukely was generally decried. After the execution no measure in execrations was observed. He was christened Sir Judas. Stories, probably fict.i.tious, of the contempt with which he was visited, were greedily devoured. 'Every man in Court,' it was reported, 'declines Stukely's company as treacherous.' The High Admiral, who himself had battened on plunder from Ralegh, was rumoured to have threatened to cudgel the betrayer from his door. Stukely had been visiting Nottingham House on some duty connected with his office of Vice-Admiral of Devon. He complained to the King, who befriended him, of the affronts he received. The answer was said to have been: 'Were I disposed to hang every one that speaks ill of thee, there would not be trees enough in all my kingdom to hang them on.' According to another tale, reported by J. Pory to Carleton, the King replied to his protestation of the truth of his accusations: 'I have done amiss; Sir Walter's blood be upon thy head.' In vain he endeavoured to defend himself through the press. On August 10 he had printed a short _Apology_ for his conduct as Ralegh's keeper. In it he took up the only practicable ground, that he had simply obeyed the orders of the Crown.

After Ralegh's execution he was stung by the obloquy he had incurred into the publication of a formal indictment of the memory of the dead.

On November 26 appeared a rhetorical doc.u.ment, which he had retained the Rev. Dr. Sharpe to help him in drawing up. It was ent.i.tled the 'Humble Pet.i.tion and Information of Sir Lewis Stukely, touching his own behaviour in the charge committed to him for the bringing up of Sir Walter Ralegh, and the scandalous aspersions cast upon him for the same.' Fact and fiction are audaciously mingled in the narrative. As a specimen of its temper may be mentioned the statement that Ralegh in the Gate-house asked its keeper, Weekes, if any Romish priests were under his charge. The insinuation was that the Protestant hero would have liked an opportunity of reconciliation to the Church of Rome before his death.

[Sidenote: _A Convicted Criminal._]

Such calumnies increased the popular wrath. The whole nation exulted in the tidings within a few months that their author was about to be indicted for the capital offence of clipping coin. Manourie was arrested at Plymouth on the same charge. He accused his friend, whose old confederate in clipping and sweating coin he had been. By way, it is to be feared, of embellishment of a tale of righteous retaliation, it was reported that Sir Lewis had been caught on Twelfth Night within the precincts of the Palace of Whitehall in the act of clipping the very gold pieces, the wages of his perfidy, paid to him on the previous New Year's eve. He was confined first in the Gate-house, and then in the Tower, in Ralegh's old cell, and in due course was tried. Fruitlessly he endeavoured to s.h.i.+ft the crime on his son, who had absconded. A servant confessed his master had followed the practice for the past seven years.

The evidence was overwhelming, and he was convicted. It was a 'just judgment of G.o.d,' men said, 'for Sir Walter Ralegh's blood.' James, Mr.

Gardiner says, 'thought he owed something to his tool, and flung him a pardon.' According to the popular rumour it was a gift for a tangible consideration. He had to beggar himself to buy it. His office of Vice-Admiral of Devon was forfeited, and it was filled by Eliot. He slunk away first to his home at Afton, where all, gentle and poor, banned him, and thence to Lundy Isle. There, amid the ruins of Morisco's Castle, he died mad on August 29, 1620. His treason has conferred on his obscure name an infamous immortality. He was equally an enemy to himself and to King James, whom his accommodating perfidy tempted to perpetrate the final injustice. But it must be remembered that but for him Ralegh would have lingered for a few years more of weary life on foreign soil, and dropped into an unhonoured grave. To him English history is indebted for a heroic scene, and Ralegh for a glorious close to his splendid but checkered career. The mind shudders at the thought of the bathos into which a little remorse in that contemptible villain would have plunged his victim.

[Sidenote: _Manourie's Defence._]

Public vengeance was not satisfied with the self-wrought retribution on Stukely. It ranged lower, and it ranged higher. It condescended to spurn the tool of a tool. Manourie, too, had to publish his apology. He called G.o.d to witness that Stukely had bribed him to lay traps for Ralegh, and to put into his mouth malcontent speeches. All the evil he told of his ally was believed. His professions that his own admitted baseness had been provoked by resentment of Ralegh's spontaneous abuse of the King were received with incredulity or unconcern. On the fact, Captain King's word in his _Narrative_ in answer to Manourie was accepted in preference to the Frenchman's. The _Narrative_ was not printed, but circulated extensively in ma.n.u.script. Though it is no longer discoverable, Oldys seems to have read it, and he has quoted pa.s.sages in his life of Ralegh.

'Never,' in it a.s.severated King, 'in all the years I followed Sir Walter, heard I him name his Majesty but with reverence. I am sorry the a.s.sertion of that man should prevail so much against the dead.' He need not have feared that it had prevailed, or would prevail, with the nation. That scarcely spared a thought to Manourie, unless to curse him as a mercenary liar. But in the emotion stirred by Ralegh's death it was soon evident that the people had grown indifferent to the degree of its hero's personal loyalty, or the reverse. The flood of enthusiasm for him swept away the interest in his guilt or innocence in respect of particular charges. Public opinion hallowed him as saint and martyr, and put the Court and Government on their defence.

[Sidenote: _The Royal Declaration._]

[Sidenote: _Bacon's part in it._]

The vehemence and volume of national emotion at the abandonment of Ralegh to the spite of a faction were a surprise to the King and his advisers. They seemed unable to comprehend its character and direction.

They believed, or pretended to believe, that a demand was being raised for a new trial of his offences. They could not, or would not, see that the only question was of the distribution of punishment among his persecutors. Something, however, manifestly had to be done, and at once.

One purpose of Stukely's _Pet.i.tion_ had been to pave the way for a 'declaration from the State,' for which the Pet.i.tioner formally asked.

The Committee of the Council had recommended in c.o.ke's paper of October 18, and the King had approved, the issue of such a manifesto simultaneously with the despatch of Ralegh to the scaffold. Its preparation had been immediately taken in hand. The reason for the delay in publication is unknown. Probably the royal editor was extremely fastidious. Whatever the cause of the procrastination, at last, on November 27, the day after Stukely's _Pet.i.tion_, an apology appeared with the authority of the Crown. James himself supplied part of the contents, 'additions,' wrote Bacon to Villiers, 'which were very material, and fit to proceed from his Majesty.' Naunton and Yelverton also a.s.sisted in the composition. The arrangement of arguments and, though marred by royal and other interpolations, the diction have been traced to the serviceable hand of the Lord Chancellor. Ralegh and Bacon had long been intimate with one another. They had never been enemies, or even rivals. In his History Ralegh had cited with applause Bacon's _Advancement of Learning_, and other works. He had testified that no man had taught the laws of history better, and with greater brevity, than that excellent learned gentleman. Bacon fully reciprocated the admiration. He s.n.a.t.c.hed at opportunities for placing on record his delight in Sir Walter's pretty wit, and adventurous spirit. If it be an excuse for his share in the persecution of the man and his memory, he was animated by no personal antipathy. But his skill had been retained for those who were hounding Ralegh to death, as it had been retained for the destruction of his old patron Ess.e.x. He did not now let his conscience afflict itself at the thought that he was about to gloss an act, which a historian, not very friendly to the sufferer, has said 'can hardly be dignified with the t.i.tle of a judicial murder.' Neither pa.s.sion, pique, nor fear, inspired his pen. His function in official life, as he interpreted it, was to be the advocate of authority; his feeling for any but scientific truth was never acute; and he had positive pleasure in the employment of his intellectual dexterity, whatever the object. Acting on that system he did the best he could with the case put before him on the present occasion. His and its misfortune was that it was irretrievably bad. His instructions were that Ralegh had gained his pardon by a lie; that there was no Mine, and that he never supposed there was any; that he went to harry and plunder Spaniards, and for nothing else; when he found spoil was not to be had as easily as he had antic.i.p.ated, he had determined to desert his men, and fly to the East Indies, or stay behind in Newfoundland. The King was supposed to have, with his wonted and infallible sagacity, made the discovery of Ralegh's knavery long since. That royal hypothesis of stark imposture, and no enthusiasm, was the clue which the Lords Commissioners, with Bacon at their head, had obsequiously borrowed to hale Ralegh to the scaffold. It was the strange sophism out of which Bacon again was set to compose a sedative for the popular emotion.

[Sidenote: _His Majesty's Honour and Justice._]

[Sidenote: _His Princely Judgment._]

He had to begin by apologizing for the King, both to the indignant nation and to the King's own injured sense of consistency. He had to try to extricate his master from the cruel dilemma, either of having been an accomplice in a scheme now denounced by himself as a pirate's conspiracy, or of having betrayed, out of cowardice and cupidity, a faithful servant to foreign vengeance. That is the meaning of the exordium of this pamphlet published in November by the King's Printers, Bonham Norton and John Bill: 'Although Kings be not bound to give account of their actions to any but G.o.d alone; yet such are his Majesty's proceedings, as he hath always been willing to bring them before sun and moon, and carefully to satisfy all his good people with his intentions and courses, giving as well to future times as to the present true and undisguised declarations of them; as judging, that for actions not well founded it is advantage to let them pa.s.s in uncertain reports, but for actions that are built upon sure and solid grounds, such as his Majesty's are, it belongeth to them to be published by open manifestos. Especially, his Majesty is willing to declare and manifest to the world his proceedings in a case of such a nature as this which followeth is; since it not only concerns his own people, but also a foreign prince and state abroad. Accordingly, therefore, for that which concerneth Sir Walter, late executed for treason--leaving the thoughts of his heart, and the protestations that he made at his death, to G.o.d that is the Searcher of all hearts, and the Judge of all truth--his Majesty hath thought fit to manifest unto the world how things appeared unto himself, and upon what proofs and evident matter, and the examination of the commanders that were employed with him in the voyage--and namely of those which Sir Walter Ralegh himself, by his own letter to Secretary Winwood, had commended for persons of worth and credit, and as most fit for greater employments--his Majesty's proceedings have been grounded; whereby it will evidently appear how agreeable they have been in all points to honour and justice. Sir Walter Ralegh having been condemned of high treason at his Majesty's entrance into this kingdom; and for the s.p.a.ce of fourteen years, by his Majesty's princely clemency and mercy, not only spared from his execution, but permitted to live as in _libera custodia_ in the Tower, and to enjoy his lands and living, till all was by law evicted from him upon another ground, and not by forfeiture--which notwithstanding his Majesty out of his abundant grace gave him a competent satisfaction for the same--at length he fell upon an enterprise of a golden mine in Guiana. This proposition of his was presented and recommended to his Majesty by Sir Ralph Winwood, then Secretary of State, as a matter not in the air or speculative, but real and of certainty; for that Sir Walter Ralegh had seen of the ore of the mine with his eyes, and tried the richness of it.

It is true that his Majesty, in his own princely judgment, gave no belief unto it; as well for that his Majesty was verily persuaded that in nature there are no such mines of gold entire, as they described this to be; and if any such had been, it was not probable that the Spaniards, who were so industrious in the chase of treasure, would have neglected it so long; as also for that it proceeded from the person of Sir Walter Ralegh, invested with such circ.u.mstances both of his disposition and fortune. But nevertheless Sir Walter Ralegh had so enchanted the world with his confident a.s.severation of that which every man was willing to believe, as his Majesty's honour was in a manner engaged not to deny unto his people the adventure and hope of so great riches, to be sought and achieved at the charge of volunteers; especially, for that it stood with his Majesty's politic and magnanimous courses, in these his flouris.h.i.+ng times of peace, to nourish and encourage n.o.ble and generous enterprises for plantations, discoveries, and opening of new trades.'

[Sidenote: _An Apology for an Apology._]

The main and misleading principle in the minds of the authors could not but dislocate and discolour facts. Those were carefully culled which made for a given conclusion. Incompatible evidence was omitted altogether. The 'Declaration of the Demeanour and Carriage of Sir Walter Ralegh, as well in his Voyage as in and since his Return, and of the true motives and inducements which occasioned his Majesty to proceed in doing justice upon him, as hath been done,' is a shuffling excuse for a baseness. The ma.s.s of it is an acc.u.mulation of hearsay evidence. Its chief object was to depict Ralegh as a man whom n.o.body need regret; to sneer away his l.u.s.tre and dignity. With this sordid view the trivial episode of the malingering scene at Salisbury is described with sickening minuteness. Few writers of authority have ventured to applaud the treatise. An exception is Mr. Spedding, who could not well let judgment pa.s.s against his idol without a word of defence for one of the worst blemishes in a pitiful official career. He shows here as elsewhere his admirable diligence in the collection of evidence; but he cannot be said to have shed any new light either on Ralegh's character, or on the part Bacon played in his slaughter, and in the endeavour to blacken his memory. For him both the King and the keeper of the King's conscience had no option but to put Ralegh to death. According to him the King's sanction of warlike preparations implied no understanding that it might be necessary to use them. According to him the commission to conduct an armed squadron and soldiery to a mine on the banks of the Orinoko conveyed no right to break a hostile Spanish blockade of the river.

According to him, though in defiance of contemporary testimony, Ralegh alone employed violence; the San Thome garrison 'offered no provocation whatever, except an att.i.tude of self-defence.' On these principles, while he laments the tardiness of its appearance, he necessarily considers the _Declaration_ straightforward, honest, and convincing.

National opinion judged differently. It treated the whole as a piece of special pleading. In fairness it must be granted that, had it been much more cogent, it would have had as little effect. Chamberlain had prophetically written to Carleton on November 21, while it was known to be in process of composition, that it 'will not be believed, unless it be well proved.'

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

CONTEMPORARY AND FINAL JUDGMENTS.

[Sidenote: _Popular Indignation._]

[Sidenote: _Its Durability._]

More judicious or less prejudiced observers than James and his confidants would have suspected earlier the rise of the popular tide of sympathy and indignation. Strangers had remarked the tendency before the execution. A Spanish Dominican friar in England on a secret political mission had, Chamberlain told Carleton in October, been labouring for Ralegh's life from dread of the ill-will towards Spain which his death would cause. Many Englishmen were much nimbler than official and officious courtiers in perceiving the blunder. A great lord in the Tower, who may be presumed to have been Northumberland, another correspondent of Carleton's told him, had observed that, if the Spanish match went on, Spain had better have given 100,000 than have had him killed; and if not, that England had better have given 100,000 than have killed him. Pory a.s.sured Carleton, writing on October 31, that Ralegh's death would do more harm to the faction that procured it than ever he did in his life. As soon as his head was off, the authorities had to be hard at work suppressing ballads which were being sung in the streets against his adversaries. The jeer of the London goldsmith, Wiemark, 'the constant Paul's-walker,' that he wished such a head as had just been severed from Ralegh's body had been on Master Secretary's shoulders, was but a sample of a storm of sarcasms upon the Government which ran through the town. The anger displayed by Naunton and Villiers a couple of years later at the appearance of so poor a satire as Captain Gainsford's _Vox Spiritus, or Sir Walter Ralegh's Ghost_, which was being circulated in ma.n.u.script, and their zeal in suppressing it, testify to the durability of the alarm excited in the Court. It was no momentary and evanescent impulse. Dean Tounson had written on November 9, of Ralegh's execution, that 'it left a great impression on the minds of those that beheld him; inasmuch that Sir Lewis Stukely and the Frenchman grow very odious. This was the news a week since; but now it is blown over, and he almost forgotten.' The good Dean underrated the solidity and reasonableness of English feeling. The nation might not care to linger over creatures like Stukely and Manourie, even to execrate them. Its grief for Ralegh was a lasting sentiment. A spectator of his death declared that his Christian and truthful manner on the scaffold made all believe that he was not guilty of treason nor of malpractices. So sudden a conversion of the kingdom to faith in his innocence and heroism would have been almost as irrational as the original acquiescence without proof in his criminality, had it been as abrupt as it seemed. It would have been as short-lived as Dean Tounson antic.i.p.ated, if its growth had been as gourd-like. In fact the nation only at the instant ascertained the state of its mind. The mood itself had been in course of formation for years.

[Sidenote: _Popular Forgetfulness._]

Ralegh, as we have seen, had been cordially detested in his day of ascendency. All a reign's odium naturally condenses itself upon a royal favourite. His elaborate courtesy did not produce the effect of affability. His lavishness was thought ostentation. His good nature, for he was good natured, had too much an air of condescension. The scorn of rivals or his superiors in rank he met with scorn. His exploits by land and sea, as impartial critics noted, heightened instead of pacifying malignity. Later exposure to settled Court dislike blunted the edge of popular enmity; it hardly turned it into kindness. The national att.i.tude towards Ralegh, downtrodden and hara.s.sed, long showed curiosity more than affection. The kingdom wondered what he was doing, or would do.

Formerly it had believed, with repugnance, in his ability to extricate himself from all difficulties, whether of war or of intrigue. It retained the same faith in the indomitable resources of the prisoner of the Tower, without much active sympathy, though without antipathy. He died; and the wonder, the observant admiration flamed into a fury of pa.s.sionate regret. For six and thirty years Ralegh had been before its eyes, and in its thoughts, for good or evil. It could not imagine him not at its service; and he was irreparably gone. A reserve of force, upon which the nation unconsciously had depended in the event of any emergency, had been thrown away. A light in England had been extinguished. The people forgot how it had misconstrued and reviled him.

It forgot how pa.s.sively it had borne to see him worried by malicious rivals and upstart strangers. On the instant he became for it the representative of an era of national glory sacrificed to sordid machinations. The executioner's axe in Palace Yard scattered a film which had dimmed the sight of Englishmen for an entire generation. Death vindicated on Ralegh's own behalf its t.i.tle to his panegyric: 'O eloquent, just, and mighty Death!'

[Sidenote: _An Idol of the Const.i.tutional Party._]

The nation persisted in grieving for him. The instruments of his destruction, courtiers and Ministers, it pursued with a storm of immediate hatred. Loyalty or awe of the Prerogative secured the Sovereign's person for the time from open reproaches. The country was willing to suppose that the King had been misled by evil counsellors, and had quickly repented of the iniquity. Spain, two years later, a.s.sisted Austria to dethrone the Elector Palatine and his Stuart wife. A story was invented that James, in anger at the news, exclaimed he would demand the Spanish general's head. A courtier, it was fabled, dared to question whether Philip would be as facile and obliging as James had been. 'Then I wish,' groaned James, 'that Ralegh's head were again on his shoulders.' Posterity has been less ready to make any excuse for James, even the excuse of a selfish contrition. His memory has paid with interest for his escape at first from his rightful share in the obloquy.

His injustice as an individual weakened the national faith in royalty.

The wrongs suffered from the State caused Ralegh to be regarded as a martyr to freedom, which he was not. The growing party of champions of const.i.tutional liberties watched over and exalted his fame. Pym, in his note-book of _Memorable Accidents_, has entered under the year 1618: 'Sir Walter Ralegh had the favour to be beheaded at Westminster, where he died with great applause of the beholders, most constantly, most Christianly, most religiously.' Hampden could not bear that any fragments of his writing should be lost. Cromwell pored over his History. Milton printed his essays. Eliot at the date of the execution was twenty-eight. He had long been a friend, and still followed the fortunes, of Villiers. He did not belong yet to the popular party. So far was he from forgetting the spectacle in a week that, many years after, he recalled the whole in a glow of enthusiasm both for the King's victim and the Devon hero. He wrote in the _Monarchy of Man_, which he did not complete till 1631, that all history scarcely contained a parallel to the fort.i.tude of 'our Ralegh'; that the placid courage of 'that great soul,' while it turned to sorrow the joy of the enemies who had come to witness his sufferings, filled all men else with emotion; 'leaving with them only this doubt, whether death were more acceptable to him, or he more welcome unto death.'

Something both of political and religious partisans.h.i.+p mixed with and exalted the zeal of Pym, Hampden, Eliot, Cromwell, and Milton for the foe of Jesuits and Bishops, the scapegoat of a Stuart's infatuation for Spain, the survivor of a Court which had believed in the present grandeur of England, and a future more splendid still. The feeling was wonderfully tenacious. Ralegh remained for the generation which witnessed his death, and for the next also, the patriot scourge of a still detested Spain. Gradually that especial ground of kindness for him subsided, along with the aversion on which it rested. English hatred of Spain has long been so obsolete a sentiment as to be virtually inconceivable. Not many care to thread the mazes of the plots he was alleged to have countenanced, or of those contrived against him. His acts have been relegated to a side channel of history. Yet for Englishmen his figure keeps its prominence and radiance. It is the more conspicuous for the poverty of the period in which a large and calamitous part of his career was spent. As the student plods along one of the dreariest wastes of the national annals, his name gleams across the tedious page. When from time to time he flits over the stage, the quagmire of Court intrigues and jobbing favouritism is illuminated with a sparkle of romance.

[Sidenote: _Perplexities._]

[Sidenote: _Failures and Inconsistencies._]

He is among the most dazzling personalities in English history, and the most enigmatical. Not an action ascribed to him, not a plan he is reputed to have conceived, not a date in his multifarious career, but is matter of controversy. In view of the state of the national records in the last century, it is scarcely strange that Gibbon himself should, after selecting him for a theme, have recoiled from the task of marshalling the chaos of his 'obscure' deeds, a 'fame confined to the narrow limits of our language and our island,' and 'a fund of materials not yet properly manufactured.' Posterity and his contemporaries have equally been unable to agree on his virtues and his vices, the nature of his motives, the spelling of his name, and the amount of his genius. No man was ever less reticent about himself; and his confessions and apologies deepen the confusion. He had a poet's inspiration; and his t.i.tle to most of the verses ascribed to him is contested. He was one of the creators of modern English prose; and his disquisitions have for two centuries ceased to be read. He and Bacon are coupled by Dugald Stewart as eminent beyond their age for their emanc.i.p.ation from the fetters of the Schoolmen, their originality, and the enlargement of their scientific conceptions; and a single phrase, 'the fundamental laws of human knowledge,' is the only philosophical idea connected with him. His name is entered, rightly, in the first rank of discoverers, navigators, and planters, on account of two countries which he neither found nor permanently colonized. He was a great admiral, who commanded in chief on one expedition alone, and that miserably failed. He had in him the making of a great soldier, though his exploits are lost in the dreary darkness of intestine French and Irish savageries. He was a master of policy, and his loftiest office was that of Captain of the Guard. None could be kinder, or more chivalrously generous, and he practised with complacency in Munster treachery and cruelty which he abhorred in a Spaniard of Trinidad. He had the subtlest brain, and became the yokefellow of a Cobham. He thirsted after Court favour, and wealth, and died attainted and landless. He longed to scour the world for adventures, and spent a fourth part of his manhood in a gaol. He laid the foundation of a married life characterized by an unbroken tenor of romantic trust and devotion, by doing his wife the worst injury a woman can undergo. The star of his hopes was the future of his elder son, and the boy squandered his life on an idle skirmish. He courted admiration, and, till he was buried in prison or the grave, was the best hated man in the kingdom.

Had he been less vivacious and many-sided, he might have succeeded better, suffered less, and accomplished more. With qualities less s.h.i.+ning he would have escaped the trammels of Court favouritism, and its stains. With powers less various he would have been content to be ill.u.s.trious in one line. As a poet he might have rivalled instead of patronizing Spenser. In prose he might have surpa.s.sed the thoughtful majesty of Hooker. As an observer of nature he might have disputed the palm with Bacon. He must have been recognized as endowed with the specific gifts of a statesman or a general, if he had possessed none others as remarkable. But if less various he would have been less attractive. If he had shone without a cloud in any one direction, he would not have pervaded a period with the splendour of his nature, and become its type. More smoothness in his fortunes would have shorn them of their tragic picturesqueness. Failure itself was needed to colour all with the tints which surprise and captivate. He was not a martyr to forgive his persecutors. He was not a hero to endure in silence, and without an effort at escape. His character had many earthy streaks. His self-love was enormous. He could be s.h.i.+fty, wheedling, whining. His extraordinary and indomitable perseverance in the pursuit of ends was crossed with a strange restlessness and recklessness in the choice of means. His projects often ended in reverses and disappointments. Yet, with all the shortcomings, no figure, no life gathers up in itself more completely the whole spirit of an epoch; none more firmly enchains admiration for invincible individuality, or ends by winning a more personal tenderness and affection.