Release of Raleigh-Raleigh's expedition to Guiana-Raleigh returns to England-His execution under his former sentence-Affairs of the Palatinate-The Elector defeated at Prague -Parliament-Monopolists-Lord Bacon impeached-Conduct of Parliament in Floyd's case-The King and the Parliament at issue-Parliament dissolved-Prince Charles and Villiers in Spain-The proposed marriage of Charles with the Infanta broken offRejoicings in England-Parliament-War declared against Spain-Death of King James. SIR WALTER RALEIGH had been a prisoner in the Tower somewhat more than twelve years. To a man of such activity of mind even imprisonment would not be unhappiness. His wife was permitted to dwell with him. He had access to the Lieutenant's garden; and, says sir William Wade, one of the Lieutenants, "he hath converted a little hen-house to a still-house, where he doth spend his time all the day in distillations." Mrs. Hutchinson, whose father, sir Allen Apsley, was also Lieutenant of the Tower, gives a more intelligible account of these distillations, in relating the virtues of her mother: "Sir Walter Raleigh and Mr. Ruthin being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chemistry, she suffered them to make their rare experiments at her cost; partly to comfort and divert the poor prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of their experiments, and the medicines to help such poor people as were not able to seek to physicians."* Raleigh was the inventor of a famous cordial which went by his name. In an evil hour the tranquil studies and useful diversions of Raleigh were exchanged for schemes which were to renew the energies of his youth. The dream of a gold mine in Guiana never ceased to haunt his imagination. Indians had interviews with him in the Tower; for he had kept up a correspondence, through his agents, *"Memoirs of Col. Hutchinson," p. 22. 374 RALEIGH'S EXPEDITION TO GUIANA. [1618. with the natives of the country which he had partially explored in 1595. At length he obtained permission to employ the liberty which was promised to be granted to him, through the mediation of Villiers, in again attempting to work the gold mine in whose existence he firmly believed. He was released from his prison on the 20th of March, 1616. He was now in the sixty-fifth year of his age. But he was one of those who bated no jot of heart or hope, and he sent an expression of his gratitude to Villiers in a letter which smacks of the old enthusiasm: "You have, by your mediation, put me again into the world. I can but acknowledge it; for to pay any part of your favour by any service of mine, as yet, is not in my power. If it succeed well, a good part of the honour shall be yours; and if I do not also make it profitable unto you, I shall show myself exceeding ungrateful." Raleigh risked in this scheme all he possessed in the world. When lady Raleigh went on her knees to James, to beg that her family might not be robbed of the estate at Sherborne, which had been secured to them before her husband's attainder, he exclaimed, "I maun have the land-I maun have it for Carr." Eight thousand pounds were afterwards obtained as the "competent satisfaction" for an estate worth five thousand pounds a year. This sum, with the produce of a small estate which his wife sold, was all invested in the Guiana project. James stipulated for a share of the profits of the enterprise. But the Spanish ambassador, Gondomar, who had at that time obtained great influence over the king, at first remonstrated, and declared that the expedition was for piratical purposes. Raleigh maintained that his sole object was to settle a country which belonged to England by right of discovery, and to work its gold mines; and Gondomar affected to be satisfied. Raleigh got together a squadron of fourteen vessels, and he set sail on the 28th of March, 1617, having received a commission by which he was constituted general and commander of the expedition, and governor of the country. It was imprudent in Raleigh to have gone upon a doubtful adventure without having received a previous pardon, which was to be obtained for money. But it is said that Bacon, who, in 1617, had accomplished the prime object of his ambition, the custody of the great seal, said to Raleigh, "The knee-timber of your voyage is money. Spare your purse in this particular; for upon my life you have a sufficient pardon for all that is past already, the king having under his broad seal made you admiral of your fleet, and given you power of the martial law over your officers and soldiers." The outward voyage was unpropitious. There was sickness in the ships, of which many of the voyagers died. They landed in Guiana on the 12th of November; and on the 14th Raleigh wrote in a hopeful spirit to his wife: "To tell you that I might be king of the Indians were a vanity. But my name hath still lived among them here. They feed me with fresh meat and all that the country yields. All offer to obey me." In a short time he began to have glimpses of the treacherous nature of the sovereign in whose name he had gone forth to "make new nations." James had obtained from him the most minute details of his plans; and the king had communicated them to Gondomar, who had sent them to his court at Madrid. The king's commander had been promised a free passage through the country. He found it fortified against him. He was himself weak from sickness, and was obliged to be carried in a litter. He sent his faithful follower, Captain Keymis, to sail up the Orinoco 1618.] RALEIGH RETURNS TO ENGLAND. 375 with a part of the squadron in the direction of the mine. The instructions which Raleigh had given were not obeyed. If Keymis found the mine of great richness-royal, as the term was-he was to repel any attack of the Spaniards. But if not royal, he was to return with a basket or two of the ore, to satisfy James that there was a foundation of reality in the attempt to find gold. Keymis landed in the night near the Spanish town of Santa Thome, near the mine. The Spaniards attacked his encampment; and a battle ensued. After much slaughter, the English drove back their assailants to the town; and the Spaniards coming out in fresh force, the son of Raleigh was killed. The governor of the town, a kinsman of Gondomar, also fell. The English burnt Santa Thome, in which they found refining houses, and two ingots of gold. But the passes to the mine were defended by too strong a force to enable Keymis to accomplish the great object of the expedition. When he returned with his diminished crew, the reproaches of his commander led the unfortunate man to commit suicide. The great spirit of Raleigh was crushed. He saw nothing before him but reproach and danger. In a letter to his wife he says, "I protest before the majesty of God, that as sir Francis Drake and sir John Hawkins died heartbroken when they failed of their enterprise, I could willingly do the like, did I not contend against sorrow for your sake, in hope to provide somewhat for you to comfort and relieve you. If I live to return, resolve yourself that it is the care for you that hath strengthened, my heart. It is true that Keymis might have gone directly to the mine, and meant it. But after my son's death, he made them believe that he knew not the way, and excused himself upon the want of water in the river; and counterfeiting many impediments left it unfound. When he came back, I told him that he had undone me, and that my credit was lost for ever. He answered that when my son was lost, and that he left me so weak that he thought not to find me alive, he had no reason to enrich a company of rascals, who, after my son's death, made no account of him." Raleigh conducted his fleet, with mutinous crews, to Newfoundland, and then sailed homeward. On the 18th of March, after his return, Howell wrote, "The world wonders extremely that so great a wise man as sir Walter Raleigh would return, to cast himself upon so inevitable a rock as I fear he will." * Two friends, the earls of Pembroke and Arundel, had pledged their honour for his return, and he would not be a cause of trouble to them. This Arundel acknowledged when Raleigh, on the scaffold, reminded him of the promise that he had made to the earl that he would return. Gondomar was now supreme at the English court, negotiating a marriage between prince Charles and the Infanta of Spain. The destiny of Raleigh was in the hands of the malignant Spaniard and the revengeful king. Raleigh was arrested at Plymouth; and after some stratagems to escape to France, and to obtain delay, having feigned madness, he was conducted to his old prison of the Tower. He was examined before commissioners, upon the charge that he fraudulently pretended that he went to discover a mine, when his real object was to make a piratical attack upon the Spanish settlements. He denied these charges with constancy and boldness; but admitted his attempt to escape, and his pretence of mental derangement, which he "Letters," p. 8. 376 HIS EXECUTION UNDER HIS FORMER SENTENCE. [1618. excused by the desire which every man feels to escape death. In his imprisonment he was no longer under the care of the kind sir Allen Apsley. That lieutenant of the Tower was removed from the charge of Raleigh, to make way for sir Thomas Wilson, who wrote constant reports of his conversations with his prisoner. These are in the State Paper Office. "On the perusal of these papers, it is difficult to say whether the preponderating feeling is sympathy for the captive, or disgust and indignation for his unfeeling and treacherous keeper." * It was the king himself who was urging on his creature to worm himself into the confidence of Raleigh for the purpose of betraying him. But all the arts of the betrayer were unavailing. Nothing could be obtained which could furnish a new ground of accusation. The letters which passed between Raleigh and his wife were intercepted, and were read by the king. It was determined at length that the prisoner should be executed under his former sentence, by a writ of privy seal directed to the judges. But they held that their warrant for execution could not be issued, after so long a time had elapsed since the judgment, without bringing up the prisoner to plead. Raleigh, suffering under an ague, was brought on the 24th and again on the 28th of October to the King's Bench at Westminster, and there being asked why execution should not pass against him, he urged that he was discharged of the original judgment by the king's commission for his voyage, which gave him new life and vigour. Execution was granted. Raleigh asked for a little delay, to settle his affairs and his mind. He was brought out of his prison the next morning to die upon the scaffold, in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster. The night before his death, he wrote these lines on a blank leaf of his Bible : "E'en such is time; who takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with age and dust; When we have wander'd all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days. But from this earth, this grave, this dust, The last end of this heroic man was worthy of his great genius. He received the Sacrament; he declared his forgiveness of all persons; he manifested the utmost cheerfulness; he gave thanks to the Almighty who had imparted to him the strength of mind never to fear death, and to meet it with courage in the assurance of His love. He breakfasted, and smoked his usual pipe of tobacco. When he came to the scaffold he was very faint; and commenced his speech to the assembled crowd, by saying that during the last two days he had been visited by two ague fits. "If therefore you perceive any weakness in me, I beseech you ascribe it to my sickness rather than to myself." His speech was of a manly tone, defending himself from slanders which had been raised against him. He implored the bystanders to join with him in prayer to that great God whom he had grievously offended; "being a man full of all vanity, and one who hath lived a sinful life in such callings as have been most inducing to it; for I have been a soldier, a sailor, and a courtier, all of them courses of wickedness and vice." He was asked by the dean of Westminster * Jardine, "Criminal Trials," vol. i. 1619.] AFFAIRS OF THE PALATINATE. 377 in what religion he meant to die, and he replied, in the faith professed by the Church of England, hoping to be saved by the blood and merits of our Saviour. It was a bitter morning; and the sheriff proposed that he should descend from the scaffold and warm himself: "No, good Mr. Sheriff, let us despatch, for within this quarter of an hour my ague will come upon me, and if I be not dead before that, my enemies will say I quake for fear." He took the axe in his hand, kissed the blade, and said to the sheriff, ""Tis a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases." So died the last of Elizabeth's heroes. The execution of Raleigh called forth indignation, "not loud but deep," in the English mind. The people felt that he was sacrificed to Spain, against which power, its jesuits and its inquisitions, he had waged no inglorious warfare. He was sacrificed by a king from whom the bold Protestant spirit was departed, and who remained supine whilst the two great principles which divided Europe were again preparing for a struggle. Thus thought the majority of the nation, at a time of extraordinary excitement in connection with foreign events. The daughter of James had been married six years to the Elector Palatine. He was a prince of a serious character; by nature proud and reserved; earnest in the discharge of his duties as a ruler; not devoid of ambition to become a leader for a great public object. The Calvinists of Bohemia had been in insurrection upon a question of the possession of some lands of the church which were held by Catholics; and the quarrel was under arbitration at the instance of the emperor Mathias when he died. Mathias was also king of Bohemia; and the archduke Ferdinand was chosen emperor. He had been recognised as successor to the throne of Bohemia; but he was a determined zealot of Catholicism; and the Bohemians, who held that their crown was elective, offered it to Frederic, who had been one of the arbitrators to settle the difference which had led to their insurrection. The Elector Palatine, after some hesitation, accepted the dangerous promotion, and was crowned at Prague, in November, 1619. The resolve was the signal for a general array of hostile forces throughout Europe. The great battle of Protestantism and Catholicism appeared once more likely to be fought out. Had Elizabeth been alive she would have thrown all her force into the conflict. James at first refused to give any assistance to his son-in-law. The Protestants of England were roused to an enthusiasm which had been repressed for years. They saw the armies of Austria and Spain gathering to snatch the crown from the elective king of Bohemia, and to invade the Palatinate. They saw many of the Protestant princes forming an union for his defence. Volunteers were ready to go forth from England full of zeal for the support of the Elector. James was professing an ardent desire to Protestant deputies to assist his son-in-law; and at the same time vowing to the Spanish ambassador that the alliance with his Catholic master, which was to be cemented by the marriage of prince Charles to the Infanta, was the great desire of his heart. At length the Catholic powers entered the Palatinate; and the cry to arm was so loud amongst the English and the Scotch, that James reluctantly marshalled a force of four thousand volunteers, not to support his son-in-law upon the throne of Bohemia, but to assist in defending his hereditary dominions. The scanty assistance came too late. Frederic was defeated by the Austrians at Prague, on the 7th of November, 1620, which |