Part 7 (1/2)
The next as occupied with the performance of the curious burlesque which Jae Brooke was beheaded, the King drew up a warrant to the Sheriff of Hampshi+re for stay of all the other executions With this docuned death-warrants for Markhah on the 13th The King told nobody of his intention, except a Scotch boy, John Gibb, as his page at the , Sir Walter Raleigh was desired to coht before, he had written an affecting letter of farewell to his wife, and--such, at least, is my personal conviction from the internal evidence--the rie_ By this time he was sorry that he had bemeaned himself in his first paroxyset back the letters in which he sued for his life, 'for,' he said, 'I disdainit' He went on:
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 ly forms I cannot write much God kno hardly I stole this tihts fro was denied you; and either lay it at Sherborne, if the land continue [yours], or in Exeter Church, by my father and mother I can write no more Ti the Castle Green, Raleigh saw Markhah the steady rain to the scaffold He saw the Sheriff presently called away, but could not see the Scotch lad who called hi in with the reprieve
He could see Markha before the block, he could see the Sheriff return, speak in a low voice to Markham, and lead him away into Arthur's Hall and lock him up there He could then see Grey led out, he could see his face light up with a gleam of hope, as he stealthily stirred the wet straith his foot and perceived there was no blood there He could see, though he could not hear, Grey's lips move in the prayer in which he made his protestation of innocence, and as he stood ready at the block, he could see the Sheriff speak to him also, and lead him away, and lock hi more and more, so violently curious that the crowd below noticed his eager expression, could see Cobha, in a la, and when the prayer was over, he could see the Sheriff leave hi, on the scaffold, while he went to fetch Grey and Markham from their prison Then he could see the trio, with an odd expression of hope in their faces, stand side by side a ued by the Sheriff, and then suddenly on his bewildered ears rang out the plaudits of the asse its hands because the King had mercifully saved the lives of the prisoners And still the steady rain kept falling as the Castle Green grew eh at his as left alone with his bewilderment He was very soon told that he also was spared, and on December 16, 1603, he was taken back to the Tower of London Such was Jaether inhuman sketch for a burlesque
CHAPTER VIII
IN THE TOWER
It is no longer possible for us to follow the personal life of Raleigh as we have hitherto been doing, step by step In the deep monotony of confine any marks of months or days upon his chronicle of patience A hopeless prisoner ceases to take any interest in the passage of tih's few letters from the Tower are almost all of them undated His coed A whisper froleaain the darkness of his hopelessness He was vexed with ill-health, and yet froour of his constitution, and his invincible desire to live, were unabated Froe, as soNepenthe, the consolatory self-forgetfulness of literature It was in the Tower that the s were produced
He was confined in the upper story of as called the Garden Tower, now the bloody Tower, and not, as is so often said, in the White Tower, so that the little cell with a diht, the Chapel Crypt off Queen Elizabeth's Areon in which Raleigh wrote _The History of the World_, never, in all probability, heard the sound of his footsteps It is a eon as this According to Mr Loftie, his apartate to the Inner Ward, and had, besides alooking ard out of the Tower, an entrance to theher level, the level of the Lieutenant's and Constable's lodgings They probably opened directly into a garden which has since been partly built over
Raleigh was coed; it was Sir William Waad's coh and her son shared them with him for a considerable time, and Sir Walter was never without three personal servants He was poor, in comparison with his former opulent estate, but he was never in want Sherborne just sufficed for six years to supply such needs as presented thehtly exceeded 200_l_, or 1,000_l_ of our h Theto make the best terms possible for his wife and son In a letter to the Lords of the Council, Raleigh mentions that he has lost 3,000_l_ (or 15,000_l_ in Victoriandeprived of his five main sources of income, namely the Governorshi+p of Jersey, the Patent of the Wine Office, the Wardenshi+p of the Stannaries, the Rangershi+p of Gillinghaht that he ary, and he did his best to retain the Duchy of Cornwall and his estates at Sherborne The fore of a prisoner It was given to a friend, to the Earl of Pe to give up the Seal of the Duchy direct to the Earl; he was presently induced to resign it into Cecil's hands, and then nothing but Sherborne remained His debts were 3,000_l_ His rich collections of plate and tapestry had been confiscated or stolen If the King permitted Sherborne also to be taken, it would be ies of the Lieutenant, and under these circuht have been obliged to crouch in the traditional dungeon ten feet by eight feet The retention of Sherborne, then, entlehest interest to us to see what had become of Sherborne
We have seen that up to the date of the trial Cecil held at bay the Scottish jackals ent prowling round the rich Dorsetshi+re h said, 'hath been our only coh was condean to prepare the division of the prize They sold the cattle, and began to root up the copses Theythe house itself Raleigh appealed to the Lords of the Council, and Cecil sent doo trustees, who, in February 1604, put a sudden stop to all this havoc, and sent the commissioners about their business Of the latter, one was the infah's forh On July 30 in the sa manors were conveyed to Sir Alexander Brett and others in trust for Lady Raleigh and her son Walter, Sir Walter no the life interest in the estates which he had reserved to himself in the conveyance of 1602 On the h supported herself and her husband also
She was not turned out of the castle at first Twice at least in 1605 we find her there, on the second occasion causing all the armour to be scoured Some persons afterwards considered that this act was connected with Gunpowder Plot, others maintained that it was reat point is that she was still mistress of Sherborne Lord Justice Pophah's act of conveyance invalid, and in 1608 negotiations began for a 'purchase,' or rather a confiscation of Sherborne to the King To this we shall presently return In the meanwhile Captain Keymis acted as warden of Sherborne Castle
As soon as the eather closed in, in the suh's health As he tells Cecil, now Lord Cranborne, in ain body andlain a fortnight with only a paper wall between hi of that terrible coh, at last, had been able to bear the terror of infection no longer, and had departed with little Walter Raleigh thereupon, in a fit of extreme dejection, 'presumed to tell their Lordshi+ps of his htly of suffocation by wasted and obstructed lungs' He entreated to be res His prayer was not answered Earlier in the year he had indeed enjoyed a short excursion fro had coh was hastily removed to the Fleet prison beforehand, lest the etiquette of such occasions should oblige Jaive obnoxious prisoners their liberty Raleigh was one of five persons so hurried to the Fleet on March 25: on the next day the King came, and 'caused all the prisons of the Tower to be opened, and all the persons then within the was over, the excepted prisoners were quietly brought back again This little change was all the variety that Raleigh enjoyed until he left for Guiana in 1617
When it transpired in 1605 that through, as it appears, the negligence of the copying clerk, the conveyance by which Raleigh thought that he had secured Sherborne to his son was null and void, he had to suffer from a vindictive attack from his wife herself She, poor woman, had now for nearly two years bustled hither and thither, intriguing in not always the , never leaving a stone unturned which ht lead to their restitution
The sudden discovery that the lawyers had found a flaw in the conveyance wasnerves could endure, and in a fit of temper she attacked her husband, and rushed about the town denouncing hih, in deepest depression of mind and body, wrote to Cecil, who had now taken another upward step in the hierarchy of James's protean House of Lords, and as Earl of Salisbury henceforward:
Of the true cause of ht in danger either of sudden death, or of the loss ofor motion of my hand and whole arm I complain not of it I know it vain, for there is none that hath compassion thereof The other, that I shall be , ill return in post when she hears of your Lordshi+p's departure, and nothing done She hath already brought her eldest son in one hand, and her sucking child [Carew Raleigh, born in the winter of 1604] in another, crying out of her and their destruction; chargingprovided for my own life, I am without sense and compassion of theirs These tor but torether with the consideration of my cruel destiny, my days and times worn out in trouble and imprisonment--is sufficient either utterly to distract me, or to make me curse the ti
Things were not coh, who did nothing by halves, was not accustomed to underrate his own misfortunes His health was uncertain, indeed, and it was still worse in 1606; but his condition otheras not so deplorable as this letter would tend to prove Poor Lady Raleigh soon recovered her equanie Harvey, indulged Raleigh in a variety of ways He frequently invited hied in various chearden to set up his still in In one of Raleigh's few letters of this period, we get a delightful little vignette Raleigh is busy working in the garden, and, the pale being down, the charhter, strolls by along the terrace on the ar, and watch the picturesque old hted up with the fla with hiham coaxes hiht back from Guiana He tells her that he has none prepared, but that he will send her some by their common friend Captain Whitlock, and presently he does so A captivity which admitted such communications with the outer world as this, could not but have had its alleviations
The letter quoted on the last page evidently belongs to the suh was undoubtedly in great discoe Harvey was succeeded by Sir Williareat severity before his trial He, however, although not well disposed, shrank fro his noble prisoner He hinted to Lord Salisbury that he wanted the garden for his own use, and that he thought the paling an insufficient barrier between Raleigh and the world Meanwhile Salisbury did not take the hint, and the brick wall Waad wished built up was not begun Waad evidently looked upon the cheh,' he wrote, 'hath converted a little hen-house in the garden into a still, where he doth spend his time all the day in his distillations' Some of the rely popular His 'lesser cordial' of strawberry water was extensively used by ladies, and his 'great cordial,' which was understand to contain 'whatever is etable, and mineral world,' continued to be a favourite panacea until the close of the century
When, in Noveh was for ahiree; but his life was, for the moment at least, made distinctly harder When he returned from examination, the hich Waad had desired to put between the prisoner and the public was in course of construction When finished it was not very forh was in the habit of standing upon it, in the sight of passers-by The increased confineht his ill-health to a cliht he was about to suffer an apoplectic seizure, and he was allowed to take medical advice The doctor's certificate, dated March 26, 1606, is still in existence; it describes his paralytic syh should be re to the 'little roo his still-house,'
which would be warh's health i the year 1606 various atteh, but in vain The Queen had made his acquaintance, and had becoeneral hope that when her father, the King of Denmark, cah There is reason to believe that if he had done so with success, he would have invited Raleigh to return with him, and to becoot so far as this Ja, and he took an early opportunity of saying to Christian IV, 'Promise me that you will be no land, Christian did ask for Raleigh's pardon, and was refused When he had left England, and all hope was over, in Septehher way into the King's presence, fell on her knees at his feet James went by, and neither spoke nor looked at her It must have been about this tiht her unfortunate eldest son Henry to visit Raleigh at the Tower Prince Henry, born in 1594, was now only twelve years of age His intis rather to the years 1610 to 1612
In February 1607, Raleigh was exposed to some annoyance from Edward Cotterell, the servant who in 1603 had carried his injudicious correspondence with Lord Cobhah's service, and attended on her in her little house, opposite her husband's rooainst his master, but in exaible could be extracted froed, it would appear, by the Queen, proposing to Lord Salisbury that he should be allowed to go to Guiana on an expedition for gold It is pathetic to read the earnest phrases in which he tries to wheedle out of the cold Minister permission to set out ard once more across the ocean that he loved so ate, to leave his wife and children behind hies; and the Queen and Lord Salisbury o He pleads how rich the land is, and how no one knows the way to it as he does We see of the Sea:
'Tis not too late to seek a neorld; Push off, and sitting well in order s furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars until I die
Such was Raleigh's purpose; but it was not that of James and of Salisbury On the contrary, he was kept a faster prisoner In July 1607, fresh regulations cah and his servants had to retire to their own apartuests any longer to be adh had particularly offended Sir Willia into the Tower in her coach She was infor quiet evenings which specially predisposed Raleigh to literary composition He borrowed books, mainly of an historical character, in all directions A letter to Sir Robert Cotton is extant in which he desires the loan of no less than thirteen obscure and bulky historians, and weover the precious manuscripts of the _Annals of Tewkesbury_ and the _Chronicle of Eveshah, now fourteen years of age, proceeded to Oxford, and matriculated at Corpus on October 30, 1607 His tutors were a certain Hooker, and the brilliant young theologian, Dr Daniel Featley, afterwards to be fahout the year 1608, Raleigh, buried in his _History_, n to us
Early in 1609, the uncertain tenure of Sherborne, which had vexed Raleigh so much that he declared hie for the pleasure of never hearing of it again, once more came definitely before the notice of the Governht in it to the King, but he had refused; he said that it belonged to his wife and child, and that 'those that never had a fee-sirant a fee-siht theher sons by the hand she appeared in the Presence Chaive the had determined to seize Sherborne, and he told her, 'I maun hae the lond, Iall patience, Elizabeth Raleigh started to her feet, and implored God to punish this robbery of her household Sir Walter was more politic, and on January 2, 1609, he wrote a letter to the favourite, iretted that Raleigh, whose opinion of James's minions was not on private occasions concealed, should write to Carr of all people in England as 'one whom I know not, but by an honourable fame;' and that the eloquence of his appeal should be throay on such a recipient 'For yourself, Sir,' he says, 'seeing your day is but now in the dawn, and race assuring you of in your first building upon the ruins of the innocent; and that their griefs and sorrows do not attend your first plantation' Carr, of course, took no notice whatever, and on the 10th of the same month the estates at Sherborne were bestowed on hi presently purchased theave them to his son, who soon after died Mr Edwards has discovered that Sherborne passed through eight successive changes of ownershi+p before 1617 To Lady Raleigh and her children the King gave 8,000_l_ as purchase-money of the life security in Sherborne The interest on this sue in 1617 sed up most of the principal Thus the vast and princely fortune of Raleigh melted away like a drift of snow
In the suh came into collision with Lord Salisbury and Lord Northampton on some matter at present obscure Northah, in e find no change, but the saht er fashi+on' In consequence of their intervieith Raleigh and other prisoners, the Lords recoer be allowed to cocker and foster exorbitant hopes in the braver sort of captives Raleigh was i allowed to take his customary ith his keeper up the hill within the Tower His private garden and gallery were taken from him, and his as almost entirely excluded from his company The final h, and there was no quickening of the old friendshi+p at the last
When Lord Salisbury died on May 24, 1612, Raleigh wrote this epigram: