Farewell. CHAP. VI. in his glorious kingdom. My dear wife, farewell! Bless my poor boy; pray for me, and let my good God hold you both in his arms! Written with the dying hand of some time thy husband, but now, alas! overthrown. Yours that was, but now not my own,"WALTER RALEIGH." Spirit of the letter. Time of writing it. This letter, of which the manliness, the simplicity, and pathos, are so deeply affecting, furnishes, perhaps, the best reply to the coarse and cruel accusations thrown out against him by Coke and Popham, as if he had been a bold disbeliever in the being and attributes of God. Its exact date does not appear; but it was probably written a short time before the extraordinary melodrama at Winchester, which has been just described. Raleigh looked from a window which commanded a view of the scaffold, and we may easily conceive his astonishment when one victim was removed at the moment the axe was about to descend, and another substituted, who, after certain ceremonies, was as quickly withdrawn. The shouts, however, which accompanied the reprieve must have inspired him with hope; and this was soon realized by an intimation that he had been included in it with the other prisoners. On the 15th of December to the Tower. he was remanded, along with Cobham, Grey, and Markham, to the Tower.* At the earnest solicitation of his Remanded of his wife. wife, she and her son were permitted to remain with him in prison; and so faithfully did this affectionate Faithfulness woman continue her attendance, that their youngest child, Carew, was born within the walls of the fortress. He was allowed also to have two servants and a boy; whilst Mr Hawthorn, a preacher, his physician, Dr Turner, the steward of Sherborne, and Mr Thomas Hariot, *The fate of Cobham, whose falsehood was the cause of all Raleigh's calamities, was peculiarly miserable. After being confined many years, he was enlarged only to die of starvation in a garret where he was harboured by a poor man who had formerly been his servant at court.* * Weldon's Court and Character of King James, p. 37. were not excluded, at convenient times when he wished CHAP. VI to consult them.* Sir Walter Raleigh had now to commence his life as a Prison li prisoner. The Tower was to be his home; and in some respects he was the best, in others the worst fitted man for such a habitation. His love of study, his varied mental resources, the stores of observation he had laid up in his travels, and his experience of the vanity and fickleness of the world,―all prepared him to enjoy retirement and contemplation. "His mind to him a kingdom was," a noble possession, stored with moral and intellectual riches, which rendered him to a great degree independent of society and liberty. Those hours which Leisure for before he had to steal from business or sleep, to enjoy his study. books, or his studies, were now all his own; no court intrigues; no unseasonable interruptions; no summonses from royalty; no busy progresses or brilliant pageants; no deliberations at the council or discussions in the parliament; nothing of the excitement of war, or discovery, or peril, broke the even and tranquil tenor of his existAs he was permitted the company of his wife and children, with the occasional visits of a few friends, he might almost have forgotten that he was a prisoner. But Activity of the mind of this remarkable man was so constituted as to render restraint peculiarly irksome. It was indeed full of profound thought: but this thought had been cultivated during forty years of incessant activity; and the habits of so long a period could not be easily changed for almost perfect solitude. He had read more than most students; his books had been carried with him on his campaigns and voyages,-they were his companions in the tent and in the cabin. And the friends with Use of whom one may pass a delightful hour, snatched with difficulty from public duties, may become fatiguing when circumstances deprive us of other companions. He had written much, and his love of literature was ardent. But the subjects of his writings were his own adventures; he ence. * Cayley's Life, vol. ii. p. 85. his mind. friends. mer occupat, ns. Ambition. CHAP. VI. had been, as he himself expressed it, "a soldier, a seacaptain, and a courtier,” he might have added, an active politician at home, an envoy to foreign courts, a discoverer of new countries, a planter of colonies; and, though now fifty-one, his constitution both of mind and body were uncommonly strong and vigorous. Ambition, against which he had written so eloquently when death was near, began to beat high when he saw himself once more restored to hope. He trusted that, if liberated, his services might yet procure pardon; and his inventive mind was occupied with schemes to recommend himself to his sovereign, and by which he might ultimately obtain restoration to his fortunes. Contented spirit. Chemical In the mean time it became necessary to reconcile himself to the change in his situation; and he did so with his accustomed manly and cheerful disposition. He began his History of the World,—that great work which will be as permanent as the English language,— he amused himself in transforming a small house in the Tower garden into a laboratory. There he carried on his chemical experiments, and, as we read in one of Sir experiments. William Wade's Letters, "spent all the day in distillations." His efforts were unremitting to arrange his affairs, which had fallen into disorder from his late troubles. By his attainder his moveable estate was forfeited; but through the favour of the king, who, at the commencement of his imprisonment, seems to have treated him with lenity, it was consigned to trustees appointed by himself for the benefit of his family and creditors.* The lieuten- Unfortunately, Wade, the Lieutenant of the Tower, was a creature of Cecil, and of course nowise disposed to grant his prisoner any particular indulgence; but for a considerable period he lived as comfortably as was compatible with the loss of freedom. Between his family, his books, his experiments, and the occasional visits of his friends, time glided on in progressive knowledge and content ant. * Rymer's Fœdera, vol. xvi. p. 569. enemies. king. ment.* But this bright season was soon destined to be CHAP. VI. overclouded. His enemies, not contented with the evil Renewed they had already brought upon him, renewed their efforts efforts of his to complete his ruin; and unhappily the king's mind was of that weak and capricious cast which received an easy bias from interested persons. The first indication of change seems to have been conveyed to him when James sent for the seal of the high public offices he had held under Elizabeth, as warden of the Stanneries, cap- Letter to the tain of her guard, and governor of Jersey. This he immediately returned, accompanied by a letter, in which he strongly protested his innocence, and besought the king for a favourable consideration of his case. "If," said he, "I be here restrained till the powers both of my body and mind shall be so enfeebled, as I cannot hope to do your majesty some acceptable and extraordinary service, whereby I may truly approve my faith and intentions to my sovereign, Lord God doth know that then it had been happiest for me to have died long since."+ So Fresh little impression was made by this affecting appeal, that it was followed by a far more severe blow. His estate of Sherborne, which, in his prosperous days, he had taken so much delight in improving, had been settled by him, in the close of Elizabeth's reign, on his eldest son, and the king, notwithstanding his attainder, had granted him a liferent interest in it. The conveyance of this property was now scrutinized with eyes sharpened by avarice and malignity. The deed was referred for examination to the same chief-justice who sat on the trial; and this dignitary decided that, from the clerk having omitted some words, it was invalid. Robert Carr, the king's new favourite, afterwards the notorious Earl of Somerset, was *Sir John Harrington's Brief View of the State of the Church of England, pp. 93, 94. + See the letter, printed for the first time from the original in the State-paper Office, by Mrs Thomson, Appendix, letter R. Raleigh's seal I had the good fortune to meet with in the collection of ancient seals made by an ingenious artist in Edinburgh, Mr Laing. He had taken an impression from a cast, communicated to him by Mr Cayley; and a fac-simile of it has been engraved for the title-page of this work. cruelties. Cruel spoliation. CHAP. VI. easily persuaded to take advantage of this legal flaw, and to solicit the estate; and so infatuated was James's attachment to this weak courtier, that Raleigh, from the moment he heard the circumstances, knew he had only to expect spoliation. This, however, did not prevent him from attempting to avert the calamity by a letter of remonstrance to the favourite: It is written in a tone of manly expostulation. Expostulation with Carr. SIR,-After some great losses and many years' sorrows (of both which I have cause to fear I was mistaken in the end), it is come to my knowledge that yourself, whom I know not but by an honourable fame, hath been persuaded to give me and mine our last fatal blow, by obtaining from his majesty the inheritance of my children and nephews, lost in the law for want of a word. Sad position. This done, there remaineth nothing with me but the name of life; despoiled of all else but the title and sorrow thereof. His majesty, whom I never offended (for I hold it unnatural and unmanlike to hate goodness), stayed me at the grave's brink, not, as I hope, that he thought me worthy of many deaths, and to behold all mine cast out of the world with myself; but as a king who, judging the poor in truth, hath received a promise from God that his throne shall be established for ever. Contrast of their conditions. Favour for "And for yourself, sir, seeing your fair day is but now in the dawn, and mine drawn to the evening, your own virtues and the king's grace assuring you of many favours and much honour, I beseech you not to begin your first building upon the ruins of the innocent, and that their sorrows with mine may not attend your first plantation. I have been ever bound to your nation, as well for many other graces as for the true report of my trial to the king's majesty, against whom, had I been found malignant, the hearing of my cause would not have changed enemies into friends, malice into compassion, and the minds of the greatest number then present into the commiseration of mine estate. It is not the nature of foul treason to beget such fair passions; neither could |