Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/91

] moment that they were on the water, the quick eye of Raleigh noticed a wherry which kept steadily in their wake; and the tide failing, it was judged useless to proceed to Gravesend. They went, therefore, into Greenwich; the wherry also lay to there, and Sir Walter found himself immediately arrested by the traitor Stukeley, whose men were in the wherry. King also was arrested, and Sir Walter was, the next morning, conveyed to the Tower. The French envoy was forbidden the court, and soon after ordered to quit the country.

The answer from the king of Spain did not arrive for five weeks, which was, that in his opinion the punishment of Raleigh's offences should take place where his commission—which he had violated—was issued. It was, therefore, necessary to bring him to trial in London. Meantime, he had been subjected to close and repeated interrogations before a commission appointed for the purpose, composed of lord chancellor Bacon, the archbishop of Canterbury, Sir Edward Coke, and several other members of council. He was charged with having imposed upon the king, by representing that his object was to discover a gold mine, when he only wanted to get out of prison and commence pirate; that he had endeavoured to provoke a war with Spain; that he had barbarously deserted his ships' companies, and pushed them into unnecessary danger; that he had ridiculed and maligned the king; had feigned madness to deceive his majesty; and attempted to escape in defiance of his authority.

Raleigh denied the charge of treating the name of the king disrespectfully; asserted that nothing proved his sincerity in expecting to reach mines so completely, as his having expending two thousand pounds in the necessary apparatus for refining the ore; and he had never exposed his men to any danger that he did not share himself, except when illness incapacitated him; and that as to feigning madness and trying to escape, the charges were true, but they were, under the circumstances, perfectly natural and pardonable.

The commissioners, finding that they could establish no real charge against him of sufficient gravity to implicate his life, resorted to the usual stratagem of government in those times, as well as in times long after—to set a spy upon him under the colour of a friend. The individual who accepted this dirty office—such villains are always plentifully at hand—was one Sir Thomas Wilson, keeper of the State Paper Office. He appeared to be hit upon because he had as much learning and ingenuity as he had little principle, and could therefore easily draw out Raleigh to talk by assuming a kindly interest in him. Sir Walter appeared to talk freely, and related his adventures, and also what daily took place before the commission; yet this government pump could bring up nothing very criminating. Raleigh declared that had he fallen in with one of the Spanish galleons, he would have seized it with the same freedom that Drake had done: but his mere intention to do what had won so much fame and favour for other commanders, was not a charge likely to go down with the public. Raleigh remarked that-when he made that avowal before the commission. Bacon said, "Why, you would have been a pirate!" And that he had replied, "Oh, my lord, did you ever know of any that were pirates for millions? They that work for small things are pirates."

Finding that there was nothing in Raleigh's proceedings on this occasion, which had not been done, and far more than done, with high public approbation, by the greatest commanders of the British navy, they dared not attempt to condemn him on that score, and therefore James demanded of his council what other mode they could suggest to take his life. Coke and Bacon proposed that they should fall back simply on the plea of his old sentence, and the king sent an order for his execution to the Tower. The judges, therefore, received an order to issue a warrant for his immediate beheading, but they wisely shrunk back from such a responsibility, declaring that after such a lapse of time neither a writ of privy seal, nor a warrant under the great seal, would be legal without calling on the party to show cause against it. They accordingly summoned him before them by habeas corpus, and Raleigh, who was suffering from fever and ague, real enough this time, was the next day brought before them at the King's Bench, Westminster. Yelverton, the attorney-general, reminded the court that Sir Walter had been sentenced to death for high treason, fifteen years before. That the king, in his clemency, had deferred the execution of the prisoner, but now deemed it necessary to call for it. He observed that Sir Walter had been a statesman, and a man who, in respect to his talents, was to be pitied. That he had been as a star at which the world had gazed; but "stars," he continued, "may fall; nay, they must fall when they trouble the spheres wherein they abide." He called, therefore, at the command of his majesty, for their order for his execution. On being asked what he had to say against it, Raleigh replied that the judgment given against him so many years ago could not with any reason be brought against him then, for he had since borne his majesty's commission, which was equivalent to a pardon; and that no other charge was made against him. The chief-justice told him that this pleading would not avail him; that in cases of treason nothing but a pardon in express words was sufficient. Raleigh then said, if that were the case, he could only throw himself on the king's mercy; but that he was certain that, had the king not been afresh exasperated against him, he might have lived a thousand years, if nature enabled him, without hearing anything more of the old sentence.

Montague, the chief -justice, admitted this by saying that "new offences had stirred up his majesty's justice to revive what the law had formerly decreed;" and he ended with the fatal words—"Execution is granted."

Thus Raleigh was in reality put to death to oblige the king of Spain, with whom James was anxious to form an alliance by his son's marriage to the Infata. The old sentence was but the staging-horse for the occasion, the court not daring to allege as the real charge that he died for having invaded the territories of the king of Spain; the public having a strong repugnance to both Spain and any matrimonial alliance with it, which must introduce a popish queen, and would have gloried in any real chastisement of that nation, and the capture of its treasure ships.

Sir Walter then prayed for a short time to settle some matters of worldly trust, assuring the court that he desired not to prolong his life one minute; "for now," he said,