Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/346

282 Stukeley to continue to counterfeit friendship with Raleigh, to assist him in his meditated escape, and only to arrest him at the last moment; and to bring this attempt as one more charge against Raleigh. So Stukeley continued to insinuate himself into the confidence of his cousin, and endeavoured by all means in his power to wheedle out of him such papers as might afford evidence of his designs and might serve to help to bring him to the scaffold. On his arrival in town, Raleigh was conducted to his own house in Broad Street. There he was revisited by Le Clerc, who repeated his former offers. The next morning Sir Walter got into a boat attended by Stukeley, all smiles, and the honest King; and, as prearranged, he was arrested at Woolwich and at once lodged in the Tower. On 29 October, 1618, Raleigh's head fell under the executioner's axe. He was a victim to Spanish resentment and to James's meanness in offering him as a sacrifice to curry favour with Spain. Gardiner says Raleigh was executed "nominally in accordance with the sentence delivered in 1603; in reality because he had failed to secure the gold of which James was in need. The real crime was the King's, who had sent him out without first defining the limits of Spanish sovereignty." The writer of the notice of Sir Lewis Stukeley in the Dictionary of National Biography takes a lenient view of Stukeley's conduct. "Stukeley certainly gave hostile, not necessarily false evidence against Raleigh. He seems to have been a harsh, narrow-minded, and vulgar man, glad to have his cousin in his power, to revenge himself on him for the pecuniary loss his own father had entertained." Gardiner says: "Stukeley seems to have thought it no shame to act as a spy upon