Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life and Legend 9781472599940, 9781441112095

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During his lifetime, and ever since, Sir Walter’s surname has been spelt in many different ways.The authors have chosen, and have followed consistently, the spelling preferred by Ralegh himself throughout most of his life.The title of the book, however, recognizes a spelling preferred by many modern popular sources on both sides of the Atlantic.

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List of Illustrations

Plates Between pages 174 and 175 1.

Sir Walter Ralegh by Nicholas Hilliard, circa 1585. Images © National Portrait Gallery, London. NPG 4106.

2.

Sir Walter Ralegh and his son Walter (Wat), 1602. Images © National Portrait Gallery, London. NPG 3914.

3.

Sir Walter Ralegh.The Cadiz Portrait, circa 1598. Attrib.William Segar (fl. by 1589, d. 1633). Oil on Canvas. 109 × 84cm. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland. Photo © National Gallery of Ireland. NGI 281.

4.

Lady Ralegh, née Elizabeth Throckmorton. English School, 1603. Oil on Canvas. 112 × 86cm. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Ireland. Photo © National Gallery of Ireland. NGI 282.

5.

Queen Elizabeth by George Gower. The Armada Portrait. Images © National Portrait Gallery, London. NPG 541.

6.

Sir Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, by John de Critz Images © National Portrait Gallery, London. NPG 107.

7.

Sir Walter Ralegh, Chart of Guiana, 1595/6. © The British Library Board. Add. MS. 17940.

8.

John White, Map of the East Coast of America, 1585/6. © The Trustees of the British Museum. No. 1906. 0509. 1.3.

9.

John White, Watercolour of the town of Secoton, 1585/6. © The Trustees of the British Museum. No. 1906. 0509. 1.7.

10.

John White, Watercolour of Indian woman with her daughter. © The Trustees of the British Museum. No. 1906. 0509. 1.13.

11.

Theodor de Bry, Ralegh’s Meeting with Topiawari, 1598 © The British Library Board. No. 068622.

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L I S T O F I L L U S T R AT I O N S

12.

Sherborne Lodge: a reconstruction by J. H. P. Gibb, 1988. © Sherborne Castle Estates, courtesy of Mr John Wingfield Digby.

13.

Haiward and Gascoyne, The Liberties of the Tower of London, 1597. © The Society of Antiquaries of London.

14.

J. E. Millais, ‘The Boyhood of Ralegh’, oil painting, 1870. Tate London 2010.

15.

The Frontispiece to Ralegh’s History of the World, 1614. St John’s College F.7.4. By courtesy of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge.

16.

The first page of Ralegh’s The Ocean to Scinthia in Ralegh’s hand. Hatfield House MS 144/240. By courtesy of the Marquess of Salisbury.

17.

The Captain of the Guard at the Queen’s funeral, 1603. Somerset Record Office DD/SAS/C1193/28. By kind permission of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society.

18.

The Sir Walter Raleigh Lager. Advertisement for the Apex Brewery Co. of North Carolina. Raleigh Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina. Reproduced by kind permission of Tracy and Eric Zothner. Maps

The North Atlantic

xiv

The Caribbean

xv

Ralegh’s Virginia

xvi

Guiana

xvii

Southern England and Ireland

xviii

Preface Why write another biography of Sir Walter Ralegh?1 We have often been asked that question and part of our reply must be that we wrote it because we wanted to understand this man, who was soldier, voyager, visionary, courtier, politician, poet, historian, patriot and ‘traitor’. There are more specific reasons. We are both students of Elizabethan and Jacobean history and feel that we are well placed to understand the world in which Ralegh lived and died, in particular his friendships and alliances with prominent courtiers and the procedures of the law-courts that condemned him. A great volume of research has appeared in the last twenty years on Elizabethan and Jacobean politics, and the context of his public career is now much better understood. While many valuable critical works have been devoted to his writings, we believe that most biographers have paid too little attention to them. Much can be learned from Ralegh’s prose and his poetry about his ideas, personality, feelings and values. Important new texts of his works have recently been published: we now possess reliable versions of his poems, his letters and his travel narratives. Finally, we believe that no biography of Ralegh can be complete without an assessment of his posthumous reputation. The myths that accumulated around him tell us something about the man himself, but far more about the perceptions of his own and subsequent generations. In the course of writing this book we have incurred many debts and wish particularly to thank the Duke of Northumberland, for permission to quote from the library and archival collections at Alnwick Castle; the Marquess of Salisbury, for permission to quote from the archives and papers at Hatfield House; Mr J. Wingfield Digby, for permission to quote from manuscripts at Sherborne Castle; Robert Anthony, Curator of the North Carolina Collection and the staff at the Wilson Library, Chapel Hill; and staff at the National Archives, the British Library and the Bodleian Library. We greatly appreciate the advice and guidance given at various times by Dr Bruce Barker-Benfield, Dr Anna Beer, Dr Allen Boyer, Dr Stephen Clucas, Professor Pauline Croft, Dr Tom Freeman, Miss Barbara Hird, Ms Deborah 1 For an admirable list of books and articles on Ralegh, see C. M. Armitage, Sir Walter Ralegh: an annotated bibliography (Chapel Hill, NC, 1987).

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P R E FAC E

Hodder, Miss Lebame Houston,The Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge, Miss Sara-May Mallett, Mr Simon Murray, Dr Will Poole, Dr N. S. Popper, Dr Colin Shrimpton, Mrs Ann Smith, Professor Larry Tise, Mr Brett Usher, Dr Linda Washington, Dr Vivienne Westbrook, Professor Alan White, Mr John Williams and the participants in the Spenser and Raleigh Conference, University of East Carolina, April 2008, and the Tower of London Seminar on Ralegh in January 2009. Penry Williams wishes to thank his partner Sylvia Platt for her constant support during the writing of this book and for reading and commenting on the entire text in typescript.

Abbreviations APC BL BL, Add. BL, Harley BL, Lansdowne BL, Sloane CSPD EHR HMC HMC, Salisbury

HW

Latham, Poems Letters of Chamberlain Letters of Ralegh ODNB Quinn, Roanoke Rudick, Poems TNA SP 12 SP 14 SP 63 Works of Ralegh

Acts of the Privy Council of England, eds J. R. Dasent et al., London, 1890–1964 British Library British Library, Additional Manuscripts British Library, Harleian Manuscripts British Library, Lansdowne Manuscripts British Library, Sloane Manuscripts Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series English Historical Review Historical Manuscripts Commission HMC, Calendar of the manuscripts of the most honourable the Marquess of Salisbury . . . preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire (London, 1883–1976) Sir Walter Ralegh, The History of the World. Since there are many editions of the History, references are given by book, chapter and section, rather than by pages. However, references to the preface, which is not divided into chapters and sections, are given by signatures of the 1614 edn A. Latham (ed.), The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh (London, 1951) N. E. McClure (ed.), The Letters of John Chamberlain (Philadelphia, 1939) A. Latham and J. Youings (eds), The Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh (Exeter, 1999) The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography D. B. Quinn (ed.), The Roanoke Voyages, 1584 –1590 (2 vols, Hakluyt Soc., London, 1955) M. Rudick (ed.), The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: a historical edition (Tempe, AZ, 1999) The National Archives State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth I State Papers, Domestic, James I State Papers, Ireland W. Oldys and T. Birch (eds),The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt (8 vols, Oxford, 1829)

Plymouth

Ferrol Azores

Cadiz

Roanoake Bermuda

Madeira Canary Islands

The Bahamas Puerto Rico

Cuba Hispaniola

Cape Verde Is

Lesser Antilles Trinidad

The North Atlantic

Ba l anne

ha

Florid

m

a Ch

a

Isl

an

ds

Cuba

Hispaniola Jamaica

CARIBBEAN SEA

Puerto Rico Guadeloupe Dominica

Margarita Cumaná Trinidad

The Caribbean

eake

ssap

Che Bay

R.

Chesepian

Ch

ow

Albemarle Sound

an

Port Ferdinando R. Roanoke

Roanoake Island d

un

o oS

Secotan

ic ml

Pa

Croatoan

Cape St John (C. Haterask) Wococon

Ralegh’s Virginia

Margarita

San Jose Gulf of Paria

Cumaná

TRINIDAD The S

erpen

ina

sem

R.

Ca

ron

i

R. Orinoco

Guiana

a ru ) pu a Ti ac R. um (C

Caroni Falls

R. C u

o am an o) M an R. (Am

Morequito’s Port (San Thomé)

t’s M

outh

Orinoco Delta

Cork Smerwick

Youghal Kinsale

LONDON

Sherborne Plymouth

0

Miles

ExeterEast Budleigh (Hayes Barton)

Jersey 100

Southern England and Ireland

Winchester

1

The Devon Man

Stand whoso list upon the slipper top Of court’s estates, and let me here rejoice And use me quiet without let or stop, Unknown in court that hath such brackish joys. Sir Thomas Wyatt, Epigrams, no. xlix

If you want a quiet and contented life keep away from the royal Court, counselled Thomas Wyatt. Considering the corruption, immorality and danger he encountered there – he was twice imprisoned in the Tower under Henry VIII – his advice simply put a personal gloss on a widely acknowledged truth. Yet Wyatt continued to frequent the Court, and so did most ambitious men of his day. They could not keep away. Matters were not much different under Elizabeth I. Edmund Spenser might warn of the ways of the Court: [I]t is no sort of life For shepheard fit to lead in that same place, Where each one seeks with malice and with strife, To thrust downe other into foule disgrace, Himselfe to raise: and he doth soonest rise That best can handle his deceitfull wit, In subtil shifts, and finest sleights devise.1

But like Wyatt he knew that fortunes awaited those capable of subtlety and deceit. For Spenser and countless others the Court was the source of fame, honour and reputation. A successful career there brought titles, grants of office, lands and leases. For many, to retire from Court was to retire from life. In this book we consider the recipient of Spenser’s poem, a courtier who took on these challenges, reached the slipper[y] top and fell disastrously; but who has nevertheless lived on in public memory across four centuries. We 1 E. Spenser, ‘Colin Clouts Come Home Againe’, ll. 688–94, in Poetical Works, eds J. C. Smith and E. de Selincourt (Oxford, 1912), pp. 535–45.

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consider the intricacies of a life well lived, and also the still more complex structures of reputation and renown. 1554 witnessed novelty and upheaval. In Mary I, elder daughter of Henry VIII, England had its first truly sovereign Queen, governing the country from its capital city with the support of nearly the entire political nation.The year also witnessed religious realignment, and conspiracies among the disaffected. Rebels marched on London, prompting a display of great courage from Mary, the execution of another Queen, the unfortunate Jane Grey, and the imprisonment in the Tower of London of a young princess who, four years later, would succeed to the English throne in her turn. It also brought into this world one of that future Queen’s most interesting, most talented and most charismatic subjects. Walter Ralegh was born at Hayes, near East Budleigh, Devon, the second son and third surviving child of Walter Ralegh and his wife Katherine (née Champernowne).The Raleghs were an old-established county family, traced with a degree of confidence back to Sir Wymund Ralegh, a Devonshire landowner who died in 1258.Though they need to be treated with caution, some studies test the antiquity of the line still further, tracing a descent from Sir Hugh Rawley, or de Ralegh, who was sheriff of Devonshire from 1160 to 1167.2 The name is thought to be taken from the hamlet close to Barnstaple, in the north of the county. Walter’s grandfather, another Wymund, was the ward of Sir Richard Edgcumbe of Cotehele, and in due course he married Richard’s daughter Elizabeth.Wymund’s son and heir, Walter, was born in 1505 and was thus still a young child at his father’s death in 1512. Some attempt seems to have been made to conceal the minority from the Court of Wards in faraway London, but the attempt failed, and the Court granted his wardship, along with four Devonshire manors held in trust for the young man by his uncle Sir Piers Edgcumbe and other trustees, to a favoured courtier, Sir Nicholas Vaux.The Ralegh estate was worth such attention, but only just. There were landholdings, probably all leased out, in Withycombe Raleigh and Colaton Raleigh.3 There was not a great deal more. Walter Ralegh senior moved to Hayes Barton from his father’s home at Fardel, near Ivybridge, on the expiry of his wardship in 1526.4 He took up 2 T. N. Brushfield, Raleghana (Plymouth, 1896–1907), iii, pp. 8–10. 3 J. Youings, Ralegh’s Country: the south west of England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Raleigh, NC, 1986), pp. 1–2. 4 On Ralegh senior see M. J. G. Stanford and M. W. Turner, ‘The Raleghs, father and son’, in J.Youings (ed.), Ralegh in Exeter, 1985: privateering and colonisation in the reign of Elizabeth I (Exeter, 1985), pp. 91–104, at 91–5.

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the remnant of a lease on the ‘Barton of Powreshayes’, renewing for eighty years, or for the lives of himself and his son John, in 1551.5 A late sixteenthcentury farm stands today in this lonely spot, dipped in the gently rolling, green Devon countryside on the southern edge of Woodbury Common, but, as Joyce Youings points out, Walter junior was born in an earlier building, perhaps a ‘long, low medieval house with shuttered, unglazed windows’.6 That is the fact of the matter. Nevertheless, the antiquity of a Tudor house exercises the imagination: an old tradition in Hayes Barton, with as little justification as most legends of this sort, for long identified a particular bedroom as the birthplace. As might be expected the room faces south, towards the sea.7 The Ralegh pedigree is complicated, but worth pursuing in an attempt to understand a child’s place in his Tudor world. Walter Ralegh senior married three times. About his first wife, Joan Drake, little is known. The daughter of John Drake of Ash, she lies buried in the nave of East Budleigh church, the lettering on her gravestone curiously reversed. No one now seems to know why. According to Michael Stanford, the Drakes were minor gentry, with some family members prospering as merchants in Exeter and Exmouth. Perhaps Ralegh married rather below his own station. It seems likely that Joan, the mother of George (1527–97) and John (d. 1588), died in 1530, or soon after. She is now only a shadow on the page, but still less is known about Walter’s second wife, identified vaguely as ‘a daughter of Darrell of London’, or rather more plausibly as Elizabeth de Ponte, the daughter of a Genoese merchant resident in England.8 The only surviving daughter of this union, Mary, married Hugh Snedall of Exeter in 1563.9 Katherine Champernowne was, therefore, the third wife. The couple were cousins of a sort, for Walter’s grandfather and namesake had also married a Katherine Champernowne some seventy years earlier. On this occasion there was no suggestion that the husband had chosen a wife beneath his own station. Katherine, indeed, was from a rather more elevated stratum of the Devon gentry, the widow of Otho (or Otes) Gilbert of Compton Castle near Newton Abbot, and the mother of three sons from her first marriage. Her marriage to Walter Ralegh 5 Brushfield, Raleghana, i, pp. 4–7. 6 J.Youings, ‘Raleigh’s Devon’, in H. G. Jones (ed.), Ralegh and Quinn: the explorer and his Boswell (Chapel Hill, 1987), p. 69. 7 W. Stebbing, Sir Walter Ralegh: a biography (Oxford, 1891), p. 6. 8 Brushfield, Raleghana, i, pp. 8–10; J. Roberts, ‘The second marriage of Walter Rawley’, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries 34:1 (1978), 11–13. 9 Brushfield, Raleghana, i, p. 19.

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also produced an older boy, Carew, and a daughter, Margaret or Margery, who grew up to marry first one Lawrence Radford, and subsequently George Hall, of Exeter. It is not known for certain whether Margaret was older or younger than Walter junior, such is the murk that obscures so many details in a minor gentleman’s pedigree. So far as anyone now can tell, Walter and Katherine were a well-matched pair. Walter Ralegh senior lived the life of a well-to-do country gentleman, carrying the obligations that normally fell to his class. In 1543 he was called upon to raise men for Henry VIII’s campaign in France, itself an indication that he was a figure of stature in county society.10 In his own footnote to national history, Walter shares some blame for igniting the South-Western Rebellion, a dangerous revolt against the religious and economic policies of King Edward VI’s uncle and Lord Protector the Duke of Somerset, which broke out during the summer of 1549. According to John Hooker, a young eyewitness to many of the bloody events that year, Ralegh travelled down the road to Exeter during Whit Week. Near Clyst St Mary he rode past an old woman, making her way to Mass, and telling her beads. Denouncing what he regarded as superstition, Ralegh insisted that ‘there was a punyshemente by the law apoynted agaynste her and all suche as woulde not obeye and folowe the same and which woulde bee putt in execution vpon theime’. Annoyed and somewhat alarmed, the old woman conferred with her fellow parishioners, many of them disturbed by the recent introduction of the new Edwardian Prayer Book. Clearly she had a way with words herself, for the villagers, enraged at her treatment, took to the street, set fire to a local mill, and came after Ralegh with murder in their hearts. Prudently, he fled the scene.11 Later in the rebellion Ralegh was imprisoned in the tower of St Sidwell’s Church, apparently for his religious beliefs, during the month-long siege of Exeter. There is something of the son’s opportunism in the father’s subsequent actions.When the siege was raised, Ralegh and two fellow prisoners, finding themselves no longer guarded, appropriated many of the church ornaments, including a cope of fine cloth, worth twenty marks. The parish subsequently set about recovering its property, but Ralegh argued – perhaps with some justification – that he was owed a return for his treatment. He responded to demands for restoration of the cope by telling the court that ‘yf it were not cut already for the sparmer of a bed they should have it’; here 10 Stanford and Turner, ‘The Raleghs, father and son’, p. 93. 11 E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: traditional religion in England c.1400–c.1580 (London, 1992), pp. 467–8.

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there is a taste of his son’s bravado.12 In the end, however, Ralegh restored what he had taken, which is more than can be said for some other prisoners who also pilfered valuables from churches and civic buildings at that turbulent moment in Exeter’s history.13 In 1554 Ralegh assisted Sir Peter Carew, who had tried and failed to raise a rebellion in Devon against the Queen, to escape in one of his barks. Carew, however, was a charismatic, larger-than-life fellow, the sort of man who could persuade and cajole, and Stanford speculates that this perilous act might have arisen from friendship as much as through religious conviction.14 Whatever the motivation, this was an isolated gesture of dissent in one who proved broadly loyal to the regime, and English monarchs seized upon loyalty wherever they found it. Ralegh was acting Vice-Admiral in Devon under Mary, and sat in that Queen’s last parliament as a member for Wareham, Dorset. After the accession of Queen Elizabeth and the establishment of a more congenial protestant regime – if one mindful of his earlier trimming – he was churchwarden of East Budleigh in 1561.15 There are suggestions that Ralegh was accumulating wealth, benefitting from trade and investment. He was numbered among the many gentlemen who put money into privateering expeditions during the 1540s and 1550s, and Admiralty records reveal that he owned or co-owned several merchant ships and privateering vessels, even though the precise details are now lost in the gaps within the series of Exeter customs records.16 The tithes of fish at Sidmouth were leased to Ralegh and two of his sons from 1560 to 1578.17 In later life, he and his wife lived in Exeter, in a house ‘adjoyning to the Palace-gate’, a place that another false legend later associated with his youngest son’s birthplace. He had paid £4 to become a freeman of Exeter in 1555, and obviously enjoyed long and close associations with the city.18 Walter and his wife may have moved from Hayes to be near several members of Katherine’s family; Brushfield notes that a number of Gilberts lived in Exeter. Alternatively, as Raleigh Trevelyan suggests, Hayes Barton may no longer have measured up to the aspirations of the family. The son and heir 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 488–9. Stanford and Turner, ‘The Raleghs, father and son’, p. 94. Ibid. Brushfield, Raleghana, i, p. 4. M. J. G. Stanford, ‘The Raleghs take to the sea’, Mariner’s Mirror 48 (1962), 18–35. Brushfield, Raleghana, i, p. 4. Youings, ‘Raleigh’s Devon’, p. 72.

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John and his wife might have been looking for something more prestigious.19 A third possibility is that this represents an economy measure: gentlemen living in towns were not expected to maintain so large a household staff, and old age might have been more comfortable in an urban setting.20 Once again, we must guess at motives. Walter Ralegh died in February 1581, at the end of the long years of Elizabethan peace, and he lies buried alongside Katherine in the church of St Mary Major, Exeter.21 As for Katherine, her reformed beliefs are evident in a story that Foxe tells in his Actes and Monuments, the so-called Book of Martyrs. Recounting events leading to the execution of Agnes Prest in Exeter, Foxe states that Prest was visited during her imprisonment by ‘a certayne worthy gentlewoman, the wife of one Walter Rauley, a woman of noble wit and of a good and godly opinion’.Visitor and visited found that they agreed on many articles of faith, the strengths of Prest’s conviction making a great impression. ‘As sone as she came home to her husband,’ Mistress Ralegh declared that ‘in her life she never heard a woman (of such simplicity to see to) talke so godly, so perfectly, so sincerely, and so earnestly; insomuch that if God were not with her, she could not speake such thinges; to the which I am not able to aunswere her (sayd she) who can read and she cannot.’22 Of course, Foxe set out to emphasize the virtues and fortitude of his ‘martyrs’, but the degree of independence, the honest candour of words spoken by wife to husband, and the conviction behind those words, all suggest the strength of Katherine’s protestant beliefs, a robust character and a sound marriage. Katherine outlived Walter by some thirteen years. She made her will in April 1594, and probably died shortly thereafter.23 Her children by her marriage to Otho Gilbert included the noted mariner and soldier Humphrey Gilbert, whose adventurous career greatly influenced the young Ralegh. Another son, John Gilbert (d. 1596), administered his mother’s estate. John’s nephew, heir and namesake was knighted at the attack on Cadiz. This Sir John Gilbert later joined Ralegh in privateering ventures (which were the cause of occasional disputes between them) and stood by Sir Walter when he was a prisoner in the Tower. He died in 1608. 19 20 21 22

Brushfield, Raleghana, i, p. 23; R. Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh (London, 2002), p. 8. Youings, ‘Raleigh’s Devon’, p. 73. Brushfield, Raleghana, i, p. 21. John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London, 1570), p. 2,251. The details of Ralegh’s wife were added to the account of Prest’s martyrdom in the 1570 second edition of the book. We are indebted to Dr Tom Freeman for this information. 23 Brushfield, Raleghana, i, p. 22, where the will is printed in full.

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The younger Walter Ralegh derived no particular advantage from his descent.Though of respectable stock, he was the product of a third marriage and a second, the youngest of four sons to his father and five sons to his mother. Our knowledge of his early life suffers accordingly from the neglect that heralds and genealogists too often accord the humdrum younger child, the son who does not inherit his father’s estate, and who has to make his own way in life. While 1554 is now widely accepted, even his date of birth is a matter of ongoing debate. No surviving parish register enlightens us.24 Ralegh’s boyhood is a profound mystery, the surviving clues frustratingly random. Local traditions in east Devon assert that he was taught by the vicar of East Budleigh, and that he attended the new school at Ottery St Mary. Both seem plausible enough.Yet no one really knows how Ralegh came to acquire the formidable erudition displayed in later years. Brushfield, in so many words, suggests that he owed everything to his mother’s genes and to her tuition; here was proof of the adage that able men have able mothers.25 He may have a point: Katherine’s sons by Otho Gilbert do after all show something of the same brilliance. But bright children also have to work hard if they are to succeed in the world, and Ralegh could never be faulted for want of effort. He toiled intellectually as well as physically. Robert Naunton, a perceptive contemporary not particularly well disposed towards his subject, may give a lead when he recalled that Ralegh was ‘an indefatigable Reader, whether by Sea or Land, and none of the least observers both of men, and the times’.26 The much-quoted seventeenth-century biographer John Aubrey writes much later that Ralegh would always pack a ‘Trunke of Bookes’ when he sailed on a long voyage.27 Ralegh was also concerned that others should have the benefit of reading, and in about 1603 donated £50 to the new Bodleian Library in Oxford for the purchase of books. The library had established a fund raising scheme under which donors gave money and the librarian chose books which were then embossed on the binding with 24 A. M. C. Latham, ‘A birth-date for Sir Walter Ralegh’, Etudes anglaises 9 (1956), 243–5 argues persuasively for 1554, but Brushfield (Raleghana, i, p. 27) favoured 1552, while another eminent Ralegh scholar, Pierre Lefranc, remained convinced that Ralegh was born considerably earlier: ‘La date du mariage de Sir Walter Ralegh: un document inédit’, Etudes Anglaises 9 (1956), 193–211. 25 Brushfield, Raleghana, i, p. 27. 26 R. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, or, observations on the late Queen Elizabeth (London, 1641), p. 31. 27 O. L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives (London, 1949), p. 254; see also Hatfield House, Salisbury-Cecil papers, MS 102/84, Cecil to Sir George Harvey, 20 December 1603.

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the arms of the donor.28 It seems that he fell into the habit of assembling commonplace books, either his own or the work of others. Clue after clue suggests that he never stopped reading, but in early life it is hard to know what he read, and what impression those books made.29 So far as can be made out from the meagre clues, including one or two asides in his The History of the World, Ralegh served as a volunteer in France from 1569 with the Huguenot armies during the interminable Wars of Religion that blighted French history in the later sixteenth century.According to William Camden’s Annals, Ralegh rode as ‘a very young man’ with his cousin Henry Champernowne’s troop of English gentleman volunteers, while John Hooker, who knew Ralegh in youth, records that his friend and patron’s early years were full of ‘warres and martiall services’.30 Ralegh was young – very young – to serve as a soldier, even by the standards of the time. Campaigning took him across northern and south-western France, the barbarities and valour he witnessed making a deep impression.This was civil war, a bitter confessional and regional conflict, short on glory, short on rewards.‘By it’, as the old soldier wrote later, ‘no nation is bettered.’31 Working from other comments in Ralegh’s History, many insist that he tasted defeat at the battles of Jarnac and Moncontour. In fact, Ralegh only wrote that the Protestants, to his own knowledge, did ‘greatly bewail’ the loss of their leader Condé after Jarnac; he does not quite claim that he had been present on the field.32 About Moncontour, on 3 October 1569, there is no such ambiguity. Ralegh recalled how Lodowick of Nassau’s competent retreat had ‘saved the one half of the Protestant Army, then broken and disbanded; of which my self was an

28 We owe this information to the kindness of Dr Bruce Barker-Benfield. 29 See the interesting insights in B. Schmidt, ‘Reading Ralegh’s America: texts, books, and readers in the early modern Atlantic world’, in P. C. Mancall (ed.), The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624 (Chapel Hill, 2007), pp. 454–88. 30 W. Camden, Annals, or, the historie of the most renowned and victorious princesse Elizabeth (London, 1635), p. 117. R. B. Manning, Swordsmen: the martial ethos in the three kingdoms (Oxford, 2003), p. 109. The first and second volumes of Chronicles: comprising 1. The description and historie of England, 2.The description and historie of Ireland, 3.The description and historie of Scotland/first collected and published by Raphaell Holinshed,William Harrison, and others (London, 1586–7),‘epistle dedicatorie’ by Hooker, addressed to Ralegh and dated 12 October 1586. 31 Quoted from The History of the World in Stanford and Turner, ‘The Raleghs, father and son’, p. 98. 32 HW, Book 5, Chapter 2, Section 3.

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eye-witness, and was one of them that had cause to thank him for it’.33 This was a sharp lesson in the realities of warfare, a lesson never forgotten. It appears that Ralegh returned to England after the Peace of St Germain was concluded in 1570. There are some, taking for absolute truth a flattering dedication written by Richard Hakluyt for his edition of René de Laudonnière’s history of French expeditions to Florida, who argue that he may have combined a military career in France with his studies in Oxford, commuting back and forth as the pattern of term and vacation permitted. Hakluyt defers to Ralegh’s superior experience of France and to his better understanding of the French language, but since he was addressing his remarks to a royal favourite at the height of his career, these effusions need not necessarily be taken at face value.34 Like so many other details at this stage in his life, the date of Ralegh’s matriculation from Oriel College, Oxford remains uncertain. He probably went up to the University in 1572.35 The very fact of his admission suggests that he was already marked out as the bright child of the family: perhaps thought was given to a career in the Church, or the Law. Though never the poor scholar, his means were necessarily rather limited, as his parents had other children to consider. At best he would have lived on an allowance, which is never an easy thing for a young man. Aubrey picked up a story told by Thomas Child of Worcestershire that Ralegh, pressed for money, ‘borrowed a Gowne of him when he was at Oxford . . . which he never restored, nor money for it’.36 In stories such as this one begins to see an opportunist, persuasive, slightly ruthless nature. Francis Bacon, in his Apophthegms, preserves another nice tale about a timid Oxford student who was also a skilful archer: ‘He was abused grossly by another, and moaned himself to Walter Ralegh, then a scholar, and asked his advice; What he should do to repair the wrong had been offered him?’ Ralegh, with more than a touch of impatience and sarcasm, suggested that his friend should challenge the abuser to ‘a match of shooting’.37 This passed for wit in the sixteenth-century 33 HW, Book 5, Chapter 2, Section 8. 34 A notable historie containing foure voyages made by certaine French captaynes unto Florida/ written all, saving the last, by Monsieur Laudonnier . . .; newly translated out of French into English by R. H. (London, 1587). 35 Brushfield, Raleghana, i, pp. 26–7. J. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: early series (Oxford, 1891–2), p. 1,230, which cautiously favours 1568. 36 Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, p. 253 37 J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis and D. D. Heath (eds), The Works of Francis Bacon (London, 1857–74), vii, p. 163.

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University. Ralegh may not have taken a degree away from Oxford, but he retained the Ciceronian prose style then favoured at the Universities all through life, even as it became increasingly outmoded. He was not alone in that. So too did John Milton two generations later.38 After University came an education in the essentials of English law. This pattern, already well enough established among men of means and ability, was to become ever more common during the next half-century. Ralegh was admitted to the Middle Temple in February 1575.39 The administrator and JP, Sir Stephen Powle, an Oxford contemporary, is said to have shared his lodgings.40 Naunton sees a restlessness in these years, suggesting that Ralegh’s forays to Oxford and to the Middle Temple were ‘rather excursions than sieges or sitting down’. As a younger son, Naunton argues, Ralegh ‘foresaw his own destiny that he was first to roule (through want and disability, to subsist otherwayes) before he could come to a repose, and as the stone doth by long lying, gather mosse’. Certainly this stone seems to have rolled with a purpose, but it was a long traverse. Ralegh’s eventual prosperity was not down to birth or luck. Rather, it was hard won, ‘per ardua’. Naunton also observed in the Ralegh of more mature years a wit, a judgement, a ‘plausable tongue’, and a supreme capacity to ‘draw vertue out of necessity’.41 The few clues suggest that these traits had already developed, early in life. Now there are initial glimpses of other talents. Ralegh’s first published poem appeared in 1576, as a commendatory verse in George Gascoigne’s satirical glance into The Steele Glas. It is not particularly good poetry, but everyone has to start somewhere. Swete were the sauce, would please ech kind of tast, The life likewise, were pure that never swerved, For spyteful tongs, in cankred stomackes plaste, Deeme worst of things, which best (percase) deserved: But what for that? this medcine may suffyse, To scorne the rest, and seke to please the wise.

38 See S. W. May, Sir Walter Ralegh (Boston, 1989), p. 130. 39 H. A. C. Sturgess (ed.), Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple (London, 1949), i, p. 39, where he is described as ‘late of Lyons Inne’, one of the Inns of Chancery. 40 See V. F. Stern, Sir Stephen Powle of Court and Country (Selinsgrove, PA, 1992), and ODNB. 41 Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, pp. 30–1.

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In this he is still ‘Walter Rawely of the Middle Temple’.42 By 1577, however, he has changed lodging, and is living at Islington, ‘about a bow’s shot on this side the church’.43 While various stories again identify several old buildings in that corner of London as Ralegh’s house, it is likely that his dwelling, later the Pied Bull public house, was demolished early in the nineteenth century.44 Other legends inevitably suggest that he smoked his first pipe here – but Ralegh’s biographer encounters many such tales.45 At this point his reasons for remaining in the capital become clear.When entering bond for one of his servants summoned to answer charges that December, Ralegh is described as ‘de curia’ – of the Court.46 There is no hint of any attraction to a profession or calling, unless it is to the magnet of political power at Westminster. If Ralegh was indeed ‘of the Court’ by 1577, his precise association with that vast, amorphous and rapidly changing organism remains obscure.47 The tag reflects both aspiration and reality. His mother’s elder sister, Katherine Astley, had been Elizabeth’s governess from 1547, and had retained the Queen’s particular trust until her death in 1565. This connection may have provided him with an initial introduction – the Queen would hardly have ignored Astley’s nephew – but it was perhaps through Humphrey Gilbert’s means that Ralegh first met leading courtiers, including the Queen’s Secretary Sir Francis Walsingham and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Gilbert seems to have been something of a guiding star or role-model to his younger half-brother. They had in common a quick tongue, a quicker temper and a brisk ambition that attracted and repelled in equal measure. As a Colonel in Munster during the Fitzmaurice rebellion of 1569, Gilbert had captured twenty-three castles, slaughtering all who resisted.48 His methods are starkly described by the pamphleteer and poet, Thomas Churchyard. After a battle, Churchyard tells us, Gilbert ordered the heads of all those killed to be cut from their bodies, brought to his encampment and laid on the ground, so that no one could come near without passing through a lane of heads. According to Churchyard, this brought ‘greate terrour to the people when 42 43 44 45 46 47

Rudick, Poems, p. 1. Brushfield, Raleghana, v, pp.10–11. Ibid. See P. Ackroyd, London: the biography (London, 2001), pp. 364, 528. Brushfield, Raleghana, v, p. 11. For a handy description of the Court see D. Loades, The Tudor Court (Oxford, 2003), and in more condensed form, D. Loades, Intrigue and Treason: the Tudor court 1547–1558 (Harlow, 2004), pp. 303–8. 48 C. Falls, Elizabeth’s Irish Wars (London, 1950), p. 106.

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they saw the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke and friends, lye on the grounde before their faces’.49 Yet Gilbert could shed his bloodlust once out of Ireland. He was learned and intelligent, well read in the classics, and had proposed the foundation of an academy in London for the education of the Queen’s wards and other young gentlemen in scientific and practical matters. Gilbert had also long been interested in Atlantic exploration and had even published a treatise, A Discourse of a discoverie for a new passage to Cataia [Cathay], on the subject. In June 1578, he secured a patent for six years to discover ‘such remote, heathen and barbarous landes . . . not actually possessed of any Christian prince . . . and to have hould occupie and enjoye them’. Four months later he had assembled a fleet of eleven ships and 500 men. Ralegh sailed in this fleet as captain of the Falcon, a vessel of 100 tons, carrying seven gentlemen and about sixty mariners and soldiers. Simon Fernandez, an experienced Portuguese navigator familiar with the American coastline, set out with him as master mariner, and perhaps in some measure as a ‘minder’ too. In this family venture Carew Ralegh also played his part, as captain of another vessel, the Hope of Greneway. Their cousins, Edward Denny and George Carew, were among the volunteers. To this day the precise purpose of Gilbert’s expedition remains obscure, but his ambitions were in any case frustrated by the usual Elizabethan blend of storms, mischance, quarrels with a second-in-command and desertions. Then Gilbert himself was sent to guard the Irish coast against a landing by the rebel James Fitzmaurice. As it turned out, Fitzmaurice succeeded in putting ashore on the Dingle Peninsula in south-west Ireland, with important consequences for Ralegh’s later career.50 The Falcon, however, pressed on into the Atlantic, braving winter weather in a vain search for plunder and adventure. Precise details of failure are never simple to reconstruct. Hooker, in the extension to Holinshed’s Chronicles, tells us that Ralegh,‘desirous to doo somewhat worthie of honor tooke his course for the west Indies’, but found himself short of victuals when he reached the Cape Verde Islands and was forced to return home. ‘In this viage’, writes Hooker, ‘he passed manie dangerous adventures, as well by tempests as fights on the sea.’ Elsewhere Hooker talks of many of the company being slain and the ships being ‘battered and disabled’. Despite the upbeat prose, it all seems rather grim and ill-starred. Ralegh eventually ‘arrived safelie at Plimouth in 49 Quoted in N. Canny, The Elizabethan Conquest of Ireland (Hassocks, 1976), p. 122. 50 See below, p. 14.

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the west countrie in Maie next following’.51 Hooker comments that while this experience might have discouraged another man from any further ‘sea attempts’, Ralegh ‘did not give over’. Be that as it may, he always hesitated thereafter to sail into the open Atlantic. Soon after Ralegh’s return to England, he and Humphrey Gilbert were under investigation by the Privy Council for acts of piracy nearer home. A Spanish ship carrying oranges and lemons had been captured by their associates and taken to Torbay, where the goods were being sold. The incident is obscure and, as so often in Ralegh’s early career, the outcome is unknown.52 For the rest of 1579 Ralegh disappears from view, evidently spending much of his time in London, probably around the royal Court. He emerges in a dubious light early in 1580 when he received three commands to appear before the Privy Council for brawling, once with Sir Thomas Perrot and then with Edward Wingfield ‘besides the tennis courte in Westminster’, a common site for brawls and insults. All three men were briefly imprisoned and instructed to give surety for their good behaviour.53 This does not seem to have hindered Ralegh’s rise at Court, for around that time he was promoted Extraordinary Esquire of the Body to the Queen.54 In July 1580 came a more active role. He was commissioned by Lord Grey de Wilton, newly appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland to levy one hundred Londoners for service in Ireland.55 Some thirty days later they arrived in Cork where Ralegh established his base. His first task was to sit in commission with Warham St Leger, Provost Marshal of Munster, to try the younger brother of the Earl of Desmond, Sir James Fitzgerald, on a charge of treason. Inevitably Sir James was found guilty and in spite of pleading that he should be beheaded was sentenced to hanging, drawing and quartering. It was said that Ralegh’s men played a part in cutting up his body into small pieces. One source reports that Fitzgerald died a fervent Catholic, but Hooker merely comments that ‘thus the pestilent hydra hath lost another of his heads’.56 51 J. Hooker, in extension to Holinshed, Chronicles (London, 1587), iii, p. 1369; Hooker, dedication of his translation of Giraldus Cambrensis to Ralegh, in Chronicles (1587), ii, sig. A3–3v; D. B. Quinn (ed.), The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (London, 1940), i, pp. 236–7. 52 APC, 1578–80, pp. 109, 142–3, 146–7. Below, Chapter Three, on the later story of Ralegh’s privateering. 53 APC, 1579–80, pp. 384, 388, 421–2. 54 Lefranc, Ralegh, p. 29; Latham, ‘A birth-date for Sir Walter Ralegh’. 55 APC, 1580–1, pp. 96–7, 100. 56 Quoted in R. Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors (London, 1890), iii, p. 56.

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Ralegh then left Cork to join the force assembled by Grey against renewed rebellion in the south-west.The ‘arch traitor’, James Fitzmaurice, had brought with him to Ireland two papal proclamations against Elizabeth as well as the distinguished Jesuit theologian, Dr Nicholas Sanders. Fitzmaurice was killed shortly after the landing and Sanders died later of dysentery. Leadership of the revolt was taken over by Sir John of Desmond, brother of the Earl. Matters got worse for the government when rebellion broke out in the Pale, the area under Crown control around Dublin, under the leadership of a young Catholic peer, James Eustace, Viscount Baltinglass; and in September 1580, as we have seen, a force of Spanish, Italian and Irish mercenaries landed at Smerwick, near Dingle, and began to strengthen the earthworks set up earlier by Fitzmaurice. The fort, known as the Dun an Oir or Golden Fort, was not an ideal spot for opening a campaign. Sir William Pelham, the Lord Justice of Ireland, described it as ‘a vain toy, and of little importance’. No man, he claimed, could hide from shots fired from the adjoining hill.57 On a fine day this is one of the most beautiful places in the British Isles, its bay ringed by steep cliffs above the sea, with Mount Brandon towering, topped by cloud, across the bay. But in October and November the mercenaries are not likely to have appreciated the scenery. There was only a narrow pass through the mountains to the east, which could easily be blocked by Grey’s forces. Without control of the sea the garrison was trapped, crammed into a tiny promontory measuring 26 by 16 metres, joined to the mainland by a narrow and dangerous sheep-track, and lacking a water supply. Even if 300 of the original 600 had already returned to Spain, as reported by Sir Richard Bingham, it is hard to see how they could have stayed within the flimsy turf walls of the fort and defended themselves there. Ralegh joined Lord Grey, who was marching to Smerwick with 600 foot and 200 horse, awaiting a larger force under the Earl of Ormond and ships under Admiral Winter. In the extended second edition of Ralph Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587) the editor, John Hooker, recounts a story about Ralegh’s conduct on the march. Knowing that after an army left camp in the morning, Irish foot soldiers had a habit of looting what they could find, Ralegh stayed behind at a camp near Tralee with his company and prepared an ambush. As he expected, some Irishmen appeared, one of them carrying a bundle of ‘withies’, or willow branches. Ralegh asked him what they were for, to which the man unwisely replied that they would be used ‘to hang up English 57 Calendar of Carew Manuscripts, 1575–88, eds J. S. Brewer and W. Bullen (London, 1868), p. 268.

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churls’. ‘Is it so (quothe the capteine) well they shall now serve for an Irish kerne’, and hanged him with one of his own withies. Hooker was an Exeter man, and Ralegh the most likely source of his story.58 Winter’s ships reached Smerwick on 5 November and eight culverins were landed from them. On 7 November Grey opened the bombardment. Three days later a white flag was shown from the fort; a parley was requested and granted, and an Italian camp-master appeared. Grey asked who they were and who had sent them, and was told that they were mostly Italians, with some Spaniards and a few Irish, and that they had been sent by the Pope. On 11 November the garrison commander, Colonel Sebastiano di San Giuseppi, came out with about a dozen officers and asked to be allowed to leave the fort after laying down their arms. Grey, according to his own account, refused to make any promises and insisted on unconditional surrender, on the grounds that the invaders were not commissioned by a sovereign power and the Pope’s authority was invalid. They were not therefore protected by the law of arms: ‘at my handes’, wrote Grey, ‘no condition of composition they were to expecte, other then that simply they should render me the forte, and yield theyr selves to my will for lyfe or death.’ The Colonel clung to Grey’s knees and begged to be allowed to spend that night in the fort and then ‘all should be putt in my handes’. This was allowed and next morning ‘trayling their ensignes rolled up’, the Colonel came out with ten or twelve officers, who handed over the fort and their lives. Grey sent in some officers to supervise the surrender of the soldiers’ arms and the guarding of munitions and victuals. ‘Then’, writes Grey, ‘putt I in certeyne bandes, who straight fell to execution.’ This task was said by Hooker to have been supervised by Ralegh and one Captain Humfrey Mackworth. Except for the officers, who were allowed to live for the sake of their ransoms, all the mercenaries were slaughtered by the sword. Their interpreter, Oliver Plunket, and a few other Irishmen were hanged after having their legs broken. Some pregnant women were also killed, apparently on the grounds that they must have had intercourse with the enemy, although there can scarcely have been enough time for that to have become apparent.59 The dead have now been given a moving and handsome memorial in the form of a limestone slab carved by the sculptor 58 J. Hooker, Description and Chronicles of Ireland (1587), part of Hooker’s extension to Holinshed’s Chronicles, pp. 170–1. See fn. 30 and Bibliography, sub. The first and second volumes. 59 E. Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland, ed. W. L. Renwick (Oxford, 1970), pp. 214–15.

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Cliodhna Cussen, bearing the heads of decapitated men. At the back is a simple inscription in Irish: In remembrance, Dun an Oir, November 1580.60 Edmund Spenser, present at the negotiations, but not of course free from prejudice, reported that the Lord Deputy had specifically told the Italian Colonel that ‘they could not justly plead either custom of war or law of nations, for that they were not any lawful enemies’.61 San Giuseppi’s account of events is not very different from Grey’s and Spenser’s. He writes that after a few days suffering under the English bombardment, the officers held a council and resolved to treat for terms. Grey replied that terms would only be granted ‘at his discretion’.The Colonel claimed that he would let himself be cut into pieces before surrendering, but in the event he gave in, blaming his Irish allies for giving no help and criticizing his own troops, who, he said, were Biscay men, ‘the most useless for soldiering that ever I saw’.62 Grey’s reputation as a man of honour was badly tarnished. Graja fides, the faith of Grey became a synonym for perfidy in Ireland. Several accounts, among them the despatch of Bernadino de Mendoza, Spanish ambassador in London, to Philip II insisted that Grey had, in fact, promised the garrison life if they surrendered. Others put the blame on Oliver Plunket, the interpreter, who, they said, deliberately mistranslated the exchange in order to persuade San Giuseppi against surrender.63 Much is obscure about these events. Why did the garrison surrender so quickly after only four days bombardment? After all, reinforcements were expected and might well have arrived shortly. Why did San Giuseppi accept that Grey had offered no quarter, and having done so, why did he lay down arms with no attempt at resistance? The surrender may have been the result of thirst as much as military considerations. The Colonel and the officers may – this is speculation – have had a secret promise from Grey that their lives would be spared for ransom. The negotiations, after all, took place through an interpreter in English, Italian and Spanish at a moment of tension and confusion. This hardly made for clarity. Queen Elizabeth is said by Camden to have disapproved of the massacre, but there is no contemporary evidence for this.The only criticism she 60 Curiously, there is nothing to tell the visitor what happened there – only a metal notice forbidding her/him to cause any damage. 61 Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland, p. 108 62 Ibid., p. 216. 63 CSP Span., III, 1580–6, pp. 69–70; C. P. Meehan (trans.), The Rise, Increase and Exit of the Geraldines (Dublin, 1878), p. 91; J. O’Donovan (ed.) Annals of the Four Masters (Dublin, 1856), pp. 1,739–43.

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made at the time was that the officers, the principals at the scene, should not have got away with their lives when the lower ranks suffered death, and more to the point, the decision should have been hers to make, not Grey’s. After his account of the massacre, Hooker reported on more of Ralegh’s exploits in a degree of detail which can only have come from Ralegh himself. In February 1581 Ralegh told Walsingham of an encounter with John FitzEdmund FitzGerald, Seneschal of Imokilly, a leading associate of the Geraldines. In doing so he remarked that ‘the manner of myne own behovior I leve to the report of others’.64 Hooker obliged him in this six years later, with a judiciously expanded account of the incident in his extension to Holinshed’s Chronicles.The Seneschal, Hooker tells us, had planned to ambush Ralegh at Ballinacorra Ford between Youghal and Cork, on his way back from a meeting in Dublin, when the latter had with him only three horsemen and four shot, against sixty foot soldiers and fourteen horsemen with the Seneschal. After Ralegh had crossed the ford, one of his men, Henry Moyle, fell from his horse and called for help; Ralegh rode back and rescued him, only to see him fall from his horse again. Once again, Ralegh came to the rescue, and then stood his ground, waiting for the rest of his troop to catch up. Although the odds were twenty to one in his favour, the Seneschal did not dare to attack him.65 Shortly after this, at a meeting with the Earl of Ormond, Governor of Cork, Ralegh – never one to let well alone – accused the Seneschal of cowardice. One of the latter’s men said that although he had been cowardly at the time, he would not be so again. Even so, when a challenge was issued by Ralegh’s men, it was again refused by the ‘rebels’. At the end of the summer, however, when Ralegh was at Cork, he heard that David Barry, of Barryscourt, near Cork, was nearby with a large company. Ralegh once more issued a challenge, which was declined. Later on, however, seeing a company of foot soldiers, he charged them with six horsemen.They resisted; Ralegh’s own horse was badly wounded, and he himself was put into some danger. Eventually, he overcame his enemies, several ‘rebels’ were killed and two taken prisoner to Cork. Hooker’s final story involved the capture of Lord Roche of Bally, whose castle lay twenty miles or so from Cork. Ralegh was ordered to bring Roche to the town for questioning about his supposed dealings with the enemy.The Seneschal and David Barry laid a trap for him, arranging to ambush him on 64 Letters of Ralegh, p. 3. 65 Hooker, Description and Chronicles of Ireland, p. 173.

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his way to Roche’s castle. Ralegh was made aware of this, but ‘by devices and means . . . by little and little’ got into the castle with all his men, ordering each of them ‘to come into the hall with his peece well prepared with two bullets’. When Roche saw this he was ‘amazed and stricken at the hart with feare’, but played for time and courteously invited Ralegh to have dinner with him. Ralegh accepted and told Roche that he must come to Cork that night. Under threat of force Roche gave in and was marched through a dire and tempestuous night to the city. ‘The dark night, which was cumbersome to themselves, was a shadow to shrowd them from their enimies’, says Hooker. According to him, the citizens of Cork were astonished and admiring at this outcome, having supposed that Ralegh could never have escaped.66 Hooker could not have given Ralegh a better press in his account of Irish affairs in these years. He is presented as a prime player in the ‘pacification’ of Ireland rather than one among several fighting captains of the English companies; and he thus secured a form of immortality for his daring in the most widely read chronicle of the time. However, more important than these tales of ‘derring-do’ are Ralegh’s personal projects in Ireland and his ideas about the government of the country. For younger sons like Walter, Ireland was an opportunity state, and a captaincy in Elizabeth’s army was a promising route to benefiting from its opportunities. The army was more like a collection of franchises than a unified body with a single command structure. There were no intermediate commands between the head of the state – Lord Deputy or Lord Justice – and individual captains, who thus had a great deal of independence: they were well placed to secure posts in the local administration or the lordships of rebels.67 Ralegh’s eye lighted particularly on the lands of the Barry family, whose head, Viscount Barrymore, was imprisoned in Dublin Castle under suspicion of treason. On Barrymore’s death in gaol in April 1581, his heir David Fitzjames Barry went into rebellion, and was duly proclaimed traitor in May. This was Ralegh’s chance: he secured from Grey a promise of the Keepership of Barryscourt, just east of Cork, and of the Great Island in Cork Harbour.68 According to his own account in a letter to Walsingham, he forbore to take possession of the castle until the arrival of the Earl of Ormond, 66 Ibid., pp. 173–4. 67 C. Brady, ‘The captains’ games’, in T. Bartlett and K. Jeffery (eds), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 136–60; N. Canny,‘Ralegh’s Ireland’, in H. G. Jones (ed.), Raleigh and Quinn: the explorer and his Boswell (Chapel Hill, 1987), pp. 87–101. 68 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 5–7.

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not wanting to encroach on the latter’s authority as Lord General of Munster. He suspected, rightly as it turned out, that Ormond was determined that the lands of rebels should go to ‘loyal Irish’ and not to English swordsmen. Confirmation of his suspicions eventually led Ralegh into a passionate attack upon Ormond, who had, he said, achieved nothing during his two years in this post. In fact, he claimed, ‘there ar at this instant a thowsand traytors more then ther were the first day’. Why, he asked, was the good service of Sir Humphrey Gilbert not considered? He had ended a serious rebellion with only a third of the troops now in Ireland, and the Irish were more frightened of him than of anyone else. Ralegh finished his letter with an unconvincing protest of humility, claiming that he only wanted to serve the Queen and would willingly surrender his commission and obey her without pay. He followed this with a request that he be allowed to keep Barryscourt and the Great Island.69 In May he returned to his attack on Ormond, who had, he wrote, failed in any way to curb the villainies of the Barrys. The defences of the Island had been spoiled and decayed, allowing the ‘traitors’ to receive the supplies they needed. Ralegh was prepared to repair it and defend it for the Queen, but had been told that Ormond intended to hand it over to another when he had done so. Rather contradicting his earlier offer to serve without pay, he ended with a proposal to levy another 100 men from the country around.70 In August 1581, after only a year in Ireland, Ralegh wrote to Leicester complaining that the Earl had forgotten him, but that he would still serve him ‘as any man you may cummande’. Were it not that Grey was a follower of Leicester he would disdain his place ‘as miche as to keap sheepe’.71 His cousin Antony Denny had similarly complained about service in Irish bogs, describing them to Walsingham as better suited to mastiffs than brave gentlemen desiring honour.72 While Irish service was attractive to many who hoped only for a modest revenue, it was less so for those with greater pretensions, like Ralegh and Denny, who looked to the Court for higher honours and rewards. Following the success at Smerwick, Elizabeth’s government sensed victory and sought to economize. A total of 3,300 men were withdrawn from the English forces. In December 1581 Ralegh was sent to London to carry 69 70 71 72

Ibid. Ibid., pp. 8–10. Ibid., pp. 10–11. ODNB; N. Canny, Making Ireland British (Oxford, 2001), pp. 73–7.

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dispatches from Ireland, and on New Year’s Day 1582 Burghley informed Grey that the Queen was determined to reduce the cost of garrisons. He mentioned also that Ralegh had advised the Queen against laying the cost of 200 soldiers on Ormond’s tenants.73 Ralegh must have suggested more than this, for ten days later Grey wrote a furious letter to Burghley, complaining that Ralegh’s plan might seem ‘plausible’ to the Queen and lead her to think that he himself had not looked carefully into the matter. In fact, he wrote, he had discussed Ralegh’s plan with the Council in Dublin, which saw many ‘inconveniences and impossibilities in the accomplishment therof ’.74 By the spring, Grey’s personal relations with Ralegh had further deteriorated. ‘For myne owne parte I must be playne’, he wrote to Walsingham, ‘I nether lyke his carriage nor company.’75 One can understand why. Ralegh, a recent arrival in Ireland, had links with the Court and was evidently ready to exploit them. He was arrogant, ambitious, brave and intelligent. Understandably and probably correctly, Grey suspected intrigue at Court, and, although Elizabeth insisted that she objected only to the cost of his proposed garrisons, he was not reassured and left Ireland in the summer of 1582. Compared with Grey’s proposals for ever more severe terror and an extensive system of garrisons, Ralegh sought a more pacific approach, based upon the support of Irish warlords, including Ormond. It is not clear why Ralegh turned to Ormond: possibly growing hostility between Grey and himself led him to look to the other major power-broker in Munster; possibly he was guided by the ties of Court faction in London. Recognizing that the Queen objected to the high cost of Grey’s proposed garrisons, Ralegh suggested that men who had sided with Desmond from fear of the Earl’s retribution, could be enticed to the English cause with pardons and offers of secure tenures for their properties. It was essential, he argued, that no hope of pardon be offered to Desmond himself, since otherwise it would be impossible to detach his adherents. Once that was done, Ireland could be held by a reduced number of garrisons. But, he warned, soldiers must be paid properly, for without that they would oppress the people with taxes and pillage, driving them again into rebellion.76 Initially the reduction of garrisons led to the recruitment of more men to the rebel cause, but within a year the Crown’s policy was 73 74 75 76

HMC, Salisbury, ii, p. 498. TNA, SP 63/88/12. TNA, SP 63/92/10. TNA, SP 63/96/30, 31; Pope Hennessy, Ralegh in Ireland, pp. 226–32; R. Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, iii, p. 101.

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gaining ground. John of Desmond had already been captured and killed in January 1582 and in the following year the Earl himself was caught on the run and murdered. The rebellion was at an end and the ground had been cleared, literally, for planting English settlers. In the longer term the problem of ruling Ireland remained acute, but given a Queen and a Lord Treasurer determined to rule on the cheap, Ralegh’s solution was probably sensible.77 Furthermore, his preference for quiet diplomacy rather than a purely military solution reveals a surprising side to his character. He was not averse to violence and cannot be called a patient man; yet here he was thoughtful and pragmatic, contrasting sharply with his friend Spenser, a Protestant ideologue who favoured all-out conquest.78

77 Contrast the view in P. E. J. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars: war, government and society in Tudor England (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 109–10. 78 On Spenser, see B. Bradshaw, ‘Edmund Spenser on justice and mercy’ in T. Dunne (ed.), The writer as witness, Historical Studies 16 (Cork, 1987), 76–89. C. Brady, ‘Spenser’s Irish crisis’, Past and Present 111 (1986), 17–49; N. Canny, Making Ireland British, ch. 1.

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2

The Favourite

In public life, the roots of advancement are frequently elusive. Attempts to chart or measure the establishment of an Elizabethan favourite all too often end in frustration in a fruitless quest to identify a series of personal decisions taken by an inscrutable monarch. It is, however, evident that a favourite’s progress can assume a momentum of its own, once the fact of favour becomes apparent to others at Court. It is also clear that favour often follows a process of very careful political calculation.That was certainly the case with Ralegh. Access led to familiarity, familiarity led to an objective assessment of ability, and this assessment weighed the man’s capacity to undertake particular political or ceremonial tasks. Returning to Court in December 1581, carrying despatches from Grey, Ralegh was again the bearer of news, again a source of information for Queen, Council and the wider Court alike.1 News gave him his entrée, and now he was clearly speaking to and impressing influential people, closeted with the powerful figures around Elizabeth. How did he impress? Here the prevailing murk and the want of reliable contemporary analysis is such that Ralegh’s biographers turn out of necessity to the elegant simplifications of later generations. As so many romantic novelists and popular historians insist, a measure of physical attraction may well have helped his cause.2 John Aubrey reminds us that the Queen loved to have ‘proper men’ about her at Court, and Ralegh was as proper as they came.3 He was tall – at six feet rather taller than most of his contemporaries – dark-haired in youth, with somewhat pale and refined features: a high 1 W. Stebbing, Sir Walter Ralegh: a biography (Oxford, 1891), p. 21. See too S.W. May, ‘How Ralegh became a courtier’, John Donne Journal 27 (2008), 131–40. 2 We need not, however, stretch the interpretation too far, and give credence to salacious contemporary gossip that Elizabeth rewarded her favourites commensurate to their sexual prowess. R. P. Shephard, ‘Sexual rumours in English politics’, in J. Murray and K. Eisenbichler (eds), Desire and discipline: sex and sexuality in the premodern West (Toronto, 1996), pp. 101–22, at 103–4. On the complexities of favour at the Court see P. E. J. Hammer, ‘“Absolute and sovereign mistress of her grace”? Queen Elizabeth I and her favourites, 1581–1592’, in J. H. Elliott, and L. W. B. Brockliss (eds), The World of the Favourite (London, 1999), pp. 38–53. 3 O. L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives (London, 1949), p. 253.

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forehead and a long face. His beard ‘turnd up naturally’, always an advantage.4 Robert Naunton’s pen-picture is particularly convincing: [Ralegh] had in the outward man, a good presence, in a handsome and well compacted person, a strong naturall wit, and a better judgement, with a bold, and plausible tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage, and to these he had the adjuncts of some generall learning, which by diligence he enforced to a great augmentation, and perfection.5

His physical presence is indeed well documented, and it stands out in the lovely miniatures that survive from the mid- and late 1580s. But so too are Ralegh’s diligence, his aptitude for repartee and his passion to read and to learn. For all that we can tell, it was this magical brew that caught Elizabeth’s attention, and made her turn to Ralegh, time and again, for a comment, an aside or a thoughtful critique. Naunton, a contemporary trying like so many others to account for the fact that ‘he had gotten the Queen’s ear at a trice’, suggested that Elizabeth took ‘no slight mark of the man, and his parts’, that she held Ralegh ‘for a kinde of oracle, which nettled them all’.6 Every legend that surrounds his rise to favour places him in attendance on the Queen, close enough to talk to her, to play the faithful servant. He had already achieved the goal of any would-be courtier: an intimacy that had nothing to do with frolics in the bedchamber, and everything to do with personal confidence and public display. What legends they are! The well-worn tale of how Ralegh once spread his cloak over a ‘plashy place’, traditionally at Greenwich, so allowing the Queen to walk across, rests only on gossip recorded by Thomas Fuller, who was born at least twenty years after the event he describes. As Steven May points out, the story does not accord with the ways in which a Queen went about her business. With the threat of assassination so potent in the 1580s, royal walkabouts in the uncontrolled press of a crowd were deemed too risky.7 Nevertheless, here is history as it should have been, an imaginative illustration of a known truth. In the tale, the Queen rewards Ralegh with ‘many suits’

4 Ibid., p. 255. 5 R. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, or, observations on the late Queen Elizabeth (London, 1641), p. 31. 6 Ibid. 7 S. W. May, Sir Walter Ralegh (Boston, 1989), p. 6.

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in recompense for the one that he has cast down; adventure brings reward.8 Fuller is also responsible for another familiar story, in which Ralegh and his Queen compose couplets on a window pane. ‘Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall’, he is said to have begun, only for Elizabeth to respond with her usual, brisk challenge to a courtier’s masculinity:‘If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all’.9 Later versions of the story have the lines inscribed with the point of a diamond. That is quite a lot of scratching, and composition must have taxed the patience of both parties, but the story predates Fuller’s popular book, and seems to tap into a tradition that Ralegh, in the earliest days of his favour, might have been rather cautious, and even diffident.10 ‘At a trice’ overstates the case. Ralegh had of course figured on the periphery of the Court for several years; he was no youngster when he caught Elizabeth’s eye. When his opportunity came, that experience in the shadows may have proved an advantage. Even though the Queen’s great favourite Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was out of favour, following his marriage to the widowed Countess of Essex and the birth of his short-lived son and heir Lord Denbigh in 1580, competition was still very strong, and the fixed hierarchies within a Tudor Court always operated as a steadying factor. Sir Christopher Hatton, who had himself made a career and a fortune in the Queen’s service, was clearly envious, though how far his petulant displays of pique at Ralegh’s advancement represented the formalized discontent of an older favourite, rather than true jealousy, it is now very hard to tell. Neither Hatton nor the Earl of Oxford could have missed the significance of the selection when Ralegh, acting as Lord Burghley’s intermediary, sought the Queen’s forgiveness for Oxford’s latest indiscretion. Burghley’s choice would have wounded the aristocratic Oxford – would any nobleman have relished being beholden to an upstart like Ralegh? – and perhaps it was meant to wound.11 Recognition of this kind, from the pre-eminent Elizabethan statesman, demonstrated Ralegh’s new importance. During May 1583 Maurice Browne, agent in London for the Thynne family, noted Ralegh’s prominence, and 8 Roze Hentschell suggests that Ralegh’s gesture invited the Queen to step over an altogether broader puddle, the Atlantic Ocean, and to exploit the potential of the New World. See Hentschell, The Culture of Cloth in Early Modern England: textual constructions of a national identity (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 75–6. 9 T. Fuller, History of the worthies of England (1662), pp. 261–2. 10 See Rudick, Poems, p. lxii. In an earlier version of the 1630s, the lines are written ‘in the queens gardin’ (Rudick, Poems, p. 172). 11 See Letters of Ralegh, pp. 14–15.

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his consequent high spending. He was already a model of how to get on at Court. Since Thynne was involved in disputes with Ralegh’s brother Carew, Browne fretted about the powerful figures ranged against his friend and suggested that Thynne should play the Ralegh and strive to enhance his own image when coming to Court. Perhaps he might think about buying some smart new clothes!12 Sir Edward Hoby, marooned in Berwick, far from Court, was clearly alarmed by talk that Ralegh was actively taking Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s side in an ongoing dispute.13 Thomas Morgan, then in the pay of Mary Queen of Scots, also recognized a rising star when he saw one: Ralegh was, he wrote,‘the Quene’s dere miniont, who daylye groweth in creditt’.This might, he suggested, work to Mary’s advantage, for it seemed possible that Ralegh’s secretary, William Langharne, would prove a good, loyal, malleable Catholic.14 Unfortunately for Morgan, and for Mary, Langharne’s attachment to Catholicism proved ambivalent. Right from the start, it seems, religious ambiguity settled over Ralegh and his immediate circle. Courtly gestures and political lovemaking should never obscure the political realities on which favour was grounded. Everything was built on labour and a measure of diligence, and Ralegh, like any successful courtier, was always capable of hard work. Setting aside private reservations, he could also, when necessary, project an utter confidence in his own ability. Sometimes, that self-belief was interpreted as egotism and an excess of hubris. With Ralegh’s appointment as Lord Warden of the Stannaries and High Steward of the Duchy of Cornwall in the summer of 1585, Sir Anthony Bagot wrote a bitter letter to Burghley, denouncing the choice, and lamenting Ralegh’s ‘intolerable’ pride, ‘as the world knows’. A show of pride would never make such a courtier popular. ‘No man is more hated than him’, Bagot insisted, and ‘none cursed more daily by the poor.’15 Without doubt Ralegh was ‘damnably proud’, just as Aubrey says. Here is a charge encountered over and over again, through the next two decades. A favourite of the Queen does of course have reason to be proud – the fault, if such it is, can perhaps be excused. And if he was cursed by some, he was also admired by others, especially by a number of ladies at Court. Apocryphal as it is, Aubrey’s raw tale of how Ralegh pleasured a scarcely reluctant maid of honour, pinning her against the trunk of a convenient tree, 12 13 14 15

ODNB under Browne. HMC, Salisbury, iii, p. 73. HMC, Salisbury, iii, p. 97. Quoted in R. Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh (London, 2002), p. 91.

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gives a flavour of the man’s power, and, perhaps, his weakness.The girl’s token resistance is soon overcome. ‘Oh Sir Walter, will you undo me?’ swiftly gives way to ‘Nay, sweet Sir Walter’, and finally to a rhythmic, breathless, ‘Swisser Swatter’, as his attentions proceed.16 Ralegh’s posthumous reputation as a womanizer, however, is scarcely supported by the evidence. Aubrey goes out of the way to add that this was ‘his first Lady’, and while he seldom fails to make women swoon in the movies, no one in his lifetime depicts Ralegh as a serial seducer.17 Cool appraisal rather than hot ardour characterizes several tales told about him.18 The poem ‘Lady, farewell, whom I in silence serve’, according to one manuscript heading, is said to have been surreptitiously ‘put into my La[dy] Laitons Pocket’ by Ralegh, a gesture which seems to chime with a tradition that Ralegh was actually somewhat hesitant in his pursuit of the women about the Queen. But as to Love unknowne I have decreed, So spare to speake doth often spare to speed.19

His name is also linked, tenuously, to another lady of the bedchamber, Anne Vavasour, but Anne was pursued, sometimes fruitlessly, by many gentlemen at Court.20 Otherwise, Ralegh the ladies’ man is fashioned by later writers bent on adding superfluous colour to the historical record, and by the occasional verse attribution of seventeenth-century compilers. Even in this after-age, however, many writers and collectors emphasize diffidence as well as predatory lust.21 16 Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, pp. 255–6. William Oldys, Ralegh’s eighteenth-century biographer, concludes that the maid is Ralegh’s wife, Bess Throckmorton, and that this hanky-panky, ‘this matter of devirginating a maid of honour’, was the prelude to a happy and faithful married life! An author’s generosity of spirit is in this case not entirely without foundation. 17 Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, p. 255. 18 According to Francis Bacon, Ralegh regarded the ladies of the privy chamber and bedchamber as ‘witches; they could do hurt, but they could do no good’ (J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis and D. D. Heath (eds), The Works of Francis Bacon (London, 1857–74), vii, p. 129). 19 Rudick, Poems, pp. xxxviii-xxxix, 15; Laiton has been identified by May as Elizabeth Leighton (née Knollys), S. W. May, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: the poems and their contexts (Columbia, 1991), p. 117. 20 Rudick, Poems, p. xli. 21 Rudick, Poems, pp. lx-lxiii.

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Of course, such affairs as there were had to be kept decently hidden, given the source of Ralegh’s good fortune. The Queen always came first. Corresponding with his half-brother in March 1583, Ralegh sent Humphrey Gilbert, then about to set off on his ambitious final voyage to America, ‘a token from Her Majesty, an ancor guyded by a Lady . . . farther she cummandeth that yow leve your picture with mee’.22 Here again is a proof of success, a demonstration, this time in writing, of a treasured intimacy. There were many other demonstrations, in many other forms. On 27 December 1584 the Pomeranian traveller Leopold von Wedel, detailing a visit to the English court, catches just a measure of this theatre. Chatting with, or rather to, her courtiers, the Queen pointed ‘with her finger at [Ralegh’s] face, that there was a smut on it, and was going to wipe it off with her handkerchief; but before she could he wiped it off himself ’. Like every other bystander, von Wedel got the message. Here, he reflected, was a man who two years before could scarcely afford to keep a servant. Now, through the sole favour of the Queen, ‘he can keep five hundred’.23 Dependency, and the rewards that it might bring, were obvious to any educated observer.The complexities run deeper, however; is an element of symbiosis present too? As A. L. Rowse points out there was something about Ralegh’s personality, ‘daunting . . . fascinating but contingently antipathetic’, that fashioned a very specific and rather idiosyncratic relationship between subject and monarch. There was more of an age gap than with earlier favourites, Leicester and Hatton, and there was no settled pet nickname for Ralegh, a reliable token of regal trust.24 Elizabeth had marked the man down for advancement because it had pleased her to do so, and because she had seen certain political advantages in the arrangement. How far the personal then drew these decisions further is anybody’s guess. Events would prove that she could do without him. Tangible benefits soon began to accrue.The rewards that fall to a favourite evade precise measurement. We do not always pick up on the little gifts and benefits, except sometimes in stories focusing on the envy of others. The 22 Letters of Ralegh, p. 12. Maurice Browne, writing to John Thynne, describes the ‘Lady’ as a crowned queen, and the whole ‘token’ as set with rubies and diamonds. The back of the jewel carried an engraved inscription:‘tuemur sub sacra ancora’ (quoted in Trevelyan, Raleigh, p. 61). 23 V. von Klarwill (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and Some Foreigners (London, 1928), p. 336. 24 A. L. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons (London, 1962), p. 144.Though ‘Water’ comes and goes, while he is her ‘silly pugge’ in one well-known poetic exchange of the 1580s (Rudick, Poems, p. 20).

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Welsh soldier and author Sir Roger Williams, whose family background was not so very different, ground his teeth at a rival’s success. When Ralegh was presented with a gold chain in 1589, Williams asserted that he himself had done just as much for the state as this parasitic favourite. But men like Williams were never slow in advertising their own merits. The next year he told Lord Burghley, very bluntly: ‘I am one that deserves better reward.’25 More substantial, financial favours are easier to detect. In April 1583 Ralegh secured leases reverting to the Crown from All Souls, Oxford, selling them on without delay to guarantee the profit. That May, he received a patent for the sale of wine and the licensing of vintners, worth at a minimum £600 per annum, even allowing for his agent’s fees.This grant, renewed and refined over the next twenty years, established his fortune.26 The practical value of this ‘farm’ lay in the power Ralegh now enjoyed to charge vintners £1 a year to sell wines; import permits were also, theoretically, at his disposal. Many copies of licences issued in Ralegh’s name are preserved in the National Archives.27 A licence to export undyed woollen broadcloth, granted for a year in 1584 and confirmed in 1585, 1587 and 1589, was if anything still more lucrative. Even Burghley, who understood the worth of these things, at one point considered the resulting income excessive. In all these ways, a cash-strapped Crown, lacking any disposable land and coin, rewarded those it chose to advance. A great man at the Court needed a house measured to his status. In 1583, the Queen granted Ralegh a handsome London dwelling, Durham House on the Strand, one in a line of ‘palaces’ facing the Thames. The acquisition of this imposing property, in a particularly desirable riverside location close to the Court, underlined his new-found prominence. In fact, he shared the house with Sir Edward Darcy, but it was a big place, and Ralegh occupied the more prestigious higher floors. Visitors to Durham House wrote of its magnificence, recalling the splendour of its fabric and fittings. Of mid-thirteenth-century origin, the house had been added to and rebuilt by Thomas Hatfield, Bishop of Durham, one hundred years later. It had passed into royal hands in 1536, although Henry VIII’s first two Queens had already used it as temporary lodgings, further evidence of the prestige secured by its size 25 A. C. Miller, ‘Sir Roger Williams – a Welsh professional soldier’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, pt 1 (1972), 86–118. See also the article on Williams by David Trim in ODNB. 26 See Letters of Ralegh, pp. 43–4, 47–8. 27 T. N. Brushfield, Raleghana (Plymouth, 1896–1907), p. 5.

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and setting. In 1553 the house had seen the ill-fated marriage between Lady Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley, son of the Duke of Northumberland and brother of Elizabeth I’s future favourite, the Earl of Leicester. More recently, Elizabeth had used it to accommodate foreign ambassadors, and perhaps as temporary lodgings for noblemen on visits to the Court, though successive Bishops of Durham never quite gave up hope of recovering their predecessors’ property. These lingering expectations became significant in a decisive later phase of Ralegh’s career.28 Common sense dictated the layout: the main buildings ran to the south, with the outhouses and service quarters to the north, the two blocks separated by generous courtyards.York House stood to the west, while a pleasant garden and orchard on the eastern side of the property offered an elegant buffer against Ivy Lane and its popular river stairs.29 From the mid-1580s a close friend, the Earl of Northumberland, occupied a house in Ivy Lane when in the capital, and indeed much of London court society lived within an easy walk of Ralegh’s property. All this was highly satisfactory, but one feature proved particularly attractive. Durham House was blessed with a lantern tower or turret that had a ‘prospect which is [as] pleasant perhaps as any in the world’. Through the turret windows, Ralegh looked out on the bend of the Thames, eastwards to the City, with its cluster of church spires, the great block tower of St Paul’s, the fortress palace of the Tower of London and the solitary medieval bridge of many arches, and south to the Palace of Westminster, home of the law courts and also of Parliament during its occasional sessions. Aubrey credited the potency of a fine view: it enlarged ‘an ingeniose man’s thoughts’ he suggested, and certainly views were very important to Ralegh.30 He put the chamber to use as his study, and it is said that he later adapted an attic room at Sherborne for the same purpose. Durham House offered a stage well suited to the magnificence of a leading courtier, and Ralegh never once stinted on splendour when the means were to hand. His clothing was the subject of much comment, admiration and imitation. It was also the target for opportunistic theft: a ‘gentleman’, Hugh Pewe, pleaded guilty in 1584 to a charge that he had stolen ‘a jewel 28 Brushfield, Raleghana, v, pp. 5–10. 29 A 1626 plan of the house is reproduced in Brushfield, Raleghana, v. The same article copies a drawing of the river frontage by Hollar, from around the same time, which clearly shows the castellated medieval frontage, the water-gate, the high windows and the substantial, dense orchard. 30 Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, p. 254.

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worth eighty pounds, a hatt bande of pearls worth thirty pounds, and five yards of white silk called damaske worth three pounds’, all Ralegh’s property ‘at Westminster’. Theft on this scale was a felony, grand larceny, theoretically punishable by death, but Pewe, like many another Elizabethan criminal, pleaded benefit of clergy, reading or reciting the ‘neck verse’, and so escaped the gallows. The sheer scale of the finery, casually left lying around, is more telling than the fact that some fellow was tempted to make off with it.31 Here was another statement of favour, wealth and power. Ralegh knew too how to play for rewards, even though their accumulation bred hostility among competitors at Court and unpopularity among the ordinary citizens of London, who resented the rise of another acquisitive favourite. Sir John Harington relates how Ralegh, eager for the manor of Banwell, part of the Wells diocesan estate, told Elizabeth that the bishop, Thomas Godwin, had married for a second time. The Queen’s own views were quite clear: she did not think that bishops should marry at all. A second marriage demonstrated personal weakness, perhaps even insolence towards the sovereign. By alienating Elizabeth from her incontinent prelate, of course, Ralegh improved his own prospects of securing an advantageous lease. Harington’s story may be apocryphal but it shows rather well how a capable courtier set about his work, and it shows too that tales portraying Ralegh as a ‘slick operator’ were perfectly credible to contemporaries.32 The rewards of the 1580s amounted to largesse on a remarkable scale, but what political rationale underpinned such generosity towards a landless younger son? The answer becomes apparent when Ralegh’s personal abilities, his regional connections, and the present needs of government are considered side by side.Though now at the heart of Court, Ralegh remained the Devon man. John Aubrey’s slightly ambiguous assertion, based on conversations with the Cornish judge and politician Sir Thomas Malet, that Sir Walter spoke ‘broad Devonshire to his dying day’, surely points to an accent that stood out, even among the rounded vowels encountered at the Elizabethan Court.33 In July 1584, the new favourite tried to purchase his birthplace, ‘Hayes, a farme sumtyme in my fathers possession’, offering to give the owner Richard Duke 31 Brushfield, Raleghana, v, p. 10. Though little turns on the point, we assume that Westminster here refers to Durham House and not to the Court. Both readings are possible. 32 See B. Usher, ‘Queen Elizabeth and Mrs Bishop’, in S. Doran and T. S. Freeman (eds), The Myth of Elizabeth (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 206–7. 33 Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, p. 255.

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‘what so ever in your conscience yow shall deeme it worthe’.34 Ralegh still owned very little freehold property at that time, and the manoeuvre reads like a step towards establishing an estate in his own ‘country’.While Duke chose not to sell, many of the honours bestowed upon Ralegh by the Queen had a deliberate, regional slant. Confident in his administrative abilities, impressed by his willingness to work hard, Elizabeth was building her favourite up into a regional viceroy. Ralegh was granted the Rangership of Gillingham Forest, Dorset, in July 1584. Knighted on 6 January 1585, he became Lord Warden of the Stannaries, the semi-autonomous tin-mining jurisdictions, in June.35 After the death of Francis Russell, second Earl of Bedford, in July 1585, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall in September, and Vice-Admiral of the West in November that same year.The well-known Hilliard miniature was painted at around this time. It shows a gorgeous man, in gorgeous clothes. A man, perhaps, who has at last found his place in life. The lieutenancy has a particular significance, for the honour was almost exclusively confined to the peerage in late Elizabethan England after its reintroduction, as a temporary military expedient, during the 1580s.36 Here was the crucial appointment in Ralegh’s early career.Throughout the early 1580s, as Ralegh rose to favour, England was moving steadily towards war with Spain. Spain’s commitment to re-conquer the rebellious United Provinces placed perhaps the finest army in Europe – under the command of one of Europe’s most experienced generals, Alexander Farnese, from 1586 the Duke of Parma – just the other side of the Channel, while the assassination of the Dutch leader William the Silent in 1584 reminded the whole protestant nation that Elizabeth’s regime and the established religion depended on the life of a childless Queen. Many people in England, including many at Court, acknowledged the power of primogeniture, tacitly set aside the 1544 Succession Act and regarded Elizabeth’s cousin, the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, as next in line to the throne. A prisoner in England since 1568, Mary offered a ready alternative for discontented Catholics plotting Elizabeth’s death. These were anxious times. Ralegh’s new regional honours gave a trusted soldier, a proven workhorse, and a man unambiguously dependent upon the Queen for favour, military and political authority in an exposed, 34 Letters of Ralegh, p. 24. 35 He was knighted at Greenwich (W. A. Shaw, The Knights of England (London, 1906), ii, p. 83). 36 See, conveniently, the list of lords lieutenant, 1590 (HMC, Salisbury, iv, p. 14), and of lieutenants and muster masters, 1595, in Hatfield MS 37/13.

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vulnerable and independently-minded part of England, far from London. No one at Westminster could afford to take the south-west for granted. Little more than thirty years earlier, Devon and Cornwall had been convulsed by a particularly bloody rebellion against the rule of the Lord Protector, the Duke of Somerset. Fifty years before that, an army of Cornishmen had marched on London, discontented at the taxation imposed by Henry VII’s nervous and vulnerable government. What was true in the 1490s remained true in the 1580s.Were the Elizabethan government to neglect the region, a canny enemy might take advantage of its many natural harbours, and, perhaps, of the lingering attachment to Catholicism still found there. The Stannaries needed particularly careful handling. Enjoying centuriesold privileges, including separate taxation and a parliament of their own authorized to determine matters of immediate concern to the tin industry, they represented a seam of sometimes cantankerous independency on the margins of England. While the industry’s heyday was long past, there were still profits to be made in this seasonal occupation, justifying the hard labour and rough living conditions high on Dartmoor.37 To his death the Earl of Bedford, as a prominent landowner in the south-west of England and as the lord lieutenant in Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, had worked to maintain royal authority and, indeed, his own prestige in the region, but Bedford died on the same day as his only surviving son, his grandson and heir was still a minor, and a fresh approach was clearly called for in this dangerous hour. Ralegh could not of course boast a title or lands, but the family name carried weight in the region, he had gifts of his own and would at least be able to shoulder some part of the Earl’s former burden. Elizabeth and her advisors hoped with some justification that they had identified the right man for a particularly challenging job. Ralegh’s new authority was not limited to Cornwall; logically, it extended into the county of his birth. Across the Tamar, he served as a knight of the shire for Devon in the Parliaments of 1584 and 1586. Here was a source of patronage, and enrichment for oneself and one’s friends. Here were dignity and status too. Informally, the county MPs ranked above those elected from cities and towns in the social hierarchy. During the autumn of 1584, Parliament met in the midst of a political crisis after the assassination of William the Silent. Following the discovery of the so-called Throckmorton Conspiracy against Elizabeth, members had to deal with the knee-jerk 37 See J. Youings, Ralegh’s Country: the south west of England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Raleigh, NC, 1986), pp. 23–8.

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reaction of protestant England, the Bond of Association, by which county gentry publicly undertook to pursue to the death those responsible, were the Queen to be attacked and killed.38 This was a sensitive issue: the Queen did not like independent action, however well meaning, and she liked still less any talk of her death. But ordinary political life went on too. Absorbing the protocols of legislative process, Ralegh struggled to see through a private bill confirming his patent for founding a colony – unnecessary perhaps, but the authority of Parliament would have helped to make assurance doubly sure.39 It is as though a cloak of artifice has been snatched away, revealing the point of all these favours and rewards. They built up a youngest son into a courtier-statesman with the presence and authority to impress some difficult constituents. As friends and acquaintances looked for help from the rising man, Ralegh’s requests for favours began to display a West Country bias. A few examples from many serve to illustrate the point. In October 1586 he wrote as a newly established patron of exploration to the Earl of Leicester, seeking the Earl’s favour for his fellow Devonian Sir Francis Drake, who was then ‘in good hope to return for the Indies if it may be brought to pass’. Drake had recently returned from the West Indies, bringing home most of Ralegh’s colonists from Virginia.40 Early in the 1590s, Ralegh sought the clerkship of the peace in Exeter for his servant Hancock, as a favour from Sir John Gilbert. Family politics were in play here too, and Gilbert gracefully acceded to the request. He could not, he wrote later, deny ‘so honourable and dear a brother’.41 On another occasion in the mid-1580s Ralegh wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Walter Mildmay, seeking favour for George Evelegh, a son of the former subsidy collector in East Devon, now saddled with his father’s debts.42 Evelegh had also been a contemporary of Ralegh at the Inns of Court, and some of these favours were nuanced by Court as well as Country considerations. Early in 1586 Ralegh wrote to Sir William More, a property owner in Blackfriars, asking for his understanding in the unfortunate case of Rocco Bonetti, a highly fashionable Italian fencing master who owed money on buildings that he had put up on More’s land 38 See D. Cressy, ‘Binding the nation: the bonds of association, 1584 and 1696’, in D. J. Guth and J. W. McKenna (eds), Tudor Rule and Revolution (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 217–34. 39 T. E. Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, Volume II 1584–1589 (London, 1995), p. 121; see below, Chapter Three, p. 51. 40 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 36–7. See below, Chapter Three. 41 HMC, Salisbury, iv, p. 507. 42 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 37–8.

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and who now needed the security of an extension to his lease in order to pay off significant debts.43 Bonetti is credited with introducing the flexible style of fighting with rapier and dagger to England, and along with many other courtiers Ralegh had patronized his fencing school.44 Ralegh, like any other man of means, was not entirely free from the charlatan with a hard-luck story.45 It was difficult sometimes to spot the rascal in the crowd. Petitions of every kind, telling every miserable tale under the sun, arrived on the desks of Burghley, Leicester and other prominent figures at Court. These petitions prompted a positive response in a surprising number of cases, for even the meanest suitor might presume to name the friend of a friend, or a family connection through a distant cousin. The Elizabethan world – and it was at times a very small world – turned on favours done, favours acknowledged and, in appropriate cases, on favours returned. His career at Court reached its apogee in the late 1580s. Martin Frobisher told Lord Willoughby in July 1587 that ‘Mr Rale standes emong[s]te othares undare the clothe of a state’.46 In the same year, Ralegh was nominated to succeed Sir Christopher Hatton, newly promoted to the Lord Chancellorship, as Captain of the Guard. Even the most prejudiced of contemporaries had to admit that he was well suited to the office; here was a post full of ceremonial show, but with a keen practical purpose given all the threats to the Queen, real and perceived. Ralegh duly took up his duties after Hatton’s death in 1591. The Captaincy of the Guard was a true mark of the Queen’s trust, and the nomination sent a clear message to the world beyond Westminster. Observers would have been left in no doubt that those who showed disrespect to Ralegh insulted Elizabeth as well. Nevertheless, there was still an impermanence to his position. Monopolies, grants, and grace and favour apartments in town houses were important enough, but to command full credibility in exercising his new offices, and when lording it over the established gentry of Devon and Cornwall, Ralegh needed the most certain token of lasting authority in Elizabethan England. He required lands, an estate worthy of his new status. Elizabeth and her government had little enough land to give – directly. The early modern monarchy lived a hand-to-mouth existence, bestowing the offices and other benefits that periodically came 43 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 34–5. 44 R. B. Manning, Swordsmen: the martial ethos in the three kingdoms (Oxford, 2003), p. 214. 45 Particularly if that story involved an escape from Spanish imprisonment, as in the case of the witty, unreliable Charles Chester (see ODNB). 46 HMC, Manuscripts of the Earl of Ancaster, p. 49.

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its way to sustain loyalty, while playing on a shared interest in preserving social and political stability.47 Of course, it did what it could.The Derbyshire properties of Anthony Babington, executed and attainted following another futile conspiracy in support of Mary, Queen of Scots, were conferred upon Ralegh in 1586. Extensive estates in Ireland also became available that year, though they represented a precarious speculation given the ongoing political confusion in Elizabeth’s other kingdom. However, Ralegh could not afford to pick and choose. He received from the Queen a grant of threeand-a-half seignories in the plantation of Munster, part of the Desmond patrimony confiscated after the suppression of the Earl’s revolt in the early 1580s. The size of this vast Irish estate, 42,000 acres, balanced its problems and consequent obligations. Like other prominent colonists, Ralegh took on a commitment to settle the province with reliable Englishmen, united in a hierarchy running down through leading freeholders bound by contractual agreements to the ‘undertaker’ himself.48 The English Council was working to a plan for settlement drawn up a decade earlier by a group of private adventurers, and now dusted down from the shelves of Burghley’s study. Their goal was the establishment of key settlements on each seignory; six was thought to be the ideal number.49 Of course, reality always complicated the clean lines drawn across a map. On many estates, borders were in time blurred and trimmed following successful legal claims on behalf of dispossessed landowners. Only Ralegh and the other principal adventurer, Hatton, did not suffer in this way, confident as they were in the Queen’s favour. One contemporary map of Munster, drawn up in 1587 and now in the National Maritime Museum, shows a swathe of territory along the Blackwater valley marked with Ralegh’s name, emphasizing, if emphasis were required, the feudal imposition that was plantation. 50 Ralegh was allotted four messuages – building plots with land attached – in the seaport of Youghal. Tradition has it that he was elected mayor of the town, and one 47 For the ongoing debate over the nature of the Elizabethan polity see J. F. McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: essays in response to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot, 2007). 48 Letters Patent dated 27 June 1587. See Hatfield MS 209/2. 49 N. Canny, ‘Ralegh’s Ireland’, in H. G. Jones (ed.), Raleigh and Quinn: the explorer and his Boswell (Chapel Hill, 1987), pp. 92–3. 50 National Maritime Museum P49, f27, reproduced in S. Doran (ed.), Elizabeth: the exhibition at the National Maritime Museum (London, 2003), pp. 129, 167.

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might speculate, with many others, that the Warden’s house of Our Lady’s College is identical to Ralegh’s residence ‘Myrtle Grove’. Still standing today, the house is a charming, clearly very old structure, perhaps the oldest continually-occupied domestic dwelling in Ireland. Tadhg O’Keefe believes that it predates Ralegh by a century or more, and that it was originally built as a late medieval, open-hall, cleric’s house, of the type found throughout southern England, but very rare in Ireland.51 It is indeed immediately apparent that the interior walls of the house are later partitions.This Myrtle Grove has traditions all its own. Here is ‘Spenser’s Window’, ancient and beautiful, from the pages of The Faerie Queene itself. In the grounds there is a walled garden where Ralegh is said to have planted potatoes and tobacco, and also four yews, rich in the tradition that he smoked his pipe in their shade.52 Edmund Spenser’s Kilcolman, the centre of his relatively small 3,000-acre estate, is not far distant – it lies midway between Limerick and Cork – and there, in the summer after the Armada, we imagine the two men reading one to another, perhaps from The Faerie Queene, moments recalled in Spenser’s pastoral poem Colin Clouts Come Home Againe.‘To thee, that art the summer’s nightingale/Thy Sovereign Goddess’s most dear delight’, wrote Spenser, mixing flattery with the obligations of this unequal friendship in, perhaps, unequal measure.The idyll died too soon. Ralegh returned to the precarious life at Court, while Spenser eventually fled Kilcolman in 1598, at the height of the Nine Years War. Spenser was one of many Irish acquaintances, for in this distant corner of Elizabeth’s domain a major landowner with direct connections to the Queen was a man worth knowing. In another of those informative, throwaway lines in The History of the World, Ralegh glosses his reflections on the extreme ages of Biblical patriarchs with an allusion to an ancient Tudor noblewoman.‘I myself ’, he wrote, ‘knew the old Countess of Desmond of Inchiquin in Munster, who lived in the year 1589 and many years since, who was married in Edward the Fourth’s time, and held her jointure from all Earls of Desmond since then.’53 This National Maritime Museum map also emphasizes Ralegh’s central importance to the Irish enterprise. Here is another political payback for 51 Paper delivered at the 2005 conference on Sir Walter Ralegh at Youghal. 52 We are greatly obliged to Mr Simon Murray for his hospitality when visiting the house. 53 Quoted many times, for example in J. Pope Hennessy, Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland, ed. T. Herron (Dublin, 2009), p. 65. The truth is somewhat more prosaic – the Countess was probably around ninety when she died (see ODNB).

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Elizabeth’s investment of time and money in her ‘Ralegh Project’. His great estate was far larger than any other single grant in the plantation, almost three times as big as the next in size, that given to Sir William Herbert. Since each ‘undertaker’ was technically limited to 12,000 acres, the grant attracted hostile comment, notably from the Lord Deputy, Sir John Perrot. Ralegh in turn accused Sir John of ‘raising impertinent objections’, and turned the power of a favourite upon his opponent. Perrot was warned by Burghley, candidly and perhaps quite accurately, that Ralegh was ‘able to do you more harm in one hour than we are all able to do you good in a year’.54 The Queen, of course, could set aside all rules, and it has been suggested that she permitted Ralegh to take over the holdings of two other undertakers – Sir John Clifton and Sir John Stawell – whose enthusiasm for the enterprise had cooled. Nevertheless, this importance was transient. Ralegh was in no position to stay in Ireland. The south-west of England required his attentions, and of course he had a position to defend at Court. He resided in Youghal for some of 1588 and 1589, and may perhaps have visited again in June 1590, but thereafter he left the management of his estate to his agents. Indeed, Ralegh’s interest in the land waned when he acquired property at Sherborne in Dorset during 1592. Sherborne, though smaller, was a far more valuable English patrimony, land fitted for the house that he planned to build and hand down to his descendants. Essentially conventional in his personal ambitions, Ralegh sought nothing else. Most of the workload involved in developing his seignories in Ireland fell, it seems, on Andrew Colthurst, an officer paid by the government.55 We know the names of fourteen freeholders, merchants among them, nominated by Ralegh in and before 1589.56 In August that year he gave Robert Mawle and another man authority to lease and sell lands in his name, and as D. B. Quinn observes there is nothing in the surviving record to indicate that he ever revoked this authority. Mawle, rewarded with a lease of the Barony of ‘Inchiquin Ralegh’ as Sir Walter, perhaps remembering the double-barrelled Devonshire parishes of his youth, chose to call it, seems to have been his principal agent. Even so, Ralegh still worked harder than most to develop his Irish land, especially in the early years. In 1590 he licensed and backed an initiative by Henry Pyne, another tenant, to manufacture pipe staves, the pieces of wood 54 M. MacCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation: English migration to southern Ireland, 1583–1641 (Oxford, 1986), p. 52. 55 Canny, ‘Raleigh’s Ireland’, p. 94. 56 TNA, SP 63/144/28, fos 62–5.

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bound together by the hoops around a barrel or cask, drawing on the timber reserves of the region. The worked timber was to be exported to the Canaries and to Madeira, where staves of a quality fit to cask wine were in short supply. Hatton and Ralegh both looked at developing wood cultivation and iron smelting on their new estates; they were receptive to any idea that might pay, or at least sustain settlers. Land was enclosed, set about with quickset hedgerows, and a loyal English population was imported. Ralegh peopled his lands with tenants, directly at first. One hundred and twentyeight of them had arrived in Ireland by 1589, including the foremost English mathematician and astronomer of his generation,Thomas Harriot, who settled at Molana Abbey. In 1594, when operating at second hand, he leased out the seignories to various Englishmen for £200 per annum.57 Details of these arrangements surviving in the records show a serious attempt at colonization, with a new population apparently well equipped to make a success of their venture. We know, for example, that in 1589 Ralegh’s settlers owned 1,430 cattle, 1,160 sheep, 28 ploughs, ten teams of horses and 310 small Irish horses and other animals.58 The effort made economic sense to the landowner, and also enhanced his prestige, suggesting that further territorial acquisitions might sensibly follow. Leases preserved among the Lismore manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland, made on his behalf between 1589 and 1602 but concentrated in the first three of these years, show Ralegh, in Quinn’s words, ‘concerned principally to consolidate his holdings northward from Youghal along the River Blackmore [sic – Blackwater] to Lismore . . . and along the River Bride’. Once again these leases were very much directed at English speculators, in the knowledge that they would seek to sub-let. This arrangement lost a margin of the potential profit, but still allowed Ralegh a guaranteed income, and removed a good deal of the immediate risk. Quite cautiously phrased, the leases were limited for the most part to terms of forty years.59 In late sixteenth-century Ireland, no one really dared to look further ahead. While in Ireland, Ralegh also fathered a child.60 Of the mother, Alice 57 H. C. Hamilton (ed.), Calendar of the State Papers relating to Ireland (1588–92) (London, 1885), p. 171; J. W. Shirley, Thomas Harriot: a biography (Oxford, 1983), pp. 164–5. 58 TNA, SP 63/144/28, as given in Canny, ‘Raleigh’s Ireland’, p. 95. 59 The leases are recorded in NLI, MS 6135; see D. B. Quinn’s note at the end of W. A. Wallace, John White, Thomas Harriot and Walter Ralegh in Ireland (London, 1985), pp. 19–22. 60 It is not clear when the child was born. She could in fact have been the product of

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Goold, little is known, beyond the fact that she appears to have been a daughter of Justice James Goold. Indeed, the very existence of this child rested on a single letter of disputed authenticity until the rediscovery of Ralegh’s will in the 1960s revealed a bequest to his ‘reputed daughter’ of 500 marks.We do not know the girl’s name, but we do have some reason to believe that Ralegh later betrothed her to Daniel Dumaresq, his page when Governor of Jersey. Daniel, the son of John Dumaresq, Seigneur of Samarès manor, and John’s first cousin Esther, was one of two wards from Island families granted to Ralegh at this time. While the young man seems to have been slightly weak in the head, his family had influence, and he was duly sworn a Juré-Justicier in September 1607, in succession to his father.The match seems to have had little support from Dumaresq senior – or that at least is the impression an anxious father wished to convey after Ralegh’s disgrace in 1603. According to one contemporary manuscript inscription in a Jersey book,‘The Seigneur of Samarès made Sir Walter Ralegh’s daughter no Jointure and disowned the marriage at her death.’ The Reverend Elie Brévint, a seventeenth-century Sark chronicler, tells us that this elusive young woman died of plague in ‘London or Kingston’, presumably between 1603 and 1606, and most probably during the great outbreak of 1603 which carried away one-fifth of the city’s population.61 Brévint, incidentally, tells us more, recalling in an Aubrey-like diversion three sayings of Sir Walter before his appointment as Governor of Jersey. One relates to the inheritance of widowers whose wives die in childbirth. Another is typical Ralegh, straightforward, gnomic and thoughtful:‘Oars are made of wood’.The third is a touch prophetic, and may draw on personal experience recalled from events in 1592: ‘It is most galling to a prisoner if his wife is not permitted to see him.’62 The portrait of Ralegh now in the National Portrait Gallery collection, dated 1588 and attributed to the H monogrammist, shows a man in the prime of life, and at the height of success. If we carry in our mind’s eye an impression of the typical Elizabethan favourite, it cannot stray very far from a much earlier union, though the late 1580s seem most likely.What is abundantly clear, from the context described tactfully by Joyce Youings, is that it would be unwise to rely too much on evidence in the surviving transcript of a letter of Ralegh to Master James Gold from the Court (Letters of Ralegh, pp. 379–80). 61 P. Ahier, The Governorship of Sir Walter Ralegh in Jersey, 1600–1603 (St Helier, 1971), pp. 100–2; on Dumaresq see also Hatfield MS 120/22, Sir John Peyton to Salisbury, 19 January 1608. 62 Ahier, The Governorship of Ralegh in Jersey, p. 150.

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this likeness. Ralegh, garlanded by the motto ‘Amor et Virtute’, strikes a predictable pose, recognizing the source of his authority and prominence. His monarch’s devoted servant, he wears Elizabeth’s colours, white and black. Two pearls, an Elizabethan emblem, are worn in an earring. In his cloak are moonbeams, stitched in tiny pearls, while a silver crescent surmounts the motto, none-too-subtle allusions to Queen Elizabeth allegorized as Cynthia, chaste Roman goddess of the moon. Like every courtier, Ralegh needed his secure sources of ready cash and investment capital. In his nephew by marriage,William Sanderson, he found a reliable partner.A highly experienced London merchant (married to Ralegh’s niece Margaret Snedall, the ‘nephew’ was at least four years older than Sir Walter) who had inherited money from his father, Sanderson had a good track record in financing Atlantic voyagers. He had backed John Davis’s pursuit of the North-West Passage in the 1580s, and he sponsored the glorious Celestial and Terrestrial globes published by Emery Molyneux in 1592.63 Sanderson advanced Ralegh thousands of pounds, managed some aspects of the favourite’s business affairs, and ploughed money into his Virginia adventures. An anonymous, and favourable, contemporary memoir of the merchant describes their relationship in more detail: [Sanderson] did mannage his affaires all the tyme of his prosperity; And did (at severall tymes) stand bound for the said Sir Walter Raleigh for more than a hundred Thowsand pounds starling; And also for meere debt more than sixteene Thousand pounds at one tyme taken up in London most part thereof at Usury upon his own bond, such was his Credite and Reputation in those dayes, As there can be made good proofe thereof.64

The extent of Sanderson’s financial backing is now not at all clear, but it was certainly considerable. While Ralegh’s credit was, in his heyday, watertight, and while Sanderson also obliged other leading courtiers in their search for ready cash, there must surely have been an element of trust and family obligation behind support on such a scale. With the inevitability that goes with high-stakes partnerships, this relationship eventually soured, the two 63 See R. Davies, Thomas Harriot and the Guiana Voyage in 1595 (Thomas Harriot Seminar occasional paper No. 24, 1997). Sanderson married Margaret, the daughter of Hugh Snedall and Ralegh’s sister. 64 BL, Harley MS 5208, quoted in R. A. McIntyre, ‘William Sanderson: Elizabethan financier of discovery’, William and Mary Quarterly 13 (1956), 184–201, at 194–5.

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men parting angrily during the mid-1590s. But at the height of Ralegh’s court career Sanderson’s money sustained that commitment to speculation, ostentation and patronage so necessary among all those close to the Queen.65 Cash was needed to impress friends and acquaintances as well as the Queen and rivals. Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, ten years Ralegh’s junior, fell increasingly under his spell. The Earl’s household accounts begin to record the payment of gaming debts to Ralegh from around 1587. On 26 March 1588, for example, Northumberland lost forty shillings to his friend, perhaps at ‘tictac’ or at cards, while a month later he lost another pound while gambling at Durham House.66 At about the same time Northumberland generously rewarded ‘Sir Walter Rawley his man, that brought your Lordship a shert of maile’, and, on another occasion, ‘the man that brought Sir Walter Rawleys pictor’.67 A martial gift, and a constant reminder of one’s face; Ralegh had gauged the temper and the interests of a moody, difficult young man. Mounts and saddles followed, the Earl splashing out on a horse and equipage, a perfect pair for those presented to Ralegh.68 They could now ride out together in fashionable harmony. These were strategic gifts in a strategic friendship; what friendship at Court was not strategic? Northumberland made the acquaintance of a charismatic, knowledgeable, influential man of the world, while Ralegh courted a member of that increasingly rare breed in late Elizabethan England, a wealthy earl descended from an ancient family. Any immediate benefit lay perhaps with Northumberland; the Percy family may have been well established, and it may have been noble, but the name had a tainted, even dangerous resonance at Elizabeth’s court. Northumberland’s uncle, the seventh Earl, had been beheaded at York for his part in the Northern Rebellion of 1569, while his father, the eighth Earl – a Catholic like his predecessor – had committed suicide in the Tower of London in 1585, when imprisoned under suspicion of complicity in the Throckmorton Conspiracy. Nevertheless, there was more to this than policy; the shared interests and outlook are already clear enough. 65 McIntyre, ‘William Sanderson’; below, Chapter Five, p. 101. 66 Syon MS X.II.12(6)b. Mr Power’s book, money delivered to the Earl of Northumberland for play, February and March 1588. 67 G. R. Batho (ed.), The Household Papers of Henry Percy, Ninth Earl of Northumberland (1564–1632) (London, 1962), pp. 67, 74. It would be interesting to identify the portrait, should it survive. 68 Syon MS U.I.1y, Wycliffe’s account, 1587–8, for reference to ‘a stroe coloured velvet saddle’.

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Their mutual interest in science and exploration, for example, prompted both men to patronize the fascinating and brilliant Thomas Harriot. Here is a friendship nurtured for the future as well as for the present, a friendship that endures. Ralegh’s young son is presented by the Earl with a fine feather for his cap in the late 1590s. In January 1600 Rowland Whyte confides to Sir Robert Sidney that Ralegh and Northumberland busy themselves at cards and other diversions, one sure way of passing the long hours of attendance at Court.69 Playing the courtier could be wearisome work. At that point the Earl needed a sympathetic ear, for his estranged wife, Essex’s sister, was in London complaining of his behaviour. She had every justification. Northumberland’s eccentricities, his remoteness accentuated by advancing deafness, frustrated an essentially affectionate relationship. In 1604 Toby Matthew wrote to Dudley Carleton, then in the Earl’s service, commenting on illness, shyness, or – perhaps – a series of idiosyncratic moodswings: Northumberland, he wrote, ‘is so unlike any body elce, that it were pitty he should not be like himselfe’.70

69 HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley, ii, p. 429. 70 TNA, SP 78/51, fo. 300.

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3

Roanoke

By the beginning of 1583,Walter Ralegh’s older half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was completing his plans for another expedition across the Atlantic. One obstacle remained: Elizabeth required him to stay at home ‘as a man noted of not good happ by sea’, a perceptive comment that he would have been wise to heed. At this point Ralegh stepped into the picture. His role was limited but significant, smoothing Gilbert’s path at Court and providing some funding. Ralegh evidently helped to win over the Queen, for in sending her ‘token’ to Gilbert in March that year he noted that: Her Highness willed mee to send yow worde that she wished as great good hap and safty to your ship as if her sealf were ther in parson, desiring yow to have care of your sealf as of that which she tendereth, and therefore for her sace [sake] yow must provide for hit accordingly.1

In May Nicholas Faunt, one of Walsingham’s secretaries, wrote to Antony Bacon from Court that ‘Mr Rawley our newe favorite hath made an Adventure of 2000 li [£2,000] in a shippe and furniture therto’. This was a large sum and no doubt Ralegh hoped for a good return on his investment. He had no intention of sailing himself, perhaps discouraged by his unhappy experiences earlier in the Falcon.2 The expedition set out on 11 June 1583 with five ships: the Delight (120 tons), the flagship, owned by Sir John Gilbert and William Winter, the son of Elizabeth’s admiral, captained by Winter; the Golden Hind (40 tons), owned and captained by Edward Hayes, who later wrote a vivid narrative of the journey; Ralegh’s ship, the Barke Ralegh (200 tons), captained by M. Butler, with Robert Davis of Bristol as master; the Swallow (40 tons); and the Squirrel (8 tons).3 Two days after their departure, the Barke Ralegh deserted the fleet. Gilbert 1 Letters of Ralegh, p. 12. 2 D. B. Quinn (ed.), The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (London, 1940), ii, p. 365; for the Falcon see above, Chapter One, p. 12. 3 Quinn, The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, ii, p. 396.

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wrote angrily to Sir George Peckham that the ship, the largest of them all,‘ran from me in faire and cleere weather’. He asked Peckham to ‘solicit’ Sir Walter to make an example of the crew.4 After the crossing, illness hit the fleet when it was anchored off St John’s, Newfoundland, and Gilbert sent the Swallow back to England with the sick. Then, off Cape Breton Island, the Delight hit a shoal and sank with eighty of her one hundred men.With only the Golden Hind and the tiny Squirrel left, Gilbert decided to abandon the voyage and set off for England with his two remaining ships. Edward Hayes tells the end of the story. In spite of protests from his colleagues Gilbert insisted on sailing in the Squirrel, although it was heavily overloaded. ‘I will not’, he said, ‘forsake my little company going homeward, with whom I passed so many stormes and perils.’ (His half-brother Walter Ralegh had a better sense of his own survival.) By the time the ships had passed the Azores, they hit heavy storms. Here, ‘the Generall sitting abaft with a booke in his hand, cried out unto us in the Hind . . . “We are as neere to heaven by sea as by land”. Reiterating the same speech, well beseeming a souldier, resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testifie he was.’ About midnight on 9 September 1583 the Squirrel’s lights went out and she was swallowed by the waves.5 Ralegh was the man best placed to take over the mission to explore and colonize North America, but he was not the only one seeking to try. Sir George Peckham, a prominent Buckinghamshire Catholic, proposed to provide persecuted recusants with a home across the Atlantic where they could live freely while practising their own religion. After encountering opposition to this from the Spanish ambassador, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, and from English Catholic exiles loyal to Spain, he redirected his appeal to include Protestant noblemen and gentlemen ‘who doe chiefly seeke a temperate climate, wholesome ayre, fertile soile, and a strong place by nature whereupon they may fortifie’. Gilbert had granted Peckham and his associates, who included Philip Sidney, 8,500,000 acres out of his own concession from Elizabeth.6 However, Sidney was forbidden to leave England, Peckham was imprisoned for his religion, and the plan lapsed, never to be revived. Very different were the proposals of another group, headed by Captain Christopher Carleill. Where Peckham had envisaged a colony of landed estates, Carleill appealed to commercial interests. His father, Alexander 4 Ibid., p. 383. 5 Ibid., pp. 419–20. 6 Sidney had been granted his own concession by Gilbert of 3,000,000 acres: Ibid., i, p. 74; ii, pp. 435–80.

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Carleill, was a successful City merchant whose wife married Sir Francis Walsingham after her first husband’s death. Christopher, like Walsingham a strong Protestant, fought at sea and on land, with the Dutch Sea Beggars in the English Channel, with the Prince of Orange in the Netherlands and the Prince of Condé in France. His father had had useful contacts with the great London trading companies and his stepfather gave him an entry to the royal Court. In 1583 he negotiated with a group of Bristol traders and with the Muscovy Company for a joint venture to America, writing in its support ‘A briefe and summary discourse upon the intended voyage to the hithermost parts of America’. This is a hard-headed document, spelling out the initial outlay required and the commercial return to be expected. The scheme was far more realistic than Gilbert’s or Peckham’s and as we shall see it was probably more realistic than Ralegh’s. Had it developed it would have had the advantages of merchant capital and business acumen. But for some reason, not now apparent, it faded and Carleill went off instead on Drake’s great West Indian raid of 1585. Eight years later he died in poverty. The field was clear for Ralegh. Although he had few inherited advantages – no large accumulation of landed estates and no extended family of noble kinsmen and kinswomen from whom he could draw support – he had relatives more modestly placed who could be of active help: Raleghs, Champernownes, Gilberts and others. But even so, he had to rely largely upon his personal qualities. One of his earliest intellectual contacts, through Humphrey Gilbert, was with that extraordinary wizard, cosmographer and magus, Dr John Dee, thought to be the first man to use the phrase ‘British Empire’.7 Then there was Thomas Harriot, astronomer, linguist and ethnographer; the two Richard Hackluyts supplied Ralegh with publicity and geographical information; and men like William Sanderson and John Watts brought in City contacts. The beautiful sketches of John White provided the earliest visual record of the people of North America. Ralegh was an inspiring military leader who could call upon the services of such officers as Sir Richard Grenville and Ralph Lane. Finally, there was the Court, essential for political backing: the Queen herself, though she did not like Ralegh to leave her side; Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State, a strong supporter of the western enterprise; and Robert Cecil, who succeeded Walsingham as Secretary. We shall meet them all in the course of the narrative. Ralegh’s first step was to gain authority from the Queen for occupying 7 On Dee see E. G. R.Taylor, Tudor Geography, 1485–1583 (London, 1930), chs v-vii, and the article by R. J. Roberts in ODNB.

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the lands he hoped to discover. With Gilbert’s grant due to expire in June 1584, Ralegh moved quickly to obtain letters patent. Importantly, his grant, sealed on 25 March, was not limited in time. He was allowed to hold the lands he discovered and occupied for himself and his heirs for ever, provided that they were not already possessed by any Christian prince or inhabited by any Christian people.8 In April of the same year a voyage of reconnaissance set out in two ships, led by two members of Ralegh’s household: Philip Amadas, a Plymouth man, and Arthur Barlow. Simon Fernandez, an experienced but difficult and controversial seaman, sailed with them as pilot. It is likely, though we cannot be certain, that Thomas Harriot and the artist John White were also on the voyage. On his return in September Barlow wrote a description of the land they had found and sent it to Ralegh,‘at whose charge and direction, the said voyage was set foorth’. The purpose was presumably to encourage support for the enterprise generally and to smooth the passage through Parliament of a bill confirming Ralegh’s grant.9 Barlow’s description of the land is a lyrical piece of promotional literature, possibly helped by Ralegh himself or by Richard Hakluyt the younger, or possibly even by Harriot. Barlow is vague, perhaps deliberately so, about the exact location of his landing. (It is not clear whether they approached Roanoke from the north or the south.) He extols the fertility of the soil, emphasizing the height and beauty of the trees: ‘the earth bringeth foorth all things in aboundance, as in the first creation, without toile or labour.’ However, most of his attention is given to the natives, who entertained them lavishly. ‘We found the people’, he writes, ‘most gentle, louing, and faithfull, void of all guile, and treason, and such as liued after the manner of the golden age.’10 However, this commendation is weakened by his account of a massacre perpetrated by a local King upon Wingina, King of Wingandacoa, where Barlow and his men had been staying. For the return journey, Barlow took back to England with him two Indians, Wanchese and Manteo. Even before the return of Barlow and Amadas, Richard Hakluyt the younger had begun to write his Discourse of Western Planting, a key text in English colonial history, written, he says, ‘at the requeste and direction of . . . Sir Walter Raghley, nowe knight’ and presented to the Queen on 5 October

8 D. B. Quinn, The Roanoke Voyages, 1584–1590 (2 vols, London, 1955), i, pp. 82–9. 9 Ibid., pp. 91–116, 122–9. 10 Ibid., p. 108.

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1584 – but only published much later, in 1877.11 A few words are necessary at this point to introduce Hakluyt, a key publicist of Ralegh’s and other mens’ voyages. Confusingly, there were two men called Richard Hakluyt, cousins, living at much the same time and both fascinated by geography and voyaging.The elder, a lawyer, was important largely for inspiring the interest of his younger cousin in maps and travel. The younger Hakluyt records that he visited his cousin in the Inner Temple as a schoolboy and was fascinated by the maps and charts that he saw there. After graduating in 1575 from Christ Church, Oxford, at the age of twenty-three, he began to lecture on geography. He also took holy orders and became a preacher. He tells us that ‘in my publike lectures [I] was the first, that produced and shewed both the olde imperfectly composed, and the new lately reformed Mappes, Globes, Spheares, and other instruments of this Art for demonstration in the common schooles, to the singular pleasure, and generall contentment of my auditory’.12 This was the start of an astonishing publishing career, crowned by the various editions of the Principall Navigations . . . of the English Nation.13 In his Discourse of Western Planting, Hakluyt turns, after an introductory section on the importance of ‘thinlargemente of the gospel of Christe’, to commercial and fiscal arguments. English trades ‘are growen beggarly or daungerous’, especially where the King of Spain has dominions. Elsewhere, trade was decayed by the burden of taxes in France, by pirates in the Mediterranean and by civil dissension in Flanders. Hakluyt supports his case with glowing reports from the writings of Ribault and others.The colonies would provide ‘manifolde ymployment of numbers of idle men’, bring an increase in the royal revenues and would also be ‘a greate bridle to the Indies of the Kinge of Spaine’. Philip II was, claimed Hakluyt, less powerful than people thought. Hakluyt moves from arguments in favour of colonies to ‘a note of some thinges to be prepared for the voyadge’: animals for food, carpenters and other artisans for building works, and trading goods. The knitted woollen caps made in Toledo may, he suggests, ‘become a notable trade’.14 He then 11 This is the title by which it is best known. Hakluyt himself called it his ‘Particular Discourse’. The most accessible edition is in E. G. R. Taylor (ed.), The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts (London, 1935), ii, no. 46, pp. 211–326. 12 D. B. and A. M. Quinn, ‘A Hakluyt chronology’, in The Hakluyt Handbook (London, 1974), i, pp. 263–331, esp. 267–8. 13 The main editions were published in 1589, 1598–1600 and 1903–5.They were preceded by the Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (1582). 14 Taylor (ed.), The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, pp. 320–7.

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notes things that should not be forgotten: preachers, bibles, books on the discovery and conquest of the East and West Indies to raise men’s minds to courage; a table of laws to be produced, for showing to prospective colonists; a physician and a surgeon; honey for making mead, and so on. Every man’s gifts and qualities should be entered in a register; no papists should be chosen. All this was written before the Amadas-Barlow reconnaissance voyage had returned. Hakluyt is plainly an obsessive maker of lists. Even more important to Ralegh’s enterprise, and certainly more remarkable intellectually than Hakluyt, was Thomas Harriot. Born in 1560, Harriot went up to St Mary’s Hall, Oxford, in about 1576.15 By the time of his graduation in 1580 he had become principally interested in mathematics and especially in its application to navigation.This may have been due to the influence of Richard Hakluyt, but of that we cannot be certain. Indeed, there is a great deal in Harriot’s life of which we cannot be certain. He published virtually nothing and left his surviving papers in confusion.16 Around the time of Ralegh’s return from Ireland in 1581–2, the two men made contact and developed a strong friendship. How they met is a matter of speculation: possibly through Hakluyt, possibly through Lawrence Keymis, who was at Balliol about the same time. At all events, by 1582 or 1583 Harriot was living and working in Ralegh’s household, where he stayed until he moved into the service of the Earl of Northumberland, a richer master, in or around 1597. Ralegh and Northumberland were of course friends and companions, with a common interest in the sciences. Initially at least, Harriot’s principal value to Ralegh lay in his application of mathematics to navigation. In his translation of Peter Martyr’s De Orbe Novo, dedicated to Ralegh, Richard Hakluyt commented that Ralegh had nourished in his household ‘with a most liberal salary, a young man well trained in those studies [mathematics], Thomas Harriot; so that under his guidance you might in spare hours learn those noble sciences and your collaborating sea captains, who are many, might very profitably unite theory with practice, not without almost incredible results’.17 15 Harriot later became a member of Oriel College, where he is very finely commemorated. 16 On his life see J. W. Shirley, Thomas Harriot: a biography (Oxford, 1983). There are two valuable collections of essays on Harriot: J. W. Shirley (ed.), Thomas Harriot: Renaissance scientist (Oxford, 1974) and R. Fox (ed.), Thomas Harriot, an Elizabethan Man of Science (Aldershot, 2000). A second volume edited by Fox, Thomas Harriot and his World, is due shortly. 17 Quoted in Shirley, Thomas Harriot: Renaissance scientist, p. 18.

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Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1584, Ralegh was consolidating his authority with a parliamentary bill confirming his patent. It was entered in the Commons on 14 December, passed three readings there after some controversy, but did not pass the Lords.18 Richard Hakluyt senior, the lawyer, wrote two pamphlets as inducements to men ‘to the liking of the voyage intended towards Virginia’. The general tenor of both resembled the Discourse in their stress upon conversion of the Indians and the development of trade. Both insisted that the business of conversion should be carried out in ‘a gentle course without crueltie’. Both accepted that there might be opposition from the Indians, but insisted that ‘we are lords of navigation, and they not so’.19 Anonymous advice given to Ralegh and Thomas Cavendish maintained that although the Indians had no armour it would be necessary for the expedition to contain well-armed men in case of a Spanish attack, spelling out in some detail the force required. Out of 800 men, 400 should be arquebusiers, and while a fort was being constructed there should always be 200 men on guard, and thereafter 100. The fort should be constructed as a pentangle, with five bulwarks. The overall organization of the colony was to be military. There were thus two broad colonial models proposed to Raleigh: one commercial, the other military. When Ralegh was forbidden by Elizabeth to leave her side, his place was taken by Sir Richard Grenville, a man twenty years older. A native Cornishman, Grenville had seen service in Ireland and had been interested in Gilbert’s plans for a colony in the New World. On 9 April 1585 he left Plymouth with seven ships: the Tiger, a galleass of 160 tons, as ‘admiral’20 with Grenville as general and Simon Fernandez21 pilot and master; the Roebuck (100 tons), probably vice-admiral, with John Clarke captain; the Lion (or Red Lion) of Chichester (100 tons); the Elizabeth (50 tons), captained by Thomas Cavendish, the high marshal of the expedition; the Dorothy (50 tons), possibly commanded by Arthur Barlowe; and two pinnaces. In all there were 600 men aboard, of whom about half were sailors and the rest soldiers and specialists.22 It is not clear how either group was recruited. A commission was issued in 18 See Chapter Two, p. 34. 19 Taylor (ed.), The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts, i, 327–50. 20 The terms ‘admiral’ and ‘vice-admiral’ apply to the ships, not their captains.The modern equivalent to the former would be ‘flagship’. 21 For Fernandez, see above, Chapter One, pp. 12–13. 22 Quinn, Roanoke, i, pp. 158–9, 173, 178–9.

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June 1585 for Ralegh to impress sailors and soldiers, but that would have been too late for a sailing in April.23 However, some sailors were probably conscripted after their ship was taken in a privateering raid. The colony seems to have been intended principally as a military settlement, following the pattern set out in the notes given to Ralegh and Cavendish above, and setting to one side the commercial or agrarian pattern recommended by Hakluyt. Most recent opinion has viewed the intention behind the Roanoke settlement as being primarily the provision of a fortified base from which privateering expeditions or strategic attacks on Spanish ports could be launched. Significantly, there were no women attached to this expedition, by contrast with that despatched two years later. But it is difficult to be certain of the colony’s purpose and perhaps there can be no sharp distinction between the two models.24 A few days after they set sail the ships were separated by storms. The Tiger sailed on alone and eventually reached their agreed rendezvous, where Thomas Cavendish in the Elizabeth joined them. Both ships then proceeded north towards the Carolina Banks, stopping off on the Island of Hispaniola, where they were able to buy supplies and where, rather surprisingly, the Spanish governor of the island gave a grand banquet. Probably he felt that the English force was too big to attack and had better be entertained. Eventually the other ships of the expedition also caught up with the Tiger and on 3 July they reached the Carolina Banks, where the Tiger went aground. Although it was taken off the shoal, most of its cargo of supplies was lost. After he had been on the island of Roanoke a few days Grenville ‘began to establish a colony’ there, appointing Ralph Lane its general with 106 men under him. Lane was an experienced soldier, who had fought on sea and on land, particularly in Ireland; but according to his most recent biographer he was ‘vain, boastful and fiery-tempered’. His relations with Grenville were poor.25 The latter evidently intrigued against Lane when he got back, and Lane asked Walsingham that he not be asked to serve under him again, since Grenville showed ‘intollerable pryede and unsaciable [sic] ambicione’.26 Grenville left for England on the Tiger on 25 August, with some other 23 Quinn, Roanoke, i, pp. 144–5, 156–7. 24 Below, p. 59. K. R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: maritime enterprise and the genesis of the British empire, 1480–1630 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 204–7. 25 ODNB, under Lane, R. 26 Quinn, Roanoke, i, pp. 199, 212.

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ships departing later. On the way, he was lucky enough to encounter a Spanish ship ‘richlie laden with sugar, hides, spices, and some quantitie of gold, silver, and pearle’, to an estimated value of £50,000.27 After this fortunate delay he reached Plymouth on 18 October. Meanwhile, Lane and his 106 soldiers stayed on Roanoke to explore the mainland territory and prepare for further settlements. They were severely handicapped by Grenville’s having left them only one pinnace and some smaller boats.The pinnace had too deep a draught for the shallow lagoon and the rivers, and did not answer well to the oars. Even without this handicap Lane’s small force had a massive and daunting task. Apart from one or two sketch maps of the coastline drawn by John White, presumably on the Amadas-Barlow voyage, they had no idea of the geography of the land and relations with the Indians became increasingly tense.They were wandering in an unknown and unmapped land of primeval forest and swamps, among an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile people with whom communication was at best limited. Only Harriot, and possibly White, knew anything of the language. Between August 1585 and June 1586 the colonists explored the territory. One group went north, towards Chesapeake, and stayed for two or three months in the region of the Chesepian tribe. According to Lane this land, for fertility of soil and temperate climate, ‘and for the commoditie of the sea, besides multitude of beares . . . is not to be excelled by any other whatsoever’.28 The language is familiar. It is the testimony of many discoverers, from Columbus onwards, praising their newfound paradise in the hope of attracting settlers or pleasing their patrons. Unfortunately, Lane’s account of the Chesapeake region is fairly sparse, perhaps because he hoped to establish his base there later and wanted to keep it secret from the Spanish. Harriot and White evidently went south and visited Secoton, where White drew the village and some of its inhabitants. A third group, including it would seem Lane himself, explored to the north-west along the Chowan River and towards Choanoke. His description of this journey is detailed but far from lucid. Lane got useful information about the land to the north from the local chief, Menatonon, whom he praises highly. Lane resolved that on the arrival of supplies and reinforcements he would take a ship and find what we now know as Chesapeake Bay, moving his headquarters from Roanoke. 27 Holinshed in Quinn, Roanoke, i, p. 177. Grenville himself said ginger and sugar were the main commodities in the cargo. 28 Quinn, Roanoke, i, p. 257. Cf. Lane’s letter to Walsingham of 12 August 1585 (ibid., pp. 199–204).

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But that was for the future. For now, he began to explore westward and then north-westward up the Roanoke River. There he learned that the chief of the people on Roanoke Island, Pemisapan, previously known as Wingina, was spreading rumours among other tribes that the English intended to attack them. Pemisapan’s father, Ensenore, died in April 1586, removing the principal protector of the English. Relations between the Indians and the English deteriorated badly, each side fearing that the other was going to attack, and the Indians probably resenting English demands for food. Pemisapan planned to depart from Roanoke Island with his people, leaving corn unsown so that the English would be starved out. In the end, Lane lured Pemisapan onto Roanoke Island and devised a surprise attack. On 1 June, at the watchword ‘Christ our victory’ the settlers shot the king and his ‘chief men’, giving them in Lane’s words ‘that which they had purposed for us’. After falling, Pemisapan got up and fled into the woods, where he was pursued by one of Lane’s men, who returned with the chief ’s head in his hand. A week later twenty-three ships were seen approaching by a lookout. They turned out to be the fleet of Sir Francis Drake, returning from the great West Indies raid on which he had embarked in the autumn of 1585. Having captured Cartagena on the Panama Isthmus, Drake decided against a permanent occupation of the town and sailed north, taking with him 200 Moors and Turks freed from Spanish galleys and 300 native Americans, most of them women. The point of this is not certain, but Drake may very likely have known Ralegh’s plans before he sailed and purposed to provide labour for the Roanoke colony. Be that as it may, Drake reached Roanoke in early June and generously offered Lane the choice of either a passage home for all his men or a ship of 70 tons, the Francis, two pinnaces and some smaller boats, all fully equipped, together with enough food for 100 men for four months. This would have enabled Lane to carry out a much more thorough exploration of the region, especially around Chesapeake Bay. Unhappily, a violent storm broke out on 13 June. It was vividly described in the journal of one of Drake’s ships, the Primrose: the unknown author writes that all the time they were in the region, they ‘had thunder . . . and raigne with hailstones as bigge as hennes egges’.There were, he says, ‘greate spowtes at the seas as thoughe heaven & [earthe] woulde have mett’.29 When the storm swept the Francis out to sea with her store of food, Drake offered another ship, the 170 ton Barke Bonner, as a replacement.This would 29 Quinn, Roanoke, i, pp. 303–8.

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have been less suitable for exploring and the loss of the Francis’s stores was serious. Lane’s captains came to him and said that in view of the smallness of their number and the failure of Grenville to arrive with the food promised before Easter, he would ask Drake for a passage home.This he did and Drake agreed. On 19 June all the colonists, except three who were up country, embarked for Portsmouth. One further accident occurred when the sailors, according to Lane, threw all their books and writings into the sea. A later writer, possibly Hakluyt, described the embarkation as being so confused that the settlers might have been chased by a mighty army. This, he contends, was the consequence of the ‘crueltie, and outrages committed by some of them against the native inhabitantes of that countrie’, which had brought the hand of God upon them.30 Such was the unlucky end of the first Roanoke colony. Today, the earth ramparts of a fort are visible at the north-eastern end of Roanoke Island, where John White’s map clearly (and we suspect accurately) shows the English settlement. The existing twentieth-century recreation of an earlier emplacement is a successor to the now vanished efforts to build a log-cabin version of Fort Raleigh for tourists to the newly accessible island in the 1930s.While it seems too small for the settlers’ purpose, it is an evocative place.31 Almost immediately after this a supply ship sent by Ralegh reached Roanoke and finding it deserted sailed back to England. Then, about two weeks later, Grenville himself arrived with more ships, also found the colony deserted and departed, leaving fifteen men to hold the fort. Presumably he intended that they should stay there to maintain Ralegh’s title; but it was a futile move, which in effect condemned them to death. Ironically, had Drake not arrived, as deus ex machina, the colony would probably have survived, at any rate for a time. However, the Roanoke enterprise did leave an important legacy in Thomas Harriot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia 30 Quinn, Roanoke, i, p. 478. 31 However anachronistic, the log fort and chapel were popular in their day, and their eventual removal by the US Parks Service was somewhat resented by islanders. On the site, see J. C. Harrington, Search for the Cittie of Ralegh: archaeological excavations at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, North Carolina (Washington, 1962); C. Trebellas and W. Chapman, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site: historic resource study (Atlanta, 1999); H. G. Jones, ‘The Americanization of Raleigh’, in J.Youings (ed.), Raleigh in Exeter, 1985: privateering and colonisation in the reign of Elizabeth I (Exeter, 1985), pp. 79–86.

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and the accompanying paintings of John White. Although many of their notes and sketches were lost during the scramble to get aboard ship in the final retreat, they still had enough material to leave us an invaluable account of ‘Virginia’ in words and images, based on their joint exploration of the region. Indeed they were evidently planning a more ambitious publication, combining a detailed survey with maps and engravings.32 This was never completed, but Harriot did write his Briefe Report in the first place to win support for White’s venture in May 1587. It was printed in the following year, with its author described as ‘Thomas Harriot; servant to the above-named Sir Walter, a member of the Colony, and there imployed in discovering’.Two years later A Brief and True Report was given much wider exposure in the production by Theodor de Bry, a Frankfurt publisher, of his multi-lingual work, America, with engravings of some of White’s paintings.33 Harriot’s Brief Report was specifically written to counter criticisms of the enterprise by some of the would-be colonists. It was backed by a prefatory letter from Lane, in which he answered those settlers who criticized his government of the colony and affirmed Harriot’s status as ‘an Actor in the Colony . . . a man no lesse for his honesty then learning commendable’.34 Harriot himself stresses his direct observation of the land and its people, having been ‘specially imploied’ in dealing with the natural inhabitants, thanks presumably to his understanding of Algonquian. He divides the treatise into three parts: first, the ‘merchantable commodities’ of the land; second, commodities ‘knowne to yeelde for victuall and sustenance of mans life’; and third, ‘the nature and manners of the people’. There is nothing very remarkable about the first two. The ‘tradeable’ products of the land are not impressive and did not prove so.Tobacco was to come later, although Harriot does mention it in passing. Of the crops, he gives prominence to maize and corn, claiming that the sowing of an acre of this would yield 200 bushels, compared with forty at most in England. Here he was wildly optimistic. The main interest of the Report lies in its third section on ‘the nature and manners of the people’. Essentially, says Harriot, the Indians are not to be feared: ‘they shall have cause both to feare and love us, that shall inhabite 32 D. B. Quinn, ‘Thomas Harriot and the New World’, in Shirley, Thomas Harriot: Renaissance scientist, pp. 42–3. 33 de Bry was a Calvinist printer from Liège, who set up a publishing house in Frankfurt am Main. 34 An accessible version of the Report is in Quinn, Roanoke, i, pp. 317–87; for de Bry, see below, pp. 58–9.

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with them’. Their only weapons are bows, arrows and wooden truncheons; they have only bark shields to defend themselves; their towns are small – of thirty houses at most – and defended only with walls of bark. A ruler known as a Wiroans, or chief lord, usually rules over only a few towns. The greatest of them rules over only eighteen towns and can assemble no more than seven or eight hundred men.The language of every ‘government’ is different from every other. Set battles are rare: they fight mostly by surprise attacks or ambushes. In any war between ‘us and them’ we have the advantages of discipline, weaponry, and experience. ‘In respect of us they are a people poore, and for want of skill and iudgement in the knowledge of our things, doe esteeme our trifles before thinges of greater value.’ Yet considering their lack of our means ‘they seeme very ingenious’ and in what things they can do, they show ‘excellencie of wit’. Harriot’s insights into native religious beliefs and practices are especially relevant to us because both he and Ralegh were at times accused of atheism.35 The natives, writes Harriot, already have some religious beliefs and although these are erroneous, they could be brought to an understanding of true religion. They believe there is one chief God who created all the others and then made women, who produced children. They think gods have human shapes of which they make images; and they also believe in the immortality of the soul, holding that after death the soul is either carried to the habitation of the gods or ‘to a great pitte or hole . . . to burne continuallie’. They show great respect to their priests for fear of such punishment. Harriot says that he learned all these things through conversations with their priests, who came through this to doubt some of their own beliefs. In a particularly apt comment he writes that the natives saw many European instruments and devices that they could not comprehend: sea compasses, perspective glasses ‘whereby was shewed manie strange sightes’, burning glasses, guns, books, writing and reading, ‘spring clocks that seeme to goe of themselves’ and so on. They believed these ‘were rather the works of gods then of men, or at the leastwise they had bin given and taught us of the gods’. In every town he came to Harriot proclaimed the truth of the Bible and the doctrine of salvation through Christ.Wingina, the Wiroans with whom they lived, often accompanied them to pray and sing psalms. Once, when their corn withered as the result of a drought, they asked us ‘to pray to our God of England’ to preserve the crop. In one town, after unspecified offences had been com35 Below, Chapter Four, pp. 89–97.

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mitted against the colonists, the people began to die very fast, presumably of measles or smallpox. They believed that because such effects followed their own ‘wicked practises’, the colonists had the power to kill without weapons. Harriot seems to conclude from this that Lane and other colonists had been unnecessarily fierce in killing some of the natives for reasons that would have been better ignored. In conclusion Harriot commended Virginia as a desirable place for a colony. His explorations suggested to him that the mainland was even more fertile than the coastal regions and that the climate generally was temperate. Only four of their company had died of sickness and those had been sickly when they arrived. Furthermore Sir Walter Ralegh had been liberal in his granting of lands. Provided that those who settled were provided with enough food for a year and cultivated diligently, they would survive and prosper. The drawings and paintings of Harriot’s collaborator, John White, are a vivid counterpart to the former’s prose.36 Very little is known of White’s early life. There were several men of that name living in England during the 1580s and it is not always clear which of these was the painter. The first definite appearance of our man comes in a list of members of the Company of Painters and Stainers in 1580, and he was last heard of in Ireland in the 1590s. He may well have travelled with Frobisher to the north in 1577, for some drawings of Inuit people survive, and he probably sailed with Amadas and Barlowe to Virginia in 1584. He was certainly with Harriot in the colonizing expedition of 1585–6, when his main work was done, and he returned to Virginia, as we will see, in 1587. His pictures of Indian men, women and children represent living people rather than types. They are shown in their peaceful and well-ordered villages, dancing and fishing, with corn growing in the fields. Attractive sketches of fish, turtles, birds and plants accompany the portraits. Probably these are the best pictures of North American life before the days of photography. No doubt they were intended to attract settlers to this innocent land, but they rise above mere marketing. The sketches themselves were little known until the twentieth century, but they were circulated widely through the engravings of Theodor de Bry. Having spent the years 1587–8 in England, when he presumably saw White’s pictures, de Bry launched a massive publishing enterprise, America, in 1590, 36 K. Sloan (ed.), A New World: England’s first view of America (London, 2007), passim, for a catalogue and reproductions of all White’s drawings and paintings, with commentaries.

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with its first volume on Virginia, and a further thirteen following on Central and South America, Africa, and the East Indies. The Virginia volume was published in Latin, German, English and French, later volumes in Latin and German only. His prints are far from being mere copies of White’s sketches, emphasizing more strongly the peaceful nature of the Indians and the fruitful products of the soil. After the return to England of Lane and the first settlers, White took the lead in organizing a successor colony. Ralegh was still to be its overlord but seems now to have played a less active role. The new colony was to be different from the first. Rather than providing a base for privateers and naval enterprises against the Spanish, it was to be primarily a colony of settlement and trade, perhaps with privateering as a secondary objective. While the first colony’s settlers had been entirely male, this one included seventeen women and nine children against eighty-six men. On 7 January 1587 a formal grant of arms was made, under the authority of Sir Walter Ralegh, to the governor and twelve assistants of the ‘City of Ralegh’, the name of the proposed corporation. The actual indenture formalizing Ralegh’s grant has not survived, but it evidently included the allocation of 500 acres for each settler, provided they went in person. John White was nominated governor with nine assistants, and Ralegh ordered that the settlement was to be made in Chesapeake Bay, a more suitable harbour than Roanoke Island.37 White had some contact with Sir George Carey, Captain of the Isle of Wight and Vice-Admiral of Hampshire, who received authorization in January to send out three ships, under the command of William Irish, to take reprisals. Whatever was planned between them is, however, obscure.38 On 8 May White weighed anchor and left Plymouth with three ships, the Lion of 120 tons, an unnamed flyboat and a pinnace. White was captain of the Lion and Simon Fernandez master. On the forty-second day out from England they reached Dominica and then sailed through the Caribbean until they reached Hatorask on 22 July. Throughout this part of the voyage relations between White and Fernandez became increasingly fraught, White constantly blaming the latter for giving out false information. From Hatorask White intended to sail in the pinnace to Roanoke and make contact with the fifteen men left behind by Grenville. He proposed then to return to the 37 The grant of arms is the only document to have survived of those authorizing the colony. See Quinn, Roanoke, ii, pp. 506–12. 38 Quinn, Roanoke, ii, pp. 512, 543. The main source for White’s expedition is his own narrative at pp. 515–38; for reprisals see below, pp. 65–8.

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other ships and with them sail on to Chesapeake, where he would build a new settlement. However, as soon as they were in the pinnace, Fernandez called out to the sailors that they should leave the settlers on Roanoke and not proceed to Chesapeake, since it would soon be too late in the year for privateering. Something does not ring true here, since the ships did not actually leave for another month. Fernandez may have had other reasons for refusing to go on to Chesapeake, but unhappily we only have White’s side of the story. He, perhaps rather feebly, gave in to this demarche: ‘it booted not the Governour to contend with them’, he writes. ‘Why not?’ one may reply. Once arrived on Roanoke Island they searched for Grenville’s men, but found only the bones of one. The earthwork around Lane’s fort had been rased, but the houses still stood, although deer were in them eating the ‘melons’ growing indoors. Two days later the flyboat arrived, having been left behind in the ‘Bay of Portingall’ with some of the settlers by the machinations of Fernandez, according to White. In spite of the killing of George Howe, one of the assistants,White and Manteo managed to establish good relations with the Indians of Croatoan. White assured them that the settlers had come ‘onely to renew the olde love, that was between us, and them, at the first, and to live with them as brethren, and friends’.39 The Indians told him that Grenville’s men had been attacked by a different group of Indians (from Secoton) and had fled, no one knew where. On 13 August Manteo, described by White as ‘our Savage’, was christened on Roanoke on the order of Ralegh ‘and called Lord therof . . . in reward of his faithfull service’. Five days later White’s daughter Elinor, wife of Ananias Dare, gave birth to a daughter, who was named Virginia in recognition of the fact that she was the first Christian born there.40 By this time the Lion and the flyboat were being got ready for the return voyage to England, the settlers preparing letters and tokens to send back. It had already been agreed that two of the assistants should go back to report; but none wished to return. Accordingly, the whole company asked White to return to England and see that their needs were supplied. White at first demurred, claiming that his honour would be impugned if he were to desert the people whom he had persuaded to go with him to Virginia; but in the end he gave way, 39 Quinn, Roanoke, i, p. 526. 40 On her birthday, 18 August, in 1937 President Franklin Roosevelt signed a birth certificate for Virginia Dare, while a commemorative stamp and coin were issued in her honour.

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provided that the assistants sent with him a testimonial that he was going at their request. On 27 August Governor White came on board the flyboat and sailed for England in company with the Lion. Before they left, an unhappy accident occurred: twelve of the men in the flyboat were thrown from the capstan and seriously injured. When they reached the Azores the Lion left them for a privateering venture, but the flyboat struggled on with only five men fit for service. Eventually, after a storm that lasted six days and with only stinking water to drink, they reached Smerwick in the west of Ireland. White got a passage home in a ship called the Monkey and landed near St Michael’s Mount on 5 November. Finally, he reached Southampton on the eighth, meeting Fernandez in the Lion, who had secured no prizes, while losing many of his sailors. On 20 November 1587 White reported to Ralegh on the state of the colony. Ralegh responded by ordering a pinnace to be sent out with all the provisions they needed and with a letter promising that ‘a good supply’ of shipping and men would be with them by the following summer.41 Disastrously for the colony, news of Spanish preparations for the Armada reached England in the early part of 1588 and all shipping was prevented from going to sea. Grenville had some ships ready for a voyage to the West Indies and Ralegh wrote to him passing on the Privy Council’s orders for the stay of all shipping, but adding a postcript telling him that he may let certain ships ‘steal away’. Although a later order from the Council in April expressly forbade this, White, by now desperate, managed to get leave for two pinnaces, the Brave and the Roe, to be dispatched from Bideford with supplies for the settlement. Again, the lure of privateering intervened: this time the English ships turned out to be victims rather than hunters. After chasing some ships but getting little from them, they came in sight of a tall ship which at first they mistook for an English vessel.White gives a lively but rather confused narrative of events, in which twenty-three men were injured, their master and their mate ‘deadly wounded’ and unable to leave their beds. White himself suffered three wounds, two in the head and one in the buttocks. He concludes philosophically that as God was ‘iustly punishing our former theeverie of our evil desposed mariners’, they were obliged to give up their voyage and return to England, where the other pinnace joined them. For the remainder of 1588 Ralegh and Grenville were probably too much occupied with naval defence to help the colony. However, a potentially useful 41 White’s report is printed in Quinn, Roanoke, ii, pp. 562–9.

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step was taken in March the following year with the formation of a tripartite agreement between Ralegh, chief governor of ‘Affamacomock . . . alias Virginia’, on the first part;Thomas Smith,William Sanderson and seventeen others, all merchants, on the second; with John White and twelve others, on the third. In return for investment in the project the merchant group would be admitted to freedom of the ‘City of Ralegh’ with the right to trade.42 Had the colony survived, the injection of extra capital would have been useful, but as it turned out nothing was done to relieve the settlers that year. According to White, he took the next step himself in 1590. Learning that one of the leading privateers, John Watts, had prepared three ships for an expedition to the Caribbean recently stayed by order of the Council,White proposed that Ralegh intercede with the Queen to allow Watts to sail on condition that his ships take supplies to Virginia. This was agreed, although the necessary bond was apparently never signed.To complicate matters,William Sanderson, possibly acting on behalf of Ralegh, persuaded Watts to allow his own ship, the Moonlight, to accompany the expedition. Although Watts agreed to this, his ships left the Moonlight behind when they sailed. Furthermore, he refused to allow White to take with him any other passengers or supplies.43 White was left no time before sailing to complain about this to Ralegh. He thought, rightly as it turned out, that the ‘governors’, masters and sailors of Watts’ ships had no intention of helping the settlers and were only concerned with taking prizes. On 20 March 1590 Watts’ little fleet – the Hopewell, the Little John and the John Evangelist – with White aboard the Hopewell, sailed from Plymouth for the West Indies. After spending the next four months chasing prizes in the Caribbean the Hopewell and the Moonlight finally reached Virginia. On 15 August they saw a great cloud of smoke rise near the place where White had left the colony three years before, and this gave him hope that some of the settlers were still alive and expecting his return. White landed the next day and made for the smoke, but ‘found no man nor signe that any had bene there lately’. Next day they landed on Roanoke itself, after an unhappy accident in which seven sailors were drowned. It was only by persuasion of White himself and their captain that the sailors were prepared to continue with the search for the colonists. By then it was so dark that they overshot the place where White had originally left the planters, but they saw a great fire to the north and rowed towards it. On reaching it they let fall their grapnel and 42 Quinn, Roanoke, ii, pp. 557–8, 569–76. 43 Quinn, Roanoke, ii, pp. 712–16. White’s narrative of the voyage is printed at pp. 598–622.

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sounded a trumpet-call and ‘many familiar English tunes of songs’.There was no response.They then returned to the spot where White had left the colony, seeing the footprints of many Indians along the way. On a tree were carved the letters ‘CRO’. White explained that he had agreed with the settlers that if they left that place they should carve the name of the place to which they were going, with a maltese cross if they were in distress. There was no such cross. However, in the village was a large tree with the bark torn off and the word CROATOAN carved upon it ‘without any crosse or signe of distresse’. The sailors told them that they had found a number of chests dug up and broken open, including some belonging to White. Although he was saddened by this news, he was pleased to learn that the settlers were safe at Croatoan, where Manteo had been born ‘and the Savages of the Iland our friends’: an optimistic conclusion to draw from the evidence. Next morning, they decided to sail for Croatoan; but the wind got up so strongly that they lost the third out of their original four anchors. As the weather got ‘fouler and fouler’ and they found themselves short of victuals and water, they decided to go south and winter in the Indies, returning to Virginia in the spring. This was agreed by the whole company in the Hopewell but not by their consort, the Moonlight, which set a course directly for England. For two days the Hopewell ran on a course for Trinidad until the wind changed to the west and blew so forcefully that they were hardly able to bear any sail. Faute de mieux they set a course for the Azores, which they reached on 18 September. Here they joined elements of the English fleet lying in wait for the Spanish flota. This evaded them, but even so the haul in terms of prize-money was satisfactory, including as it did the Buen Jesus, appraised in value at £5,806 10s. 4d. White then returned to England, reaching Plymouth on 24 October. He ended his life in Ireland, having achieved none of his objectives. The Hopewell had spent some five months seeking prizes and about four days searching for the lost settlers. White was devastated by the loss of colony, daughter and grandchild. He recorded the names, all 117 of them, in the 1589 edition of Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations. It is easy for historians, seated in library or study, to blame White for showing so little determination, letting Fernandez ignore instructions in 1587, failing to get ships out to the settlers in 1589, and sailing off to the Caribbean and then to England in 1590. We do not have to contend with Atlantic weather or with sailors determined to seek prizes. Even so, the conclusion must be that he fell short of the qualities needed by a successful colonizer.

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What happened to the settlers, the Lost Colonists? After 1590 they were largely forgotten. Ralegh seems to have sent out some ships around 1599, and in 1602 he despatched Samuel Mace, a Weymouth sea captain, to the coast of Virginia to collect plants and to search for the colonists. Mace collected a good deal of sassafras but bad weather prevented any further search.44 Some light was shed upon the fate of the colonists after the foundation of the Jamestown colony in 1607.The Indian chief Powhatan confessed to Captain Smith, the Governor of the new colony, that he had been responsible for massacring the Roanoke settlers, who had evidently moved north to the Chesapeake region. William Strachey, in The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania, records that ‘the men women and children of the first plantation at Roanoak were by practize and comaundement of Powhatan (he himself perswaded thereunto by his priests) miserably slaughtered without any offence given him’.They had, according to Strachey, lived peaceably with the Indians for some twenty years before that.45 It is possible also that a second group of colonists moved to Croatoan, south of Roanoke, and mingled with the friendly Indian tribe there. Could Ralegh have done more to help the colony? In the preface to the 1589 edition of Principall Navigations Hakluyt wrote that the settlements were founded ‘at the charges of sir Walter Raleigh, whose entrance upon those newe inhabitations had bene happie, if it had ben as seriously followed, as it was cheerefully undertaken’.46 Was this intended as a criticism of Ralegh? It seems unlikely that a man of Hakluyt’s rank would have openly criticized so powerful a courtier. More probably, he meant that the timing of the Roanoke project was unlucky, which certainly it was. The Spanish threat in 1587 and 1588 meant that every ship was needed in home waters, and Elizabeth’s government wisely prevented ships from sailing off on privateering enterprises.Yet the embargo does not seem to have been entirely successful, for several fighting ships were sailing in the Atlantic in these years, including some of Ralegh’s.47 If he had given more single-minded attention 44 Very little is known about this trip. See D. B. Quinn, ‘Thomas Hariot and the Virginia voyages of 1602’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 27 (1970), pp. 268–81. Letters of Ralegh, pp. 240–1. Sassafras roots were thought to have medical uses. 45 W. Strachey, The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (1612), eds L. B. Wright and V. Freund (London, 1953), p. 91. 46 R. Hakluyt, Principall Navigations (1589), sig. * 4r, quoted in Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, p. 218. 47 Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, p. 218.

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to the relief of the colonists, it might have come about. But by 1587 he was beginning to withdraw from the project. He had already spent a great deal of money, £40,000 he claimed, and it was becoming evident that a purely military base was unnecessary for successful privateering. However, while they were abandoned in their own time, the colonists live in the memories of modern Carolinians.48 Privateering played an important role in colonization and in Ralegh’s story. During the wars with France under Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary it had been a popular occupation for English sea captains, but with the coming of peace in 1559 it had ceased to provide legal cover for what had often been in effect piracy. In 1579, for instance, the Privy Council had ordered Humphrey Gilbert and Walter Ralegh to face charges for ‘piracies’ allegedly committed off the coast of Devon on a ship from Seville carrying oranges and lemons.49 The outcome of the case is unknown, but the Council was right to call it ‘piracy’. However, in the spring of 1585 the international situation changed when the Spanish ordered the confiscation of all English shipping in Spanish ports and the imprisonment of their crews. In retaliation the English government authorized the issue of letters of reprisal to merchants suffering loss, so that they could win compensation by force at sea. Actions which had until then been condemned as piracy now acquired a dubious legitimacy. A huge bureaucracy, headed by the Lord Admiral, regulated the business, and applications for letters of reprisal were made to the High Court of Admiralty. Not surprisingly, there is no record that any applicant was refused.50 Locally, the regulations were enforced by viceadmirals in the coastal shires, responsible for arrests of ships, examination of suspects and witnesses and execution of the sentences of the High Court. While the distinction between pirate and privateer was now clear in law, in reality the boundary was permeable and the legal authority given by letters of reprisal encouraged men to plunder where they could. According to a seventeenth-century observer the Spanish had ‘good cause to remember 48 See D. B. Quinn, ‘The lost colonists’, in J. Youings (ed.), Raleigh in Exeter: privateering and colonisation in the reign of Elizabeth I (Exeter, 1985), pp. 59–71; H. G. Jones, ‘The Americanization of Raleigh’, in ibid., pp. 73–89. 49 APC, 1578–80, pp. 109, 142–3, 146–7. 50 K. R. Andrews (ed.), English Privateering Voyages to the West Indies, 1588–95 (London, 1959), passim, esp. p. 7. See also K. R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering (Cambridge, 1964), passim.The term ‘privateer’ did not come into use until the seventeenth century. In the sixteenth century ‘privateers’ were called ‘ships of reprisal’.

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how they were baited in the queen’s time, there being never less than 200 sail of voluntaries and others upon their coasts’.51 The effect of this upon voyages of exploration and colonization was twofold. On the one hand, the profits of privateering helped to provide capital for investment in exploratory and colonizing voyages, while on the other these profits were so attractive that men’s attention was diverted from long-term objectives. Privateers came in many shapes and sizes: noblemen like the Earl of Cumberland; courtiers like Ralegh; merchants like John Watts and William Sanderson; professional sailors like Christopher Newport, Admiral of the Virginia Company’s fleet. Most of the noble amateurs and great merchants directed operations from the safety of the land, and Ralegh was no exception.The costs of a privateering voyage were heavy, including the possession or hire of a ship, fitting it out and equipping it with armaments (cannon, muskets, pikes and so on), ammunition, victuals and repairs. The only thing that came free of charge was the hire of labour. Crews usually served for victuals only, expecting to recoup their efforts from the prize money. Kenneth Andrews estimates that the total cost of setting forth a ship of 100 tons with fifty men might come to £693. The expense increased exponentially with the size of the ship, and one of 350 tons might involve an outlay of £3,425.52 On the face of it, the prize-values of captured vessels look very attractive. The value of four ships captured by Sir Richard Grenville in 1585–6 was put at £50,000.53 But by the time deductions were made the profits due to the owners would have been much less. The Queen typically took 5 percent for customs duties, the Lord Admiral 10 percent, the crew one-third of what was left, the victuallers about as much, leaving only the final third to be distributed between the owners. A successful voyage sent out in 1591 by Ralegh and Watts, with ten other investors, or ‘adventurers’, brought back prizes valued at £31,150, but £16,198 went to the Queen in customs dues, to the Lord Admiral, to the crew and to transport costs, leaving only £14,952 for the twelve investors. Ralegh claimed that they had spent £8,000 between them in fitting out the ships and that their profit amounted only to about £7,000, which he said came only to ‘the increase of on[e] for on[e] which is a small returne.Wee might have gotten more to have sent them afishinge.’54 51 Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, p. 7; Andrews, English Privateering Voyages to the West Indies, p. 16. 52 Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, pp. 46–50. 53 Quinn, Roanoke, i, p. 220 fn. 4; Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, p. 192. 54 D. B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481–1620 (London, 1974), p. 300; Letters of Ralegh, p. 57.

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It is difficult to calculate the cost of colonization, but since the Queen made no contribution it was important for settlers to exploit what sources of revenue they could. David Quinn has estimated that the voyages to Virginia in 1584, 1585, 1587 and l590 would have cost in all about £26,000, with a further £5,000 to £7,000 per annum for running expenses. Ships and stores brought back to England and sold might have reduced the total expenditure to between £5,000 and £7,000, but that still left a large shortfall. Since little or nothing could be hoped for from trade with the newly founded colonies, privateering was the most promising source of funds. But there was still a large hole in the accounts and early modern colonies were sadly underfunded.55 Between 1585 and the Guiana voyage of 1595 Ralegh sent out at least one privateering expedition each year, some of them combining their operations with founding and supplying new settlements. Apart from his early voyage in 1578–9, he seems not to have sailed on privateering expeditions himself, providing instead the funding and organization. He was an entrepreneur rather than a frontline fighter. 1585 saw Grenville’s voyage to Roanoke with the Tiger and other ships, the Tiger taking the Santa Maria de San Vicente on the return journey. In the following year Ralegh sent Grenville out again with two large ships and five others, and soon after this he despatched two pinnaces, the Serpent and the Mary Spark, to take prizes in the Azores. In the same year Ralegh sent the Dorothy to join an expedition – not in the end very successful – mounted by the Earl of Cumberland. 1587 saw John White’s expedition in the Lion, after which Simon Fernandez went off in the hope of plunder on the homeward voyage. In the Armada year Ralegh was able, surprisingly, to despatch two pinnaces, the Brave and the Roe, which attempted to capture ships but themselves got badly mauled in the process. Ralegh sent out no expedition to Virginia in 1589, but invested in the expedition to Portugal that year, which gained him some prizes.With John Randall, Sir George Carey and others, Ralegh fitted out the Bark Randall in the same year. From the beginning of the following decade Ralegh tended, like that great nobleman pirate the Earl of Cumberland, to join combined operations organized by great merchants. 1590 saw his and White’s involvement in the voyages of John Watts’ Hopewell and William Sanderson’s Moonlight, when the Buen Jesus was taken. In the following year Ralegh again cooperated with

55 J. W. Shirley, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s Guiana finances’, Huntington Library Quarterly 13 (1949–50), 55–69.

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Watts in a West Indian voyage which brought only a slender return.56 In 1592 Ralegh invested in one of the largest and most successful expeditions of the reign. Sixteen ships were involved, two of them belonging to the Queen. Ralegh fitted out the Roebuck, his brother Carew the Galliantt Rawlighe, and John Watts the Alcedo and the Margaret and John. There were ten others. Ralegh was in charge of the preparations and was nominated as overall commander, with Sir John Burgh his second-in-command. The fleet sailed with Sir Walter in command on 6 May, but the following day Martin Frobisher caught up with them carrying an order from the Queen that Ralegh must return home. Reluctantly he complied, and was back in England ten days later. Ralegh’s lines in his great ‘The Ocean to Cynthia’ may refer to this recall: To seeke new worlds, for golde, for prayse, for glory, To try desire, to try love severed farr When I was gonn shee sent her memory More stronge then weare ten thowsand shipps of warr To call me back.57

Without Ralegh, the expedition sailed on with Frobisher in command.Three Spanish ships were captured: the Santa Clara of Biscay and two East Indiamen, the Santa Cruz and the Madre de Dios, the most valuable prize of the whole reign.The profit of this huge cargo turned out to be slender for the investors, particularly for Sir Walter.58 In 1593 Ralegh sent his own ship, the Roebuck, in a squadron under Sir John Burgh to capture or destroy the Spanish settlement on the island of La Margarita, off the northern coast of South America. The attempt was beaten back. In 1594 Jacob Whiddon was sent to reconnoitre Trinidad. By then Ralegh’s attention was turning to Guiana.59 Although Ralegh’s colonies on Roanoke failed, there were some visible legacies as well as some lessons learned. Ralegh has been credited with bringing potatoes and tobacco across the Atlantic. Potatoes, which were originally grown in Peru, had arrived in Seville at least as early as 1570. From there 56 Above, p. 61 at n. 41. 57 ‘The Ocean, to Cynthia’, ll. 61–5. 58 On the 1592 expedition see G. M. Griffith,‘An account book of Raleigh’s voyage, 1592’, National Library of Wales Journal 7 (1952), 347–53. On the situation at Court and on the division of the spoils see Chapter Four below, pp. 80–1. 59 Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 288–9. Below, Chapter Five.

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they had spread to other parts of Europe, very probably to England, before the time of the Roanoke voyages. Gerard, in his Herball of 1597, introduced some confusion into the story of the potato by claiming that he had ‘received roots hereof from Virginia’. In fact these were plants known to the Indians of that region as openauk, which are not potatoes. However, although Ralegh almost certainly did not bring potatoes into England, he may possibly have introduced them into Ireland. The evidence for this is very late and for that reason not very reliable. Sir Richard Southwell of Kinsale claimed in the Proceedings of the Royal Society for 1693 that his grandfather had brought into Ireland potatoes that he had been given by Ralegh, and an article of 1699 by one John Houghton reaffirmed the claim, but without any further evidence being given. There is a well-known story that Ralegh’s gardener in Youghal had picked the berries of a potato plant and cooked them with unhappy results. The same story is also told about Sir Francis Drake and is just one of the many myths that accumulated about the two men.60 It is no more likely that Ralegh brought tobacco into England before anyone else. Tobacco had been imported into Europe from America by André Thevet in the middle of the sixteenth century and is known to have been growing in England as early as 1571. However, when John Aubrey claimed that Ralegh was ‘the first that brought tobacco into England and into fashion’, he was wrong on the first point but probably right on the second. At first tobacco was used for medicinal rather than social purposes. In The Faerie Queene (1590) Spenser has the female warrior Belphoebe, who stood for Elizabeth, searching the woods for ‘divine tobacco’ to heal her page Timias, who is generally thought to have represented Ralegh. So a connection between Ralegh and tobacco was made early on, and he probably was one of the men responsible for popularizing the smoking of tobacco at the royal Court. Not surprisingly, various stories circulated about Ralegh and tobacco. One has a servant seeing him smoking and pouring a bucket of water over him, an anecdote also told of the actor Tarleton. Another relates the tale of a wager between the Queen and Sir Walter about the weight of the smoke given out by a pound of tobacco. Ralegh argued that this could be found by weighing first the tobacco and then the resulting ash. The difference would represent the weight of the smoke. A third story, which he strongly denied, has him smoking at the execution of the Earl of Essex, but he did ‘take tobacco’ on

60 For the history of the potato see R. N. Salaman, The History and Social Influence of the Potato (1949, rev. edn 1985), pp. 77–84, 148–53, 222.

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the morning of his own death.61 As a colony of settlement with commercial backing, the proposed settlement of 1587 was founded on more realistic lines than its predecessor. Yet there were fatal weaknesses. The colony was small, geographical knowledge was weak, the choice of sites was poor and the transatlantic lifeline was hazardous and unreliable. Roanoke’s financial resources were slender and in consequence it depended heavily upon the profits of privateering, which distracted attention from the colonists themselves. Piracy was an essential source of finance but a dangerous rival for attention.62 For a colony to survive it must quickly become self-supporting and be no longer dependent on the native inhabitants for food.That seems to have been apparent to Harriot and White, but not to other settlers: they had to work the land and in the early days of the Jamestown colony that notion was unwelcome. Encroachments on Indian food-supplies caused friction and the colonists were often brought near to starvation. By launching the colonial ideal Ralegh pointed the way to a British empire; and he brought together an enterprising and imaginative group of men to carry out his plans. He has been honoured (and later vilified) for that, but the project that ultimately succeeded was very different from the one he had first envisaged. Lessons could be and to some extent were drawn from the Roanoke experience, but they had often to be learned again in Jamestown.63

61 E. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book III, canto 5, stanza 32; J. Knapp, ‘Elizabethan Tobacco’ in S. Greenblatt (ed.), New World Encounters (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 272–312; T. Pollard,‘The pleasures and perils of smoking in early modern England’, in S. L. Gilman and X. Zhou (eds), Smoke: a global history of smoking (London, 2004), pp. 38–45. 62 Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 218–22; Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, chs ix, xi; K. O. Kupperman, ‘Ralegh’s Dream of Empire’ in H. G. Jones (ed.), Ralegh and Quinn: the explorer and his Boswell (Chapel Hill, 1987), pp. 123–38. 63 See K. O. Kupperman, Roanoke: the abandoned colony (Lanham, MD, 2007), passim, and The Jamestown Project (Cambridge, MA, 2007), passim.

4

The Outcast

By the late 1580s, the generations were changing; Elizabeth was outliving her contemporaries. Leicester and his brother the Earl of Warwick, Walter Mildmay, Walsingham and Hatton all died between 1588 and 1591. In the tight little circle of trusted advisors at Court, the loss of so many counsellors inevitably had a destabilizing effect, on the governance of England, and, at first sight, on the Queen herself. Some thereafter choose to see Elizabeth as an increasingly marginalized figure, her grip on political events slowly loosening, her control over her Privy Council gradually weakening. John Guy invites us to interpret the 1590s as a ‘second reign of Queen Elizabeth’, a monarchy of shadows, beset by advancing mortality, by endless war, by incompetent leadership, by an increasing authoritarianism and by bitter, unchecked, factional rivalry, all the glory long departed.1 The Queen struggles to cope with the generation gap. Her treatment of favourites and counsellors as intemperate boys verges on the eccentric. Some, such as the intelligent younger son of Lord Burghley, Robert Cecil, appointed a Counsellor at the age of twentyeight in 1591 and Secretary in 1596, bide their time against the succession of a new monarch. From the older generation, only Burghley survives, and after 1591, though increasingly debilitated by illness, he dominates the Council. Unique in the history of western European monarchies, Burghley’s long pre-eminence grows stronger still in this last decade, for the Queen’s trust never falters.2 These are complex times, however, and the concept of a ‘second reign’, while interesting and helpful, does not of itself show England as it really was. As Natalie Mears points out, the differences can be exaggerated; governance and political culture continue to operate along familiar lines.3 The sudden mortality around the Council table in the 1580s obscures the continuity 1 J. Guy,‘The 1590s: the second reign of Elizabeth I?’ in J. Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: court and culture in the last decade (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1–19. 2 See the excellent recent biography by S. Alford, Burghley: William Cecil at the court of Elizabeth I (London, 2008). 3 N. Mears, Queenship and Political Discourse in the Elizabethan Realms (Cambridge, 2005).

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in royal service elsewhere. At Court, and also out in the Elizabethan countryside, new names replace the old, brought forward by Elizabeth’s favour and in some cases trading on that same extended cousinship that advanced Leicester and Essex.The Earl of Worcester is one such: capable, a fine horseman, wealthy and modest. John Fortescue,Thomas Egerton,William Brooke Lord Cobham and many other experienced, capable Crown servants from the ‘second reign’ demonstrate that Elizabeth could still favour good men as well as bad. Throughout the later 1580s, Ralegh retained the confidence of the Queen, and so had the measure of her new favourite, Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex. Born in 1565, Essex was eleven years Ralegh’s junior. He was something of an enigma to contemporaries, and he remains misunderstood today. The popular view that Essex was a ‘great resenter’, who never understood or forgave dissimulation, has been qualified by Paul Hammer in his definitive study of the Earl’s political career.4 Naunton again came as close with the brief pen portrait as anyone ever has, picturing a young Essex full of ‘a kinde of urbanity, or innate curtesie, which both wonne the Queen, and too much took upon the people’.5 He nurtured enmities, but these were often born of disillusion, and a sense of injury that sometimes takes hold of the honourable man. The old favourite and the new never quite knew what to make of each other. There were periods of apparently quite genuine and spontaneous camaraderie, and periods of hostile disengagement, prompted by now forgotten quarrels. In 1587 the two men were ‘made Frendes’.6 In December 1588, Essex challenged Ralegh to a duel. During the summer of 1589, Essex’s followers insisted that their lord had ‘chassed Mr Rauly from the coart and [had] confined him in to Irland’.7 There Ralegh wrote his commendatory sonnets to The Faerie Queene, so full of self-pity and the despair provoked by displacement. He seems to have been in low spirits that year, as he reached the mid-point of his ‘three score and ten’. One of these poems, ‘Me thought I saw the grave, where Laura lay’, foreshadows the later Ralegh canon in its open acknowledgement of mortality and impermanence, for 4 P. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: the political career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge, 1999). 5 R. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, or, Observations on the late Queen Elizabeth (London, 1641), p. 33. 6 Lambeth MS 3203, fo. 35. 7 Lambeth MS 647, fo. 247r.

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man, for England, for the history of the world.8 Life at Court was becoming less straightforward, even though the scuttle and bustle of political manoeuvring is in large measure hidden from the historian dependent upon written records. It may have been at this time that Spenser wrote of Ralegh’s disenchantment in ‘Colin Clouts Come Home Againe’; but there is no very specific evidence of the Queen’s antagonism before the disaster of 1592: His song was all a lamentable lay, Of great unkindnesse and of usage hard, Of Cynthia the Lady of the sea, Which from her presence faultlesse him debard.9

Contemporaries frequently portrayed the relationship as a see-saw, the balance, rather simplistically, tilting from Ralegh to Essex, then back once more. Sir Charles Cavendish, present at a dinner given by Lord Burghley for Arbella Stuart, cousin of James VI and, potentially, his rival for the English throne, suggested gleefully that, thanks to Essex’s rise, Ralegh was ‘in wonderful declination’. It was, thought Cavendish, very unlikely that he would ever rise again, even though he was ‘courteously used’ by Burghley, and even though he was behaving in a startlingly modest way, quite out of step with his former pride.10 In a letter keeping his correspondent up to date with Christmastide developments in London, the Earl of Derby told the Earl of Shrewsbury late in 1589 that Ralegh, who had been away from Court, had returned to the capital but was not straying far from Durham House. In his absence, Essex had been held in high favour. Or so it seemed – Derby and Shrewsbury were not always the most astute observers.11 All this, though, is to miss the complexity of a close association between men who were frequently of one mind. There were times when Ralegh and Essex worked harmoniously together. 8 On the ‘Laura’ sonnet see P. Ure, ‘The poetry of Sir Walter Ralegh’, Review of English Literature 1:3 (1961), 19–29; J. L. Mills, ‘Sir Walter Raleigh as a man of letters’, in H. G. Jones (ed.), Raleigh and Quinn: the explorer and his Boswell (Chapel Hill, 1987), pp. 171–2; W. Erickson, ‘Spenser’s letter to Ralegh and the literary politics of The Faerie Queene’s 1590 publication’, Spenser Studies 10 (1989), 139–74; below, Chapter Seven, p. 141. 9 E. Spenser, ‘Colin Clouts Come Home Againe’, ll. 164–7, in Poetical Works, ed. J. C. Smith and E. de Selincourt (Oxford, 1912), pp. 535–45.The dedicatory letter to Ralegh is dated 27 December 1591. 10 HMC, Third Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1872), appendix, p. 42. 11 Lambeth MS 3200, fo. 102.

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Both, for example, showed some sympathy for the more extreme protestant separatists and ‘hotter’ puritans, taking the side of John Udall, the religious controversialist, who was sentenced to death under the statute of 1571 for writing ‘a wicked, scandalous libel’ called the Demonstration of Discipline.They may have had their different reasons for this joint effort – Ralegh for his part seems to have disliked extreme punishments in cases of conscience – but the cooperation was witnessed by Thomas Phelippes, a shady character drawn from the underworld of Elizabethan espionage, who sensed that Essex was somehow compelling Ralegh to help him represent the views of puritans to the Queen. Before Elizabeth could make up her mind to pardon him, the unfortunate Udall died in gaol.12 An interesting dynamic operated here. Essex was the younger man, apparently with time on his side. But he was also taking all the risks. It was he who dashed off to seek glory in the so-called Counter Armada of 1589, a disastrous attempt to liberate Portugal from Spanish rule. Ralegh, by contrast, remained in England, even though he had apparently received permission to join the expedition. Two years later, it was Essex who led a force to Normandy, in support of the new protestant King Henri IV of France, and it was Essex, again, who took the blame when that campaign disintegrated, broken by disease and unrealistic goals. Elizabeth was enraged when the Earl rather cannily knighted twenty-four well-born gentlemen outside Rouen, confirming some personal alliances that would hold good for years.The risks in any search for martial glory usually overwhelmed any gains; the prudent courtier did not willingly stray too far from the Queen. Essex’s ultimate failure to make an ally out of Ralegh, who at heart shared the same political and strategic philosophies, is conventionally explained by reference to the Earl’s intransigence and paranoia, but Ralegh could be equally intransigent and, sometimes, just as irrational. He was, moreover, responsible for his own calamities.Actions often portrayed as simply incontinent are more accurately attributed to self-protection and ‘family insurance’. For anyone who played the role of the Queen’s ‘lover’ at Elizabeth’s Court, marriage to another woman bludgeoned through the romantic façade. At the beginning of the 1590s, Ralegh began a liaison with Elizabeth – Bess – Throckmorton, one of the Queen’s ladies of the Privy Chamber. Bess, then in her midtwenties, had been a part of the Queen’s inner circle since November 1584. She was the daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the Tudor diplomat and 12 On Udall’s career, see ODNB.

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courtier, a man of strong protestant convictions. The Throckmortons were a prolific family – Nicholas, a fourth son like Ralegh, was one of nineteen children – of old blood, and well connected, but they were also a house divided. Though Nicholas had turned his back emphatically on the old religion, a majority of the Throckmortons were openly and proudly Catholic. Some of the family were pursued for recusancy under Elizabeth, and in due course caught up in the Gunpowder Plot under James I.13 Young Bess therefore had cousins and kinsfolk who were political liabilities. Even her father, an inveterate schemer, had been tried and acquitted on a charge of treason under Mary, only to be imprisoned once again by Elizabeth on suspicion of favouring a marriage between Mary Queen of Scots and the Duke of Norfolk. Bess’s mother, Anne, was the daughter of Nicholas Carew, executed in 1539 for alleged conspiracy against Henry VIII, while her stepfather, Adrian Stokes, had been the second husband of Frances Brandon, a granddaughter of Henry VII, and the mother of Lady Jane Grey.Worst of all, her cousin Francis Throckmorton had given his name to perhaps the most serious Catholic conspiracy against Elizabeth, and had paid for his plotting with his life in the summer of 1584. Without doubt the affair was founded on a strong mutual attraction, but as in most Elizabethan matches there was a good deal of calculation and politics as well. Here was no maid, weeping her way to marriage with a hesitant lover, grimly determined to ‘do the right thing’. Here were no teenagers, distracted by first love. It was altogether more pragmatic than that. Ralegh was forging an alliance with one of England’s most prominent gentry families – like them or loathe them, the Throckmortons were certainly significant – while for Bess, the prestige of the royal favourite offset any doubts about marrying a youngest son. On both sides it seemed a canny union: advantageous, yet within acceptable social bounds. Anna Beer suggests that Bess may have played for a still higher stake: through a marriage to Ralegh her family might aspire, ‘if not to the throne itself, then to a part in a coalition of powerful courtiers on the death of the aging and childless Queen Elizabeth’.14 He probably appeared a good bet for the present as well as for the less than certain future. The difficulty lay at Court. A liaison of this kind would displease the 13 The Catholic Throckmortons receive their due in a fine collection of recent essays: P. Marshall and G. Scott (eds), Catholic Gentry in English Society: the Throckmortons of Coughton from reformation to emancipation (Farnham, 2009). 14 A. Beer, My Just Desire: the life of Bess Ralegh, wife to Sir Walter (New York, 2003), p. xvi.

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Queen. The consequences were of course taken into consideration, but both Ralegh and his lover were determined people. All accounts agree that Bess was formidable. Her brother Arthur, who was very fond of his sister, would later refer to her as ‘Morgan le fay’ in a diary entry of 1609.15 She was clearly a match for Ralegh in every sense, and any reading of the surviving evidence must conclude that the marriage proved strong. Over the years, however, it had much to endure. Although Beer justifiably highlights the energy of husband and wife – for her they are the ‘power couple’ of the late Elizabethan Court – their energy has about it at almost every stage the taint of desperation, of a frantic response to shared loss. The political implications of their union proved, on a personal level, far more significant than either anticipated, and so the public story of Walter and Bess’s marriage develops into a cheerless struggle to repair the irreparable. Bess was pregnant by the late summer of 1591, and at some point shortly before 19 November, she and Ralegh married in secret.16 Pierre Lefranc’s argument that the couple were already husband and wife as early as 1588 surely misreads the common-form of a Chancery case relating to the nonpayment of Bess’s dowry, where a very approximate, and inconsequential, date is given for the marriage, in effect because a blank must be filled.17 The marriage could not of course remain a secret for ever. Ralegh, it seems, planned to be a long way from England when the news became public, far beyond the immediate wrath of the Queen. As we have seen, a major military expedition to Panama was planned for 1592. The target was the annual Spanish shipment of silver home from South America; the potential gain was immense. England’s political nation scrapped for a stake in the enterprise.The Queen, the City of London and the Earl of Cumberland made significant investments, while Ralegh insisted on a leading role, committed a particularly large sum of money to the voyage, and planned to accompany the fleet for at least a part of its journey before handing over command to Martin Frobisher. Busying himself in preparations – it was his way of closing out other realities – he made every effort to discount spreading rumours of his marriage, assuring Robert Cecil as late as March 1592 that ‘if any such thing weare I would have imparted it unto your sealf before any man livinge’.18 15 A. L. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons (London, 1962), p. 276. 16 Arthur Throckmorton heard of the marriage on that day (ibid., p. 160). 17 P. Lefranc,‘La date du mariage de Sir Walter Ralegh: un document inédit’, Etudes anglaises 9 (1956), pp. 193–211. 18 Letters of Ralegh, p. 63.

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Ralegh more than once resorted to blatant falsehood when he perceived his career to be at stake, but such deceptions could backfire, especially if, as seems probable, Cecil knew the truth. Bess, who had somehow managed to conceal her advanced pregnancy from everyone at the Court, was delivered of a son on 29 March 1592, ‘betwene 2 and 3 in the afternowne’, at her brother Arthur’s town house in Mile End. This precision we owe to Throckmorton’s diary.19 Remarkably, Essex stood godfather when the child was christened Damerei on 10 April. Having recently experienced the Queen’s anger following his own marriage to Frances Sidney,Walsingham’s daughter and Sir Philip’s widow, the Earl was clearly a sympathetic confidant. Suggestions that the invitation was extended in order to compromise Essex as a co-conspirator seem wide of the mark. While he could easily have betrayed Ralegh’s secret for personal gain, such a betrayal ran completely against the young man’s character. Why Damerei? The strange name, Beer suggests, announced the new family’s ambitions, a statement that blue blood ran through Ralegh veins. In 1587 Ralegh had subsidized a history of Ireland from John Hooker, and Hooker, in a necessarily flattering prefatory investigation into his patron’s ancestry, noted a marriage 250 years earlier between Sir John de Ralegh, ‘who then dwelled in the house of Furdell in Devon, an ancient house of your ancestors, and of their ancient inheritance’, and the daughter of ‘De Amerie of Clare’, a connection of the Plantagenet royal house.20 Perhaps late-Elizabethan fashion also influenced the choice. In 1602 the Earl of Northumberland, who had no need to emphasize antiquity in his pedigree, reached back to the medieval past to select the name Algernon for his newborn child. With Damerei packed off to a nurse in Enfield, Bess returned to Court late in April, taking up her duties as a Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber, while Ralegh sailed on 6 May on the first leg of the Panama expedition.21 He was back in Plymouth by mid-May, by which time his secret had come out.There was no instant response, no immediate royal tantrum; rather ominously, the Queen controlled her anger. On 28 May Damerei Ralegh was brought by his nurse to Durham House, where his father saw him for perhaps the only time. Three days later Ralegh was committed to the charge of Sir Robert 19 Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, p. 160, and illustration. 20 Beer, My Just Desire, p. 55; see Brushfield, Raleghana, iii, pp. 31–2. Hooker’s genealogy is distinctly tangled, maybe deliberately so. 21 Rowse suspects that the nurse was found among the Throckmortons’ Middlemore relations, who lived there (Ralegh and the Throckmortons, p. 161).

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Cecil, though the oversight seems to have been loose and gentlemanly; by 2 June he was back at Durham House, albeit under orders to stay there. The following day Bess was placed in the custody of the Vice-Chamberlain, Sir Thomas Heneage.22 Perhaps this light touch gave the wrong impression. Convinced that a charade of courtly contrition would suffice, Ralegh lamented his wretchedness, nominally to Cecil, but in fact directly to the Queen. He was unwise to do so. Overdone flattery did not square with his attempts to suggest that the offence was entirely trivial, that it amounted to ‘one drope of gall’, and nothing more. ‘Do with mee now therfore what yow list’, he concludes. ‘I am more wery of life then they are desirus I should perishe, which if it had bynn for her, as it is by her, I had bynn to happelye borne’.23 Arthur Gorges recalled in a letter to Cecil an occasion on which Ralegh, watching from the high windows of Durham House, noticed the Queen’s barges on the river below. Wrestling theatrically with his keeper, George Carew, Ralegh had shouted that he ‘wolde disguyse hymselfe and gett into a pare of oares to ease his mynde butt with a syght of the Quene, or els, he protest, his harte wolde breake’. The whole performance ended in ‘outragius wordes’ and the ‘Jaylor had hys newe perwygg torne of hys crowne’. Gorges, a literary fellow, surmised that Ralegh would ‘shortely growe Orlando furioso; If the bryght Angelyca persever against a little longer’.24 Maddened, that is, with unrequited love! That was Ralegh’s point, as Gorges knew, but the ultimate spectator of this little drama, the ‘bryght Angelyca’, was irritated rather than pacified by gestures from the frantic lover, smacking as they did of the stage, of thespian artifice and a lack of remorse.25 It was a curious but somehow characteristic miscalculation, one which helped set this indiscretion apart from other occasions on which Elizabeth 22 All the dates are drawn from Throckmorton’s diary. 23 Letters of Ralegh, p. 70. 24 Bodleian MS Ashmole 1729, fo. 177. See H. E. Sandison, ‘Arthur Gorges, Spenser’s Alcyon and Ralegh’s friend’, PMLA 43 (1928), 657–8. 25 On this Petrarchan scene see M. Campbell, ‘Inscribing imperfection: Sir Walter Ralegh and the Elizabethan Court’, English Literary Renaissance 20 (1990), 233–53, at 234–5. Campbell suggests that these exchanges provide a context in which to read ‘The Ocean to Cynthia’, a poem that shares the Petrarchan vocabulary of frustrated passion and service unrewarded, and which, she believes, deliberately emphasizes its own sense of disorder and dislocation, even in the title. On the dating of the poem see P. Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh écrivain: l’oeuvre et les idées (Paris, 1968), pp. 101–9 and below, Chapter Seven, p. 150.

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had been infuriated by the clandestine marriages of her favourites. These irked her, both on the personal level – as disloyal acts – but also in the way that they disregarded so easily her assumed control over the bloodlines in her own extended cousinship. Marriage control by the materfamilias counted for a great deal at the Elizabethan Court. Leicester, after his marriage to Lettice Knollys in 1578, and Essex, following his marriage to Frances Sidney in 1590, had both flirted with the Tower. Both had enraged the Queen, but both had been forgiven. No doubt Ralegh was gambling on a similarly happy outcome, but there were less auspicious precedents to consider as well. On the birth of their child the Earl of Oxford and his lover Anne Vavasour had both been imprisoned in 1581, and though this wilful aristocratic couple had compounded their offence in adultery – Oxford was married to Burghley’s daughter – their fate would prove the truer guide.With Bess brazening it out at Court, and Ralegh shuffling through every thin gesture that came into his head, Elizabeth was simply not prepared to forgive and forget. Indeed, when at last she made up her mind to act, the response was venomous. Husband and wife were both sent to the Tower of London on 7 August 1592, Arthur Throckmorton recording the event in French, a language that he resorted to in his diary only at moments of personal or family crisis.26 This imprisonment must be understood in its context. The clandestine marriage had clearly amounted to an act of lese-majesty, what the age defined rather broadly as ‘contempt’. Bess’s status as a lady in waiting had been besmirched. Under the protection of the Queen, she had married without her mistress’s consent, and had conspired with her new husband to conceal the fact. It needs to be borne in mind, though, that neither Ralegh nor his wife stood in any danger of their lives, despite some assertions to the contrary. No capital crime had been committed. This was not treason by any reasonable legal yardstick. It did not even rank as a particularly serious contempt. Some more threatening acts of lese-majesty might be pursued through an ore tenus prosecution in Star Chamber; the Earl of Northumberland was prosecuted in this fashion in 1606, after the Gunpowder Plot. However, the summary justice in prosecutions of this kind always assumed an admission of guilt, and a public prosecution would have reflected very badly on the deceived Queen.27 A spell in the Tower might shock, and serve to express 26 See the similar treatment meted out to another lady of the privy chamber, Bridget Manners, when she eloped with Robert Tyrwhit two years later (S. W. May, Sir Walter Ralegh (Boston 1989) p. 13). 27 See M. Nicholls, ‘The “Wizard Earl” in Star Chamber: The trial of the earl of

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extreme displeasure, but it could not undo a marriage. Elizabeth was left to demonstrate the extent of her disgust, and to indicate unambiguously that there would be no easy path back to trust and favour. Neither prisoner felt particularly guilty. Ralegh chafed at the disgrace, sought solace in poetry, and begged for release with as much humility as he could muster, but it is clear from the sentiments expressed in his finest poem ‘The Ocean’s Love to Cynthia’ (or ‘The Ocean to Cynthia’), which probably dates from this period, that he was also furious at the way in which he and his wife had been treated. Sometimes, his pride blinded good sense. In ‘The Ocean to Cynthia’, Ralegh is the wide, restless sea and Elizabeth the unapproachable moon goddess. She is also a tyrannical, inconstant woman, who tortures him as a traitor for his honest love. This is splendid stuff, but Ralegh, wallowing in melancholy, misses his mark. If, as we might suppose, Cecil never showed the poem to Elizabeth – it seems to have remained among his papers – he was only doing its author a service. The Queen, in these matters, acted more consistently than Ralegh ever cared to notice.28 Disgrace, and the loss of influence at Court, allowed old rivals to recover ground. The Archbishop of Cashel, Meiler Magrath, had been obliged to grant Ralegh most of the temporalities of the see of Lismore and Waterford, which he had enjoyed in commendam, alongside the revenues from his own see, for some years. Now, during the summer of 1592, he was able to claw back a good deal, aided and abetted, for once, by his enemy the Lord Deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam.29 Maximizing the returns on a number of impoverished Irish benefices, Magrath was a pluralist on the grand scale, with an eye for the moment: he was himself quite popular at Elizabeth’s Court, and Ralegh’s downfall coupled with the death of the Bishop of Lismore,Thomas Weatherhead, gave him his opportunity. Ralegh, however, showed that he could exploit the moment too. The fleet he had so recently sent off into the Atlantic succeeded in capturing a Portuguese carrack, the 1,600-ton Madre de Dios, one of the greatest single prizes taken by Elizabethan seamen. This was not the silver fleet, but it promised to provide an ample return on a commercial venture. The carrack was brought to Dartmouth in triumph, and tales reached London of how Northumberland, June 1606’, Historical Journal 30 (1987), 173–89. 28 Below, Chapter Seven, pp. 150–60. 29 Nearly four years later, as fortune began again to turn, Ralegh attempted to take his revenge, bidding unsuccessfully to secure Lismore and Waterford for his ‘frend’ Hugh Broughton. Letters of Ralegh, pp. 136–7.

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a vast treasure on board was being plundered by those at the scene. In this administrative chaos lay Ralegh’s opportunity; no one knew the south-west and its inhabitants better than he did. On 15 September, at the request of Sir John Hawkins – who openly regarded Ralegh ‘the especyall man’ for the task – and through the mediation of Burghley, he was sent to Dartmouth, still technically a prisoner, as he never tired of telling those he met on the way.30 He had, to some extent, bought his freedom, promising the Queen £80,000 from the prize if he were released, and nothing but a profitless hull if he were not. Fore score thowsande pounde is more then ever any man presented Her Majestye as yet. If God have sent it for my ransome I hope Her Majestye of her abundant goodness will accept it. If I speake with the least a greater sume wilbe more thancks worthye.31

At least he had the good sense to remain silent about Bess and his marriage when discussing matters altogether more congenial to Elizabeth. At Dartmouth, under Robert Cecil’s observant eye, he set to work, enjoying the welcome given him by mariners.32 The pilferers had in fact already done a competent job; from a cargo originally worth perhaps half a million pounds, only £140,000 worth of goods survived to enrich the Queen and the other investors. Elizabeth, who had taken a 10 percent stake in the venture, took Ralegh at his word and insisted on payment of the promised £80,000 for the royal coffers, leaving him with nothing more than a notional profit of £2,000 on the £34,000 adventured by him and his associates.33 Perhaps, in the circumstances, that was beside the point, for after his efforts on the south coast Elizabeth began to forgive. On 22 December Bess was released from the Tower. The new Lady Ralegh had shown particular resolution, some might call it enduring stubbornness, while under arrest.Writing from her prison to the 30 BL, MS Lansdowne 70, fo. 88, Hawkins to Burghley, 11 September 1592. 31 Letters of Ralegh, p. 79. 32 He arrived the day after Cecil.These events were considered by Burghley to be worthy of inclusion in a manuscript list of events in 1592 (Hatfield MS 333). 33 See Hatfield MS 142/176 for particulars of the division of the spoils.William Sanderson acted for Ralegh on the commission charged with distributing the proceeds from selling the plunder (R. A. McIntyre, ‘William Sanderson: Elizabethan financier of discovery’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 13 (1956), pp. 197–8).

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clearly sympathetic Sir Moyle Finch and his wife Elizabeth Heneage, daughter of the Vice Chamberlain, she refers to a continuing sickness, thanking Lady Finch for her ‘medsen’. Bess’s resolutely phonetic spelling characterizes every surviving letter. While ‘dayly put in hope’ of liberation, she does not want it should the consequences prove difficult for her husband: ‘I never desiared nor never wolde desiar my lebbarti with out the good likeking ne advising of Sur W R: hit tis not this in prisonment if I bought hit with my life that shuld make me thinke hit long if hit shuld doo him harme to speke of my delivery: but Sur R S[ecill?] was somwhat deseved in his Jugment in that and hit may be hee findeth his eror.’ She seems to have fretted over Cecil’s attempts at mediation! There were no such doubts about her husband. ‘Wee ar trew with in ourselfes I can asur you’.34 The Raleghs against the world; defiance mixed with desperation. It is possible, though now hard to prove, that the death of Bess’s son moved the Queen to set her free. Little Damerei Ralegh vanishes from the record. Ralegh seems to have deliberately distanced himself from his wife at this point; perhaps both he and Bess had realized that it would not do to flaunt their marriage while events were taking a more favourable turn. Arthur Throckmorton made the immediate arrangements after Bess’s release, and she travelled down into the country while Ralegh remained close to the Court.35 However, husband and wife were not separated for long. Bess soon returned to London, and on 1 November 1593 the couple’s second child,Walter – known throughout his life as Wat – was baptized at Lillington, Dorset, a few miles south-west of the foundations of a fine new house Ralegh was beginning to build, close by the old castle at Sherborne. In January 1592, the Queen had taken a lease of ninety-nine years on all the Bishop of Salisbury’s estates in or near Sherborne, and she had immediately sublet them to Ralegh for the remainder of her term. Here was a property long coveted by Ralegh – or so we are told – and indeed its position is still lovely, standing in glorious parkland on the outskirts of Sherborne. A story told by Sir John Harington has Ralegh thrown from his horse while waxing lyrical about the advantages of the estate, ploughing the soil of Sherborne with his face – an involuntary act of ‘seisin’, an entry upon his land, which chimed with the procedures of the Common Law and which was considered at the time to be a good omen.36 The new ‘Lodge’ built substantially of Portland 34 HMC, A. G. Finch MSS, i, p. 34; Beer, My Just Desire, pp. 64–5. 35 Beer, My Just Desire, p. 69. 36 [Harington], Nugae Antiquae: a miscellaneous collection of original papers, in prose and verse,

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limestone, together with its gardens, owed much to the architect Simon Basyl and to Ralegh’s talented, capricious half-brother Adrian Gilbert.37 Aubrey, as usual, captures the charm and purpose of the place. Sherborne was ‘a delicate lodge . . . not big, but very convenient for the bignes, a place to retire from the Court in summer time and to contemplate etc . . . . In short and indeed ’tis a most sweet and pleasant place and site as any in the West, perhaps none like it.’38 No wonder, then, that Ralegh had ‘cast such an eye upon it as Ahab did upon Naboth’s vinyard’.39 Years later, when Adrian Gilbert was attempting to add up the money that he had spent on Ralegh’s behalf, never to be repaid, he included £50 in respect of time ‘spent at Mile End Green, and about London, when the Lady Ralegh was first delivered with child; and when most of Sir Walter’s friends forsook him, being requested by the said Sir Walter Ralegh to visit her’.40 Gilbert was putting a price on family kindnesses, and was by that point bitter enough to charge over the odds. But he did not exaggerate the sense of isolation. It was the loss of those political alliances, so long taken for granted, that brought home to Ralegh the magnitude of his miscalculation, and again his actions under pressure did not prove wise. In a letter to the Queen, probably written in February 1593, he describes himself, pointedly if with quite breathtaking effrontery, as ‘all alone in the worlde’, while criticizing the failure of friends to extricate him from his self-inflicted troubles. Elizabeth too came in for reproach.Would she never forgive him? Was he to suffer forever? Worse still – and this twist is as bizarre as it is ill-judged – the letter encloses a memorandum on the succession,‘but onn houres worke’, an immediate response to Peter Wentworth’s abortive attempt to speak on the subject in Parliament. Wentworth’s scheming led him straight to the Tower, and although his memorandum was essentially anodyne, arguing correctly that the matter was for God and princes alone, Ralegh was perhaps fortunate to escape the same fate. It may be that the paper did not reach the Queen. If it did, she would have been none too pleased to see so many alternative rulers paraded, even though Ralegh’s object was to find fault with the claims

37 38 39 40

by Sir J. Harington and others (London, 1779), i, pp. 105–6. Reminiscent of William the Conqueror taking possession of England after a similar fall on Pevensey beach. Letters of Ralegh, pp. 107–8. O. L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives (London, 1949), p. 254. [Harington], Nugae Antiquae, i, pp. 105–6. C. Monro (ed.), Acta Cancellariae (London, 1847), p. 180. Dr Allen Boyer kindly brought this reference to our attention.

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of each one in their turn. And, for future note, one of the candidates thus disparaged was King James VI of Scotland. To discuss the succession was to tread on sensitive ground. So far as an ageing, childless queen was concerned, the matter went beyond the remit of subjects, and beyond legislation. In his principled pursuit of freedom of speech in Parliament Wentworth knew what he was doing, and he recognized the likely consequences. By contrast, the political naivety of Ralegh’s impulsive gesture is striking.41 That same letter also mentions another political paper by Ralegh, part of the same campaign, ‘contayninge the dangers which might groe by the Spanish faction in Skotlande’. It is the only such reference to this document. No copy survives.42 Nevertheless, we know from his speeches in Parliament that Ralegh was concerned by Spanish attempts to ‘corrupt’ the Scots nobility. King James, for his part, feared that a rapprochement between England and Spain might frustrate his hopes of one day securing the English crown.43 There were some well-placed friends that did not in fact desert the Raleghs. Successive Earls of Shrewsbury, and their spouses, seem to have remained on good terms. In the tense days before James I’s succession the friendships between Ralegh, Bess, and Bess of Hardwick, the formidable four-times married widow of Gilbert, the sixth Earl, was widely recognized, but Ralegh was already writing to the Countess, apologizing for neglecting their friendship, as early as 1593. In so doing he could not omit a self-pitying aside, lamenting the ‘ill desteny’, even the ‘strenght of counterworkinge’ that dogged him. Again, it was dawning upon him that he might struggle to recover the Queen’s favour.44 The Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury spent a good deal of time away from Court, but others with more regular access to the Queen were also reluctant to abandon the disgraced favourite. After their mutually advantageous supervision of the Portuguese carrack, Lord Howard of Effingham and the Cecils seem to have done what they could for the Raleghs, actively intervening when Sir William Fitzwilliam, acting on orders from the Council, put a stop to the trade in Irish pipe staves out of Munster to the Canary Islands. This wartime gesture threatened the precarious economy of the Munster 41 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 90–1. P. Lefranc, ‘Un inédit de Ralegh sur la succession’, Etudes Anglaises 13 (1960), 38–46. 42 Letters of Ralegh, p. 90. 43 Sir Simonds D’Ewes, The Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth both of the House of Lords and House of Commons (London, 1682), p. 484. 44 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 92–3.

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plantation.45 In trying to resolve the dispute, the Council weighed timeless arguments that strove to justify commerce with the enemy: members were reminded that the Canaries were a friendly part of Spain, and that England derived benefit from the trade. Spain benefited too, of course, but she was already securing plenty of staves from Norway, and would only obtain more from Scandinavia if Irish sources were cut off. Above all, the trade was particularly beneficial to the local plantation economy, and if planted men were to give up on Ireland and come home to England, the security of the province would be jeopardized.46 After deliberation, the Council took a pragmatic approach to the immediate problem and the trade continued. However, Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam was no friend, and with or without the help of Council orders he continued to make life difficult for Ralegh’s settlers. Robert Cecil in particular remained happy to take Ralegh’s advice on areas in which he could reasonably claim some expertise, and the giving of advice kept a disgraced man in the public eye. Ralegh was determined to make the most of this opportunity, to show that he could still be of use to his sovereign. Ostensibly sending news from the south-west – or the news that there was no news – his letters turned to other, more statesmanlike concerns.The emerging alliance in Ireland between Hugh O’Donnell, Lord of Tyrconnell, and Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, was one subject where his dire forewarnings had proved substantially accurate, and he was not slow to point this out, likening himself to ‘the Trojen Southsayer [who] cast his spear agaynst the wodden horse but [was] not beleved’. The situation, he felt, was not beyond salvation, provided that England focused her efforts and gave Ireland its due measure of attention. Taking a wider geopolitical view of the troubles, Ralegh highlighted the pressures of war in Brittany, a distraction from the threat posed across the Irish Sea – ‘wee ar so busyed and dandled in thes French warrs, which ar endless, as wee forgett the defens next the hart’ – and the connections between the powerful Earl of Argyll and Ulster politics, ‘for by hyme this fier must be only mayntayned in Ulstell’. Of course, that obligation to take Ireland seriously was itself deeply frustrating to any true Englishman. Ireland was, he well knew, a blight and burden on the English crown, for the sums spent on ‘so beggarly a nation’ a much better kingdom might have been purchased. Political chaos in Ireland brought many personal difficulties for an Irish landowner. Ralegh did what he could for the 45 Ibid., pp. 96–7, 99–100. 46 HMC, Salisbury, iv, pp. 278, 464; P. Croft,‘Trading with the enemy, 1585–1604’, Historical Journal 32 (1989), 281–302.

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tenants on his Irish estates, but settlers began to abandon their holdings as the lack of security emboldened the dispossessed Irish and their supporters to take whatever they could, by whatever means, while substantial investments in nascent industrial and agricultural schemes now brought no significant return. Ralegh laces his ‘I told you so’ letter with the usual dose of self pity:‘I am tumbled down the hill by every practize . . . I am the worse for the Bath and not the better.’47 Even spa waters could hardly be expected to dispel the gloom that afflicted him in these years. Correspondence with the Cecils at this time concentrates on business, with some spice of pleasure: the occasional reference to falconry and horsebreeding, and the more than formal good wishes to friends and relations.48 The importance lies in what is not said, for the letters implicitly confirm his continued value to the regime, and therefore his status in the Elizabethan world. By this time, there is just a hint of sunnier days ahead. In May 1594 Ralegh was confident enough to remind the Lord Keeper, Sir John Puckering, that Star Chamber should not encroach on the ‘auncient custome and prerogative’ of the Stannaries.49 People still turned to him for help, confident that he could use his links at Court to assist them. These petitioners were a typically mixed bunch: admiralty officials in search of wardships, negligent privateers, cuckolded sea captains, experienced army officers battered by the wars and Irishmen anxious to escape the consequences of former offences, now given hope by the downfall of others. Here is the Elizabethan patronage system at work: lavish compliments, an attempt at objectivity in the request, delicate allusions to the all too necessary bribery and, as in a letter to William Cecil’s patronage secretary and Robert Cecil’s close friend Michael Hickes, a pious exhortation that nothing should be done that might conflict with a man’s conscience.50 Yet the catalogue of petitioners also suggests the limits on Ralegh’s political recovery during the 1590s. In the days of his greatness the list of supplicants would have been longer, and more varied, and there would have been less need to put pen to paper. Slowly, Ralegh came to realize that his comparatively modest antecedents made him dispensable. Leicester, Oxford and Essex enjoyed an independent status that helped them to recover from misfortunes at Court, but Ralegh was entirely dependent on the favour of 47 48 49 50

Letters of Ralegh, pp. 68–9, 93–6. Ibid., p. 100, for example. Ibid., pp. 108–10. See, for example, Letters of Ralegh, pp. 100–2, 104–6, 110–13, 115–18, 122–3, drawing from letters written in 1593 and 1594.

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a Queen who now felt that she could no longer trust him. On the verge of middle age, his moment had gone. In the search for patronage there are hints that Ralegh is being by-passed, in ways that would never have occurred before 1592. George Carew pressed this nomination as a helpful gesture during Ralegh’s absence in Guiana, but it is still strange to see him writing directly to Cecil in the mid-1590s, recommending a man as muster master in Cornwall, albeit with a gloss that the favoured one is a kinsman of Ralegh’s, and that Sir Walter will surely ‘not dislike him’.51 Thanks, perhaps, to the influence in the county of another Carew kinsman, Richard, who was married to one of the Arundell family of Trerice, effectively the patrons of the borough, Ralegh was elected a burgess of Mitchell, Cornwall, in the 1593 Parliament. He had been knight of the shire for Devon in the 1580s, and this borough seat was distinctly less exalted. Nevertheless, it was at least a step on the path back to favour, and one or two clues suggest that he might still have been able to exercise his own patronage to secure the Saltash seat for the well-travelled diplomat Jerome Horsey.52 In the next two Parliaments Ralegh was returned for county seats: Dorset in 1597 and Cornwall in 1601. He was unique in Elizabeth’s reign in representing three English counties, a keen Parliament man, actively concerned with borough patronage and with the business of the House, seldom if ever omitted from an important committee; he was, after all, a lord lieutenant, albeit of an impoverished and remote county. From time to time the Commons offered him a stage. In 1593, for example, he took on the role of prophet, warning fellow members in a sweeping survey of the dangers posed by Spain, demanding pre-emptive action and, consequently, a grant of subsidies sufficient to sustain the necessary military operations. These opinions were hardly unorthodox, though his insistence that those who could pay more should be taxed proportionately went against the realities of direct taxation in Elizabethan England. Ralegh argued that the ‘three pound men’, those who only just fell into the group liable to contribute towards the subsidy, should be excused payment, and the money lost from these subjects taken instead from ‘those of ten pounds and uppward’.53 Subjected to unprecedented pressure from the Lords to act generously, MPs duly granted the Queen a triple subsidy, but, once again, no effort was made to revise the increasingly 51 Letter dated 14 September 1595, Hatfield MS 172/64. 52 See the article on Horsey in ODNB. 53 T. E. Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, Volume III 1593–1601 (London, 1995), pp. 94, 106, 110; D’Ewes, Journals, pp. 484, 492.

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fossilized calculations for this standard form of direct taxation. Too many vested interests were involved, and the Queen would not even contemplate a destabilization of the political nation in a time of war. In parliament after parliament, the return on each ‘entire subsidy’ dwindled. At Westminster, the pragmatic side to Ralegh’s character emerged from time to time, bringing colleagues down to earth, pricking some wilder conceits. In the 1593 Parliament he spoke to counter demands for the banishment of obdurate ‘Brownists’, an early manifestation of English Congregationalist separatism who took their name from the priest and radical preacher Robert Browne. The measure was, he suggested, flawed both in principle and in practice. Brownists were misguided, of that he professed to have no doubt, but as in the case of John Udall it seemed to him wrong that so heavy a punishment should be imposed in a matter of belief and conscience. With such laws, there was always the danger that innocent people might suffer along with the guilty; punish the fact, he urged, and not the supposed intention. And how, he asked, could so sweeping a measure be implemented? Assuming that ‘2,000 or 3,000 Brownestes meete at the sea[side], at whose charge shall they be transported, or whether will you send them? I am sory for it, I am afrayd there be 10,000 or 12,000 of them in England: when they be gone who shall mayntaine their wife and children?’54 Again, though, he may have miscalculated.The bill that Ralegh and others opposed so determinedly was a government measure, dear to the hearts of Elizabeth and her Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift.While Queen and Archbishop reluctantly bowed to pressure and restructured the bill, these changes did not save two leading Brownists, Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, who were executed early one April morning in 1593, while the Parliament still sat. Ralegh did rather better when playing the nationalist card, denouncing any measure of relief for Dutch merchants selling goods in England.‘Whereas it is pretended, that for Strangers it is against Charity, against Honour, against profit to expel them; in my opinion it is no matter of Charity to relieve them.’ ‘The nature of this Dutchman is to fly to no man but for his profitt, and to none they will obey longe.’55 These same people, he thundered, had shored up the imperial ambitions of Spain, and they should not receive any English silver. This was hardly an unpopular view; indeed it was typical of the xenophobia induced by unending war. We know very little about the early years of Ralegh’s marriage. Bess lived 54 Hartley, Proceedings, pp. 162–3; D’Ewes, Journals, p. 517. 55 Hartley, Proceedings, pp. 142–3; D’Ewes, Journals, pp. 508–9.

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at Sherborne, running house and estate, while her husband tried to recover lost ground in London. In letters to allies at Court he usually avoided any mention of his wife, a necessary discretion, given the delicacy of the subject. His resolve slipped, however, in moments of stress. Writing to Cecil from Durham House, late in September 1594, Ralegh dealt briefly with a few preparations for his forthcoming Guiana voyage, and then told the Secretary in a postscript about an outbreak of plague in Sherborne. ‘My Bess’, he writes, ‘is on way sent, hir sonne another way, and I am in great troble ther with.’ Ralegh’s helplessness and anxiety are all too clear. So too is his love for ‘my Bess’.56 Whenever the public, formal mask slips, expressions of deep affection, on both sides, are never hard to find. With Ralegh absent on his Guiana voyage Bess wrote to Cecil, pursuing with dogged determination an inheritance of £500 lost long since to the ‘care’ of the Earl of Huntingdon, and lamenting the days apart from ‘him that I am’, an unambiguous expression of love and dependence.57 According to every test imposed by the Elizabethan authorities, Ralegh was a conforming member of the established church. From time to time, however, he would express a measure of rational scepticism, a potentially dangerous trait in a public figure. That danger was aggravated by the company he kept and by his evident taste for discussion and debate. Ralegh’s patronage of the mathematician and astronomer Thomas Harriot, and his contacts with Giordano Bruno, Christopher Marlowe, John Dee and Harriot’s other patron Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, tarred him by association with far more radical notions. Indeed, they helped to bolster a charge of atheism, vividly put forward in a work by the influential English Catholic exile, Robert Parsons. Parsons’ pseudonymous Elizabethae . . . saevissimum in Catholicos sui regni edictum . . . cum responsione, published in Augsburg in 1592, provided contemporary readers with a lurid account of goings on at the ‘heretical’ English Court, and gave later authors a rich collection of tales and legends, material that begged for imaginative elaboration and further speculation. According to a rather condensed English summary of Parsons’ work, also published on the Continent in that same year, Ralegh presided over a ‘schoole of atheisme’. There, following a hardly demanding syllabus, ‘both Moyses, and our Savior, the olde, and new Testamente [were] jested at,

56 Letters of Ralegh, p. 119. 57 Beer, My Just Desire, p. 91.

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and the schollers taughte, amonge other thinges, to spell God backwarde’.58 Fanciful in the extreme, of course, yet both John Dee and Thomas Harriot felt that they might have been singled out as ‘the Conjurer who is M[aster] thereof ’, the schoolmaster in this academy of unbelief. There is some slight evidence that they met to discuss the implications.59 Parsons’ attacks, even his charges of atheism, were by no means confined to Ralegh, who was really only a secondary target. Burghley – a ‘worm’, a ‘serpent’ – was always a much more substantial foe, more worthy of Parsons’ vitriol, and the dead Hatton, Walsingham and Leicester were also savaged. The book was, of course, just another contribution to an interminable and strongly-worded propaganda war between Protestant and Catholic. Parsons was responding to attacks against the Jesuits launched by Elizabeth’s government, in turn a response to the activities of Jesuit missionary priests in England after 1580.The October 1591 proclamation against the Society of Jesus had used particularly venomous language, insisting that Jesuits were engaged in treason concealed under a cloak of religion. Nevertheless, reputations tarnished in this way are sometimes difficult to polish afresh, especially when, years after the event, polemical tittle-tattle still provides a convenient foundation for other widely-disseminated ideas. One mountain from a molehill theory, for example, links Ralegh’s hypothetical ‘school of atheism’ to the ‘school of night’ mentioned by the King of Navarre in Love’s Labour’s Lost.This curious notion can be traced back to the early twentieth century, when Arthur Acheson suggested a connection between Shakespeare’s ‘little academe’ and George Chapman’s poem ‘The Shadow of Night’. From that charming if unsubstantiated conceit, academic speculation during the 1930s fashioned another fanciful Elizabethan academy, with Ralegh and Northumberland as funders and sponsors, and Harriot as the intellectual genius.60 John Dee, as ever, lurked somewhere in the background. To believe in such an academy, however, is to credit allusion and guesswork over substance and probability. Love’s Labour’s Lost, generally supposed to have been written in the mid-1590s, is certainly laced with topical references, but Shakespeare’s mockery of a po-faced group of noblemen who take their 58 An advertisement written to a secretarie of my L Treasurers of Ingland, by an Inglishe intelligencer as he passed throughe Germanie towardes Italie ([Antwerp], 1592), p. 18. 59 E. A. Strathmann, ‘John Dee as Ralegh’s “Conjurer”’, Huntington Library Quarterly 10 (1947), 365–72; J. W. Shirley, Thomas Harriot: a biography (Oxford, 1983), p. 180. 60 These ideas culminated in M. C. Bradbrook’s study, The School of Night and F. A. Yates’s A Study of Love’s Labour’s Lost, both published in 1936.

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celibate scholarship altogether too seriously has broader targets – some of them still highly elusive – while Navarre’s remark is too fleeting, and slight, for these suggestions to carry weight. Far too much is made of particular interpretations supported, essentially, by the later gossip of Anthony Wood and John Aubrey. Nevertheless, despite a careful deconstruction by Ernest Strathmann, the ‘School of Night’ still influences some more recent literary speculation, Frances Yates’s evaluation of occult elements in the supposed curriculum coming more and more to the fore.61 To get anywhere near the truth in these matters, we have to disentangle evidence from speculation. Ralegh’s obscure links with Marlowe have been taken to provide evidence of atheism in both men, though it is hard to be certain that the two ever met.Verse exchanges may demonstrate familiarity with the works of corresponding authors, but literary familiarity of this kind does not of course confirm parallel processes of face-to-face conversation and debate. A suspected atheist, Richard Cholmley, once passed on a specific and, on the face of it, rather compelling story to a government informant. Marlowe, he said, had many persuasive arguments to uphold notions of atheism, and had indeed read an ‘atheist lecture’, whatever that might have been, to Ralegh and others.62 But this evidence is of limited value.The little that we know of Cholmley suggests a credulous individual, confident that atheism was rife in London, and receptive to the easy blasphemies of the alehouse. Ideas advanced by Samuel Tannenbaum eighty years ago that Ralegh ordered Marlowe’s murder to silence a potential witness to his atheism are still more imaginative, even in the context of all the murky speculation still surrounding that bloody quarrel at Deptford in 1593.63 Certainly, they credit Ralegh with powers far beyond his reach. Thomas Harriot was undoubtedly both Ralegh’s friend and client, but was he an atheist? That is itself a challenging question to answer. Parsons’ ‘Conjurer’ jibe certainly hit home, for Harriot was obliged to counter similar accusations throughout the rest of his life. Did Thomas Nashe, for example, 61 E. A. Strathmann, Sir Walter Raleigh; a study in Elizabethan skepticism (New York, 1951). See S. Clucas, Thomas Harriot and the Field of Knowledge in the English Renaissance (Oxford, 1995), pp. 2–5. 62 BL, Harley 6848, p. 190, see R. Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh (London, 2002), pp. 200–1. 63 S. A.Tannenbaum, The Assassination of Christopher Marlowe: a new view (New York, 1928). On this subject see C. Nicholl, The Reckoning: the murder of Christopher Marlowe (London, 1992) and P. E. J. Hammer,‘A reckoning reframed: the “murder” of Christopher Marlowe revisited’, English Literary Renaissance 26 (1996), 225–42. See also Shirley, Thomas Harriot, pp. 181–6.

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draw on them when writing in Pierce Penilesse his supplication to the divell of ‘mathematicians abroad, that will prove men before Adam’. People, wrote Nashe, who were ‘harbored in high places’, would willingly ‘maintaine it to the death, that there are no divells’.64 A year later, in Christs teares over Jerusalem, the same author apparently mocked Harriot’s ethnographic work on the peoples of North America, insisting that, according to English atheists, ‘the late discovered Indians, are able to shew antiquities, thousands [of years] before Adam’. One of Nashe’s many targets in this dismal and provocative work was the type of person who ‘establisheth reason as his God’, who delighted in picking over ‘every circumstance of [God’s] providence’, questioning ‘why he did not thys thing, and that thing, and the other thing, according to theyr humors’.65 Several courtiers and their followers showed this spirit of enquiry during the 1590s, albeit in private, but given Nashe’s own connections it seems quite possible that he had Harriot in mind. If Harriot was indeed targeted here, so too was his patron. Accusations against courtiers and their followers were nothing new, but they were only effective, and dangerous, when the courtier was vulnerable. In the early 1590s, Ralegh was an easy target.66 Nashe exaggerates a great deal in Christs teares, for exaggeration is a characteristic of his work, but does he exaggerate Harriot’s scepticism? The scholar’s extensive surviving papers contain no hint of unorthodox religious speculation. Rather, they dwell on the prosaic, detaining the reader with abstruse mathematical challenges and practical problems in need of solution, from plumbing on the Syon estate, and auditing arrangements for the financing of Ralegh’s first Guiana voyage, to a calculation of the optimum height of a ship’s mast. Nashe was however justified in emphasizing Harriot’s reliance upon personal observation, on, to quote Stephen Clucas, ‘the significance of what he sees’.67 Such a man might indeed have entertained doubts over the Creation, and the omnipotence of God. In a particularly important recent essay, Clucas draws on an intriguing anonymous manuscript in the British Library, dating from 1594, to propose that Harriot did indeed move away from conventional religious tenets, and towards a reliance on reason over 64 65 66 67

Nashe, Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Divell (London, 1592), sig. B2v. Nashe, Christs Teares Over Jerusalem (London, 1593), pp. 58v, 59v, 60. Shirley, Thomas Harriot, p. 187. Clucas, Harriot and the Field of Knowledge, p. 36. On Harriot as atheist see also J. Jacquot, ‘Thomas Harriot’s reputation for impiety’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 9 (1952), 164–87, and S. S. Webb, ‘Raleigh, Harriot and atheism in Elizabethan and early Stuart England’, Albion 1 (1969), 10–18.

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the ambiguities of theological argument. Clucas points out that the assignment of these views to Harriot is still a matter for debate. The owner of the manuscript added a cautious ‘ut credo’ to the attribution, but Harriot’s name is obviously not one that can be rejected out of hand.68 The argument advanced in this manuscript is familiar enough. ‘Harriot’ contends through syllogism that God cannot be both the first cause of all things, and at the same time omnipotent and intelligent. He is sceptical of arguments which create hierarchies of angels, and even doubts that humans can know anything at all about such beings, if they indeed exist: ‘we have no experience of the power of spirits or spiritual phenomena’.69 He uses evidential proof – or the lack of it – to cast doubt on the existence of miracles.They simply do not seem to occur, unambiguously, in the modern world.The leading questions come thick and fast: What law made God the emperor over men and the angels? To what end does God punish men? Why does God demand veneration from men and the angels? Still more fundamentally, why did God make men and the world as they are, shoddy, vain and transient? In one deeply interesting shift of gear the author asks whether it might be better not to exist at all, than to choose to be God – praestat nonesse, quam esse deus. To be or not to be?70 Aubrey long afterwards picked up a story that, in Harriot’s view, ‘ex nihilo nihil fit’, and the tale seems to square with what we know of the man.71 What, though, does all this tell a biographer of Sir Walter Ralegh? Were his views so very different from those expressed by ‘Harriot’? Of course, it is unsafe to take the beliefs endorsed by one Elizabethan and then attribute them to another, even if the two are close political and personal allies; the links of patronage and friendship are too complex for that. By the early 1590s, in any case, Harriot was looking to the Earl of Northumberland, rather than to Ralegh, as his principal patron, perhaps as a result of all this unwelcome notoriety, or perhaps because of Ralegh’s fall from favour. Northumberland certainly harboured doubts over the nature of religion, and of God Himself, and greatly admired the scepticism of Pierre Charron. Profess ignorance, doubt, enquire, search and acknowledge what you do not know: Charron’s injunctions in Of Wisdom are, as Clucas notes, underlined

68 Titled ‘Notae ex discursu Thomae Hariotae . . . de deo et prima causa & de multis aliis rebus’, BL, Add. MS 64078; Clucas, Harriot and the Field of Knowledge, pp. 39–45. 69 Clucas, Harriot and the Field of Knowledge, p. 43. 70 Ibid., pp. 44–5 71 Shirley, Thomas Harriot, p. 199.

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in Northumberland’s own copy.72 Harriot was working for the Earl by 1591, when an account book in the archive at Alnwick Castle shows him dining frequently with Northumberland’s household in London.73 We forget that Harriot, so long portrayed as the drab mathematician thinking great thoughts while gazing through his primitive telescopes, was congenial company at a small dinner party. Every now and then he appears in the historical record, fully at home in comfortable surroundings: when the Gunpowder Plotter Thomas Percy visited his kinsman Northumberland at Syon House during dinner on 4 November 1605, he found the Earl sitting at table with only his stepson-in-law, one other friend and Thomas Harriot for company. But if the focus of Harriot’s scientific patronage was adjusted at this time, this was, at most, a shift of emphasis in a strong three-way friendship. Ralegh was still important to Harriot, perhaps ever more so as the years went by. Harriot risked a great deal in his futile efforts to help Ralegh during the crisis of 1603, and he was devastated by Ralegh’s death in 1618. Maybe his biographer is right when he maintains that Harriot simply enjoyed a freer life in the service of the ninth Earl, away from the force of nervous energy that was Ralegh.74 Another incident frequently used to illustrate Ralegh’s religious scepticism amounts to little more than prandial chaffing. In 1593, during a supper hosted by Sir George Trenchard at Wolfeton in Dorset, he and his brother Carew ruffled the temper of Ralph Ironside, Vicar of Winterborne Abbas, by inquiring into the nature of the soul and exposing what they saw as Ironside’s flawed theological arguments.The reasonable soul, said the parson, ‘is a spirituall and imortall substance breathed into man by God, whereby he lyves, and moves and understandeth, and soe is distinguished from other creatures’. ‘But what’, asked Ralegh, ‘is that spirituall and imortall substance?’ ‘The soule’, Ironside replied. And so the profitless discussion ran on, debating whether it was scholarly to argue in circles, until Ralegh, tiring of the sport, called for Grace to be said, ‘for that quoth he is better than this disputacion’.75 A tactful closure, perhaps, but one that left his own position 72 Clucas, Harriot and the Field of Knowledge, p. 45. 73 Shirley, Thomas Harriot, p. 203. Shirley could not at first account for the fact that Harriot did not appear on the list of Northumberland’s household pensions and retainers until the later 1590s, when he was in receipt of £80 per annum (ibid., pp. 211–14), but in fact the Earl had long since granted him a revenue out of certain northern estates. 74 Shirley, Thomas Harriot, p. 223. 75 BL, Harley MS 6489, fos 187v-188r.

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at least ambiguous. Certainly it did not mollify Ironside, put out by what he saw as irreverent impertinence. This spat may have helped prompt, and certainly added spice to an investigation into atheism in Dorset, undertaken by the Court of High Commission and convened at Cerne Abbas during the last week of March 1594.The hearing, which brought together as commissioners Sir Ralph Horsey – present at the dinner – Thomas Lord Howard of Bindon – no friend of Ralegh – the Sheriff of Dorset John Williams, and others, listened patiently to Ironside’s sulky testimony, and to a succession of witnesses with nothing other than rumour to add.76 It was feeble stuff: the minister at Gillingham, for example, had ‘harde that one Herryott of Sir Walter Rawleigh his howse hath brought the godhedd in question, and the whole course of the scriptures, but of whome he so harde it he doth not remember’. After three days full of hearsay thrown against all sorts of people, from members of the local gentry to poor Harriot, the Commission dispersed, and took no further action.77 They had clearly had enough. Nevertheless, as Rowse and many others have pointed out, mud of this texture tends to stick.78 In Ralegh’s case it has stuck ever since. Ralegh was in no position to ignore the hint of scandal, and he duly proved his religious credentials by overseeing, with Horsey and Trenchard, a raid on Chideock, a residence of the Catholic Stourton family. There they arrested the Arundell family’s priest, John Cornelius, alias Mooney. ‘Hee is’, said Ralegh, ‘an Irishman and a notable stout villayne, and I thinke can say miche.’79 Cornelius, transferred as a prisoner to Trenchard’s house, was indeed quite happy to talk to Ralegh, albeit on topics of his own choosing. According to a Catholic source Ralegh passed an entire night conversing with the prisoner, and went away impressed by his sincerity, though irritated by a reference to atheism. If, indeed, the meeting ever took place, those long hours of talk did neither man any good. Cornelius was determined upon martyrdom, and nothing Ralegh or anyone else said could turn him from his purpose. Eventually, he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Dorchester, and Ralegh supervised the execution.80 As with another imprisoned priest, Oliver Plasden, some years earlier, Ralegh had been prepared to spend time 76 77 78 79 80

BL, Harley MS 6849, fos 183–90. BL, Harley MS 6849, fo. 184r. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, p. 177. Letters of Ralegh, p. 107. P. Hyland, Ralegh’s Last Journey (London, 2003), pp. 71–2.

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in argument and debate, in order to save a Catholic from the gallows. But Plasden died and Cornelius died, their consciences insisting that loyalty to the Queen should not compel them to set aside their obedience to the Pope. It is hard to know whether Ralegh’s intervention on these occasions demonstrates his own moderation, or whether it is part of a concerted effort on the part of the administration to prevent the creation of martyrs.The latter is more likely, but it is worth remembering that, six years later, Edward Gorges begged from Cecil the release of a Catholic prisoner from a London gaol. The man – never named, but almost certainly Henry Carew the younger, of Hamworthy, Dorset – was described as Ralegh’s kinsman, and Ralegh, according to the optimistic petitioner, was confident of converting the prisoner if he could but get the man out of the clutches of his fellow Catholics.81 Gorges omitted to mention that Ralegh had asked the same favour months before, in the same terms. He had already done all that could be done for this family, but without effect.82 The evidence, then, takes us only so far. Ralegh’s religious beliefs are hard to categorize, but his character as we understand it suggests a mixture of the deist, the naturally sceptical, and (less certainly) the fundamentally devout.The sentiments expressed in his writings, particularly in his The History of the World, confound easy charges of unorthodoxy, but the casual ribbing of Ironside argues against any unthinking acceptance of religious dogma. As Aubrey said, Ralegh’s boldness led him to ‘venture at discourse which was unpleasant to the Church-men’, but when he returned to London following his first voyage to Guiana people remarked that Sir Walter now attended sermons daily because he had ‘seen the wonders of the Lord in the deepe’.83 Discounting the wittiness of this remark, Ralegh was just the man to be impressed by direct personal experience. On a long sea voyage, he had time to ponder profound questions, and there are signs that, as he thought about them, his views in these matters changed over the years. One thing, though, did not change. He could never abide cant.‘We are all’, he wrote,‘in effect become comedians in religion; and while we act, in gesture and voice, divine virtues, in all the course of our lives we renounce our persons and the parts we play. For charity, justice and truth have but their being in terms, like the philosophers’ material prima.’84 Here is the authentic voice of Ralegh. An understanding of some deeper 81 82 83 84

In September 1600, Hatfield MS 251/37. Letters of Ralegh, pp. 190–1. Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, p. 259; HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley, ii, p. 173. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, p. 268.

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truths was beyond the wit of man: beyond the churchmen, beyond kings in their state, and even beyond Sir Walter Ralegh. The last word, however, should go to a one-time friend, Sir John Harington. In 1603, when no one wanted to speak out for a fallen Elizabethan favourite, Harington was brave and honest enough to tell the Bishop of Bath and Wells what he truly felt about Ralegh’s religious convictions: ‘As he hathe ofte discoursede to me wyth moch lernynge, wysdom, and freedome, I knowe he dothe somewhat dyffer in opynyon from some others; but I thynke also his hearte is welle fixed in everye honeste thynge . . . In relygion, he hathe showne (in pryvate talke) great depthe and goode readynge . . . In good trothe, I pitie his state.’85

85 May, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 126.

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5

El Dorado

Almost as soon as Ferdinand Pizarro had overthrown the great empire of the Incas in 1532, Spanish conquistadores began to explore east of the Andes for new lands to conquer and precious metals to mine. Traders in the pearl fisheries off the northern coast of South America – known as Tierra Firme – were told of rich tribes dwelling to the south, between the Amazon and the Orinoco. Gradually this grew into the myth of a city of gold, called Manoa, sited on Lake Parima, and ruled by an emperor, El Dorado, a descendant of the royal line of the Incas. The Empire of Guiana1 over which he ruled was said to be comparable in riches to the Empire of Peru, as a sign of which the King/Emperor was bodily anointed every year with gold dust. A succession of Spaniards explored the regions of what are now Colombia and Venezuela. Some came from the east: Diego de Ordas ascended the Orinoco as early as 1531, and one of his followers, Juan Martines de Albujar, told how he had been taken by Indians to the city of Manoa where he had seen astounding riches. The story was totally fabricated. Others approached from the west: Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada reached the capital of the Muisca people, Bogotá, in 1536; Francisco de Orellana reached the Amazon in 1542; Lope de Aguirre and Pedro de Ursua descended it in 1559 in a terrifying voyage during which Ursua was murdered. After Ursua’s death, Aguirre went up the River Negro and then descended the Orinoco to its mouth near Trinidad.2 The pre-eminent Spanish figure in the exploration of the Guiana region was Antonio de Berrío. A veteran of the Spanish wars, he was lucky enough to marry the niece of Jiménez de Quesada, then Governor of New Granada, who declared Berrío his heir. The latter made three heroic journeys into the area east of Bogotá, the third of these being the most impressive. He left Tunja in March 1590 with 112 Spaniards, 700 horses, 1,000 head of cattle, 20 cannons and 20 rafts.3 Some of his force travelled by land, some by river. 1 The name ‘Guiana’ is potentially misleading: most of the region so called by Ralegh and his contemporaries is now part of Venezuela and Colombia. 2 A voyage immortalized in the film Aguirre, the Wrath of God, directed by Werner Herzog (1972). 3 J. Lorimer (ed.), Sir Walter Ralegh’s Discoverie of Guiana (London, 2006), p. 59 (hereafter

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After eighteen months struggling down the Orinoco and through the delta he finally reached Trinidad in the autumn of 1591. He sent his camp master, Domingo de Vera, to establish a small fortified base, San José de Oruña, on Trinidad, and then to explore the Caroní River, which was thought to rise near the fabled city of Manoa. In April 1593, according to Spanish letters captured at sea, de Vera formally ‘took possession’ of the land ruled by the Indian chief, Morequito, at the junction of the Caroní and the Orinoco.4 When de Vera returned with specimens of gold work and exciting stories of the mythical city, he was despatched to Spain by Berrío to collect potential settlers for a new colony on the Orinoco, a role in which he was much too successful. He recruited between 1,500 and 3,000 persons, of whom he was authorized to take 1,000 back to America. Lack of food and Indian attacks put paid to most of them. Berrío was not the only conquistador interested in the riches of Guiana. Francisco de Vides, Governor of New Andalucia, and Juan Sarmiento de Villandrando, Governor of Margarita, were both threatening his position and that of English interlopers. Such was the situation in Guiana when Sir Walter Ralegh planned his own voyage.5 Much of the Orinoco basin had been explored, Spanish settlers had been granted property in Trinidad, and the Indians had got to know some of the ways of the Europeans. Ralegh wrote in his account of the Discoverie of Guiana that he had first learned of this land of gold ‘by relation’. His source may well have been the explorer and historian of the Incas, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, who had been captured by one of Ralegh’s privateers in 1586 and had had friendly conversations with Sir Walter during his captivity. Soon after Gamboa departed for Spain in November 1586, some ships left England to reconnoitre the mouth of the Orinoco as part of a plan to plant the area with Portuguese settlers in support of Don Antonio, the pretender to the throne of Portugal. The Lord Admiral, Charles Howard, was one of the principal backers of the plan and it is possible that Ralegh became interested at the same time. The scheme came to nothing, except that a survey party was sent out with four young English boys, two of whom were left on Trinidad with an Indian chief to learn the language and the other two on an island near the mouth of the Orinoco.6 Lorimer, Discoverie). This superb edition is indispensable for any student of the subject. 4 Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. 229–30. 5 Ibid., pp. xl-xlvii; J. Hemming, The Search for El Dorado (London, 1978), passim. 6 J. Lorimer, ‘Ralegh’s first reconnaissance of Guiana’, Terrae Incognitae 9 (1997), 7–21;

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After 1592, following the catastrophe of his marriage and disgrace, and with declining prospects for Virginia, Ralegh’s interest in the ‘Empire of Guiana’ burgeoned. Old friends and allies rallied in support of a new project. William Sanderson raised money from his friends in the City; Thomas Harriot instructed sea captains in the arts of navigation; Jacob Whiddon was despatched on a voyage of reconnaissance to Trinidad in 1594 and Lawrence Keymis, Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, enrolled as a captain, remaining Ralegh’s right-hand man until his terrible end in 1618. Among leading politicians Lord Charles Howard and Robert Cecil became Ralegh’s principal sponsors at Court.7 The project was nearly pre-empted by two rivals, Robert Dudley, illegitimate son of the Earl of Leicester, and Captain George Popham, who had captured at sea some Spanish documents relating to the Orinoco.8 Dudley reached Trinidad in January 1595, Popham a few weeks later. They discovered nothing of interest and left Trinidad in March. The money for Ralegh’s expedition, a huge sum of £60,000, was largely raised by the loyal Sanderson, who stood bond himself for £50,000 worth of loans and personally lent £1,600 or £1,700: of the total sum £30,000 was delivered to Ralegh. At Ralegh’s insistence Sanderson provided evidence of all transactions made on the former’s behalf – warrants for payments, notes of receipt and so on – which were incorporated into a ‘general acquittance’, presumably relieving Sanderson of any obligation for the debts should Ralegh fail to return. This was handed to the financier. On the night of 5 February, probably in Plymouth, Ralegh asked him to fetch the document, which he did. Ralegh handed it to Harriot, telling him to keep it and only return it to Sanderson if he died on the voyage. At being deprived of the document, Sanderson ‘brake out into great discontentmente, saying “what, Sir Walter, will you deal so violentlie and unkindlie with me?”’ Presumably he realized that he now had no protection should suits for debt be brought against him. The dispute ended with the financier turning his back on his patron and leaving the room without saying farewell.9 Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. xlii, 249–50. 7 E. G. R. Taylor, ‘Harriot’s instructions for Ralegh’s voyage to Guiana, 1595’, Journal of the Institute of Navigation 5 (1952), 345–50. 8 Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. xliv-xlvii. 9 R. A. McIntyre, ‘William Sanderson: Elizabethan financier of discovery’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 13 (1956), 184–201; C. Nicholl, The Creature in the Map: Sir Walter Ralegh’s quest for El Dorado (London, 1996), pp. 64–5; J. W. Shirley, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s Guiana finances’, Huntington Library Quarterly 13 (1949–50), 55–69.

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Next day Ralegh’s small fleet of three ships left England: there was his own ship, a ‘small barke’ belonging to Captain Robert Crosse and a ‘gallego’ under Lawrence Keymis, together with some barges and wherries. Ralegh’s own ship and Crosse’s reached Trinidad six and a half weeks later on 22 March. On the way across the Atlantic they had encountered and looted various foreign ships, from which they took wine and other provisions, but Ralegh makes no mention of these incidents in his own narrative of the crossing. The ‘gallego’, which had been delayed en route, and Lord Charles Howard’s Lion’s Whelp captained by George Gifford, which had sailed after the others, later joined them.10 Ralegh at once set off in one of the barges to explore the island. In the course of his circumnavigation he met a native chief and trader named Cantyman, who had made the acquaintance of Captain Whiddon the year before and was able to tell Ralegh a good deal about the island and about the Spanish presence on it. Some Spaniards then came aboard and after being given a good supply of wine provided further information, Ralegh letting them believe that he came only to relieve the English colony in Virginia. He decided to prolong his stay on Trinidad for a time, partly to learn more about Guiana before going there, partly to avenge eight of Whiddon’s men who had been killed by the Spanish the year before. Ralegh gathered together the Indian chiefs of the island and heard their complaints about Berrío’s conduct: he had divided the island among his soldiers and made its chiefs into slaves, dropping ‘their naked bodies with burning bacon and such other torments’.11 Sir Walter assured the chiefs through interpreters brought from England that he was the servant of a great Queen of the north who was the enemy of the Spanish and had freed other nations from their tyranny and oppression. She had now sent him to save Guiana from slavery and conquest. To illustrate his claim he showed them a portrait of Elizabeth, which evidently made a powerful impression on them. He made the same speech to the rest of the ‘nations’ in his travels, who called Elizabeth ‘Ezra Beta Cassepuna Aquerewana’, which he translates, in part, as ‘great princesse or greatest commaunder’.12 10 For the ships see Nicholl, Creature in the Map, pp. 354–60; for the events during the crossing see ibid., pp. 89–91, based on Spanish sources. Ralegh does not name his own ship: it was either the Bark Raleigh or the Roebuck. A ‘gallego’ was a small vessel with sails and steering oars (Lorimer, Discoverie, p. 19). 11 Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. 28–9. 12 Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. 30–1. [Ralegh], N. L.Whitehead (ed.), The Discoverie of the Large,

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Ralegh then took a decisive step. Believing that to leave a foreign garrison in his rear while he journeyed into the interior would ‘have savoured very much of the Asse’, he set upon the Spanish corps du guard without any warning one evening and put them to the sword, capturing Berrío. He then sent one of his captains forward to take and burn the new city of San José de Oruña. Ralegh tells this in a matter-of-fact tone, not surprising in a man who had been involved in the massacre at Smerwick fifteen years earlier.13 Ralegh and Berrío, now captor and prisoner, had much in common: both were military men, ambitious, adventurous and daring. Ralegh describes his prisoner as ‘very valiant and liberall, and a Gent. of great assuredness, and of a great heart’. He had much to learn from Berrío, who was ready to talk to him about Guiana, partly at least in order to discourage Ralegh from his enterprise. Berrío confirmed that the distance to Guiana itself from the sea was 600 miles further than Ralegh had been told. Had his men known this they would never have followed him. Berrío did his best to dissuade Ralegh and his ships’ companies from going any further into Guiana, insisting that the rivers of the delta were too shallow and sandy to allow any vessels, not even ships’ boats, to pass along them, that the Indians would flee from them, that winter was at hand, that they would be unable to carry enough food and drink in small boats and that the distance was long. Much of this was, Ralegh admits, true. Even so, he was determined to go on, keeping some of Berrío’s information, especially the estimate of the distance to be travelled, from his men. Having failed to find any rivers deep enough to carry his larger ships through the delta, Ralegh decided that they would either have to give up the whole enterprise or use the gallego, suitably adapted, together with some of the ships’ wherries and small boats.14 He chose the latter course, modified the gallego so as to take sixty men, and carried another forty men in two wherries, one barge and a ship’s boat, together with arms and food for a month.15 The journey was hideously difficult. The boats were uncovered, so that they all had to lie in the raine and wether, in the open aire, in the burning sunne, & upon the hard bords, and to dress our meat . . . wherewith they were so pestred Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (Norman, 1997), pp. 60–1 (hereafter Whitehead (ed.), Discoverie). 13 Trevelyan, Raleigh, pp. 227–8. See also BL, Add. MS 3616, fos 151 et seq. 14 A wherry is a light rowing boat (Lorimer, Discoverie, p. 13, fn. 2). 15 Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. 32–3.

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and unsavery, that what with victuals being most fish, with the weete clothes of so many men thrust close together and the heate of the sunne . . . there was never any prison in England, that could be founde more unsavoury and lothsome.

For Ralegh himself, who had ‘for many years before beene dieted and cared for in a sort farre differing’, it was still more unpleasant.16 The labyrinth of rivers in the delta was totally confusing, for the terrain was mostly heavy jungle: all the earth doth not yeeld the like confluence of streames and branches, the one crossing the other so many times, and all so faire and large, and so like one to another, as no man can tell which to take.

If they tried to steer by the sun or compass, we were also carried in a circle amongst multitudes of Ilands, and every Iland so bordered with high trees, as no man could see any further than the bredth of the river, or length of the breach.

To make matters worse, their first pilot, Ferdinando, turned out to be almost useless, having last seen the Orinoco twelve years earlier when he was too young to remember much. Luckily, they captured another pilot, an old man from the Tivitiva tribe, which lived in the delta.17 As they moved upstream against the current, all Ralegh’s powers of leadership were brought into play. The oarsmen became exhausted and the food started to run out. After four days in the delta they reached the ‘great Amana’ (now the Manamo), a larger river, but one with an even stronger current against them, now that the incoming tide from the sea was no longer helping them.They realized that they must either row against it or ‘returne as wise as we went out’. Sir Walter ordered the gentlemen to row with the rest, taking turns and spelling ‘one the other at the howers end’.18 They grew ever weaker as food and drink began to fail. He managed to persuade the company that 16 Ibid., pp. 34–5. 17 Ibid., pp. 95–9. Ferdinando, an Indian, is not to be confused with the Portuguese pilot, Simon Fernandez. 18 Ibid., pp. 104–5. Drake, another strong disciplinarian, had made the gentlemen row with the rest on his great voyage of circumnavigation.

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they had only one day’s rowing before they reached a place where the Indians could supply whatever they required. The pilots were told to ‘promise an end the next day’. Meanwhile, they lived off the country, shooting colourful birds and catching fish. Their new pilot, the old man of the Tivitiva tribe, told them that if they would only turn up a branch of the river they were on, they would soon reach an Arawac village and be back by nightfall. Ralegh went upriver with his barge and the two wherries. Three hours passed, then another three; night began to fall. The pilot told them that the village lay only another four reaches further; after they had rowed for eight, they were in the mood to hang him. But realizing that they would never find their way back in the dark they relented. At last, an hour after midnight they heard the village dogs barking and were taken to the house of the chief, where they feasted. Shortly after this, they were reunited with the gallego and reached ‘the most beautifull countrie that ever mine eies beheld’. Whereas before they had only seen bushes and thorns, now there were grassy plains stretching for twenty miles or more, with deer coming down to the river to drink. They were entering the huge Orinoco itself, now averaging six kilometres wide, sometimes rising to seventeen; and they were able to sail, resting their exhausted limbs. Here they met a new chief, Toparimaca, who provided them with another pilot, an old man very experienced in the difficult ways of the Orinoco. On their fifth day of sailing on the Orinoco itself they reached the most important port of their journey, Morequito, at the junction of the Caroní and the Orinoco. This had been the port of chief Morequito, who had earlier been killed by Berrío. There they were visited by Morequito’s uncle, Topiawari, now King of the region, and reputedly 110 years old. He had walked fourteen miles to reach them, bringing a generous supply of food, including pineapples, ‘the princesse of fruites’, and an armadillo. Ralegh started to talk to the old man through an interpreter in a specially erected tent. He began by saying that he had been sent by his Queen especially to defend the Indians against the oppression of the Spanish. He then shifted the conversation so as to learn more of the Indian tribes of the region and their alliances.Topiawari told him that his own people were called Orenoqueponi, and he remembered that when he was a young man the valley they then occupied had been invaded by ‘a nation from so far off as the Sun slept’, called Oreiones or Epuremei, who had already made themselves lords of all men. Ralegh supposed that these groups were remnants of the Inca Empire,

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driven east by the Spanish conquest, an improbable conjecture. More likely they were part of a separate group migrating from the south. Whatever the truth, Indian society seems to have been highly mobile at that time and inter-tribal wars were common.19 Topiawari’s own eldest son had been killed in a battle with the invading Epuremei. Since then, however, the Indian peoples had united against the ‘Christians’ and were no longer at war with one another. At this point Topiawari said that he was tired and must return home. Ralegh commented that he marvelled ‘to finde a man of that gravity and iudgement, and of so good discourse’ who had had no education.20 Next morning they left the port of Morequito to sail west to the mouth of the Caroní River, which flows into the Orinoco from the south. Ralegh hoped to find the golden city of Manoa near to its source and proposed to reach it by navigating upstream.This turned out to be hopeless, for although the Caroní was as wide as the Thames at Woolwich, the current was so strong that they could make no progress at all against it. They sent out some of the Orenoqueponi to make contact with the local Indians, whose chief, Wanuretona, brought provisions. Ralegh made his usual speech about the greatness of Queen Elizabeth and questioned Wanuretona about the peoples of Guiana. He was again told of the Epuremei and of three other tribes living around the golden city who were hostile to the Spanish and would join Ralegh against them.21 By this time the level of the Orinoco and the Caroní had risen four or five feet, so that it was impossible to go further by boat. Ralegh divided his force into three groups. The first, under Captains Henry Thynne and John Grenville, was to go with thirty soldiers upstream on the bank of the Caroní and aim for a town twenty miles up river.22 If they could get guides there they were to press on to another town near to the lands of the ‘Inga Emperor’. The second group, led by Ralegh himself, with Captains Gifford and Calfield and half a dozen soldiers, was to go overland to view the falls of the Caroní and the plain adjoining it. The third, under Captain Whiddon, was to look for minerals along the bank. From the top of a neighbouring hill Ralegh and his party could see ten or twelve falls, ‘each as high over the other as a church tower’, falling with such 19 20 21 22

Whitehead, Discoverie, pp. 65–71, 85–7. Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. 138–45. Ibid., p. 148. Ralegh called the river the Carolí. Caroní is the modern spelling.

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fury that they seemed to create a great shower of rain. At this point, Ralegh himself tells us, he would gladly have gone back, being ‘a very ill footman’, but he was persuaded by his companions to continue into the next valley, where he writes that ‘I never saw a more beutifull Cuntrey, nor more livelie prospectes.’ In a great set piece he talks of a land that is ‘all faire green grass’, the ground easy for marching on, deer crossing on every path, birds singing on every tree, white, crimson and carnation cranes and herons by the side of the river. Furthermore, ‘every stone that we stooped to take up promised eyther golde or silver by his complexion’.23 The other two parties had less success.They picked up all sorts of stones but could not be persuaded by Ralegh that they were mostly worthless, the latter insisting that he is not one to betray his country or himself with ‘imaginations’. Indeed, considering all the disagreeable features that accompany these journeys, he would only go on them if he were quite sure that ‘the sunne covereth not so much riches in any part of the earth’. Captain Whiddon’s party did, however, find stones like sapphires, which Ralegh thought might be genuine. Some of the Indians promised to show him a mountain where many large pieces were ‘growing diamond wise’, of which Ralegh was hopeful.24 By now the Orinoco was beginning to rage and overflow, while terrible showers of rain fell from which they had no shelter. However, they were able to go rapidly downstream – almost one hundred miles a day – and soon reached Morequito again. Responding to a message from Ralegh, the old chief arrived, at which Ralegh shut out of his tent everyone except the chief and an interpreter. When he learned that Ralegh intended to go to Manoa, Topiawari strongly advised him against attempting this at that time, for the ‘Inga Emperor’ would be too strong for him. They should make no move ‘without the helpe of all those nations which were also their [the Epuremei’s] enemies’, for otherwise Ralegh and his men would all die in the attempt. They must first gain the alliance of the border tribes, who were hostile to the Epuremei. Ralegh, anxious to bring back at least some gold, asked whether the old chief would help him capture the town of Macureguarai, four days’ journey to the south. Topiawari agreed to do so provided Ralegh let him have fifty soldiers until he came back again. Ralegh turned down this proposition on the ground that he could not spare so many men and did not have enough gunpowder or shot to give them protection against the Spaniards.Topiawari then asked Ralegh to depart since the Epuremei would 23 Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. 152–3. 24 Ibid., pp. 154–5.

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invade if they knew that he was being helped by the English. The Spanish, too, were hostile. They had earlier killed his nephew, Morequito, and were now trying to kill Topiawari himself. The old chief asked Ralegh to defer any enterprise until the following year, and they both agreed that it would be unwise to attempt any action against Macureguari for fear of failure, ‘although’, as Ralegh commented, ‘the desire of golde will aunswere many obiections’. Topiawari agreed to let Ralegh take his only son, Cayworaco, back to England, in the hope that when he himself died, which he thought would be soon, Ralegh would help Cayworaco to succeed him. In exchange, Ralegh left behind Francis Sparrey, servant to Captain Gifford, who ‘could describe a cuntry with his pen’, and Hugh Goodwin, a boy of his own party, to learn the language. Goodwin was later said to have been eaten by tigers (more probably jaguars), while Sparrey was captured by the Spanish and eventually imprisoned in Madrid.25 Landing again about twenty miles downstream from the port of Morequito, they were met by the cacique, or chief, of the region, Putijma, who promised to show Ralegh a mine on a mountain called Iconuri.26 This proved too difficult for Ralegh, the ill footman, to reach, so he sent on Captain Keymis with Putijma as guide, instructing him to meet the ships again downstream at the mouth of the River Cumaca, near the junction of the Manamo and the main branch of the Orinoco. Further down the Orinoco, by the mouth of one of its tributaries, the Winicapora (now the San José), they saw far off a mountain like ‘a white Churche towre of an exceeding height’, with a mighty river running over its top, giving out ‘a terrible noyse and clamor, as if 1,000 greate belles were knockt one against another . . . I thinke,’ he wrote, ‘there is not in the worlde so straunge an overfall, nor so wonderfull to behold.’27 Charles Nicholl, who visited this place in 1992, claims that Ralegh could not have seen the white mountain or the fall from the point where he claims to have been standing, and that he included a description that he had heard from Berrío to heighten his narrative. It could well be so.28 Ralegh hoped then to meet the most powerful of the caciques of the Orinoco region, Carapana, who had fled when he heard of their approach. Although Carapana’s followers had told him that he need not fear Ralegh, 25 Ibid., pp. 164–77. However, another account says that the jaguar story was false and was told to the Spanish to prevent them from capturing Goodwin. 26 Putijma had earlier killed a Spanish friar. 27 Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. 184–7. 28 See Nicholl, Creature in the Map, pp. 222–3.

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he was still reluctant to meet him. Ralegh concluded that this ‘notable wise and subtile fellowe’ would stay on the edges of the action: if he heard that the English returned in force he would join them, if not, he would tell the Spaniards that fear of the English was his reason for hiding away. They decided not to wait for the elusive Carapana and returned to the rendezvous with Keymis. After an anxious delay he arrived, but Ralegh records nothing of any discoveries he may have made.29 By this time they were getting still more alarmed by the ‘great rage and increase’ of the Orinoco and decided to get back to their ships. ‘To speake of what past homeward were tedious’, writes Ralegh.The journey was indeed horrendous and in crossing the open sea before Trinidad, the galley almost foundered. However, it made the land and Ralegh could write: ‘now that it hath pleased God to send us safe to our ships, it is time to leave Guiana to the Sunne.’ However, Ralegh did not intend to leave the Spanish Main just yet. The expenses of the voyage had been heavy and his men had had no reward. He therefore determined to seize some plunder from the pearl fisheries west of Trinidad. He sailed first to the Island of Margarita, hoping to get some booty and a ransom for Berrío, who was still his prisoner.The Spanish on the island were forewarned of his coming, beat off his attack, captured four of his men and refused to provide a ransom. Ralegh went on to Cumaná, where his landing was even less successful. According to Spanish sources, the English were literally driven into the sea, leaving behind their arms. Four of Ralegh’s captains were killed: Robert Calfield, John Gilbert, John Grenville and Henry Thynne, more than seventy Englishmen in all were killed or wounded and the expected ransom for Berrío was still refused. Ralegh, according to the Spanish source, did ‘not go away as pleased as he could wish’. In fact, he had no choice but to return home, letting Berrío go free without receiving any ransom for him. Needless to say, no account of these disastrous episodes was included in his story of the Discoverie.30 Ralegh reached Plymouth early in September to a disappointing reception. By November he had become seriously depressed. Writing to Robert Cecil from Sherborne on 10 November, he said:‘From this desolate place I have litle 29 The supposed ‘mine’ on the Iconuri became a crucial question in the expedition of 1617: see below, Chapter Twelve, pp. 285–6. 30 The Spanish report was made by Francisco de Vides, governor of Cumaná, on 23 June 1595, and is printed (in English) in V. T. Harlow (ed.), The Discoverie . . . of Guiana (London, 1928), app. B, p. 130. De Vides probably exaggerated the number of the English dead: John Gilbert, for one, was said to have been alive some years later.

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matter, from my sealf less hope . . .What becumes of Guiana I miche desire to here, whether it pass for a history or a fable.’ Some men were saying that he had never been further than Cornwall, others that what he claimed to have found was mere fabrication.31 However, two days later, in a mood-swing typical of the man, he had regained his confidence and wrote again to Cecil, begging him not to let anyone frustrate the enterprise whereby the friendship of the native chiefs had already been won. He hoped to be allowed to govern the country that he had ‘discovered’, but otherwise wished that someone of ‘better sufficiency’ be appointed. If nothing were done, the French or the Spanish would win the riches of Guiana.32 On 26 November he wrote again with even greater urgency. The letter, marked ‘Hast post hast W Ralegh’, reached Shaftesbury from Sherborne at 1 p.m. on the twenty-sixth and had got to Staines by 8 a.m. the following morning.‘I beseich yow lett us know whether wee shalbe travelers or tinkers, conquerors or crounes [imbeciles], for if the winter pass without making provision ther can be no vitling [victualling] in the summer. And if it be now forslowed farewell Guiana forever.’33 With the letter of 12 November he sent an account of the expedition which he had written either during the return voyage or very soon after he got back. Joyce Lorimer has recently edited this manuscript in a parallel text with the printed version, which appeared in the following year.34 It reveals a man almost intoxicated by what he has seen. Guiana was a country that offered every pleasure. The climate was temperate, the wine was abundant enough to allow constant carousing, beautiful women were available for purchase or persuasion, tobacco was plentiful and cheap European goods could be sold for a ‘marveylous price’.35 With an openly sexual metaphor, he wrote at the end: To conclude, Guiana is a Countrey that hath yet her Maydenhead, never sackt, turned, nor wrought, the face of the earth hath not beene torne, nor the vertue and salt of the soyle spent by manurance, the graves have not been opened for gold, the mines not broken with sledges.36

31 32 33 34 35 36

Letters of Ralegh, p. 125. Ibid., p. 127. Ibid., p. 133. See above, fn. 3. Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. 206–7. Also Whitehead (ed.), Discoverie, intro. Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. 210–11.

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The Empire of Guiana could be easily conquered, and once conquered, as easily defended. Someone, almost certainly Robert Cecil, realized that the heady prose of this text would be too strong for Elizabeth and her Privy Council, for whom it was primarily intended. The more lurid descriptions of the sexual and alcoholic attractions of the land were omitted, and a rather calmer style adopted for the printed version. More important is Ralegh’s treatment in manuscript and print of the subject of gold. In the draft the emphasis is on golden objects seen or taken, and especially on those reported to be in the golden city of Manoa. Attractive as these might be for the casual reader or traveller, they were not likely to weigh much with the statesman or the investor. In the printed text specific references to gold mines appear. Ralegh’s dilemma is apparent: without evidence of gold mines the investor will not be attracted, but if the evidence is too precise the investor or another may be able to search for them himself.37 The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana, first published in 1596, was an immediate success, with two further editions that year.38 It was the work of an acute observer, passionately interested in the new world that he saw about him and anxious to explain it. Ralegh carefully named all the rivers of the Orinoco delta and the tribes that inhabited the region. He insisted that the golden city of Manoa truly existed in the interior although he was careful not to reveal its location. He was particularly curious to discover the ‘true remedies’ for the poison used on the arrows of the Arora tribe (today the Yoruros), ‘for besides the mortalitie of the wound . . . the partie shot indureth the most insufferable torment in the world, and abideth a most uglie and lamentable death’.39 He never discovered the cure for this, but recommended the use of ‘tupara’ for run-of-the-mill poisons and urged abstinence from strong drink. Ralegh was fascinated by the stories of Amazons and men-withoutheads, or Ewaipanoma. He enquired of the most widely travelled of the Orenoqueponi tribe about the Amazonian women and was told by one cacique that they lived mostly on the south bank of the River Amazon. Ralegh was aware that stories of such women had circulated in Africa, Asia and the Graeco-Roman world, and believed them to be true. It was said that in Amazonia the women lived by themselves for eleven months of the 37 Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. xlvii–lxi. 38 ESTC, 20634, 20635, 20636. 39 Lorimer, Discoverie, pp.134–5.

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year but gathered together for one month, usually April, when the kings of the borders came to them and they feasted and danced, drinking wine abundantly. If they had a son they returned him to the father, if a daughter they kept her and sent the father a present. They did not, says Ralegh, cut off their right breasts.40 According to Ralegh the stories of the Ewaipanoma were genuine:‘Though it may be thought a meere fable, yet for mine owne part I am resolved it is true, because every child in the provinces of Arromaua and Canuri affirme the same.’They are reported to have ‘eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in the middle of their breasts’ with a long train of hair growing back between their shoulders.Topiawari’s son, who was brought by Ralegh to England, told him that ‘they are the most mightie men of all the lande’, and use weapons as big as any in Guiana. ‘When I seemed to doubt of it, he told me that it was no wonder among them, but that they were as great a nation, and as common, as any other in all the provinces.’ Unfortunately, says Ralegh, he did not hear about them until he was leaving the region, otherwise he would have ordered one to be brought to him. He comments that such people were written about by Sir John Mandeville, whose stories were for many years regarded as fables, but have recently, since the discovery of the East Indies, been considered more credible.When he came later to Cumaná, Ralegh met a Spaniard who claimed to have seen many of those men. However, in the end Ralegh commented that ‘whether it be true or no the matter is not great’.41 Although he was not by nature a credulous man, Ralegh believed what he was told about headless men, Amazons and the golden city. The evidence he received was abundant and compelling, even if it was false. Central to Ralegh’s account of Guiana’s native peoples lay their relationship with the Spanish and with himself. Towards the end of the Discoverie he included a lengthy section on the various tribes and their chiefs. He reported that the lords have many wives who did most of the work, while the men ‘doe nothing but hunte, fish, play, and drinke, when they are out of the wars’. However, his main concern was to keep the Indians on his side against the Spanish. Ralegh emphasized the brutality of the latter, and judging by their conduct in Mexico and Peru he did not need to do more than tell the truth. His own men were ordered to abstain from any violence or misconduct against the native women, even though many of them ‘were excellently favored . . . [and] came among us without deceit starke naked’. One woman 40 Ibid., pp. lxxii–lxxiv, 62–5. 41 Ibid., pp. 154–9; Whitehead (ed.), Discoverie, pp. 91–101.

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in particular struck his fancy, the wife of a chief who visited them near the junction of the Manamo and the Orinoco itself. I have seldom seene a better favored woman: She was of good stature, with blacke eies, fat of body, of an excellent countenance, hir haire almost as long as hir selfe, tied up againe in pretie knots, and it seemed she stood not in that aw of hir husband, as the rest, for she spake and discourst, and dranke among the gentlemen and captaines, and was very pleasant, knowing hir own comeliness, and taking great pride therein.42

Ralegh commented that he knew a woman in England exactly like her apart from the difference in skin colour. Who, one wonders, had he in mind? However, Ralegh was more concerned with gaining the support of the Indians against the Spanish than in gazing at their women, and his followers were told not to take from the natives any goods, however small: ‘nothing’, he wrote, ‘got us more love among them than this usage’.43 As we have seen, at every stopping-place along the way from Trinidad he made speeches eulogizing Queen Elizabeth and insisting that she wanted only to protect the Indians from the cruelty and incursions of the Spanish. He could, he said, easily have captured and ransomed several of the chiefs for gold, but he refrained from doing so, choosing instead ‘to bear the burden of poverty . . . then to have defaced an enterprise of such assurance’.44 Ralegh’s insistence that he was denying himself the immediate, short-term benefits of plunder and ransoms in favour of the larger enterprise of alliance with the native peoples has met controversy among historians.Was he sincere in his protestations of friendship towards the Indians? Or was he really an unreconstructed conquistador in the style of Cortés and Pizarro, or indeed of Berrío? His talk of entering the maidenhead of Guiana hardly suggests a peaceful operation. Much of his language is indeed of conquest. It is impossible to know, and it may well be that he did not know himself, whether his promises of friendship were sincerely meant. Had he returned to the Orinoco the following March and led an Indian alliance against the Epuremei and the Spanish, it is unlikely to have held together for long. Even if Ralegh had persisted in his role as ‘Protector of the Indians’, the self-seeking of his colonists would surely have undermined this position. 42 Lorimer, Discoverie, p.127. 43 Ibid., pp. 200–1, 120–1. 44 Ibid., p. lxx.

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A shorter, anonymous document was prepared alongside the Discoverie entitled ‘Of the Voyage for Guiana’, its purpose to persuade the Queen and her Council into backing a major expedition to the Orinoco. Where the Discoverie is rambling and high-flown, this is methodical and analytical. It survives in only one anonymous manuscript copy in the British Library. While Ralegh may have written it himself, the style and approach make this unlikely. Lawrence Keymis is a possible candidate, though the style is much more direct than his; maybe Thomas Harriot was the author.45 The text is divided into three sections: first, the justification for subduing Guiana; second, the possibility and ease of achieving this; and third, the method of doing so. The acquisition of Guiana would first be justified, since ‘by this meanes infinite nombers of soules may bee brought from theyr idolatry . . . & incivility to the worshipping of the true god aright & to civill conversation’.Their bodies would also be freed from the ‘intollerable tirrany’ of the Spaniards. Second, the Queen’s dominions would be ‘exceedingly enlarged and this realme inestimably enriched’. Third, even if the first two prospects were not realized, the Spaniards would be prevented from acquiring the overweening power, which would otherwise be theirs. To these general considerations were added the facts that the native tribes, known as the ‘borderers’, had already submitted themselves to the Queen; that the Spanish were so widely hated that the Indians would support her; that the voyage from England was very short; that the country of Guiana was so well endowed with food and other provisions as to require no great expense in fitting out an expedition; and that Guiana, once conquered, could easily be defended. Who, having contemplated the cruelties of the Spaniards, would not be encouraged to undertake this voyage? Having shown, to his own contentment, that the acquisition of Guiana was both justifiable and practicable, the author asked how it could be done. There were two ways: one would be the forcible expulsion of the invading Inga tribe from the region, which would be the more profitable course.The danger of this would be a possible alliance of the Inga with the Spanish, which could be disastrous. Such a conquest would also be unjust; and the author argues, with a salvo of biblical quotations, that God gave the earth to all men whether or not they were Christians. Bellarmine, he says, was correct to assert that Pope Alexander VI had no right to donate the lands of 45 The document is in BL, Sloane MS 1133, fos 45–52, and is printed in Lorimer, Discoverie, pp. 253–63. See also ibid., pp. xxxv–xxxvii.

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infidels to Christians or anyone else. Christians should attempt to convert the heathen peacefully but not by force. To win their support the Indians could be shown the truth about their conquerors by distribution of the books of Las Casas, the great defender of their rights, and by telling them of the wrongs committed by the Pope. At the same time they could be won to the cause of the English by sending presents to their chiefs, telling them of the greatness and virtues of Queen Elizabeth, by sending them maps of the English counties and of the City of London, and by explaining to them that the Queen’s religion is ‘farr differing’ from that of the Spanish.To clinch this propaganda campaign, the English should enter into a covenant with the tribes. The first article of this should be the condition that the Indians embrace the Christian faith. To the objection that this might be hard to achieve the author provided a number of counter examples, some of them of doubtful relevance. Furthermore, the Inga emperor must surrender his empire and receive it back as the Queen’s tenant in chief; he must also render her ‘a great tribute’, and send special hostages to England to be ‘civilled and converted heere’ and married to English women. Some of these points resembled certain of the proposals for pacifying Ireland in the sixteenth century. In return the English would defend the Indians against the Spanish, help the former to recover Peru, instruct them in ‘liberall arts of Civility’, and provide military training. This final point is essential to the whole plan, for the Indians would then become effective allies against the Spanish. To the objection that the Indians, being armed and trained, would turn against the English, the author answered that the former are ‘a people very faythfull, humble, patient, pecefull, simple without subtilty [or] mallice . . . as meeke as lambes, as harmeles as children’.Topiawari’s negotiations with Ralegh showed that while the Indians lacked armour and gunpowder, their negotiating skills were as sharp as those of Europeans. To all objections the author stressed the absolute necessity of sending reliable, godly preachers and imposing a strict ‘martial discipline’ upon English soldiers and settlers. Sadly, however enthusiastic Ralegh and his allies might have been, this tract was about as distant from reality as was the Discoverie of Guiana itself. Beset by the danger of another Spanish invasion, by wars in France and the Netherlands and by the stirrings of a rising in Ireland, no monarch, let alone one as properly cautious as Elizabeth, would commit to so hazardous and expensive a proposal. Ralegh was, however, still hopeful of success, and with some support from Cecil, Howard and others fitted out a second expedition under Lawrence

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Keymis.46 Keymis set off from Portland Road on 26 January 1596 with two ships, the Darling and a pinnace, the Discoverer, and he was back in England by 29 June. His account of the voyage was published in October of the same year. Unfortunately, although Keymis was a Fellow of Balliol, his literary skills were limited. His account is pretentious, verbose, repetitious and often obscure. But he was determined to defend the Guiana project against its many detractors and, in his own words, ‘to remove all fig-leaves from our unbeliefe’, revealing the truth of Ralegh’s story.47 Keymis reached the mainland of South America well south of the Orinoco, with instructions to search for rivers that led into the interior free from Spanish interference. Shortly after landing his expedition met an Indian chief, Wareo, who had been driven from his true home by Spaniards and by another Indian tribe, the Arwacas, who lived a vagabond life moving from one resting-place to another. Wareo and other Indian chiefs Keymis encountered claimed to be hoping for the return of the English and spoke reverently of Queen Elizabeth. They recalled the disciplined behaviour of the English soldiers who respected the women and property of the Indians, in contrast with the Spaniards, who had raped and looted without restraint after Ralegh’s departure. As in the previous year, Carapana, one of the most important chiefs on the Orinoco, sent a messenger to Keymis, saying that he was ‘sicke, olde and weake’, and unable to make the journey, but professing loyal friendship. However, when Keymis suggested that he himself should go to meet Carapana, he was strictly warned against it, on the ground that it might provoke the Spanish to attack. Changes had taken place in the short interval between Ralegh’s departure and Keymis’s arrival. Topiawari had died and had been succeeded by his nephew, known as Don Juan. Topiawari’s son, who had gone to England with Sir Walter, had evidently been disinherited. The Spanish were growing stronger, but increasingly quarrelsome. Valdes, Governor of Cumaná, was trying to eliminate Berrío, who in turn was waiting for reinforcements from his son and the return of his camp-master, de Vera, then in Spain. Keymis did collect a mass of information on the rivers, ‘nations’, towns and chiefs, all arranged in tabular form. In particular, he reported that an 46 Keymis’s account, ‘A relation of the second voyage to Guiana’, is contained in R. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (Glasgow, 1903–5), x, pp. 441–501. 47 Ibid., p. 443.

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alternative route to Manoa was available up the Essequibo, the river forming the present-day boundary between Venezuela and Guyana. There were no Spaniards here and the Indians reported that it took them twenty days to reach the head of the river from the coast; that they then carried their provisions on their shoulders for a day’s journey and ‘afterwards they returne for their Canoas, and beare them likewise to the side of a lake’.This, Keymis assumed, must be the great lake on which ‘Manoa’ stood.48 On Keymis’s return to England, Ralegh sent out one further expedition to Guiana. Captain Leonard Berry and Master William Downe left England just after Christmas 1597, in a pinnace called the Watte, to explore possible routes to ‘Manoa’. They met an independent explorer, John Ley, in the John of London on the River Courantyne. Attempts to explore upriver were abandoned. Ley made two more voyages to Guiana before he died. From 1596 Ralegh was too much distracted by his part in the raid on Cadiz, the Islands Voyage and his responsibility for home defence in the south-west to attend to Guiana. His interest was not revived until about 1607, when it seems to have been focused on gold and silver mines rather than Manoa. Ralegh’s Discoverie was an immediate literary success.49 George Chapman wrote a celebratory poem on Guiana to support the cause of empire. Three years later, translations of the Discoverie into Latin, German and Dutch were published by Levinus Hulsius in Nuremberg. Where Ralegh had written a colonial tract, aimed at convincing the Queen and her counsellors, the Hulsius publications were books of marvels, rather in the tradition of Mandeville. The texts were slight and their principal emphasis was upon visual images of mostly imaginary scenes, derived from the more fanciful parts of Ralegh’s work. The title-page of the Latin version showed headless men with an armed and naked Amazon, and similar plates appear in the body of the text: of a chief being anointed with gold-dust; of men living in houses built in the trees; and, openly sexual, of men and women cavorting and coupling. Much superior, but fundamentally similar, folio volumes were produced by Theodor de Bry, who had earlier published Harriot’s Briefe and True Report . . . of Virginia.50 The illustrations to both works fell far short of John White’s drawings and paintings of the North American Indians.The overseas editions, 48 Ibid., pp. 459–60. 49 Above, p. 111, fn. 38. 50 de Bry, America, vols I and VIII. For an account of these publications see B. Schmidt, ‘Reading Ralegh’s America’ in P. C. Mancall (ed.), The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624 (Chapel Hill, 2007), pp. 454–88.

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while widely sold, did little to gain support for the enterprise. There is a striking contrast between the literary success of Ralegh’s enterprise and the failure of his political and economic endeavours. This was not entirely Sir Walter’s fault. He arrived in Guiana too late: the Spanish had already ‘discovered’ much of the Orinoco basin and were on their way to controlling it. The golden city of ‘Manoa’, the main objective of the enterprise, did not exist, and while gold was found in Guiana two hundred and fifty years later, it lay well to the south of the junction of the Orinoco and the Caroní. Nor was Ralegh likely to get from Elizabeth the backing in men, ships and money that was essential to found and sustain a colony in Guiana. Although his expedition was an astonishing endeavour, he displayed a lack of follow-through. While Berrío had spent eighteen exhausting and dangerous months on the Orinoco, Sir Walter spent just thirty days.

6

The Rival

The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 did not end the war with Spain. Instead, it led to a stalemate. Neither side could find the means either to defeat its enemy or to withdraw from the conflict with honour. During the tit-for-tat struggle that followed, every military operation sought to redress a perceived imbalance, or to respond appropriately to renewed aggression, without any particular prospect of outright victory. In the mid-1590s, following an audacious Spanish raid on Penzance, virtually the entire Privy Council recommended retaliation. The Queen consented, rather reluctantly, and the fall of Calais to a resurgent Spanish army in April 1596 lent fresh urgency to these preparations. For some years, England’s war effort had focused on dry land: campaigns in the Low Countries and in Brittany strove to limit Spanish power and to deny Channel ports to the enemy. Now, however, the revival of serious interest in a major naval campaign targeting the coast of Spain brought opportunities for those who knew about ships and the sea. Ralegh’s experience was suddenly in demand, and to his pleasure he was closely involved in the many discussions which, eventually, worked out a viable way of striking back. In the spring and early summer of 1596 those opportunities presented challenges fit for an ambitious man: to ensure that leading Counsellors worked harmoniously together, to raise troops and to prepare the fleet under the direction of his friend Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, the Lord Admiral, all the while allaying the doubts of financiers, suppliers, suspicious courtiers and a Queen reluctant to spend money on combined operations after the debacle of England’s disastrous expedition against Portugal in 1589. The new world had served its purpose. As Rear Admiral of the expeditionary fleet Ralegh had fresh priorities, and one senses the relief with which he pursued them. Life was particularly frantic.1 Using his brother-in-law Arthur Throckmorton’s house at Mile End as his base, he travelled up river and down, persuading men to embark with the fleet. Ralegh’s enthusiasm was still clearly infectious. Among many others he cajoled Throckmorton 1 Hatfield MS 30/106.

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himself into joining the expedition.2 Cecil was the first to allow that, when circumstances demanded, Ralegh could ‘toil terribly’. Letter after letter from Sir Walter arrived on Cecil’s desk – six within the space of three days, early in May – a barrage of news, attempting to exercise patronage, complaining about the situation in Ireland and detailing the work at hand. Scribbling furiously, Ralegh denounced those who ‘refuse to serve Her Majestye’, implicitly suggesting that those who did in fact serve her, in small things and in great, merited any favours that the Queen might care to bestow.3 On the verge of being appointed Principal Secretary, an office which gave its holder particular privileges of access to the monarch, Cecil also knew how to toil, and between these very different men there is at all times a mutual respect accorded to those with energy and drive. He seems to have offered practical help in those busy days, providing timely assurance for a bad debt of £500 when Ralegh, one of the original guarantors, found himself liable for repayment at a particularly inopportune moment.4 He also helped Ralegh uphold his rights as Lord Warden of the Stannaries in Devon, and wrote reassuringly to Bess, who responded by promising Cecil that she would refer to him in all her ‘cumbars’ [troubles], as her ‘surest staff ’ during Ralegh’s absence.5 It is interesting that Cecil took such pains to assist and encourage the disgraced couple. Even though he was obviously well disposed to Ralegh, it is hard to suppose that the public actions of a very new Secretary would have been distasteful to the Queen. Preparations for the expedition show all the usual tribulations, especially those resulting from the vagaries of wind and tide, decisive factors before the days of steam. Storms, or even a breeze blowing in the wrong direction, frustrated the movement of troops down the Channel, and slow progress gave the snipers at Court more ammunition: Ralegh was dragging his feet, they suggested, while the Queen fretted, as she always fretted, about leadership, about aims and about the feasibility of the entire project. Pressed men ran away, or simply refused to serve.6 Essex, in a ‘hellish torment’ of uncertainty, wrote an edgy letter to Ralegh, full of outward understanding 2 He seems to have been staying with Throckmorton in May, see Hatfield MSS 40/50 and 51; Letters of Ralegh, pp. 139–40; A. L. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons (London, 1962), pp. 197–9. 3 Letters of Ralegh, p. 138. 4 Ibid., p. 140. 5 Hatfield MSS 40/25, 31/29; HMC, Salisbury, vi, p. 104. 6 Letters of Ralegh, p. 141.

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for his ‘pains and travail in bringing all things to that forwardness they are’, and half concealed fears that the delays might be caused by more than just an adverse wind: ‘I will not entreat you to make haste, though our stay here is very costly, for besides all other expense, every soldier in the army has his weekly lendings out of my purse.’7 Ralegh was in fact doing all that he could, and at times he too was caught up in the stresses of the moment. When the expedition’s high command assembled, later in May, Ralegh – egged on by Arthur Throckmorton – quarrelled with the Lieutenant-General of the embarked army, Sir Francis Vere, over the limits of their respective commands and their competing claims to seniority.These arguments were never entirely resolved, though Essex made a stab at a compromise, logically offering precedence by land to the one, and by sea to the other.Throckmorton’s provocative role was censured, but then pragmatically overlooked; he was allowed to sail with the fleet. This brouhaha was quite in character; Ralegh was always sensitive to slights, while no one ever found it difficult to quarrel with Vere. Besides, drink had obviously fuelled the row.8 For once, though, the expedition prospered despite the shortcomings of its senior officers.The large Anglo-Dutch fleet of more than one hundred ships eventually sailed from Plymouth early in June, and the ensuing operation culminated in one of the triumphs of Elizabethan arms.9 On 20 June the fleet arrived off Cadiz, taking the Spanish authorities there completely by surprise.While Spain knew that an attack was imminent, it had assumed that the targets would be those of 1589: Lisbon, and perhaps the Azores. Ralegh, in the Queen’s new ship the Warspite, sailed south in the rearguard, patrolling the coast to surprise enemy shipping, but when entering the harbour on the twenty-first he led the fleet. The previous afternoon he had persuaded Lord Howard to attack the town, much to Essex’s delight, and he now took the opportunity to vindicate his argument. Nevertheless, he did so warily; for all his gallantry, Ralegh was initially more cautious in his command than some of his fellow captains that day.10 7 Hatfield MSS 40/103, 174/76; HMC, Salisbury, vi, p. 169. See also the neurotic tone of his letter dated 12 May, Hatfield MS 40/75. Ralegh heads the list of those he blames for unnecessary delay. 8 T. Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1754), p. ii, 10. 9 P. E. J. Hammer, ‘New light on the Cadiz expedition of 1596’, Historical Research 70 (1997), 182–202. 10 R. B. Wernham, The Return of the Armadas, the Last Years of the Elizabethan War Against Spain, 1595–1603 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 96–102. On learning, directly from Ralegh, that

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In one of his longest surviving letters, written from his ‘house in Calze’ that same evening to (in all probability) Arthur Gorges, Ralegh provided a vivid narrative of the action. At first, everything had gone rather well.The Warspite had sailed past the outer defences without firing a shot, making straight for the inner harbour.Then, after dropping anchor, came the real fight, a vicious struggle on sea and land, not only with the demoralized yet gallant enemy, but also with fellow commanders anxious not to be left behind in the race for glory and plunder. Ralegh was ostentatiously determined to ‘revendge the death of The Revendge, or to second it with mine owne’. Here, he realized, was the perfect opportunity to earn a reputation while promoting his own colourful published version of Sir Richard Grenville’s doomed action against a Spanish fleet off the Azores in 1591.11 The risks that men ran in this ‘Hell’ were all too obvious. Ralegh was wounded in the fighting, receiving ‘a greevous blow in my legg, larded with manie splinters which I daylie pull out’.12 But glory now easily suppressed pain. A more elaborate account of the assault, probably written to Cecil, was eventually published in 1700 by Ralegh’s grandson as A Relation of the Action at Cadiz. Here is one of the finest set-piece battle scenes in English literature.Writing of his own attack on the enemy galleons, Ralegh tells how the Spanish ship the Philip ran aground, tumbling into the sea heaps of soldiers, so thick as if coals had been poured out of a sack in many ports at once, some drowned and some sticking in the mud. The Philip and the St Thomas burnt themselves: the St Matthew and the St Andrew were recovered by our boats ere they could get out to fire them.The spectacle was very lamentable on their side; for many drowned themselves; many, half burnt, leaped into the water; very many hanging by the ropes’ ends by the ships’ sides, under the water even to the lips; many swimming with grievous wounds, strucken under water, and put out of their pain.13

With the English occupying the town, Essex made a name for himself by controlling his troops, and ensuring that churches were respected.There was no plundering of prisoners, and no killing in cold blood. When the fighting died down he outdid his generosity at the siege of Rouen, knighting the fleet were to penetrate the harbour, Essex had tossed his hat so far into the air that it was blown into the sea. 11 See below, Chapter Eleven, pp. 245–7. 12 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 148–50. 13 Works of Ralegh, viii, pp. 667–74, at 672.

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sixty-three followers, Throckmorton included, but, amid all these shows of honour, a greater opportunity was missed. The tactical triumph concealed a measure of strategic incompetence. Cadiz was sacked, but the wealth carried on board the merchant fleet then in harbour was lost when the Spanish ships were scuttled. Even so, the expedition proved lucrative.The declared plunder offers only a partial picture, for a great deal of loot was either overlooked or concealed, but Ralegh alone carried off goods – including carpets, plate, gold and wine – valued at more than £1,700.14 Several English captains and private adventurers brought books home as well, books which today sit on the shelves of more than one ancient library. A 1588 catalogue of the Andalucian nobility in the British Library, for example, bears an inscription by Throckmorton, recording that the volume was carried from Cadiz on 27 June.15 Like any other Elizabethan courtier, far from the Queen, Ralegh feared that his part in the operation might be misconstrued at home. He demonstrated all the neuroses of a man long excluded from Court. ‘What others shall deliver of me’, he told Gorges,‘I know not.The best wilbe that ther was 16000 eye witnesses, but they may be cunning in their prayses.’16 Certainly there was a good deal of ‘cunning’ in all that filtered back to England, so many recriminations, boasts and exaggerations.Yet he need not have worried. The more influential among those eyewitnesses wrote and spoke warmly of his valour and judgement, of how he had won great renown, and even love, throughout the army.17 As news struggled home ahead of the fleet, rumours ran round London that Ralegh had drowned, and the public display of relief when these stories were shown to be false also demonstrated a measure of popular redemption.18 Weighing events in Cadiz, Elizabeth at last inclined towards forgiveness. Ralegh was allowed to return to Court the following year, and, from June 1597 he once again exercised his captaincy of the guard, filling vacancies (a necessity with the passage of time but also a statement that he had taken up the reins of office once more) and basking in the Queen’s

14 15 16 17

TNA, SP 12/259/94–6. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, p. 202. Letters of Ralegh, p. 150. Sir George Gifford to the Earl of Southampton, 5 July 1596, Hatfield MS 199/54. See also a predictably partial account of Ralegh’s actions from Sir George Carew, Hatfield MS 41/99. 18 See for example Hatfield MS 42/9.

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goodwill, ‘with the Earl of Essex’s liking and furtherance’.19 That gloss is interesting, and might be an oversimplification. Essex had sidestepped the actual reconciliation; it was Cecil who brought his friend to the Queen on 1 June, and who stood by when she allowed Ralegh to accompany her on an evening ride.20 Ralegh had earned his return, and he had, moreover, secured some established and increasingly powerful allies. He was even spoken of as a possible privy counsellor, and in that context – significantly – his friend Henry Brooke’s name began to be mentioned too, a reflection of Elizabeth’s growing regard for the handsome, engaging son and heir of that loyal Crown servant, William Brooke, Lord Cobham.21 It may be that Essex sought to control Ralegh’s recovery of favour at Court, and it may be that such controls were part of a scenario engineered by or for Elizabeth. Essex’s very public intercession might have given her an equally public opportunity to show magnanimity, and indeed to follow a course that still did not come freely from her own heart. The acceptable role now allocated to him echoes both Ralegh’s original entrée to court, and also the military dimension to English foreign policy that had become so important to Essex.When, in November 1596, the Queen told Essex that she ‘would have a meeting of such persons as were experienced in martial courses, that by them some advice might be given her, as was in the year ’88’, she first omitted Ralegh’s name, only for Essex to add it to the list, along with that of Sir George Carew.22 Though the dangers of inference are considerable, there are also one or two clues to suggest that Essex and Ralegh worked together as patrons, for example in relation to the bid by William Tooker for the Wardenship of Winchester.23 If this was in some sense an Indian summer of favour, the sun was still warm. Essex had helped him to recover ground, but Ralegh appreciated the contributions made by others. He readily acknowledged all that Cecil had done to restore his fortunes, flattering the Secretary, and commiserating with him gracefully on the loss of his wife, Cobham’s sister, in January 1597.‘Ther is no man sorry for death it sealf butt only for the tyme of death . . . Yow shall’, he wrote, ‘butt greve for that which now is as then it was when not 19 Hatfield MS 51/86, a letter petitioning for appointment to the Guard; N. E. McClure (ed.), The Letters of John Chamberlain (Philadelphia, 1939), i, p. 31. 20 HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley, ii, pp. 285–6. 21 Letters of Chamberlain, i, p. 43, letter dated 30 August 1598. 22 Hatfield MS 46/32. 23 Tooker to Cecil, 23 July 1596, Hatfield MS 42/79.

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yours, only bettered by the difference in this, that shee hath past the weresume jurney of this darke worlde and hath possession of her inheritance . . . Sorrows draw not the dead to life butt the livinge to death.’24 ‘Impossible it is to equal words and sorrows’, he would write much later in his The History of the World, dwelling on the untimely death of Henry Prince of Wales, but impossible or not, Ralegh was usually willing to try. When confronted with the melancholy of bereavement, the enduring power of sorrow and its potential to fasten onto human lives, he was seldom lost for words. Bess, for her part, stepped in with the pragmatic woman’s contribution, offering to help bring up Cecil’s son William.25 A combined strategy, surely? In rehabilitating Sir Walter Ralegh, Elizabeth and the ageing Burghley might have had a deeper purpose: besides rewarding service overseas, they may reasonably have hoped to smooth over tensions much closer to home. Congenial to both, as events surrounding the Cadiz expedition had shown, Ralegh could plausibly serve as a bridge between the Cecils and Essex. On his return to the heart of Court, Ralegh at once settled into his role as an ever-optimistic go-between, passing on news from Cecil to Essex and telling Cecil in turn, by way of an intimate if presciently ambiguous touch in July 1597, that Essex had been ‘wonderfull merry att the consait [conceit] of Richard the 2’.26 Is this a reference to Shakespeare’s new play, or is it perhaps a more straightforward meditation on the fate of an unlucky Plantagenet king, hardly a source of gay reflection? He could be good at this sort of thing and, for a time, conciliation appeared to work. Cecil ‘lent part of his house in Chelsea’ to Ralegh, and the various parties saw a good deal of one another that summer, both publicly and in private.27 Brooke, meanwhile, was prospering too, though his rise inevitably brought him into conflict with Essex; there was room only for so many favourites. On the death of Lord Cobham, in 1597, Essex hoped to secure the post of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports for his protégé Robert Sidney. The Queen, though, was having none of this, emphasizing the status of the office and selecting instead the dead Lord Warden’s son. Essex, typically, chose 24 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 154–6. 25 A. R. Beer, My Just Desire: the life of Bess Ralegh, wife to Sir Walter (New York, 2003), p. 101. 26 Letters of Ralegh, p. 160. 27 Beer, My Just Desire, p. 101; N. Mears, ‘Regnum Cecilianum? A Cecilian perspective of the Court’, in J. Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: court and culture in the last decade (Cambridge, 1995), p. 46–64 at 56–8.

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to take a stand on an unwinnable point, dismissing his rival in public, and drawing a similarly intemperate response.28 Again the matter was patched over, but Essex here may have been feeling some of the pangs that had driven Ralegh to Ireland eight years earlier. Or perhaps he simply did not enjoy being thwarted. Either way, with Ralegh rather sensibly manoeuvring still further into Cobham’s good books, the resulting tensions were hard to avoid. Ralegh had every reason to cultivate wealthy friends. His own fortune had been eroded by efforts to repair the breach with Elizabeth, and by his outlay on Sherborne. When he drew up his will, early in July 1597, his estate appears relatively modest. Ralegh’s own lands by now consisted only of the Munster territories – vast, but never profitable – and the lease on the manor of Sherborne together with some other neighbouring properties and woodland in the south-west of England. In this fascinating document the Queen is nowhere remembered. Indeed, as Agnes Latham has observed,‘all is concentrated on a little boy of four’.29 The direct beneficiaries were members of Ralegh’s family, his clients and servants. Adrian Gilbert was given a pension of £100 per annum, paid out of the Irish lands, the newly knighted Arthur Throckmorton was to have Ralegh’s ‘beste horse’ and saddle, Sir George Carew the next best, and Alexander Brett Ralegh’s ‘longe blacke velvett cloake now in my wardrobe at Durham House’. Ralegh’s executors were directed to sell his interest in the Roebuck, the great ship that he had commissioned. Out of the profits they were told to take care of Alice Goold’s child. She was to receive 500 marks (£333) from the sale. From the same source, Thomas Harriot was given £200 and Lawrence Keymis £100. Under the will, Harriot also received an annual pension of £100 out of Ralegh’s wine licences, as well as all the ‘bookes and the furniture in his owne chamber and in [Ralegh’s] bedchamber in Durham House, together with all such blacke suites of apparell as I have in the same house’. Black was Harriot’s colour: dressed discreetly, he blended into the backcloth of history. John Meere of Castletown, about whom there will be more to tell, was left an annual rent of £20 from the Sherborne estate. This was something of an insurance policy, for Meere knew of many exploitable legal niceties relating to these properties. Bess was provided for out of the wine monopoly, and out of the Sherborne estates during Wat’s minority. Setting aside her pearls, which were of course 28 HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley, ii, p. 251. 29 A. M. C. Latham, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s will’, Review of English Studies NS 22 (1971), 129–36, at 130.

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her own, Ralegh divided household movables between his wife and his son. Those outside the immediate family circle were remembered with crumbs and keepsakes. Robert Cecil, ‘my right honorable good frinde’, was given a residuary interest in a set of porcelain. Both Ralegh and Bess shared the Secretary’s fondness for quality chinaware. Like any leading courtier who had borrowed heavily, Ralegh provided for the settlement of debts, and for the redemption of pawned goods. He named his son as executor, appointing as overseers the four people he trusted most and would continue to depend on through the troubles and upheavals to come: Arthur Throckmorton; his cousin Sir George Carew (Carew’s aunt, Katherine, had married Ralegh’s maternal grandfather); Alexander Brett, of White Stanton, Somerset, married to Anne Gifford, a granddaughter of Sir George Throckmorton of Coughton; and the reliable Thomas Harriot.30 The witnesses to this will also make an interesting group: Gilbert and Meere were on hand to look after his personal interests, while William Strode of Newnham and Christopher Harris of Radford, two of Drake’s executors, were men of standing who knew how these things were done. Harris was indeed Ralegh’s kinsman by marriage, and his deputy as Vice-Admiral of Devon. It was prudent to consider fate and the future at this time. Following the triumph at Cadiz, Ralegh was sailing as Essex’s second-in-command on a new expedition against Spain, now usually referred to as the Islands Voyage. The will was witnessed on 10 July, the day the fleet sailed, and was apparently a last-minute by-product of another mighty logistical operation. Again Ralegh worked hard to plan and provision the fleet; running up debts, and agreeing to settle those owed to Cecil out of his share from prizes captured on the expedition.31 He was accounting for the colossal sum of £18,900, money intended to victual 6,000 men for a quarter of a year.32 The fleet was duly assembled and provisioned, and it took to sea amid great excitement, but on this occasion there was to be no happy outcome. Foul weather, incompetence and divisions among the senior officers saw to that. From the outset, Ralegh was determined to show Essex in the best of lights, while trying to account for the particularly curious dynamic that drove the man. When telling Cecil about the initial storm that had driven the fleet back to Plymouth – and he wrote rather defensively, for neither he nor Essex had handled their squadrons with any particular credit – he adds a revealing gloss: 30 The MS is at Sherborne, and is printed in full in Letters of Ralegh, pp. 381–7. 31 Hatfield MS 58/51. 32 Hatfield MS 56/87, dated 1 November 1597.

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That which most greeveth mee and which I protest before the majesty of God I do constantly beleve, is that ether my Lord Generall hyme sealf will wrestell with the seas to his perrill or, constrayned to cum bake, be found utterly hartbroken, although it be not in the poure of man to fight agaynst ellements.33

Two days later, with Essex now known to be safe, he begged Cecil ‘to worke from Her Majestye sume cumfort to my Lord Generall who I know is dismayd by thes mischances yeven to death’.34 For all his manifest idiosyncrasies, Essex was a valiant, even at times a heroic figure, who took every setback to heart. At the beginning of August the two commanders rushed up to Court to put forward an alternative plan, or rather a refinement to the existing plan, aimed at an always tempting target, the annual Spanish silver fleet returning in convoy from the Americas.35 The prospect of winning vast treasure, and denying that treasure to the impoverished Spanish Crown, united them in cupidity – Essex, as Cecil noted, was dealing with Sir Walter ‘very nobly’ – but the Council, understandably worried that the revised scheme might leave England undefended by sea, were less enthusiastic. Nevertheless, this rejected plan had some merit. In contrast to the earlier dispositions made in 1597, it committed limited resources against one target, avoiding any combined operations on the coast of Spain; there were fewer tactical ambiguities.When the fleet sailed again, the vagueness of its mission meant that only luck and good generalship would offer any prospect of success. Both luck and skill, however, were wanting. Ralegh found it hard to remain on message, as the Earl’s impossible expectations undermined any pretence of friendship and trust. After the fleet set out from Plymouth a second time, quite late in the season in mid-August, the weather out on the ocean was not much better, and storms plagued progress to the rendezvous off Flores.When many of the ships came together on 15 September, Ralegh’s capture of the town of Horta, on Fayal in the Azores, was the sole achievement of any note, and it showed him in his best light, setting aside the weariness that went with his inability to sleep long at sea, scouting out the land from a ‘torne shipp’ which had lost its main mast and leading his men with exemplary bravery and confidence.36 He later made light of the achievement, maintaining in The 33 34 35 36

Letters of Ralegh, pp. 161–3, at 162. Ibid., p. 164. Wernham, Return of the Armadas, pp. 166–7. Letters of Ralegh, pp. 166–8. Letters of Ralegh, p. 169.

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History of the World that it was always ‘more difficult to defend a coast, than to invade it’. Memories of that triumph led him to assert in the same work a ‘forward’ doctrine of naval defence. England was, he insisted, best advised ‘to entertain those that shall assail us, with their own Bief in their bellies, and before they eat of our Kentish Capons’.The monarch should ‘imploy his good ships on the Sea, and not trust to any intrenchment upon the shore’.37 But taking weather, tide and the fragility of intelligence into account, combined operations are seldom straightforward, and even today few strategists would instinctively concur with Ralegh’s assessments.38 His success at Fayal had unforeseen consequences. After a series of bitter exchanges and misunderstandings Essex, who arrived belatedly off the island, maintained that the rear-admiral had flouted his direct orders. Sir Walter had no authority to order the attack without the consent of his superior officer. In his suspicious fury, he demanded that Ralegh should be court-martialled. Many in his entourage were ready to egg him on, Sir Christopher Blount prominent among them. Essex’s father-in-law, Blount had missed out on a share of the glory, and the loss of these precious opportunities rankled.39 Still Ralegh dutifully showed respect, passing on to Cecil flattering reports of Essex’s high reputation in Europe.40 Battered yet again by the Atlantic, the fleet struggled home in the autumn, ship by ship, carrying rumours and counter-rumours that sent Bess into a frenzy of anxiety for her husband. There was no news of Ralegh, she wrote in a hasty letter to Cecil, and some of the stories that she had heard left her fearing the worst.41 It was midOctober before she knew for certain that Ralegh was safe.42 The embarrassed commanders learnt on their return that a Spanish fleet had sailed against England earlier in the month. This too had been frustrated by the evil summer weather, but Queen Elizabeth immediately pointed out that her country had been exposed to invasion, with no naval shield. Worse still, the risk had been taken for no discernible return. It was time to put on a show of duty. Essex scampered around raising troops 37 HW, Book 5, Chapter 1, Section 9. 38 On the Islands Voyage see also Arthur Gorges’s account in S. Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimes (London, 1625), pt 4, pp. 1,938–69. 39 See P. E. J. Hammer, Elizabeth’s Wars: war, government and society in Tudor England, 1544– 1604 (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 202–3; Wernham, Return of the Armadas, pp. 175–6. 40 Letters of Ralegh, p. 173. 41 Hatfield MS 55/88. 42 Hatfield MS 55/108.

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against the residual threat of invasion, while Ralegh worked to improve land defences in Cornwall, and determinedly accentuated positives. He drew up what amounted to a balance sheet for the year’s campaigning, reckoning that England and Ireland had been ‘defended, the enemy dishonored and made a great looser and the warr made uppon our enemis charge’.43 Even among friends, this sunny spin failed to convince. As Paul Hammer has noted, Essex had himself turned the Islands Voyage into a high-stakes military gamble, and its failure consequently amounted to a political catastrophe for the gambler.Their fresh, and quite unnecessary, quarrel over the action at Fayal weakened the carefully nurtured amity between Essex and Ralegh, so evident in Ralegh’s encomium of Essex’s conduct at Cadiz in 1596.44 It weakened Essex too. Responsibility for a futile campaign lay with the expedition commander and the taste of sour grapes was strong. When he took offence at the Queen’s promotion of the Lord Admiral to the earldom of Nottingham in October 1597, and at Nottingham’s patent of creation which credited him with victory at Cadiz, the Queen again turned to Ralegh as an obvious peacemaker, another indication that she trusted him, and that this was considered to be one of his natural roles at the Court. Essex, however, continued to see slights and fashion enemies. In the short term his intransigence was rewarded with the office of Earl Marshal, an ancient distinction commanding precedence and dignity. In the long term, it destroyed him, along with many of his remaining friends.45 The world was changing. Obligatory unity of purpose in the face of invasion and conquest by Spain had gradually given place to the backbiting endemic at a Court caught up in an expensive, inconclusive conflict. English statesmen were trying to cope with war in several theatres, while confronted with harvest failures, inadequate taxation, local discontent and an uncertain political future. The Queen’s grasp remained sure enough, but any monarch would have struggled to preserve unity through these difficult times. After the Islands Voyage, the backbiting seemed to grow worse. At last, the Cecils began to appreciate that they simply could not work with an increasingly erratic and uncompromising Essex, and that fact was slowly brought home to others who had hoped until then that tensions around the Queen amounted to nothing more than the familiar Elizabethan stresses between counsellors who shared 43 Hatfield MS 56/98; Letters of Ralegh, p. 171. 44 Letters of Ralegh, p. 152. 45 P. E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: the political career of Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 385–6.

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aims, and who differed only over methods. It was not like that any more. Essex’s energy, his cunning and his gifts as a soldier-statesmen, were being overwhelmed by his querulous fears, his absolute conviction that he was the one honest man left at Court. As Hammer observes, Essex ‘took politics too seriously because he framed his actions according to principle’.46 Like other still more prominent figures at the Court, notably the Earls of Northumberland and Worcester, Ralegh now had to make a choice, and without any discernible hesitation he aligned himself with the political mainstream. He and Cobham both gave farewell dinners for Cecil, and rode with him to Dover as the Secretary set out on his important embassy to France during February 1598. Cecil was not used to being absent from Court, and he may well have drawn comfort from the gesture. Here is positioning in the literal, and obvious, sense. It is significant, too, that Cobham is entrusted with Cecil’s formal letter of thanks to Elizabeth for the gift of a jewel.47 Even then, the rather desperate working relationship with Essex endured. Essex stood in as Secretary of State during Cecil’s absence, and did so effectively; no one ever faulted the work ethic of this puzzling, tragic man. Cecil returned home disillusioned with French promises, and gravely concerned at French plans to conclude a separate peace with Spain, plans that resulted in the Treaty of Vervins that May. He was shocked at the ravaged state of the country, left in no doubt that nothing would deter Henri IV from making peace with Spain, and won over by the King’s observation that the Dutch could not expect to secure their frontiers through the exhaustion of their allies.48 The Council wavered over the desirability of continuing the war, with the aged Burghley famously reprimanding Essex for his reluctance to contemplate peace by opening his prayer book and pointing to Psalm 55: ‘Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days’. Or so we are told with the advantage of hindsight. The gesture made no impression on Essex. Increasingly persuaded – correctly – that Cecil was taking a tougher stance with the Dutch, and that the Secretary would if necessary contemplate a separate peace with Spain, he wrote and circulated an ‘Apologie’ for his own more belligerent position, arguing that no trust was to be placed in Spanish 46 Ibid., p. 403. 47 Hatfield MS 351 (HMC, Salisbury, xxiii, p. 21–2). 48 P. Croft, ‘Rex pacificus: Robert Cecil and the 1604 peace with Spain’, in G. Burgess et al. (eds), The Accession of James I: historical and cultural consequences (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 140–54.

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promises.49 Such debates were the stuff of meetings at the Council table. Early that summer, however, Essex made a disastrous misjudgement. Frustrated in an attempt to nominate a new Lord Deputy of Ireland during a meeting of the Council, he turned his back on the Queen, who boxed his ears, and told him to go and be hanged. At this point Essex snapped. He reached for his sword, and, when restrained by his colleagues, swore that he could not put up with such treatment, that he would not have endured it even at the hands of the Queen’s father. The instinctive threat of violence appalled everyone present, including the Earl himself. This was dangerous madness, an action that could all too easily be construed as treason. Essex fled to his house in Wanstead, angry and scared. ‘Cannot princes err?’ he asked the Lord Keeper, Thomas Egerton. ‘Cannot subjects receive wrong?’ The Queen tried, but found it difficult to ignore him. A crisis in Ireland prompted the final act to this developing tragedy. Events there were going from bad to worse, as Tyrone consolidated his powerbase in Ulster, and as the Dublin administration and the inadequate English garrison first struggled and then entirely failed to cope with the growing unrest. After the defeat of loyalist forces in August 1588 at the Yellow Ford over the Blackwater River in Ulster – a classic exploitation of military surprise to divide and slaughter the major part of a straggling English army – everyone in London realized that Tyrone’s threat had to be addressed without delay. The whole island was by now convulsed in savage war. Ralegh’s settlements in Munster were simply swept away. Fortunately for him, he had leased the lands to Thomas Southwell of Brancaster, and it was poor Southwell who had to confront the worst financial effects of this turmoil. Of course, such a disaster only confirmed to Ralegh that the lands had limited value.50 What, though, could be done to restore the situation? In 1598 Ralegh’s name was considered in connection with the command of an expeditionary force then being raised to subdue Tyrone. Some even spoke of him as a possible Lord Deputy.51 According to Rowland Whyte, Ralegh ‘little liked’ the idea – which is not surprising given his experiences as an investor in Ireland and the records of recent Deputies – but such rumours, like the ones 49 On the wider debate over continued hostilities, see A. Gajda, ‘Debating war and peace in late Elizabethan England’, Historical Journal 52 (2009), 851–78. 50 W. A. Wallace, John White, Thomas Harriot and Walter Ralegh in Ireland (London, 1985), p. 22. 51 See Letters of Chamberlain, i, pp. 34, 40.

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that put Ralegh in the running for the vacant Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster that summer, indicate his return to the heart of the Court, as a potential participant in bounty.52 Ralegh was of course right to hesitate. Courtiers down the years had found that Ireland was best avoided, even in peaceful times. Its governor resided far from the Queen, and was dependent on the English Council for soldiers and supplies, beholden to allies in London, and subject to the inevitable backbiting and gossip that go with positions of authority. Others, however, were less reluctant. Determined to make amends for his actions, caught up by his own guarantees of success, and excited by the gamble, Essex led an army of some 20,000 men against the Irish insurgents in the summer of 1599. He was saluted on his departure by the London mob and by an already well-known playwright, William Shakespeare, as a royal champion embarking on his own version of the triumphant military ventures of King Henry V. What followed was no Agincourt, no finely-planned campaign of conquest and subjugation. Essex dithered, and failed to seek out his enemy. He spent months parading across southern Ireland, at one point agreeing to a private parlay with Tyrone where the discussions touched, not on submission to Elizabeth’s rule, but rather on the ambitions of the two men and the future governance of England as well as Ireland. Alarmed at reports that his enemies were conspiring against him, the Earl was again flirting with treason. A precipitate return to England that autumn led only to house arrest and humiliation. Increasingly paranoid, Essex numbered Ralegh and Cobham among his foes. Listening to his equally frantic supporters, he believed on no particularly good evidence that Ralegh had poisoned the Queen’s mind against him at Court.53 But Ralegh and Cobham were only confirming the prevailing opinion of his fitness for command. With Elizabeth’s goodwill irrevocably lost, it really did not matter anymore what Essex believed, or said, though it is a measure of the man’s magnetism that, even in disgrace, he retained the loyalty of so many young nobles and gentlemen, the Earls of Southampton and Rutland among them. If he 52 HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley, ii, p. 332. In July 1599, Sir Charles Danvers in London suggests to his friend and patron the Earl of Southampton that Ralegh is the ‘earnestest suitor’ for the vacant Chancellorship of the Duchy, though Sir John Fortescue is doing such a good job as caretaker that the Queen is unlikely to make a swift choice (Hatfield MS 71/104). 53 ‘Let Ralegh and Carey prate. They are infamous here for their service.’ Gelli Meyrick to Edward Reynolds, [August 1599]. Hatfield MS 179/84.

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had in effect purchased earlier loyalty through the indiscriminate bestowal of knighthoods on well-born followers, there was still no obligation on prudent men to follow a patron into open treason. But that is just what many of them eventually did. The affection of such followers was one thing, but the loss of Elizabeth’s regard was quite another. From this point on she was determined to humble her former favourite. ‘An unruly horse’, the Queen said, ‘must be abated of his provender, that he may be the better brought to mannaging.’54 Essex was condemned by the Privy Council in 1599, and by commissioners at York House in June 1600. Here was public humiliation, and no one suffered humiliation less patiently than Essex. Ralegh, himself accused by the distracted earl of treason, and, fantastically, of plotting to divert the succession to the Infanta of Spain, was worried enough to spell out his irritation. During the spring of 1600 he warned Cecil to make sure that the stricken favourite did not recover lost ground: ‘The less yow make hyme the less he shalbe able to harme yow and yours . . . for after revenges feare them not . . . His soonn shalbe the youngest earle of Ingland butt on[e] . . . butt if the father continew he wilbe able to break the branches and pull up the tree, root and all. Lose not your advantage: if yow do I rede your destiney’. He likened Essex to the Earl of Bothwell, a constant thorn in the side of James VI of Scotland, and it is interesting to see James VI, Essex’s longstanding patron, in the minds of both men at this time.55 That such a letter survives among Cecil’s papers testifies to the anger Essex’s insinuations had aroused. It testifies as well to Ralegh’s political naiveté. This was not the first or the last occasion on which Ralegh set out his realpolitik approach on paper. In October 1598 he had written robustly to Cecil, apparently suggesting that there was no shame or dishonour in attempting to assassinate Tyrone.56 Were these the flaws that Elizabeth noted, and which persuaded her against bringing Ralegh into the Privy Council, despite his repeated hints and requests? That reluctance, according to one contemporary, also dissuaded her from naming Ralegh on the commission to discuss peace with Spain in the Netherlands: ‘her Majesty, as yt is thought, begins to perceve that if he were one, he wold stand to be made a cownsailor

54 W. Camden, Annals, or, the Historie of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princesse Elizabeth (London, 1635), p. 534. 55 Letters of Ralegh, p. 186. 56 Ibid., pp. 178–9.

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er he went, which she hath no fancy unto.’57 Of course, in taking her decision Elizabeth may also have reckoned that the victor at Cadiz and Fayal was not an obvious choice for a peace mission. Whatever the reason, she never changed her mind. Of course Ralegh still had his uses. He retained respect as a specialist on Irish affairs; the particular diligence that he had shown in furthering colonization before the disaster of 1598 – easier perhaps for a man estranged from Court – had been noted and applauded, and he was always in contention for the more active roles. During the great invasion scare of August 1599, when sightings of a Dutch fleet returning from the Canaries and the usual summer speculation over the enemy’s intentions once again prompted rumours that a Spanish fleet was descending on the unprotected coasts of England, Ralegh was named vice-admiral of a hastily-assembled royal fleet.58 At that point, his clients saw an opportunity: Sir Arthur Throckmorton, writing from his country seat at Paulerspury, sought in the absence of his ‘surest solicitor’ to have charge of the fifty lances drawn out of Northamptonshire, trusting that his hard work in raising and equipping the county contingent would not be wasted. Loyally inveighing against the threat of church popery, Throckmorton also referred back to his service against Spain at Cadiz.59 In this competition for second-rank appointments Ralegh enjoyed some more lasting success. During August 1600, the Queen appointed him Governor of Jersey, a post Ralegh had openly coveted ever since rumours of the mortal illness suffered by the previous Governor, Sir Anthony Paulet, had first surfaced, early in the year.60 ‘Yt shuld seeme’, wrote the unsympathetic Rowland Whyte, that Ralegh ‘wilbe content to make her Majestys profitt there, and to raise a fort upon his own charges.’ Acknowledging his master Sir Robert Sidney’s hostility to both Cobham and to Ralegh – Sidney and Cobham were local rivals in Kent – Whyte felt compelled to point out the advantages that would accrue through reconciliation. Cobham, who had 57 HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley, ii, p. 447. 58 Letters of Chamberlain, i, p. 81; Letters of Ralegh, pp. 182–3;Wernham, Return of the Armadas, pp. 267–71. 59 Hatfield MS 72/61. Despite his very correct pronouncements on the Catholic threat, Arthur Throckmorton’s diary shows how he remained on good terms with most members of his family, setting aside their religious beliefs (P. Collinson, ‘The politics of religion and the religion of politics in Elizabethan England’, Historical Research 82 (2009), 74–92, at p. 86). 60 T. Rymer, Foedera, Conventiones, Literae . . . (London, 1726–35), xvi, pp. 398–400; Letters of Ralegh, p. 189.

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recently married Frances Howard, the dowager duchess of Kildare and daughter of the Earl of Nottingham, was ‘now allied where you receive much kindness’, while Ralegh, for his part, seemed to have grown ‘very wise and his frends powers great in Court’.61 An appointment attributed by Whyte to favour and patronage was also founded on logic and pragmatism. Ralegh knew something of France from his early life as a soldier, and may still have spoken passable French. The Channel Islands had a military significance, for they were regarded as a possible base for any new Spanish Armada. Moreover, the appointment of Ralegh provided a dignified means to break an evolving family fiefdom; three successive Paulets had held the Governorship of Jersey over the past fifty years.62 Ralegh was delighted to take the post. It gave him status, and compensated somewhat for disappointments elsewhere. Wasting no time, he set out to visit his new command, first setting foot on the island in September 1600. He found the place pleasant enough although, according to the letters he wrote to Bess, it was not worth anything like the figure reported.63 Diplomatically, the new Governor appointed Sir Anthony Paulet’s son George as his lieutenant, while focusing, during this and a subsequent visit in the summer of 1602, on making improvements to the fortifications. Ralegh’s finances were beginning to look more healthy as well. In 1600 his nephew Sir John Gilbert, eldest son of Sir Humphrey, and a prominent privateer in the last years of Elizabeth’s reign, captured a ‘Venetian’ ship, carrying a valuable cargo of sugar. John Chamberlain, in his letter to Carleton of 29 February 1600, noted that the prize was marked down ‘to Sir Wal: Raleighs use’, apparently because Ralegh owned or had a substantial share in Gilbert’s ship. The value of the sugar was nearly £10,000.64 Clearly here was one privateering investment that had paid dividends, even though the captured ship was in fact Dutch, and even though the Dutch authorities complained bitterly, the case attracting the attention of the Privy Council and eventually going to the Commissioners for Causes of Depredation. Not surprisingly, Ralegh was free with his advice to Gilbert on how best to administer his prize.65 When the industrious Gilbert repeated the feat in the 61 HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley, ii, p. 479. 62 P. Ahier, The governorship of Sir Walter Ralegh in Jersey, 1600–1603 (St Helier, 1971), pp. 1–5. 63 Hatfield MS 250/36. 64 Letters of Chamberlain, i, p. 89; HMC, Portland, ii, p. 21. 65 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 192–4.

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autumn of 1601, capturing a Brazilian vessel with a profitable cargo of luxury goods, Ralegh was equally liberal with requests, made on behalf of Bess as well as himself, for porcelain, furnishings and ‘silk stockinges’.66 Stockings and chinaware were the priorities of the moment. For the middle-aged couple in Sherborne, a consumer-driven life of wealth and comfort seemed at last guaranteed.

66 Ibid., p. 225.

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7

The Court Poet

The accepted model of conduct for English courtiers in the latter part of the sixteenth century was the Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione. Published in Italian in 1528, it was translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1566. It was a model in which poetry flourished. The qualities admired by Castiglione were, above all, mediocrità, meaning ‘balance’, and sprezzatura, the counterfeiting of graceful ease. The courtier must be flexible, balancing seriousness with wit, and his objective should always be to please the prince.1 Steven May has counted thirty-two poets writing at the royal Court under Elizabeth, nearly all of them men, and some of them surprising, like William Cecil, Lord Burghley, not usually seen as a poetic figure.2 In The Arte of English Poesie (1589), George Puttenham claimed that following a dearth of poets in the early part of Elizabeth’s reign there had ‘sprung up an other crew of Courtly makers [poets] Noble men and Gentlemen of her Maiesties owne servauntes, who have written excellently well’, naming the Earl of Oxford, Lord Buckhurst, Lord Paget, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Fulke Greville, Sir Edward Dyer and Sir Walter Ralegh among their number. ‘For ditty and amourous Ode I finde Sir Walter Rawleyghs vayne most loftie, insolent, and passionate.’3 At the English Court poems were written to praise the Queen, to express love and devotion, especially towards women, to provide memorials to fellow-courtiers, to accompany the New Year exchanges of gifts and to commemorate special occasions, in particular courtly tournaments.4 Ralegh’s poems present special difficulties for his editors, critics and biographers.5 He was reluctant to have his poems known beyond the Court and 1 D. Javitch, Poetry and Courtliness in Renaissance England (Princeton, 1978), intro. and ch. 1. 2 S. May, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: the poems and their contexts (Columbia, 1991), pp. 4–5 and passim. See also M. Partridge, ‘Lord Burghley and Il cortegiano: civil and martial models of courtliness in Elizabethan England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 19 (2009), 95–116. 3 G. Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (London, 1589), pp. 61, 63. 4 May, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets, p. 4. 5 The authoritative edition, on which we have relied, is M. Rudick, The Poems of Sir Walter

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only four were printed in his lifetime.6 This was frustrating both for his contemporaries and for later editors; but it was not unusual. Puttenham complained that ‘I know very many notable gentlemen in the court that have written commendably, and suppressed it agayn, or els suffred it to be publisht without their owne names to it, as if it were a discredit for a gentleman, to seeme learned and to shew himself amorous of any good art’.7 Most courtier poems were circulated in manuscript and usually survive in collections gathered together by others. Because Ralegh was highly regarded as a poet, and because later editors wanted to increase the size of his output to match his stature as a national hero, his name was often attached to poems without warrant. Many of the attributions made on his behalf are doubtful and some are simply false. His most recent and thorough editor, Michael Rudick, has claimed, perhaps too severely, that only thirteen attributions can be confidently upheld, with a further eight possible. In addition Ralegh made some seventy brief verse translations for The History of the World, mostly from the Latin, whose authorship has not been disputed. Five poems, the so-called ‘Cynthia poems’, are in Hatfield House and are written in Ralegh’s own hand.8 In only a few other cases do we know for certain the authorship of individual poems, the date of their composition or the reliability of variant texts. Nor can we be certain, except in a few cases, of Ralegh’s circumstances when they were written. Some attempts have been made by commentators to arrange the poems chronologically, attaching them to particular events in his life.9 These cannot be trusted. A special difficulty arises with the so-called ‘Ralegh group’ of poems in The Phoenix Nest, an anthology printed in 1593. Many of these are anonymous and in 1931 Hoyt Hudson proposed that thirteen of them could perhaps be attributed to Ralegh, with a core of seven poems, which were reliable, mainly on grounds of style and positioning in the volume.10 To these thirteen Agnes Latham added three more. Two of this ‘Ralegh group’ turn out to be, pretty certainly, the work of Sir Arthur Gorges, and only for three of the rest does there seem, in the view of Michael Rudick,

6 7 8 9 10

Ralegh: a historical edition (Tempe, AZ, 1999). Unless stated otherwise all references to the poems are to this edition; but we have also given cross-references to the more readily available edition by A. M. C Latham, The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh (London, 1951). Nos 1, 2, 3, 31 in Rudick, Poems; nos 1, 13, 14, 35 in Latham, Poems. Quoted in Latham, Poems, p. xxiii. See H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, 1558–1640 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 12–16. Nos 23–7 in Rudick, Poems; nos 22–5 in Latham, Poems. Notably by W. Oakeshott, The Queen and the Poet (London, 1960). See Rudick, Poems, pp. xxxii–xxxv for an account of the problem.

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good reason to count them as Ralegh’s.11 As we have seen, the earliest poem that can be confidently assigned to Ralegh is a commendatory verse for George Gascoigne’s The Steele Glas (1576); it lacks the sharpness and flavour of Ralegh’s later verse and is altogether inferior to the next of his rare printed poems, the dedicatory sonnet to Spenser’s The Faerie Queene: Me thought I saw the grave where Laura lay, Within that Temple, where the vestall flame Was wont to burne, and passing by that way, To see that buried dust of living fame, Whose tumbe faire love, and fairer vertue kept, All suddeinly I saw the Faery Queene: At whose approach the soule of Petrarke wept, And from thenceforth those graces were not seene. For they this Queene attended, in whose steed Oblivion laid him downe on Lauras herse: Hereat the hardest stones were seene to bleed, And grones of buried ghostes the hevens did perse. Where Homers spright did tremble all for griefe, And curst th’accesse of that celestiall theife.12

Here Ralegh combines lavish commendation of his friend Spenser with high praise for the Queen. Petrarch and Homer have been displaced by the achievements of Spenser, while the graces have deserted Laura’s tomb to attend upon Elizabeth. Most of Ralegh’s poems were written in the context of the Court and most of them concern the Queen: poems seeking patronage, poems of love and praise, poems of complaint at her desertion of him. One of these, accepted as genuine by most scholars although only with reservations by Rudick, is The Sheepheards praise of his sacred Diana: Praysed be Dianaes faire and harmelesse light, Praised be the dewes, where-with she moists the ground: Praised be her beames, the glory of the night, 11 The arguments are complex: for detail see M. Rudick, ‘The “Ralegh Group” in the Phoenix Nest’, Studies in Bibliography 24 (1971), 131–7. 12 Rudick, Poems, no. 2; Latham, Poems, no. 13.

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Prais’d be her power, by which all powers abound. ... Time weares her not, shee dooth his Chariot guide, Mortality below her Orbe is plast: By her the vertue of the starres downe slide, In her is vertues perfect Image cast. A knowledge pure it is her woorth to know: With Circes let them dwell, that thinke not so.13

Elizabeth is praised as a goddess, specifically the Moon goddess, Diana, immortal, timeless, unchanging.The praise is widened to include the ladies of the court (‘her Nimphs’) and her male courtiers (‘her Knights, in whom true honour lives’). The Queen herself is the source of virtue and of beauty. Very different in tone, and far more personal, is the poem generally known as ‘Farewell to the Court’: Like truthles dreames, so are my joyes expired, And past returne, are all my dandled daies: My love misled, and fancie quite retired, Of all which past, the sorow onely staies. My lost delights, now cleane from sight of land, Have left me all alone in unknowne waies: My minde to woe, my life in fortunes hand, Of all which past, the sorow onely staies. As in a countrey strange without companion, I onely waile the wrong of deaths delaies, Whose sweete spring spent, whose sommer wel nie don, Of all which past, the sorow onely staies. Whom care forewarnes, ere age and winter colde, To haste me hence, to finde my fortunes folde.14 13 Rudick, Poems, no. 5; Latham, Poems, no. 10. See also Rudick, pp. xxxii–xxxv; S. J. Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh: the renaissance man and his roles (London, 1973), pp. 64–8. 14 Rudick, Poems, no. 17; Latham, Poems, no. 12.

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Ralegh used the refrain later in lines 123 and 124 of ‘The Ocean to Cynthia’: Of all which past, the sorrow only stayes So wrate I once and my mishapp fortolde

Perhaps about the same date is a poem of regret or fear that he has lost the love of the Queen: fortune hath taken away my love my lyves joy and my soules heaven above fortune hathe taken thee away my princes15 my worldes joy and my true fantasies misteris fortune hathe taken thee away from mee fortune hathe taken all by takinge thee deade to all joyes I only lyve to woe So ys fortune becomme my fantasies foe.16

To this the Queen herself replied: Ah silly pugge wert thou so sore afraid, Mourne not (my Wat) nor be thou so dismaid It passeth fickle fortunes powere and skill, to force my harte to thinke thee any ill.17

May links these two poems to the return of the Earl of Essex to England from the Netherlands in November 1586 and to the threat that he posed to Ralegh. He suggests that in the second poem Ralegh is identifying ‘fortune’ with his rival.18 It may be so; but more interesting is the tone of both poems. Greenblatt shows how the anonymity of ‘Praysed be Dianaes faire and harmelesse light’ has been replaced by something more personal. Ralegh’s love and sorrow seem here more deeply felt. Elizabeth’s response has a certain commonsense briskness about it. She is not one to be ruled 15 i.e. princess. 16 Rudick, Poems, no. 15A. Not included in Latham: on the evidence then available the attribution to Ralegh seemed insecure. See Rudick, Poems, pp. xxxix–xli. 17 Rudick, Poems, no. 15B. See also nos 15C, 15D. 18 May, Elizabethan Courtier Poets, pp. 119–23.

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by fortune, ‘so blinde a Witche’, so Ralegh should brace up and put away his fears. Reading Ralegh’s poetry, fine as it is, does occasionally produce such a reaction even after four hundred years.19 Very different from Ralegh’s other poems is his epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney, printed in The Phoenix Nest in 1593.20 Sidney had died of wounds inflicted at the Battle of Zutphen in 1586, so the epitaph may have been written earlier than the date at which it was printed. It begins with modest self-deprecation, unusual for Ralegh: To praise thy life, or waile thy woorthie death, And want thy wit, thy wit high, pure, divine, Is far beyond the power of mortall line, Nor any one hath worth that draweth breath.

With grace and elegance Ralegh describes Sidney’s virtues in peace and war: Great gifts and wisedome rare imploide thee thence, To treat from kings, with those more great than kings, Such hope men had to lay the highest things, On thy wise youth, to be transported hence.

Ralegh then tells the story of Sidney’s call to arms, death and later fame: England doth hold thy lims that bred the same, Flaunders thy valure where it last was tried, The Campe thy sorrow where thy bodie died, Thy friends, thy want; the world, thy virtues fame. ...

Three of Ralegh’s best-known poems stand apart from the others and from each other, presenting special problems of attribution.‘As you came from the holy land of Walsingham’ is a strange and beautiful poem unlike anything else in the Ralegh canon.21 It seems to be based upon an older ballad, probably 19 Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 68–70. 20 Rudick, Poems, no. 16; Latham, Poems, no. 4. The attribution to Ralegh is firm: see Rudick, Poems, p. xli, and also pp. 147–9 for helpful paraphrases of this difficult poem. 21 Rudick, Poems, no. 13; Latham, Poems, no. 21. We have divided the text into stanzas, as

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dating from before the Reformation, when pilgrimages to the shrine of the Virgin at Walsingham were common. In a dialogue between an ageing and discarded lover and a pilgrim, the lover asks the pilgrim whether he has met his beloved on his way back from the shrine: As you came from the holy land of Walsinghame Mett you not with my true love by the way as you came? (The pilgrim): How shall I know your trewe love That have mett many one As I went to the holy lande That have come that have gone? (The lover): She is neyther whyte nor browne Butt as the heavens fayre There is none hath a form so devine In the earth or the ayre. (The pilgrim): Such a one did I meet good Sir Suche an Angelyke face Who like a queene lyke a nymph did appere by her gate22 by her grace. (The lover): She hath lefte me here all allone All allone as unknowne, Who sometymes did me lead with her selfe, And me lovde as her owne: in Latham, and occasionally supplied additional punctuation.We have also supplied the identities of the speakers in parentheses. See Latham, Poems, pp. 120–2; Rudick, Poems, pp. xxxix, 145; Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 70–4. 22 i.e. gait.

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(The pilgrim): Whats the cause that she leaves you alone And a new waye doth take: Who loved you once as her owne And her joye did you make? (The lover): I have loved her all my youth Butt now ould as you see Love lykes not the falling frute From the wythered tree: (The pilgrim?):23 Know that love is a careless chylld And forgetts promysse paste: He is blynd, he is deaff when he lyste And in faythe never faste: His desire is a dureless24 contente And a trustless joye He is wonn with a world of despayre And is lost with a toye: Of women kynde suche indeed is the love Or the word Love abused Under which many chyldysh desires And conceytes are excused: But true Love is a durable fyre In the mynde ever burnynge: never sicke never ould never dead from itt selfe never turnynge:

The difficulty lies in knowing how much of what we have here comes from the original ballad, and how much is Ralegh’s. One can only take the poem as it stands. It tells us of love, desertion and despair, favourite themes with Ralegh.The careless child is plainly Cupid, who is blind and wanton, playing 23 It is not entirely clear whether the speaker of the final sixteen lines is the pilgrim or the poet – or neither. 24 i.e. unlasting.

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with the affections of others, particularly of men. This love is changeable and impermanent, and is especially true of the love of women. True love is a ‘durable fire’, which burns always in the mind and never dies. The theme is echoed in such poems as ‘Farewell false love’,25 ‘Lady farewell whom I in silence serve’,26 ‘Fortune hath taken thee away my love’ and ‘Like truthless dreams’.27 Above all, it is the greater part of the matter of ‘The Ocean, to Cynthia’, as we shall see.28 Perhaps the most famous poem attributed to Ralegh is ‘The Lie’. It first circulated in manuscript during the 1590s without any attribution, but replies to it written before 1603 assign it to Ralegh.29 However, Pierre Lefranc argued in 1968 against Ralegh’s authorship on three principal grounds: first, that the manuscript attributions are late and unreliable; second, that the poem is of mediocre quality, below Ralegh’s usual standard; and third, that the poem is the work of a puritan. He suggested that the author was in fact Dr Richard Lateware (or Latworth), Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, and later chaplain to Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy. Lefranc contends that Lateware was writing as an adherent of the Earl of Essex and that the object of the poem was to discredit Ralegh by associating his name with it. The counter-argument has been effectively put by Greenblatt, who undermines Lefranc’s strictures on the quality of the poem and his assertion that it was written by a puritan. Critical opinion continues to uphold Ralegh’s claim to the poem.30 Satirical poems were fashionable in the 1590s; Sir John Harington, John Donne, Joseph Hall and John Marston come to mind. It was also a time of dissatisfaction with the corruption of the Court, the defects of the Church, and the failure of the country’s rulers.31 Ralegh attacks the contrast between appearance and reality in Court, Church, law-courts, universities and so on. His strategy is comprehensive rather than subtle or specific, but the poem moves with relentless force, delivering hammer-blows against corruption and 25 26 27 28 29

Rudick, Poems, no. 10B; Latham, Poems, no. 7. Rudick, Poems, nos. 12A, 12B; Latham, Poems, no. 3. Above, p. 142. Below, p. 153. Bodleian, Rawlinson MSS Poetry 212, 172. ‘The Lie’ is printed in Rudick, Poems, nos 20A–C; and in Latham, Poems, no. 26. 30 For example, E. Jones (ed.), The New Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century Verse (Oxford, 1991), pp. 371–3; Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 70–4. 31 See J. Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: court and culture in the last decade (Cambridge, 1995), passim.

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deceit. It opens with an injunction to the soul ‘to give the world the lie’.The reference to the poet’s own death suggests that it may have been written in the shadow of execution in 1603; but the mood would fit equally well with Ralegh’s depression and resentment during his exclusion from Court after 1592. Go sowll the boddies guest uppon a thanckless errant fear not to towche the best the trewthe shalbe thy warrant go synce I needs must Dye and gyve the world the lye.32

Ralegh then narrows his aim at his principal targets, Court and Church: Say to the cowrtt it glowes and shynes lyke rotten wood say to the churche it shewes whattes god33 yet doothe no good If cowrtt and churche replye gyve cowrtt and churche the lye.

He continues to assault his targets through ten more stanzas: potentates, those that ‘tend affairs of state’ and high spenders – ‘those that brave it most’ – are condemned. Love must be told that ‘it is but lust’, flesh that it is only dust, ‘beauty that she boasteth’, law that ‘it is contention’, faith that it has ‘fled the city’ and so on. There are various contemporary replies, many by the Dr Lateware proposed as the original poet by Lefranc. Most, though not all of them, name Ralegh as the original author, usually by puns on his name: Go Eccho of the minde A careless truth protest Make answere that so rawe a lye Noe stomacke can digest. 32 ‘To give the lie’, that is, to accuse a person to their face of lying (Oxford English Dictionary, 1989). 33 ‘God’ is given as ‘good’ in other MSS.

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‘The Passionate Mans Pilgrimage’ was first printed anonymously in 1604 at the end of a collection called Diaphantus, with the note that it was ‘supposed to be written by one at the point of death’ by decapitation.34 There then seems to have been no copy made until 1625, after which there were several, in fourteen manuscripts, all except one attributing it to Ralegh. If he was indeed the author, the poem must have been written in December 1603, before his reprieve. The first stanza is well known: Give me my Scallop shell of quiet My staff of faith to walke upon My Scrip of Joy Imortall diet my bottle of salvation my Gowne of Glory, hopes true gage And thus Ile take my pilgrimage.

The next five stanzas continue with a description of the pilgrim’s journey: . . . to the land of heaven Over the silver mountaines Where spring the Nectar fountaines

A vivid picture is presented of the final stages of the journey: Then the holy paths weele travell Strewde with Rubies thicke as gravell Seelings of Diamonds, Saphire floores High walls of Corall and Pearle bowres

The tone changes as the pilgrim enters the ‘bribeles hall’ of heaven ‘where noe corrupted voyces brawl’. The hall is a judgement-hall, where Christ is the ‘kings Atturny’, who ‘pleads for all of all degrees’. Unlike the ‘twelve million jury’ whose verdict goes against the poet, ‘Christ pleads his death and then we live’. These stanzas recall ‘The Lie’, with their implied attack upon ‘bribed lawyers’. The final stanza ends the poem with a touch of bravado 34 Rudick, Poems, nos 54A-C; Latham, Poems, no. 30. See Rudick, Poems, pp. lxix–lxxiii and fn. 75 on problems of attribution; also Latham, Poems, pp. 140–3; Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 121–6; P. Edwards, Sir Walter Ralegh (London, 1953), pp. 93–6; Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 84–5.

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and gallows humour: And this is my eternall plea, To him that made Heaven, Earth and Sea, Seeing my flesh must die so soone, And want a head to dine next noone, Just at the stroke when my vaines start and spred Set on my soule an everlasting head. Then am I readie like a palmer fit, To tread those blest paths which before I writ.

Four of the most remarkable of Ralegh’s poems exist in a single copy in his own hand at Hatfield House, where they were found by the archivist, C. J. Stewart, in the middle of the nineteenth century.35 They were published for the first time by John Hannah in 1870, nearly three centuries after they were written. Authorship is not in doubt, but there is some question about the date on which they were written. This is usually thought to be 1592, the year of Ralegh’s disgrace and imprisonment following his marriage, but Katherine Duncan-Jones has made a claim for 1603, following his conviction for treason.36 External evidence provides no certainty and any conclusion must rest upon readings of the poems themselves. Both dates seem possible, although the sonnet ‘My boddy in the walls captived’ may fit better with the earlier date. It would be prudent not to tie any reading, at least of the longer poem, to any specific date. The titles of the longer poem and its successor have led to some textual agonizing. Do the titles, ‘The 21th and last booke of the Ocean to Scinthia’ and ‘The end of the boockes, of the Oceans love to Scinthia, and the beginninge of the 22 boock, entreatinge of Sorrow’, imply the existence of a giant work of twenty previous books, comparable in scale to the seven books of The Faerie Queene? Spenser himself encouraged belief in a long 35 Hatfield MS 144. Rudick, Poems, nos 24–7, pp. xlviii-li; Latham, Poems, nos 22–5, pp. 122–8. 36 K. Duncan-Jones,‘The date of Raleigh’s “21th and last booke of the Ocean to Scinthia”’, Review of English Studies 21 (1970), 143–58. We are grateful to Professor Duncan-Jones for drawing her article to our attention. Some critics have suggested that the long Cynthia poem, and possibly others, may have been written at different moments in Ralegh’s career and knitted together later. This is possible, but we cannot be sure and must work with what we have.

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poem by Ralegh. In his prefatory letter to The Faerie Queene, written to Ralegh, Spenser wrote that he meant both ‘our soveraine the Queene’ and ‘a most virtuous and beautifull Lady . . . fashioning her name according to your owne excellent conceipt of Cynthia (Phoebe and Cynthia being both names of Diana)’; and in Colin Clout Comes Home Againe he talks of the shepherd of the ocean (Ralegh) singing ‘a lamentable lay . . . of Cynthia, the Ladie of the sea’.37 However, it seems unlikely that Ralegh would have had the leisure to write another twenty books, each of five hundred lines or so, at any time, let alone before the end of 1591, and certainly Spenser’s lines are no evidence for their existence. More interesting is the evidence that Ralegh was friendly with one of the pre-eminent poets of his day – perhaps the pre-eminent poet apart from Shakespeare – and that they exchanged verses together. Spenser’s dedicatory sonnet to Ralegh spoke of him in high terms, as of course it would: To thee that art the sommers Nightingale Thy soveraine Goddesses most deare delight

There is one other problem about the Cynthia poems.What were they doing at Hatfield, unknown and undiscovered? There are only two possible explanations: the first, suggested by Walter Oakeshott, is that when Ralegh was released from the Tower in 1592, in his haste to get down to the south-west he left the poems behind and Cecil gathered them up. The other, and much more likely, is that Ralegh gave them to Robert Cecil, either for passing to Elizabeth, or, if they were written after her death, as a memorial to her. If they were written around 1592, Cecil may understandably have thought that they were not the most appropriate form of petition to the Queen.38 There are five poems in the ‘Cynthia group’ at Hatfield House: ‘Now we have present made’ (no. 23 in Rudick); ‘If Synthia be a Queene’ (no. 24); ‘My boddy in the walls captived’ (no. 25); ‘The 21th and last booke of the Ocean to Scinthia’ (no. 26), at 522 lines much the longest of all Ralegh’s poems; and ‘The end of the boockes, of the Oceans love to Scinthia, and the beginninge of the 22 boock, entreatinge of Sorrow’ (no. 27). ‘Now we have present made’ 37 E. Spenser, Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (1595) ll. 164–71 in Poetical Works, J. C. Smith and E. de Selincourt (eds) (Oxford, 1912), pp. 535–45; Dedicatory Letter of the Author to SirWalter Ralegh for Colin Clout Comes Home Againe, dated by Spenser 27 December 1591; Dedicatory Letter to The Faerie Queene; Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 60–4. 38 Oakeshott, The Queen and the Poet, p. 139.

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appears to be a relatively simple poem of praise to Elizabeth, perhaps on the occasion of the giving of a present.39 No. 24 is a fragment of seven enigmatic lines.40 With ‘My boddy in the walls captived’ we are in clearer territory.41 My boddy in the walls captived feels not the wounds of spighfull42 envy. butt my thralde mind, of liberty deprived fast fettered in her auntient memory, douth nought beholde butt sorrowes diinge face, such prison earst was so delightfull as it desired no other dwellinge place, Butt tymes effects, and destines dispightfull, have changed both my keeper and my fare, loves fire and bewtys light I then had store, butt now closs keipt, as captives wounted are that food, that heat, that light I finde no more, Dyspaire bolts up my dores, and I alone speake to dead walls, butt thos heare not my mone.

He claims not to be hurt by being physically in prison, and indeed the prison formed by his enthralment to the Queen was wholly delightful, with ‘love’s fire and beauty’s light’. But now things have changed. Although he is still bound to the Queen, he is deprived of the spiritual nourishment, warmth and light of her love. The sonnet seems to echo the words of his letter to Cecil from house arrest in Durham House in July 1592: My hart was never broken till this day that I here the Queen goes away so farr off whom I have followed so many yeares with so great love and desire, in so many jurneys, and am now left behinde her and in a darke prison [all alone interlined ] . . . now my hart is cast into the deapth of all misery. I that was wount to behold her ridinge like Alexander, huntinge like Diana, walkinge like Venus.43

39 Ralegh transcribed this poem in a notebook of geographical information relating to The History of the World (BL, Add. MS 57555). 40 Rudick, Poems, pp. 157–8. 41 Rudick, Poems, no. 25; Latham, Poems, no. 23. 42 Or ‘spiteful’. 43 Letters of Ralegh, p. 70. The Queen was about to depart for Nonsuch Palace, Surrey.

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However, the poem could be dated to 1603 or so, following his imprisonment in the Tower.‘But time’s effects and destinies despiteful/have changed both my keeper and my fare’ could refer to the accession of James I to the throne after the death of Elizabeth. Either date would be possible, and whenever the sonnet was written, the message is clear: prison walls do not cast him down, for his misery stems from the absence of his beloved.The text illustrates the ambiguities raised by attempting to fix too firm a chronology to Ralegh’s poems. ‘The Ocean to Scinthia’ is much the longest and the most important of Ralegh’s poems.44 It describes the prolonged and painful destruction of the relationship on which his success at Court, with all its opportunities for wealth and fame, depended. The poem is long, complex and often difficult to grasp. While a full analysis is impossible here, some guidance should be helpful, although no substitute for a full reading of the poem.45 Ralegh begins by addressing ‘his joys’ – his pleasures or his happy days: Sufficeth it to yow my joyes interred, in simpell wordes that I my woes cumplayne, Yow that then died when first my fancy erred joyes under dust that never live agayne.46

He can only use simple words to describe how his joy died when his fancy erred, presumably in his affair and marriage with Bess Throckmorton, only mentioned this once, and that obliquely in the course of the poem. He goes on to describe the desolation that has struck him: the blossumes fallen, the sapp gon from the tree. the broken monuments of my great desires, from thes so lost what may th’affections bee what heat in Cynders of extinguisht fiers? Lost in the mudd of thos hygh flowinge streames which through more fayrer feilds ther courses bend, slayne with sealf thoughts, amased in fearfull dreames

(l. 13)

44 Rudick, Poems, no. 26; Latham, Poems, no. 24. There are valuable commentaries in Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 60–98; P. Edwards, Sir Walter Ralegh (London, 1953), pp. 110–26. 45 The reading in Edwards, Sir Walter Ralegh, has proved to be of great help. See also Oakeshott, The Queen and the Poet, pp. 176–209. 46 The second person in the poem is never the Queen, usually ‘his joys’.

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He continues for another seventeen lines in this melancholy strain, but moves suddenly into high praise for Cynthia: Oh, hopefull love my object, and invention, Oh, trew desire the spurr of my consayte Oh, worthiest spirit, my minds impulsion Oh, eyes transpersant my affections bayte Oh, princely forme, my fancies adamande, Devine consayte, my paynes acceptance, Oh, all in onn, oh heaven on yearth transparant ... Whom Love defends, what fortune overthrowes? When shee did well, what did ther elce amiss When shee did ill what empires could have pleased no other poure effectinge wo, or bliss. Shee gave, shee tooke, shee wounded, she appeased. ... To seeke new worlds, for golde, for prayse, for glory, to try desire, to try love severed farr when I was gonn shee sent her memory more stronge then weare tenthowsand shipps of warr to call me back, to leve great honors thought to leve my frinds, my fortune, my attempte to leve the purpose I so longe had sought and holde both cares and cumforts in contempt.

(l. 37)

(l. 52)

(l. 61)

Elizabeth had indeed called him back from one of his expeditions, particularly that to Panama in 1592.47 The mood of the poem suddenly switches from devotion to the gradual death of love.The poet explains by a succession of images and similes how this happens: But as a boddy violently slayne retayneath warmth although the spirrit be gonn, and by a pour in nature moves agayne till it be layd below the fatall stone

(l. 73)

47 The Queen had ordered him to return in May 1592 from the voyage he was appointed to command to Panama: above, Chapter Three, p. 68; Chapter Four, p. 75. Rudick, Poems, p. l, fn. 40.

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Or as the yearth yeven in cold winter dayes left for a tyme by her life gevinge soonn, douth by the poure remayninge of his rayes produce sume green, though not as it hath dunn. Or as a wheele forst by the fallinge streame although the course be turned sume other way, douth for a tyme go rounde uppon the beame till wantinge strenght to move, it stands att stay, So my forsaken hart, my withered minde widdow of all the joys it once possest my hopes cleane out of sight with forced wind to kyngdomes strange, to lands farr of addrest Alone, forsaken, frindless onn the shore with many wounds, with deaths cold pangs inebrased48 writes in the dust as onn that could no more whom love, and tyme, and fortune had defaced, ... . . . as if when after Phebus is dessended and leves a light mich like the past dayes dawninge, and every toyle and labor wholly ended each livinge creature draweth to his restinge wee should begin by such a partinge light to write the story of all ages past and end the same before th’aprochinge night

155

(l. 80)

(l. 90)

(l. 100)

Whether he actually had in mind the writing of The History of the World we cannot know, but he is led now to reflect more directly upon his own experience of Cynthia: such force her angellike aparance had to master distance, tyme, or cruelty such art to greve, and after to make gladd such feare in love, such love in majestie. My weery lymes, her memory imbalmed, my darkest wayes her eyes make clear as day

48 i.e. embraced.

(l. 112)

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what stormes so great but Cinthias beames apeasd. what rage so feirce that love could not allay. Twelve yeares intire I wasted in this warr twelve yeares of my most happy younger dayes, butt I in them, and they now wasted ar of all which past the sorrow only stayes, So wrate I once and my mishap fortolde49

(l. 120)

Much critical attention has been paid to the twelve-years war that Ralegh claims to have waged with Elizabeth and it has been taken to date the poem to 1592. It may do so or it may not: this is not an autobiographical poem and the narrative breaks off to describe his feeling of loss after Cynthia’s rejection: sumetyme I died sumetyme I was distract my sowle the stage of fancies tragedye then furious madness wher trew reason lackt wrate what it would, and scurgde myne own consayte. ... And as a man distract, with trebell might bound in stronge chaynes douth strive, and rage in vayne till tyrde and breathless, he is forst to rest fyndes by contention but increas of payne and fiery heat inflamde in swollen breast. So did my minde in change of passion from wo to wrath, from wrath returne to wo, struglinge in vayne from loves subjection

(l. 143)

(l. 153)

He tries in vain to remove her memory from his mind, finding that her beauty outlasts the effects of time like A vestal fier that burnes, but never wasteth that looseth nought by gevinge light to all

He insists that Cynthia is almost perfect, ‘free from evry yevill but crueltye’. Then his mood swings again:

49 ‘Like truthles dreames’: Rudick, Poems, no. 17; Latham, Poems, no. 12. The line in Cynthia provides a firm attribution for no. 17, which would otherwise be uncertain.

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But leve her prayse, speak thow of nought but wo write onn the tale that Sorrow bydds the tell strive to forget, and care no more to know thy cares ar known, by knowinge thos to well, discribe her now as shee apeeres to thee not as shee did apeere in dayes fordunn in love thos things that weare no more may be for fancy seildume ends wher it begunn.

157

(l. 213)

However, the poet comes to realize that change is inevitable: ‘butt as tyme gave, tyme did agayne devoure’. All nature declines and decays in the end: steel rusts; the most solid tree rots. Our treasures and tokens are banished as affection dies and once it has gone there is no hope of its return. The poet could not change himself and continues to love: I pourless was to alter my desire my love is not of tyme, or bound to date

(l. 300)

But Cynthia’s love was gone, and she had become a stranger so severe . . . a Lion then, no more a milke white Dove

and he is torn apart: the lymes devided, sundred, and a bleedinge50 cannot cumplayne the sentence was unyevunn

(l. 343)

He continues to praise her – ‘Devin in wordes, angellicall in voyse’ – but realizes that ‘shee cares not ffor thy prayse’ and remembers only his offence. Then, suddenly, he turns again to praise, remembering his love for her: Yet greater fancye bewtye never bredd a more desire the hart bludd never nowrished her sweetness an affection never fedd which more in any age hath ever floryshedd

50 ‘lymes’ = limbs; ‘a bleedinge’ = ableeding.

(l. 376)

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The minde and vertue never have begotten a firmer love, since love on yearth had poure a love obscurde, but cannot be forgotten to great and stronge for tymes Jawes to devour.

His love remains strong, though ‘buried bee the joy’. His passion is revived in his memory. While the slights he has endured would cure the passions of others, his love is of a special kind. It is as water to the fyshe, to men as ayre as heat to fier, as light unto the soonn Oh love it is but vayne, to say thow weare ages, and tymes, cannot thy poure outrunn.

(l. 434)

Twice now he has denied that time can have its usual effect: his love is immune to its power. In a powerful metaphor he compares the effect of his love to an earthquake: Yet as the eayre in deip caves under ground is strongly drawne when violent heat hath rent great clefts therin, till moysture do abound and then the same imprisoned, and uppent, breakes out in yearthquakes teringe all asunder, So in the Center of my cloven hart, my hart, to whom her bewties wear such wounder Lyes the sharpe poysoned heade of that loves dart which till all breake and all desolve to dust thence drawne it cannot bee, or therin knowne ther, mixt with my hart bludd, the fretting rust the better part hath eaten, and outgrown . . . ... my love was falce,51 my labors weare desayte52 nor less then such the[y] ar esteemde to bee, a fraude bought att the prize of many woes.

51 Underscored in the MS. 52 i.e. deceit.

(l. 450)

(l. 460)

(l .465)

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The poet has swung from asserting that his love is more durable than other men’s to confessing that it is false. His poem becomes even more complex and opaque than before; but seems to be dissolving into resignation: Do then by diinge, what life cannot doo . . . Unfolde thy flockes, and leve them to the fields to feed onn hylls, or dales, wher likes them best of what the summer, or the springetyme yeildes for love, and tyme, hath geven thee leve to rest, ... my minds affection, and sowles sole love, not mixte with fanceys chafe, or fortunes dross, to god I leve it, who first gave it me, and I her gave, and she returnd agayne as it was herrs, so lett his mercies bee, of my last cumforts, the essentiall meane.

(l. 496)

(l. 515)

(l. 520)

He ends with a couplet that sums up the entire poem: But be it so, or not, th’effects, ar past her love hath end. my woe must ever last.

‘The Ocean to Scinthia’ is followed in the Hatfield MS by a much shorter poem of twenty-one and a half lines, entitled ‘The end of the boockes, of the Oceans love to Scinthia, and the beginninge of the 22 boock, entreating of Sorrow’. Ralegh begins with lines lamenting his lost happiness: My dayes delights, my springetyme joies fordunn which in the dawne, and risinge soon of youth had their creation, and weare first begunn, do in the yeveninge, and the winter sadd present my minde, which takes my tymes accompt the greif remayninge of the joy it had.

These lines he was to use again in two of his petitions to James I’s consort, Queen Anne.53 But here he moves on to talk of others taking his place and 53 Rudick, Poems, nos 32, 33.

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enjoying the happiness he once had. This they can do because the Queen has the same power of renewal as the sun: my tymes that then rann or’e them sealves in thes and now runn out in others happiness bringe unto thos new joyes, and new borne dayes, so could shee not, if shee weare not the soonn, which sees the birth, and buriall, of all elce, and holds that poure, with which shee first begunn

This is a poem of acceptance, even of resignation.The poet’s day is over, and others have succeeded him in the favour of the Queen, as yet others will succeed them in this eternal process of birth, ripening, death and decay. The Queen, as the sun, is part of the natural cycle and there is nothing to be gained by protesting or rebelling against it. The ‘Cynthia poems’ describe a man caught in violent oscillations of emotion, from fathomless despair to the height of exaltation. His feelings are driven forward and back by irresistible and contrary impulses. They are expressed by vivid images from the natural world: the sun continuing to produce green shoots even on winter days; the mill-wheel that goes on turning even when the mill-stream has been diverted; the hour after sunset that ‘leaves a light much like the past day’s dawning’; the ‘man distract’ who rages in vain until he is forced to rest and then finds ‘but increase of pain and fiery heat’. Why did he write these poems, in particular the ‘21th and last booke’? It is hardly a normal petition, for it is addressed to himself rather than to Cynthia. Yet it is surely more than just an exploration of his inner mental state or the disintegration of a relationship. Probably it was also an attempt to win back the Queen’s love by displaying in as dramatic a manner as possible his wretchedness and her cruelty.54 In The History of the World, first published in 1614, Ralegh translated seventytwo extracts from Latin verse.There is no doubt that these are his, though two others from the History are not.55 Here are three samples. In the first of them

54 For different views on this see Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 87–98; A. Beer, ‘“Knowing shee cann renew”; Sir Walter in praise of the Virgin Queen’, Criticism 34 (1992), 497–516. 55 Ben Jonson claimed that ‘the best wits in England’ had a hand in writing the History; see Rudick, Poems, pp. lix, 81–104.

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Ralegh translates a passage from the Aeneid on ‘the working of God’s spirit in all things’.56 The heaven, the earth, and all the liquid mayne, The Moones bright Globe, and Starres Titanian, A Spirit within maintaines: and their whole Masse, A Minde, which through each part infus’d doth passe, Fashions, and workes, and wholly doth transpierce All this great body of the Universe.

From Catullus:57 The Sunne may set and rise: But we contrariwise Sleepe after our short light One everlasting night.

On idolatry, from Rhodius Anaxandrides:58 I sacrifice to God the Beefe, which you adore. I broile the Ægyptian Eeles, which you (as God) implore: You feare to eate the flesh of Swine, I finde it sweete. You worship Dogs, to beate them I thinke meete When they my store devoure.

After 1603 Ralegh wrote little verse and, of course, a great deal of prose: not only the History, but also several tracts of advice to Prince Henry.59 Apart from the verses in the History only four poems survive that can, with reasonable certainty, be attributed to him.These are: ‘What is our Life?’; ‘Had Lucan hid the Truth’; his Petition to Queen Anne; and ‘Even such is Time’, the eight lines said to have been written on the night before he died. A poem entitled ‘Certain hellish verses devised by that Atheist and traitour Rawley’ was almost certainly written by one of his enemies. The epigram ‘What is our Life?’ exists in about seventy different manuscript copies from before 1660. There are more attributions to Ralegh than to anyone else and he is the most likely, 56 57 58 59

HW, Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 6. HW, Book 1, Chapter 2, Section 5. HW, Book 1, Chapter 6, Section 3. Below, Chapter Eleven, pp. 248–52.

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though not the definite, author. There are several versions of the epigram, of which eight-line and ten-line versions are attributed to Ralegh. We print here the ten-line version: What is our Life the play of passion our mirth the Musick of Division our Mothers wombes the Tyreing houses be where we are drest for lives shorte comedie the Earth the stage Heaven the Spectator is who sitts and veiwes whosoere doth Acte amiss the graves which hydes us from the scorching Sunn are like drawn Curtaines till the play is done thus playeing post wee to our latest rest and then we die in earnest not in Jest.60

The topos of life as theatre had a long tradition stretching back to classical times. It fitted well with Stoic ideas of life being illusory and directed by a higher power, but from the time of St Augustine it virtually disappeared, in the absence of theatres, until it was revived by Marsilio Ficino in the fifteenth century. From Italy and France it came to England in the reign of Elizabeth.61 It was a favourite concept with Shakespeare and with Ralegh, who used it significantly in the History: ‘God, who is the Author of all our tragedies, hath written out for us, and appointed all the parts we are to play’; and most of the parts end in disaster, especially those of the great. Stephen Greenblatt has convincingly argued that the general concept of life as theatre underlies Ralegh’s ‘dramatic sense of life’.62 ‘Had Lucan hid the truth to please the time’ is an elegant tribute to his cousin and friend, Sir Arthur Gorges, on a translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia (1614). Gorges was with Ralegh when he tried to break out of house arrest to see the Queen in 1592 and at the landing on Fayal in the Azores in 1597. He and Lucan are both praised as men who have suffered through standing

60 Rudick, Poems, no. 29C; also 29A, 29B and pp. lii-liv, 164–6. Latham, Poems, no. 31. Latham prints the version set to music by Orlando Gibbons.The eight-line versions are similar but mostly lack the last two lines. 61 A. Righter, Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (London, 1967); L. G. Christian, Theatrum Mundi: the history of an idea (London, 1987). 62 Below, p. 259; HW, Preface, sig. D 1 v; Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 26–56.

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for truth.63 ‘On the State of France under the Administration of the Guises by Sir Walter Rawleigh’ is not certainly Ralegh’s. It describes, in terms of the card game primero, the situation in France in 1584–5, shortly before the outbreak of the war of the three Henries. Full understanding of the poem would be helped by knowledge both of sixteenth-century card games and of the story of the French Wars of Religion! The second verse can stand as a sample: The kinge was rashe without regarde and being flush would not discarde but first he passed it to the guise, and he of nought straighte waie it vies.64

There are three versions of Ralegh’s petition to Queen Anne.65 There can be no doubt of Ralegh’s authorship, but there has been controversy over the dates of composition, Lefranc arguing for 1603, after Ralegh’s conviction for treason, others for the time of his execution in 1618. Both are possible. The three versions of the petition are broadly similar in tone and language, and share some lines with the ‘The Ocean to Cynthia’. In no. 32, the longest, of seventy-eight lines, he laments the fading of the joys of his youth: My dayes delight, my Spring tyme Joyes Foredon, which in the dawne, and rising Sunn of youth had theare creation, and weare First begun doe in the Evninge and the winter sadd present my minde, which takes my tymes accompt the greves remayninge of the Joye it had.

To whom, he asks, can he cry for help? To whom then shall I crye, to whome shall wrong cast downe her teares, or hould upp Folded handes to her, to whome compassion doth belonge. 63 Rudick, Poems, no. 31; Latham, Poems, no. 35. HW, Book 5, Chapter 1, Section 9. 64 Rudick, Poems, no. 30 and pp. liv, 166–7. The poem seems to be a translation from a French original. 65 Rudick, Poems, nos 32–4, pp. lv–lvi; Latham, Poems, nos 37, 38.

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To her whoe ys, the First and maye alone be caled, Empresse of the Brittayns Whoe should have mercie, If a Queene have none? Whoe can resist, Strong hate, Fearce Injury? Or whoe releve th’oppressed State of truth Whoe is companion elce, to powerfull Majestie?

Ralegh finishes with a comparison between Anne and Elizabeth, unsurprisingly favouring James’s Queen: That I and myne, maye never morne [mourn] the misse of her we had, butt prayse our living Queene whoe bringes us equall, If not greater blisse.

As a petition it is more tactfully couched than ‘The Ocean to Cynthia’. Ralegh is still an angry man, but his language is less violent than in the Cynthia poem; one might even say that there is more humility in it, if that word could ever be applied to Ralegh. However, the same word could be applied to his final poem, written shortly before he was executed.66 It evoked an immediate response. Lord Treasurer Cranfield, for example, copied the lines on the back of a list of customs returns and on a letter.67 Even such is Time who takes in trust Our youth, our Joyes and all we have, Then payes us bake with age and Dust, Who in a darke and silent Grave When wee have wandred all our wayes Shuts up the storie of our Dayes. But from Times rage, the Grave and Dust My God shall raise me up I trust.

66 Rudick, Poems, no. 35, pp. lvi-lviii; Latham, Poems, no. 40. One version is inscribed ‘Sir Walter Rawleigh hys verses written in hys byble a lyttell before his death’; another is headed ‘By Sir W. R. which he writ the night before his execution’. Below, Chapter Thirteen, p. 315. 67 H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts, pp. 156–7.

8

The Suspect

All his life, Ralegh thrived or suffered in unequal friendships – with Spenser, with Harriot, with Cecil and Northumberland. For a few years, at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, his links to Lord Cobham are of particular significance. Cobham was courted assiduously, as a political ally and also as a friend. As early as 1594, long before Cobham succeeded to his title, the Bishop of Salisbury wrote a long and unhappy letter to him, apparently trying to steer him away from an unsuitable connection and explaining why Ralegh does not deserve any courtesy. No doubt something can be arranged, but a man who wilfully refuses to pay his rents and his dues to the Bishop should really receive no further leases, particularly on the land that he covets.1 After 1597, Ralegh saw in the young man’s developing relationship with the Queen the trust and affection that he himself had lost. By then, he did not scruple to grab back favour through the good offices of a friend. The eclipse of Cobham’s fortunes in 1603, and the dismissive verdict of history, have together clouded our understanding of realities in the Court of an ageing Queen. Even in belittling him, Cobham’s enemies wrote of his hold on Elizabeth’s affections.When, in 1597, he succeeded his father as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, in the face of stiff competition from Essex, Cobham’s triumph was interpreted as a manifestation of the esteem in which the father had been held. That was the Elizabethan way, but the appointment had as much to do with Elizabeth’s desire to advance a favourite, and, perhaps, the Council’s willingness to give the young man his chance.2 Over the next six years Cobham was, like Ralegh, considered as a potential privy counsellor, and rumour linked him with the office of Lord Chamberlain in succession to the ailing Lord Hunsdon.3 He shared the court official’s burden – particularly acute for a Lord Warden – of interrogating suspect Catholics arrested while en route to and from continental seminaries, and it seems that he carried out these duties with diligence and vigour. Here 1 HMC, Hatfield, iv, pp. 507–8. 2 HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley, ii, pp. 240–3, 265, 273, 286, 300. 3 See, for example, Letters of Ralegh, p. 239; HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley, ii, pp. 435, 448, 459, 486.

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was no courtier going through the motions.4 Cobham did not miss a single day of the 1601 Parliament, and he maintained his own intelligence contacts at the very highest levels. In 1603 Ralegh, when on trial for his life, insisted in open court that Cobham had, with the full consent of Queen and Council, sustained for the past seven years a dialogue with Charles de Ligne, Count of Arenberg, one of the most experienced statesmen at the Brussels court. No one present contradicted the statement, and the prisoner had no particular reason to exaggerate or lie.5 No scrupulous assessment of the evidence can conclude that Cobham was a political lightweight. He faced difficulties in these years, but they are the troubles that confront every ambitious courtier.Typically, he ran short of funds; Sir John Hele was among those who advanced him money, but Hele did so confident that Cobham was in a position to further his suit for the Mastership of the Rolls.6 Loans of this kind were seen as good investments, whether or not the money was repaid on time. Cobham was also faced with the traditional and taxing problem of reconciling county rivalries – in his case the perennial strife among the prominent gentry of Kent – with his commitments at Court.7 Unfortunately, much of what we know about his character comes from the pens and mouths of those same county rivals, especially the Sidneys of Penshurst, whose papers shed such welcome light on the last years of Elizabeth’s reign. It is not the safest evidence on which to base an accurate portrait. There was more to this friendship between Ralegh and Cobham than the shared pursuit of royal favour. Witty and capable, Cobham proved congenial company. The occasional spat is dutifully recorded by the Court postmaster and Sidney client Rowland Whyte in his letters to Sir Robert Sidney. In November 1599 Whyte reported happily that a ‘deep unkindness’ had sprung up between the two men.8 But these clouds soon passed. Ralegh regretted Cobham’s failure to join him at Bath in a distinctly sycophantic 4 See M. C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: politics, aristocratic patronage and religion, c. 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006), p. 228. 5 The arraignment and conviction of Sir Walter Rawleigh . . . coppied by Sir Tho: Overbury (London, 1648), p. 10. 6 J. S. Cockburn, ‘The spoils of law: the trial of Sir John Hele, 1604’, in D. J. Guth and J. W. McKenna (eds), Tudor Rule and Revolution; essays for G.R. Elton from his American friends (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 309–43, at 313–14. 7 P. Clark, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution: religion, politics and society in Kent, 1500–1640 (Brighton, 1977), esp. pp. 260–6. 8 HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley, ii, p. 415.

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letter of 29 April 1600: ‘we can butt longe for yow and wyshe yow as owre lives whersoever’.9 Anna Beer sees as significant the fact that Ralegh uses the plural pronoun, the first time that he refers to Bess and himself in this way in any surviving letter. She suggests that this underlines a ‘new awareness of his dependence on Bess’.10 It may also demonstrate the prevailing dynamic in this relationship; Bess harboured a soft spot for Cobham. Certainly it is also possible to detect in the absence of formality a relaxed friendship, to read a different kind of Elizabethan letter which does not address matters of business, and which for once has little or no ulterior motive. At that moment Cobham was himself preoccupied by dynastic priorities. His marriage to Frances Howard startled the Court, and was explained away by Cobham’s need for cash and Howard’s need for a well-placed courtier husband. Elizabeth seems to have had no particular objection, for her this was a comfortable union between two old and distinguished families, but Howard was a sharp and unprincipled woman and she made enemies. Bess, for one, never could endure her company.11 Nevertheless, the friendship between Ralegh and Cobham was strong enough to weather these domestic hostilities. In June 1600 Ralegh went off into the country, ‘bag and baggage, wife and children’, as Ralph Adderley put it ungallantly in a letter to the Sheriff of Staffordshire.12 A month later the Earl of Nottingham, stuck at Court and unable to track down a servant of Ralegh’s to carry a letter, sent it instead to Cobham, confident that the two men would soon meet in order to travel overseas.13 Later in July, Ralegh, Cobham, Northumberland and other courtiers visited the Low Countries, crossing the sea from Sandwich. Northumberland revelled in the experience, studying fortification and generally getting in the way of professional officers, but for Ralegh and Cobham this was a short visit. Ralegh had seen it all before, while Cobham never showed any interest in the military life. Besides, there were instructions from the Queen – possibly aimed at Cobham in particular – to return without delay.14 Both were soon 9 Letters of Ralegh, p. 191. 10 A. R. Beer, My Just Desire: the life of Bess Ralegh, wife to Sir Walter (New York, 2003), p. 112. 11 The tension between the two women was deep. ‘I wish’, Bess wrote to Cecil early in 1602, ‘she would be as ambitious to do good as she is apt to the contrary.’ Hatfield MS 85/134. 12 Quoted in J. Pope Hennessy, Sir Walter Raleigh in Ireland, ed. T. Herron (Dublin, 2009), p. 71. 13 2 July 1600, Hatfield MS 251/119. 14 Cobham to Cecil, 19 July 1600, Hatfield MS 251/100.

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back in England, while gossip struggled over the apparent pointlessness of the visit. ‘I hear’, wrote Sir Henry Neville to the future Secretary of State Ralph Winwood, ‘their Journey was not altogether idle, nor upon Curiosity only, but that they carried some Message which did no harm.’15 That autumn Ralegh travelled to Jersey, surveying his ‘littell common wealth’, and also to Cornwall on Stannary business. From Sherborne he wrote another letter to his ‘best lorde’, trading again on Cobham’s particular intimacy with Elizabeth. Ralegh had apparently presented her with a gift, perhaps out of gratitude for the Governorship, and now he wanted to know ‘how the Queen accepted the Jewell’.16 The nuances in such matters were important, and Cobham, always close to the Court, was well placed to provide an answer. Other letters surviving from those months convey to Cecil and Lord Buckhurst a first impression of Jersey and its defences, and dwell on careful negotiations to settle the price of tin. While in Jersey he took a moment to bury the hatchet with an old enemy, the erudite Edward, Lord Zouche, then deputy governor of nearby Guernsey. An exchange of carefully worded letters had the desired effect.17 In Devon, Ralegh tried very hard to satisfy all interests, those of the tinners, the mine-owners, the Queen, and of course his own.18 Life was busy for Bess as well. While Ralegh immersed himself in the affairs of government on his new island, taking his oath of office on 20 December, a fire beginning in the stables caused considerable damage to Durham House. Bess, responding to Cecil’s polite enquiry, assured the Secretary that nothing precious had been lost, while regretting that there was now no chance of entertaining him as a guest that winter. As neighbours do, she blamed the incident on a servant of her cousin and fellow lodger in the vast residence, Sir Edward Darcy.19 Fire was not the only problem confronting the owner of this literally palatial property; like its wealthy neighbours it was a target for thieves.Two suspects were indicted in April 1602 for 15 E. Sawyer (ed.), Memorials of Affairs of State (London, 1725), i, p. 231, written at Boulogne, 23 July 1600. Rowland Whyte had heard that they had been asked to investigate recent political manoeuvres by Prince Maurice (HMC, De L’Isle and Dudley, ii, p. 473). 16 Letters of Ralegh, p. 195. 17 Zouche’s letters refer to the ‘great crose in her majestys favor’ that the author had sustained, long since, at Ralegh’s hands, BL, Egerton MS 2812, fos 52v, 69, 109v–110r. 18 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 196–200. Ralegh attended a Stannary Parliament for Devon at Crockerntor on 27 October 1600 (see H. P. R. Finberg, ‘An unrecorded stannary parliament’, Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association 82 (1950), 295–310 at 296). 19 Beer, My Just Desire, p. 124; Letters of Chamberlain, i, p. 107.

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breaking ‘burglariously’ into the house, and stealing fine linen to the value of £17.20 Cecil’s consideration for Bess is illuminating; it is rare to see him so conscientious and affectionate. There is something very personal at work here: he would of course remember that Bess had been close to Elizabeth, Cecil’s late wife, in their early days together at Court.21 While Ralegh was on his travels, relations between Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex reached a crisis. Paranoid, financially ruined and politically desperate, Essex brought two hundred diehard supporters into the streets of London on 8 February 1601, declaring his intention to rescue the Queen from those ‘evil counsellors’ who surrounded her. On that momentous morning, Ralegh was again in London. In a prelude to the main drama he met his rebel kinsman Sir Ferdinando Gorges on boats in the middle of the Thames, counselling common sense, discretion and reliance on the Queen’s clemency. But discretion and good sense were in short supply that day. Gorges refused, honouring his commitment to Essex and warning Ralegh of bloody times ahead.While they talked, Essex’s stepfather and loyal ally, Sir Christopher Blount, spotted his chance, took up a gun and fired four times at Ralegh from Essex House, but the optimistic shots missed their target and Gorges, whose game that day was more complicated than at first appears, shoved the boats apart, telling Ralegh to go to his own work. Recognizing the futility of negotiation Ralegh did just that, hurrying to Court, and mobilizing the guard. Essex’s rebellion was soon over. The Earl had fatally exaggerated his support in the capital, and lacked the firepower to sweep aside resistance at Court. Backed by the Earls of Southampton, Bedford and Rutland, alongside other peers and well-born gentlemen, he rode into the city, calling out that England had been sold to the Infanta Isabella, and that Cecil, Ralegh and Cobham all sought his murder.Then, finding that no one was prepared to do more than listen, his nerve broke. With his shrinking retinue he fought and lost a skirmish at Ludgate, and fled back to Essex House by boat. After a day of ‘hurrle burlye’, of confusion and futility, Essex and Southampton came out of their last stronghold, ‘upon their knees’, giving up ‘their swordes into the Lord Admirals hands’.22 20 T. N. Brushfield, Raleghana ([Plymouth], 1896–1907), published as a series in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, v, p. 22. 21 Pauline Croft suggests that Bess Brooke had been Bess Throckmorton’s mentor at Court, back in the 1580s. 22 A. Wall (ed.), ‘An account of the Essex Revolt, February 1601’, Bulletin of the Institute of

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For all the toing and froing casualties had been extraordinarily light, with just one man dead. Elizabeth faced the world, mocking this ‘rebellion of a single day’, but she knew that she had been lucky. Any rebellion in London, close to the Court and to the Queen, was both dangerous and disturbing. Essex’s bad faith, and his unstated intention to reduce her to at best a puppet ruler, shocked her deeply. The degree of personal loyalty to Essex, so evident among too many members of well-connected families that February morning, had highlighted a dangerous strain of personal disloyalty towards the Queen. Nevertheless, Elizabeth survived, and the political nation rallied to condemn a defeated traitor. His erstwhile friends and enemies united to put the Earl on trial, give evidence against him, and find him guilty of treason. Northumberland, Essex’s brother-in-law, was summoned back from congenial camp life in the Low Countries, but despite the despatch of a special messenger from the Privy Council on 10 February ‘with letters from the Lordes and from . . . Sir Robat Cecill for his comynge hether’, he tactfully contrived to miss the hastily convened trial.23 When he did return, he was soon in contact with Ralegh, rewarding the latter’s coachman on 28 February.24 The sharp contrasts so evident throughout Ralegh’s political career are highlighted in his performances at two state trials, not three years apart. He gave evidence when Essex was arraigned with the Earl of Southampton in Westminster Hall on 19 February. Here, Ralegh was regarded as the successful rival, parading in fine livery as captain of the Queen’s Bodyguard, a hostile witness against the stricken earl. Essex played upon this perceived prejudice, mocking Ralegh, insisting that he be sworn on the Bible, and then observing that, oath or no oath, Ralegh’s word could not be trusted. ‘What booteth it’, he asked, ‘to swear the fox?’ The evidence that Ralegh actually gave, limited though it was to factual matters of time and place, was ignored by onlookers intent upon spectacle. Publicly, Ralegh could only shrug off Essex’s insult, but when he in turn stood trial for treason in 1603, and even at his death in 1618, there is reason to think that the Earl’s scorn still rankled. When Essex was brought to the executioner’s block on Tower Green, six days after his trial, rumour again insisted that Ralegh gloated over his rival’s fate. The gossip was in point of fact unfair. Obliged to attend the execution as Captain of the Guard, Ralegh withdrew to the armoury Historical Research 54 (1981), 131–3, at 132; HMC, Bath, v, pp. 280–1. 23 H.V. Jones, ‘The Journal of Levinus Munck’, EHR 68 (1953), 241. 24 Syon MS X.II.12(6) (ab).

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precisely to avoid such a charge. However, the privacy and mystery of an execution within the Tower, rather than on the open slope of Tower Hill, encouraged all sorts of tales. These rumours also ignore Essex’s scaffold confession. He knew, he said, that both Ralegh and Cobham were loyal servants of the Queen. Such sentiments in ‘last dying’ speeches were in part common form, and Essex was set on dying a model, Christian death, but there were ways of saying these things even then, and no one has ever questioned Essex’s sincerity at the final crisis. However, the pious death was witnessed only by a small group of privileged onlookers, while the trial had been a public event, and a talking point for thousands. The image that lingered in the minds of Londoners was that of Essex at the head of his men in Gracechurch Street, announcing with a ‘gast’ countenance and ‘like a man forlorn’ that England was sold to the Spaniard, telling the citizens that they should not be ‘cosined so or conicatched so’, and singling out Ralegh for particular opprobrium.25 In his paranoia, Essex seems really to have believed that Ralegh had planned to murder him in his bed, or, aided by Cecil and Cobham, to snare him in treason, suborning priests and servants to ‘entrap’ him. He had said as much to followers, and an honest opinion, honestly expressed, has a power which runs apart from any truth.26 Well into the autumn, ‘false rumors and misreports’ circulated in various parts of the country, linking Cecil, Ralegh and Cobham in vague and outrageous ways, hard to contradict.27 There was, for the moment, no means of restoring a reputation hopelessly tarnished: Raweleigh doth time bestride; He sitts twixt winde and tide, Yet uppe hill hee cannot ride, For all his bloodie pride.28

Ralegh was by no means the only target of Thomas Rogers’ popular rhyme, but the portrait of an archetypal covetous upstart courtier inspired imitation, 25 Examinations of Londoners, Hatfield MS 76/91. 26 See John Bargar to Cobham, February 1601, Hatfield MS 82/97–8; Walter Cope to Cecil, February 1601, Hatfield MS 84/7; and letter from Dr Fletcher to Cecil, 14 March 1601, Hatfield MS 77/60. 27 Anonymous information about ‘those gentlemen which mett at Wolverhampton’, Hatfield MS 204/132. 28 TNA, SP 12/278/23.

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and several further contributions to the ‘process of social shaming’ that underpinned libelling.29 Careers spent in profitable sycophancy offered easy targets. Pierre Lefranc identifies more than a dozen spirited attacks on Ralegh dating from the five years that lie between Essex’s disgraceful behaviour at the Privy Council Table and Sir Walter’s trial at Winchester. All dwell on personal vice, on a capacity for cunning intrigue and on atheism.30 If we can trust the common twentieth-century association of Ralegh with ‘Paulus’ – and it must be admitted that the identification is not entirely compelling – John Harington’s epigrams attack him time after time as avaricious, proud, insensitive, heretical and untrustworthy.31 Some of the libels openly accuse Ralegh of betraying Essex: Rogers, for example, portrays a man too clever for his own good, now rejected on account of that treachery: From thee the sun doth turn away his face, From thee the pale fac’te moone doth take her flight.32

Courtiers who had tried and failed to accommodate Essex’s neuroses shrugged their shoulders in despair or frustration. In April 1601, Northumberland was told by Dudley Carleton of widespread sympathy across the Low Countries for the late Earl and his family. In his reply Northumberland acknowledged the difficulty of arguing against prevailing ‘truth’.As for ‘oppinions of my Lord of Essex marterdom,’ he wrote, ‘they will know it better one day, or if they will not then must wee of this state give them leave to thinke as they list.’33 Others, though, were rather more active in promoting their views. At home and abroad, hostility towards Ralegh was nurtured by Essex’s loyal companions, who had gone out in rebellion with him in February 1601 and who now shared his disgrace. Sir Josceline Percy, Northumberland’s younger brother, had been knighted by Essex in Ireland during 1599, and he was not the man to desert a patron, even in extremis. In later years Ben Jonson, William Drummond and others chuckled at his raw, sardonic jests. 29 See P. Croft, ‘Libels, popular literacy and public opinion in early modern England’, Historical Research 68 (1995), 266–85, at 283. 30 Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 665–75. 31 See May, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 125. 32 BL, Add. MS 38139, fo. 192v. See Croft, ‘Libels’, p. 274; M. King, ‘The Essex myth in Jacobean England’, in G. Burgess, R.Wymer and J. Lawrence (eds), The Accession of James I: historical and cultural consequences (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 177–86, at 179–81. 33 TNA, SP 12/279/59.

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With his brother Charles, Percy was imprisoned in the Fleet gaol during the spring of 1601, awaiting trial for treason. There he drew up a facetious will, bestowing parts of his body on those he felt might best appreciate the generosity. A couple of these mock-solemn ‘bequests’ are sufficient to demonstrate the anger that lay behind the humour: Item, I give my members to my Lord Cobham, for he hathe a faire Ladie, and doth her no good with his, and mine being well used will do her some pleasure. Item I doe give my buttocks to Sir Walter Ralegh and the pox goe with them.34

Some of Percy’s scorn was justified. Although innocent of any open triumphalism, Ralegh certainly sought advantage from Essex’s fall. He profited from the disgrace of the Earl’s follower, the volatile Sir Edmund Baynham, who had been sentenced to death for treason in February, only to be pardoned that August. Ralegh set about his profiteering in an open, typically unencumbered fashion, asking the Attorney General Sir Edward Coke for a letter in support of his ambitions. Coke, busy, bombastic and irrepressible, was a valuable ally when cutting a straight path through the convolutions of the law. In the end, Baynham’s forfeited lands were sold off by two amenable lawyers, one of them his own brother-in-law, the other Ralegh’s steward. The terms of the sale allowed Baynham to retain effective possession, in the form of long leases. Ralegh gained some return, but the details are not now known. Proceedings of this sort were by no means uncommon following convictions for treason; less than three years later Ralegh himself would look for a similar act of royal generosity.35 Recovery at Court brought other rewards. Ralegh also succeeded in obtaining from the Queen a freehold title to his Sherborne estate. The properties granted by the Bishop of Salisbury to the Queen, and then by the Queen to Ralegh, in 1592 were now surrendered by the Bishop to the Queen, in consideration of an annual rent of £260, plus another £60 for lands in Burton and Holnest that had been transferred in 1594 to Ralegh’s 34 Bodleian MS Rawlinson D923, fo. 124, a copy by Rawlinson from Thomas Coxeter’s manuscript. Elizabeth eventually spared the Percy brothers a trial on charges of treason, demanding instead a substantial fine. 35 A. D. Boyer, Sir Edward Coke and the Elizabethan Age (Stanford, 2003), pp. 289–90; Letters of Ralegh, p. 204.

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friend and neighbour, John FitzJames. The Queen subsequently granted the freehold to Ralegh and FitzJames by letters patent dated 11 September 1599.36 A superficially soothing royal letter of thanks to the Bishop, Dean and Chapter of Salisbury emphasized – as did many another similar letter down the years – that this in no way set a precedent, but rather that Ralegh’s services and the insecurity of his current title had proved compelling reasons for the exchange. The letter also carried a powerful sting in the tail: the Bishop, it maintained, had squeezed Ralegh too sharply. More generous terms might yet convince the Queen that he had not neglected her wishes in the matter. This was how Elizabeth dealt with the princes of her Church!37 Secure in the enjoyment of his Dorset estates, Ralegh embarked on a deliberate programme of expansion by purchase, building on earlier, piecemeal acquisitions. He was planning for the far future, consolidating a grand estate for his descendants. Already, in 1596, he had taken a lease of Haselbery, in reversion, from the Earl of Derby.38 Shortly before Easter 1600 he paid £100 to Richard and Margaret Jones for nearly a hundred acres of wood, pasture and meadow in Lillingborne and other surrounding Dorset villages.39 On 13 December 1601 he bought, for an undisclosed but clearly significant sum, the manor of Sherborne Barton from Thomas Freke of Iwerne Courtney and Richard Swayne of the Middle Temple.40 His largest purchase followed in January 1602, when he agreed to pay £1,300 to Richard Arnolde of Alton for the moieties of around three hundred acres and two local manors – Prymsley and Pynford – properties formerly belonging to Sir John Horsey, the brother of Arnolde’s wife Mary.41 The legal fallout from these developments ran on into the next reign. An indenture preserved at Alnwick Castle records a mutual disclaimer of any remaining life interests enjoyed by Ralegh and FitzJames in one other’s property, as conveyed in September 1599. Dated 26 May 1603, this counterpart, presumably once belonging to FitzJames, may well bear the last surviving signature of Ralegh as a free man, before his long incarceration in the Tower.42 He was also spending considerable sums on both his new house and its 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Sherborne Castle Archives,Volume of Legal Transcripts 1593–1610, fos 3r–9v. HMC, Various Collections, i, pp. 371–2, letter dated 25 July 1599. Hatfield MS 209/6. Sherborne Castle Archives,Volume of Legal Transcripts 1593–1610, fo. 13r. Ibid., fos 10r-12r. Ibid., fos 14r-16r. Syon MS X.2.12 Box 2e.

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extensive gardens. A plan of the Lodge by Simon Basyll shows what was afoot – and indeed the central part of the present house at Sherborne is Ralegh’s home, ceilings, windows and all.43 Local prestige made all things possible: roads were diverted and chapels enclosed to suit Ralegh’s plans.44 Adrian Gilbert claimed in an unsuccessful Chancery suit some years later that he had spent £700 at Sherborne ‘about Sir Walter Ralegh’s business, in making and planting of his walks and gardens, and about other his affairs, by the space of seven years, or thereabouts’. Gilbert had forborne to press for these and other sums that Ralegh owed him ‘in respect of brotherly affection’, as he put it, not that Ralegh had ever really responded to his gestures of fraternal regard.45 With some allowance for the exaggeration common to such documents, Gilbert’s claims ring true. Local prominence did not, however, come without local difficulties. By the turn of the century Ralegh’s principal enemy in Dorset was his former bailiff at Sherborne, John Meere, a man remembered with some generosity in the 1597 will. Even by contemporary standards, Meere seems to have been a scoundrel.When Ralegh first came on the scene this former employee of the Bishop of Salisbury was imprisoned in London, convicted of clipping coin. In Ralegh’s obviously partial account, he had taken a man ‘eaten with lyce out of prison because it was tolde me that he had all the auncient records of Sherborne’.46 New to the politics and social niceties of Dorset, Ralegh had good reason to value local knowledge. He had installed the liberated Meere in a house close to the Castle, and if episcopal complaints about rent arrears and other matters are to be taken at face value Meere, for a time, proved a very effective agent in his disputes with the Bishop.47 For various reasons, however, trust had been broken: Meere’s enterprise knew no limits. Ralegh wrote that he had found his man ‘(comminge on him on the sudden) counterfeitinge my hand above a hundred times upon an oyled paper’.48 There is indeed independent evidence that Meere could forge Ralegh’s handwriting.49 Dismissal very naturally followed, but the bailiff was not inclined to 43 Hatfield Maps Charts and Plans 2. 44 Hatfield MS 222/27. 45 C. Monro (ed.), Acta Cancellariae (London, 1847), pp. 179, 181.The suit failed, essentially because the facts in the case were old and unverifiable. 46 Letters of Ralegh, p. 230. 47 e.g. Hatfield MS 40/24. 48 Letters of Ralegh, p. 230. 49 J. W. Shirley, ‘Sir Walter Raleigh’s Guiana finances’, Huntington Library Quarterly 13 (1949), 55–69.

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go quietly. He pursued a vexatious case in Star Chamber, harrying Ralegh’s tenants through other law courts at the same time. Significantly, Meere still had friends at Court.Thomas Howard, Lord Bindon, disliked Ralegh, perhaps on account of allegations that he believed Ralegh had made against him, and now he interceded in the courts and with Cecil on Meere’s behalf.50 The Howards were influential, and Cecil, not for the first or the last time, was confronted by conflicting obligations. For the moment, though, old friendships held firm. In August 1601 Ralegh was confidently counting on the Secretary to frustrate the machinations of ‘thos roggs the Meers’, and Cecil was proving a stout ally, imprisoning Meere in the Gatehouse throughout the summer for words spoken against Sir Walter, helping to extract a retraction of accusations made against Ralegh and sending for Meere’s son Christopher to answer a separate set of charges.51 However, the retraction was obviously tactical.The matter progressed to the Western Assizes in 1602, and with Bindon’s steady support Meere remained a thorn in Ralegh’s side for years to come, an irritating constant in so many of his surviving letters.52 All the buying and selling of land in Dorset had one important consequence. With Sherborne secure Ralegh saw little point in holding on to his vast Munster estate, devastated during the Nine Years’ War. By 1600 most of Ralegh’s seignories in Ireland were untenanted and unprofitable; and Lismore Castle was in ruins. Richard Boyle, Clerk of the Council in Munster, later first Earl of Cork, had been accumulating lands by exploiting various legal devices, and had won the favour and protection of Sir George Carew, Ralegh’s cousin and Lord President of the Council in Munster. Carew wrote to Ralegh urging him to sell and Boyle carried the letters. With help from Cecil a deal was arranged. Boyle used his fiancée’s marriage portion of £1,000 to help him buy the Ralegh seignories for £1,500 in a deal concluded during December 1602. They became a major part of Boyle’s estate and fortune, while the sale helped Ralegh at a difficult time.53 Meanwhile, the courtier and captain of the guard had other roles to play; 50 51 52 53

Letters of Ralegh, p. 239. Letters of Ralegh, pp. 209–10, 214–16. Hatfield MS 88/84; Hatfield MS Petitions 1798. Letters of Ralegh, pp. 230–2, 239. W. A. Wallace, John White, Thomas Harriot and Walter Ralegh in Ireland (Thomas Harriot Seminar paper, 1985), p. 22; T. O. Ranger,‘The career of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork, 1588–1603’ (Oxford, D. Phil. thesis, 1958), pp. 18–57;T. O. Ranger, ‘Richard Boyle and the making of an Irish fortune, 1588–1614’, Irish Historical Studies 10 (1957), 257–97.

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life was busy. Sometimes he enjoyed the spectacle of London for its own sake. In April 1601 Northumberland took him in his coach to watch a football match at ‘Tuttles’, presumably Tothill Fields in Westminster. A wild Lenten scrimmage was entertaining to the aristocrat, viewed from a safe distance.54 At other times, he was himself the showman. The Queen liked to employ Ralegh as a congenial tour guide for ambassadors, keeping him happy by hinting at, but never granting, some more demanding diplomatic role in the near future. Repeating courtesies extended to envoys from the future Charles IX of Sweden in 1598, Virginio Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, and to Ludovic Verreyken, Ambassador from the Archdukes in Flanders, Ralegh met the French King Henri IV’s envoy the Marquis de Rosny in the summer of 1601, full of good humour and affability. In September that same year he escorted the Duc de Biron, King Henri’s personal emissary, ‘to Westminster to see the monuments’, taking him on another day to the Bear Garden in Southwark. Reporting on Biron’s visit to Cecil, Ralegh criticized the neglect of a guest, and of a great man; the Earl of Cumberland, who had orders from the Council to meet and escort Biron, had not fulfilled his obligations. Because of that neglect, Ralegh had been faced with all sorts of difficulties when working out how to convey the envoy into Hampshire, to catch the Queen on her summer progress.55 Some of the criticism, by implication, fell on the Council – and maybe on the Secretary – since they were ultimately responsible for ensuring Biron’s comfort and dignity. Here is a significant straw in the wind; the critical tone to his letters is becoming gradually more obvious. Though they agreed on the essentials, Ralegh turned on Cecil in the Parliament of 1601, criticizing the latter’s call for further financial sacrifice in support of the war effort. ‘I knowe’, said Cecil,‘that neyther potte nor panne, nor dishe, nor spone, should be spared when daunger is at our elbowes.’ Ralegh was not quite happy with this. ‘I like not’, he said, ‘that the Spanyardes our enemyes should knowe of our sellinge our pottes and pannes to paye subsedies . . . it argues povertye in the State’. Cecil responded briskly: the Spaniard, he said, should be left in no doubt that loyal Englishmen would sell every pot, every pan, everything, if that was what it took to keep the enemy out.56 54 Syon MS U.I.50a(2), Church’s book. 55 Hill to Buckhurst, 25 September 1598, Hatfield MS 64/55; Trevelyan, Raleigh, p. 341; Letters of Ralegh, p. 211. On the hints at a more eminent role see Letters of Chamberlain, i, p. 91, a letter of 5 March 1600. 56 T. E. Hartley (ed.), Proceedings in the parliaments of Elizabeth I, Volume II 1584–1589

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While at some points in a busy parliamentary session Ralegh and Cecil worked together, it appears from other similarly sharp remarks to Francis Bacon that Ralegh was disinclined to support policies uncritically. He was particularly unhappy with the ramshackle and inefficient subsidy assessment.57 To tax the relatively poor while the rich benefitted from a massive undervaluation of estates stuck in his conscience, and in this he was far from alone. In Committee, many MPs sought to fine-tune the 1601 subsidy, this way and that, and Ralegh’s views, though opposed to those put forward by Cecil, echo the speeches of Sir Robert Wroth and others.58 It may of course be that we read too much into Ralegh’s contributions; he said a lot, and what he said was not always consistent. One of the most experienced members of the Lower House, he spoke his mind with greater freedom than ever before, denouncing the export of ordnance, mocking efforts to compel attendance at church, looking out for the interests of his West Country tinners and opposing attempts (doomed in any case) to regulate farming, preferring to ‘sett [the land] at libertye, and leave every man ffree’.59 For Andrew McRae, Ralegh was here attempting to sweep away restraints on individual liberty, he ‘struck the keynote of English capitalism, which would reverberate through the centuries to come’.60 It is, however, an open question whether Ralegh truly glimpsed the vision, or simply chafed against restraint, and in his grumbling he must surely have irritated a Secretary trying to see through measures that would help the Crown and its finances at a critical point in the war. He did not have many other natural allies in the House. Ralegh is said to have blushed during the acrimonious debates over monopolies, defending the practice on his record in administering the tin mines,

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(London, 1995), pp. 336, 338; Sir Simonds D’Ewes, The Journals of all the Parliaments During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth Both of the House of Lords and House of Commons (London, 1682), pp. 632–3. In this regard, the session is analysed in F. Edwards, The Succession, Bye, and Main Plots, 1601–1603 (Dublin, 2006), pp. 126–36, though the author attributes more animosity to Cecil than one can readily detect in the surviving evidence. Hatfield MS 89/82, 83. Hartley, Proceedings, p. 451; D’Ewes, Journals, pp. 671, 674. The tinners had petitioned him for reform of ‘abuses’ in the Stannaries many times, e.g. Hatfield MS 79/83. A. McRae, God Speed the Plough: the representation of agrarian England 1500–1660 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 12. See J. Edwards, ‘Between “plain wilderness” and “goodly corn fields”: representing land use in early Virginia’, in R. Appelbaum and J. W. Sweet (eds), Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the making of the North Atlantic world (Philadelphia, 2005), pp. 222–3.

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and challenging his opponents to press for a total abolition of monopolies, rather than pursuing a piecemeal approach. The ‘greate silence’ that followed this theatrical gesture signified embarrassment, or, more likely, open disagreement.61 The wise statesman does not usually speak too freely in a public arena. Rowse suggests that Ralegh lacked the politician’s essential dose of humbug, but absence of humbug is one thing, a lack of persuasive skills, discretion and common sense quite another.62 To distance oneself in those uncertain times from the principal minister at Court, even intermittently, amounted to recklessness, and the consequences were severe indeed. So much was thrown away. Cecil had entrusted his ten-year-old son William to Ralegh’s care at Sherborne over the spring and summer of 1600, perhaps another gesture of the high regard he had for Bess, and perhaps an attempt to press some brisk Ralegh-style scholarship into an unreceptive young mind.63 This experiment worked, to an extent, Ralegh writing to Cecil in familiar, affectionate terms, politely referring to that obvious gesture of trust: ‘Wee ar all, littell and great, in good health’.64 Many attempts have been made to explain the breakdown of a longstanding friendship. Some have chosen to blame Henry Howard – younger brother of the last Duke of Norfolk, Catholic, highly educated, an intriguer with long-established contacts in the Edinburgh Court – for turning Cecil against Ralegh, but Cecil was too canny to be led into unwelcome policies by such a man. The simplest explanation is the most plausible. Ralegh had coveted the office of Vice-Chamberlain, but in February 1601 that appointment went to a senior Elizabethan bureaucrat, Sir John Stanhope. Stanhope had long been a front-runner for the post, but failure is not always easy to accept.65 And then, on 29 June 1601, Elizabeth named three new privy counsellors to fill the ranks of a much depleted band.The men chosen were the Earls of Shrewsbury and Worcester, both wealthy and well connected, if more than a little suspect in religion, together with Shrewsbury’s enemy Stanhope, promoted in respect of his new office, his dependence on Cecil, and his favour 61 Hartley, Proceedings, p. 377; D’Ewes, Journals, pp. 645, 646. 62 A. L. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons (London, 1962), p. 224. 63 Letters of Ralegh, p. 188. See letters from William Cecil written at Sherborne, including one in Latin to his father: Hatfield MSS 250/44, 251/158. 64 Letters of Ralegh, p. 200. 65 Stanhope was being spoken of in connection with the office in October 1598, see Letters of Chamberlain, i, p. 46.

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with the Queen. In the cautious aftermath of the Essex rebellion, Ralegh, Cobham, and Northumberland were all overlooked. John Weakley noted in a letter to Francis Clifford, afterwards Earl of Cumberland, that there was ‘some little feud between [Cecil] and Sir Walter R[alegh]’, linking the illfeeling directly to the choice of counsellors. ‘Some thinketh’, he concluded, that ‘Sir Walt[er] Ra[legh] is not well pleased’.66 The Queen selected her Council, and the Queen stood above reproach, but Ralegh, thwarted again in his search for the position of trust that had eluded him so long, was free to blame those about her for his disappointment. At first he allowed himself to be fobbed off with hope deferred: ‘Yow here of our new councelors’, he wrote on 14 July to Sir John Gilbert. ‘I am left out till the parlement they tell me, butt I take no thought for it.’67 In fact, he thought about it a great deal. Though tokens of the old familiarity with Cecil are never omitted from their correspondence, it is now possible to see something else at work there too: the mutual suspicion that a friendship has been poisoned. When Ralegh writes from Sherborne in August 1601, he concludes a friendly but somewhat businesslike letter with a note that may have an intentional resonance beyond the rather forced humour: ‘I pray beleve’, writes Ralegh, ‘that when all harts ar open and all desires tried that I am your poorest and your faythfullest frind to do yow service.’ Bess, he adds in a postscript, ‘returns yow her best wishes notwithstanding all quarrels’.68 Cecil, as Ralegh well knew, valued fidelity. As Henry Howard wrote to James VI of Scotland during the following year, ‘nothing makes him confident, but experience of secret trust, and security of intelligence’.69 But since Elizabeth Cecil’s death following a miscarriage, in 1597, the relationship was no longer held together by the mutual trust of two wives, no longer rock solid. Ralegh’s valedictory emphasis was a human gesture, but it was unwise, at such a time, to maintain a grievance to the point at which powerful friends were lost. Of course, Cecil was also quite capable of dissembling; he was nearly always able to conceal the ways in which his thoughts were turning. Cecil was worried too – Essex’s all too public assertion that the Secretary was hostile to the King of Scots was potentially catastrophic. He was now obliged to discount suggestions that his opposition to Essex had been driven by personal 66 67 68 69

BL, Althorp Papers, Althorp B2, letter dated 2 July 1601. Letters of Ralegh, p. 205. Ibid., p. 206. D. Dalrymple, Lord Hailes (ed.), The Secret Correspondence of Sir Robert Cecil with James VI King of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1766), p. 203.

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ambition rather than by the good of the State, and his friendship with a man branded by popular opinion as the Earl’s enemy made that very difficult. Writing to Sir George Carew, one of his few trusted allies, Cecil first made it clear that he was not prepared to give uncritical support to Ralegh’s ambitions, insisting that Sir Walter would achieve a seat at the Council table only by giving up his Captaincy of the Guard in Carew’s favour.70 The comment might have been intended as a courtesy, or more likely as reassurance to an ally buried in Ireland that his interests were not forgotten. Cecil may at that stage have been resigned to Ralegh’s advancement, should the Queen press for it.Very interestingly, however, he also seemed to spot some personal threat in the close friendship between Ralegh and Cobham, and if, at that stage, he could go only so far when writing of these anxieties to someone as close to Ralegh as Carew, he is unusually candid in respect of the excitable, flashy Cobham: ‘For the better man, the second wholly sweys him, and to which passions he is subject who is subject to his Lady, I leave to your Judgment and Experience’.71 Cecil was still more alarmed when Ralegh tried to open his own correspondence with James VI in Scotland. Like Cecil, Northumberland and Howard, and like Essex before them all, he was doing his best to position himself against the change in dynasty that would eventually follow. Conducted through the Duke of Lennox, these discussions were brief, deeply obscure and to little purpose – James was unwilling to risk another channel of furtive communication with London – but the fact that they took place at all is itself significant.There seems some reason to suppose that Ralegh acted on his own initiative, or with Lennox’s active support, rejecting Cecil’s advice to stay silent. While Cecil of all people could understand these motives, the statesman in him fretted over the lack of control in a particularly sensitive negotiation.Was this wise of Lennox? What would Ralegh say? Was he again acting with Cobham? In his own correspondence with King James, Cecil remains for the most part temperate and moderate, as befits an experienced counsellor, though he jabs with the stiletto at times, while in one remarkable passage the irritation and anxiety that he feels is expressed with quite shocking vehemence: If I dyd not some tyme cast a stone into the mouth of these gaping crabbs, when they are in their prodigall humour of discourses, they would not stick 70 J. Maclean (ed.), Letters from Sir Robert Cecil to Sir George Carew (London, 1864), p. 86. 71 Ibid., p. 85.

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to confess dayly how contrary it is to their nature to resolve to be under your soverainty; thogh they confess (Ralegh especially) that (rebus sic stantibus) naturall pollicy forceth them to keep on foot such a trade against the great day of mart. In all which light and soddain humours of his, thogh I do no way check him, becawse he shall not think I reject his freedome or his affection, but alwaies (sub sigillo confessionis) use contestation with him, that I neyther had nor ever wold in individuo contemplate future idea, nor ever hoped for more then justice in time of change, yet, under pretext of extraordinary care of his well doing, I have seemed to disswade him from ingaging him self to farr, even for him self, much more therfore to forbere to assume for me, or my present intentions.72

The character assassination is curiously principled at times, and occasionally accurate. Cecil points out that Ralegh and Cobham lack the statesman’s defining quality, discretion. They argue openly, they pass letters about, and they cannot keep secrets.73 There are dangers here that we cannot easily appreciate today, growing out of the fears that men and women entertain when they can do little but wait and watch for change. The Queen was becoming ever more autocratic at the end of her reign, impatient of contradiction: Cecil told Carew that, if he himself was not prepared to stand up to Elizabeth on a particular point, no one else at Court would dare ‘bestow six woords of argument to replye’.74 Yet this irascible old woman had a soft spot for Cobham; where might that lead? Through his correspondence, Cecil is positioning both men in the party of instinctive opposition; here, he is saying, are courtiers who cannot naturally accept a Scottish king, and even though they may in time be obliged to do so, their acceptance will never be more than politic, and insincere. Putting political distance between himself and Ralegh, he throws in for good measure an artful glance at the old allegations of religious unorthodoxy: would Cecil really befriend a man ‘whom most religious men do hold anathema’? In this way, he explains why he in ‘no way checks’ Ralegh, stressing that his ‘extraordinary care’ of Ralegh’s well-being is only a pretext. If that was true in 1601 and 1602, for how long had it been true? Who was saying otherwise to James? As a friendship unravels, these are unanswered questions. 72 J. Bruce (ed.), Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland with Sir Robert Cecil and Others in England (London, 1861), p. 18. 73 Maclean, Letters from Cecil to Carew, p. 108. 74 Ibid., p. 139.

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In the summer of 1601 Cecil told Carew that he had been so frustrated and irritated by ‘the mutinys of those whom I do love and will (howsoever they do me)’, that he had been ‘left to seek new Freends’.75 He duly found them. Over the next two years Ralegh’s name was repeatedly blackened in the letters of Henry Howard, written through an intermediary to James VI in Edinburgh to assure him of Cecil’s (and Howard’s) loyalty. Howard had longstanding contacts with the Scottish Court, and in the present situation his support was useful. For the most part, Cecil simply confirms the authenticity on his ally’s statements while leaving Howard to throw the vitriol. This he does industriously – Ralegh, Cobham and to a lesser extent Northumberland, are damned together as a ‘diabolical triplicity’, busily hatching ‘cockatriceeggs’ at Durham House!76 Northumberland was a powerful man and a potentially dangerous opponent, so even Howard qualified his accusations. For his fellow egg-hatchers Ralegh and Cobham, however, no adjective was spared. Howard disparaged them as damned, wicked: ‘hell did never spew up such a couple . . . now set on the pin of making tragedies’. The Earl of Nottingham, he maintained, ‘the other day wished from his soul, that he had but the same commission to carry the cannon to Durham-house, that he had this time twelvemonth to carry it to Essex house’.77 Erudition hard won as a reader in Rhetoric at Cambridge was deployed with gusto. Northumberland, in his pride and ambition, is merely ridiculous, indiscreet and slightly giddy, Cobham lacks brains, but Ralegh is the real threat. Here is an atheist, indiscreet, incompetent, hostile to the very idea of James’s succession. Worse still, Ralegh, mere man that he is, is governed by a formidable wife. This combination of ‘Lucifer’ and ‘Proserpina’ spells great danger to the King’s ambitions.78 All this is as crucial to understanding Ralegh’s subsequent troubles as it is murky and unedifying. Despite their bile, these letters are revealing. James may have ignored some of Howard’s more colourful assertions, while delighting in the allusion and rhetoric; as an exchange between scholar and scholar, he correctly described Lord Henry’s style at one point as ‘ample Asiatic and endless’.79 Some of Howard’s views, notably his misogynistic dislike of Bess, 75 76 77 78 79

Ibid., pp. 84, 89 Dalrymple, Secret Correspondence, pp. 29–33, letter written in early December 1601. Ibid., pp. 132–3. See Beer, My Just Desire, p. 129. Dalrymple, Secret Correspondence, p. 116; G. P. V. Akrigg (ed.), Letters of James VI & I (Berkeley, 1984), p. 190.

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were peculiarly his own. But the barrage of insinuation, particularly when this purported to convey Cecil’s sentiments, could not fail to leave its impression. Given his significance at court, Cecil’s dissociation from Ralegh, his insistence that he could never support a man of ‘light and soddain humours’ fundamentally opposed to a Stuart succession, was deeply damaging, and it is again difficult to escape the conclusion that Ralegh’s wilful part in this critical breach amounted to an entirely avoidable miscalculation.80 So a once friendly correspondence with Cecil becomes essentially a matter of duty. Through the autumn of 1601 Ralegh passes on intelligence of the Spanish fleet sailing to assist the Earl of Tyrone in Ireland. He sticks to facts, and to common form, except when the Meere case prompts him to add a postscript from Bess.81 It is as if he cannot always quite bring himself to beg favours. In the letters of 1602 he frets that he is being overlooked, abandoned, sent on fools’ errands far from Court. There are strange and troubling echoes – albeit nothing more than echoes – of Essex here. One of the disadvantages of Jersey, he discovers, is that it lies a long way from the source of power and favour. Writing from the island on 20 July Ralegh asks Cecil to recall him from that ‘desolation’. ‘I arived here the 3th so I have walked here this 17 dayes in the wilderness.’82 Notwithstanding these gripes, he only returned to England on or very shortly before 12 August, having established that his island command stood secure against any surprise Spanish raid.83 But if friendship is dying, dependence thrives. All the while Ralegh still relies on Cecil for help of every kind. In May he enters into a bond to the Secretary for the repayment of £4,000.84 In August Ralegh seeks Cecil’s assistance, and through him additional help from the Lord Admiral, in protecting the value of cargoes of sassafras and cedar brought back by two recent Virginia voyages, one of them by a pinnace sent out in yet another futile bid to locate the Roanoke colonists. Rather ambitiously, he bases his case on the 1584 patent, but this useful timber is worth the gamble. The cedar would, Ralegh suggests, be just the thing to ‘seele cabinneats and make bords and many other delicate things’. However, he offsets the failure of the request, even as it is made: ‘It is your destiney to be trobled with your frinds, and so must all men bee, butt what yow thinck unfitt to be dun for mee shall never 80 81 82 83 84

Bruce, Correspondence of King James VI, p. 18. Letters of Ralegh, pp. 213–14, 217–23. Ibid., pp. 236–8. Ibid., p. 238. Hatfield MS 214/39.

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be a quarrell ether internall or externall.’ One wonders whether either man really believed that any more.85 It is, however, interesting that third parties, even those close to both, do not seem to sense that anything is amiss. Ralegh and Cecil still act together in matters of mutual profit, for example in a clever and face-saving process during 1602 by which Cecil, as Master of the Court of Wards, secured a profitable wardship for himself.86 They also cooperated to compose legal disputes, in one case as a panel of last resort.87 Adrian Gilbert, pottering away in true Gilbertian style designing a secure water supply for Cecil’s country house, Theobalds, ties the two men together, as patrons, but also as intimates. ‘Sir Walter was very earnest with me to come presently after him to go to Jersey with him: which your Honour must excuse, for I cannot be yet absent well from hence.’ He gives Cecil the timeless reassurance of the project manager: ‘Fear nothing for Gilbertus est hic, a phrase I write to Sir Walter.’88 Ralegh, moreover, was still not without true friends. Northumberland, who he anticipated meeting in the West Country on his return from Jersey, advised King James, in his own correspondence carried north by the future Gunpowder Plotter Thomas Percy, that, although Ralegh was undeniably ‘insolent, [and] extreamly heated’, he had always explicitly acknowledged James’s right to the throne at Elizabeth’s death. Besides – and here is a particularly acute observation through all that follows – Ralegh is essentially powerless, unable to do the King ‘muche good nor hearme’. While Sir Walter had his faults, the Earl felt compelled to add that there were ‘excellent good parts of natur’ in his old friend.89 However, Northumberland was himself subjected to Howard’s insinuations, and a fretful, impotent King was obliged to place most trust and confidence in his strongest allies. Nothing in Northumberland’s measured assurances seems to have altered James’s already low opinion of Ralegh. Towards the end of 1602, English statesmen expressed the usual seasonal concern over reported movements of Spanish shipping around the coast of north-western France and along the Channel. The Governor of Jersey was 85 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 240–2; D. B. Quinn, ‘Thomas Hariot and the Virginia voyages of 1602’, William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 27 (1970), pp. 268–81, at 276. 86 J. Hurstfield, The Queen’s Wards: wardship and marriage under Elizabeth I (London, 1958), pp. 301–2. Cobham was also drawn into the subterfuge. 87 See Hatfield MS 85/66. 88 Letter to Cecil dated 29 June 1602, Hatfield MS 97/46. 89 Bruce, Correspondence of King James VI, p. 67.

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obliged to monitor this information particularly carefully. In September, Ralegh wrote to Cecil from Bath, in very formal and abrupt terms; ‘payne’, he said, prevented anything more detailed. His letter conveyed intelligence about a fleet that had touched land at the Blavet estuary in Brittany, apparently carrying silver to pay the troops in Flanders. While an ambush might be feasible, the letter also suggests without quite saying so that the time to strike has already passed.90 Cecil still collaborated with Ralegh and Cobham in privateering voyages, some of them draped with subterfuge. In January 1603 he writes a typically opaque letter to Sir Walter, full of caveats and caution. A ship confiscated by the Admiralty Court is now again to be ventured. Tempted by the potential return, Cecil declares that he will bear half the costs, at least, with Ralegh and Cobham staking the balance. But he does not want his role publicized: ‘For though I thanke God I have noe other meaninge then becometh an honest man in any of my actions yet that which weare an other mans Pater noster, would be accompted in me a charme.’91 Erosion of the firm political alliance with Robert Cecil, right at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, invites us to take stock. For all his hard work, Ralegh never quite recovered the ground lost following his marriage. By 1603 he was once again active at the heart of Court, and a breakthrough to high office still seemed possible. He was entrusted with distinguished short-term appointments and sensitive commands. He had allies still closer to the Queen. But his dependence on Cecil, now alienated by the strains of the secret correspondence, and on Cobham demonstrated that his heyday was long past. The passage of years brought no more credit with maturity; sage advice had been part of the package that had first attracted Elizabeth, more than twenty years earlier. Ralegh had never been a giddy young favourite, on whom time might eventually confer wisdom. By the end of the Queen’s life he was young only in comparison to her. Ralegh struggled even to pass on crumbs of patronage to his clients: ‘It greves mee’, he wrote to Cecil in June 1602, begging for favour on behalf of ‘the poore taverners of Inglande’, ‘to finde with what difficulty and torment to my sealf I obtayne the smalest favor.’92 Of course these troubles were relative.When his nephew Sir John Gilbert, in the middle of a dispute over the proceeds from a privateering venture, presumed during the spring of 1602 to remind Ralegh that he had never 90 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 242–3; P. Ahier, The Governorship of Sir Walter Ralegh in Jersey, 1600–1603 (St Helier, 1971), pp. 55–60. 91 Hatfield MS 91/46. 92 Letters of Ralegh, p. 236.

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once lost Gilbert’s support, even when his fortunes were very low, Ralegh responded vigorously, pointing out to the young man that some had further to fall than others: ‘I pray forgett nott your sealf nor do not so mich mistake my fortunes but that when they were at worst they were better then the best of your owne, and were abell enough to steed my frinds and despise the rest.’93 For all his bravado, however, it was clear by 1603 that Ralegh could in no sense afford to ‘despise the rest’. Dynastic change was coming, and change demanded outward cooperation and consensus, while prompting gambles which worked out well for some and less well for others. As Ralegh himself realized, it was a time for being seen to advocate particular courses, particularly convincingly. Warning Cobham against building up any hopes of securing the office of Lord Chamberlain in 1602, Ralegh noted that ‘the good of thes changes wilbe that while men ar of necessety to draw lotts they shall hereby see their chanses and dispose them sealvs accordingly’.94

93 Ibid., p. 233. 94 Ibid., p. 239.

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9

The Traitor

‘In an houre, two mightie Nations were made one: wilde Ireland became tame on the sudden, and some English great ones that before seemed tame, on the sudden turned wilde.’1

At Court, the Christmas of 1602 was a muted affair. Ralegh ‘caried away’ Cobham and Lord Compton to Sherborne, while several of the peers who, after Essex’s revolt, were persona non grata about Elizabeth marked the season with the ever hospitable Sir John Harington.2 The Queen’s health remained sound enough, though she tired easily, and was quick to conceal infirmities as best she might. And then, rather suddenly, everyone seemed to notice a change. In February, particularly after the death of her old friend the Countess of Nottingham, Elizabeth’s mind began to fail. She dropped into melancholy, refused to go to bed, went for hours without speaking. No one quite knew what was wrong, but it was soon evident to the watching Court that life was departing, little by little. Drawing upon its experience as the pre-eminent executive body in early modern England, the Privy Council handled Elizabeth’s sickness and death with tact and some skill. There was no sign of panic or improvisation: this, after all, was a moment long anticipated. It helped, of course, that the discontented elements in England – Essex’s followers, most recusant Catholics and a majority of protestant nonconformists – all looked hopefully to James to improve their conditions. History, though, introduced a sense of uncertainty. Royal dynasties had seldom changed without bloodshed. Those same fears that had fuelled the secret correspondence with Edinburgh were encountered across English society. James – the only son of an only surviving daughter of an only surviving son – was dynastically beyond challenge; there was no viable alternative, and desperate rumours promoting the claims of his cousin Arbella Stuart and those of the Earl of Hertford’s son, descended from Henry VIII’s younger sister, only proved the point. But he remained a foreigner, and a Scot at that. Most English men and women, intent on preserving what they 1 T. Dekker, The Wonderfull Yeare (London, 1603), sig. C. 2 Letters of Chamberlain, i, p. 179.

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enjoyed, sought refuge in consensus, leaving a decision to others. Old Roger Manners, third son of the first Earl of Rutland, spoke for many when he wrote to his brother on 12 March: ‘I wolnot goe about to make kyngs, nor seke to pull downe eny; only woll obay soch as be chosen and crowned.’3 Elizabeth’s death, on the morning of 24 March 1603, ushered in a new world, strange and uncertain after a reign of more than forty-four years. Thomas Dekker grasped the magnitude of this alteration in The Wonderfull Yeare.‘Upon Thurseday’, he wrote,‘it was treason to cry God save king James king of England, and upon Friday hye treason not to cry so’.4 For some, the slate appeared to be wiped clean. Northumberland insisted on bringing his nephew, the young Earl of Essex, to watch the proclamation of the new king at Cheapside, a gesture reflecting James’s respect for the boy’s father, and one that helped to draw the Devereux family back into political life.5 At first there was a good deal of tension, ‘many men in the city in arms, and more affrayed than hurt’.6 When the nobility of the realm proclaimed James king in London, the crowd remained alarmingly quiet. One observer explained this ‘silent joye’ as a mark of respect for Elizabeth, never doubting that Londoners would delight in ‘the accession of soe worthy a king’, but silence can measure other emotions too.7 No one was ready to celebrate until it was clear that there would be no rebellion or turmoil. Time, however, soon provided the necessary reassurance. Adam Winthrop, in rural East Anglia, recorded that James was proclaimed in Colchester and Sudbury on 27 March, amid general rejoicing.8 Celebration then became the natural state of things. Confident in the loyalty of every significant political player south of the Border, James set out on a leisurely, triumphal progress from Edinburgh to London.Travelling south, he was gawped at, pursued, pestered for favours and plied with formal petitions of all kinds. Ralegh rode up from the West Country to meet his new King at Burghley House, near Stamford, only to receive the driest of welcomes.Aubrey puts a terrible Jacobean pun into the King’s mouth, ‘O my soule, mon, I have 3 4 5 6 7

HMC, MSS of the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle, i, p. 387. Dekker, The Wonderfull Yeare, sig. Cv. BL, Stowe MS 150, fo. 180, Thomas Ferrers to Sir Humphrey Ferrers, 25 March 1603. Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 75, fos 79–81, Simon Theloal to Dr Dun, 26 March 1603. R. P. Sorlien (ed.), The Diary of John Manningham of the Middle Temple 1602–1603 (Hanover, NH, 1976), pp. 208–9. See M. Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot (Manchester, 1991), p. 119. 8 R. C. Winthrop, Life and Letters of John Winthrop (Boston, 1864), p. 415.

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heard rawly of thee’.The tales that Aubrey heard, which are not substantiated elsewhere, suggest that there was a particular reason for this distrust, something that went beyond the libels of Henry Howard. He maintained that during the debates in Whitehall of the so-called Great Council, the interim authority in England pending James’s selection of a new Privy Council, Ralegh advocated a ‘Commonwealth’, rather than submission to the king of a ‘needy, beggarly nation’.9 If that is true, and the words are somehow in character with other remarks reported from those mysterious meetings and his peculiar ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, it is hardly surprising that Ralegh was now received without enthusiasm. Others suggested that Cecil had already sought Ralegh’s removal from his captaincy of the Guard at one of these meetings of the Great Council, only to be opposed vigorously by Cobham, but these debates among the nobles and statesmen were never fully written down, and all the sources are problematic.10 The choice of captain, in any case, lay with the new King. Aubrey’s other tale from this time has James, alarmed by the press of the crowd, asserting that he could have carried the country by force had the need arisen. Walking in his entourage, Ralegh then expressed his wish that the matter be put to the test. Why so, asked James. ‘Because’, replied Sir Walter, ‘that then you would have known your friends from your foes.’ Aubrey believed that this remark was ‘never forgotten nor forgiven’.11 Whether or not the story is true, Ralegh’s reported assessment is crucial in understanding the events of that year. Did all this adulation capture the true feelings of men and women towards their new sovereign? The favourite then performed one final service for his mistress: Ralegh was present in his official capacity at the Queen’s funeral. He walked in that splendid procession through London, past a weeping, groaning crowd, at the head of one hundred and fifty men of the Guard, ‘with the poynts of their holberds downewards’.12 Thereafter, it rapidly became clear that he had no political future under the new monarch. He was stripped of his captaincy 9 O. L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives (London, 1949), p. 257. 10 See G. B. Harrison, A Jacobean Journal (London, 1941), p. 9. Robert Cotton’s account of the discussions on 24 March are at BL, Cotton Titus C.VII, fo. 57, see P. Collinson, ‘Afterword’, in J. F. McDiarmid (ed.), The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: essays in response to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot, 2007), Monarchical Republic, pp. 245–60, at 257. 11 Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, p. 257. 12 BL, Add. MS 5408; copy in the Somerset Record Office, DD/SAS/C1193/28; HMC, Various Collections, iv, p. 165;W. A. Jackson, ‘The funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth’, The Library, 4th series, 26 (1946), pp. 262–71.

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of the guard, replaced by the Scottish privy counsellor Sir Thomas Erskine. His lucrative monopolies were lost in the general suspension of these personal favours during May, and that same month he was given notice to quit Durham House, the Bishop, Tobie Matthew, having successfully petitioned James for the immediate return of his London home. Bishops having their own ways and means, Durham House had been secured by a ‘most learned and worthie sermon’ preached before the King at Berwick on 6 April, and another preached at Newcastle four days later. Matthew had access to James regularly, for a week, and he knew how to flatter and charm, exploiting that principal asset for all it was worth. Its worth was, in fact, Durham House.13 Ralegh submitted to these strokes, acknowledging that the new King had his own obligations, and his own priorities. Outwardly, he confined himself to a protest against the apparent vindictiveness of prominent legal officers, Thomas Egerton, John Popham and Edward Coke, criticizing the haste with which he was being driven from a residence occupied for more than fifteen years. Matthew was eager to secure the property, and at his prompting, Ralegh had been given until 24 June to deliver possession to the Bishop or his attorney. That was brisk indeed.‘I am of oppinion’, he wrote,‘that if the Kings Majestye had recovered this howse or the like from the meanest gentelman and sarvant hee had in Inglande that His Majestye would have geven six moneaths tyme for the avoydance.’ The sense of injustice builds during his letter, and reaches a scorching climax.This process, he snarls, ‘is bothe contrary to honor, to custome and to civillety’.14 Ralegh seethed with frustration at his own inability to charm James, and with anger that erstwhile friends had not spoken up for him. It does not seem to have occurred to him that those friends had reason to be wary; everyone was, after all, now under the scrutiny of an unfamiliar new monarch who could so easily make or destroy careers. Even the superficial onlooker wasted no time in categorizing Ralegh with the men at Court who lacked any natural lodestone, the meddlers, the shifters, those who might seize on the moment, regardless of principle.When 13 The true narration of the entertainment of his Royall Maiestie, from the time of his departure from Edenbrough; till his receiuing at London with all or the most speciall occurrences (London, 1603), sigs C2v, C4v; T. N. Brushfield, Raleghana ([Plymouth], 1896–1907), published as a series in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, v, pp. 24–5. Generosity has its limits: Brett Usher reminds us that when Matthew was promoted to the archdiocese of York he was obliged to give up Durham House (see M. Lee (ed.), Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 1603–1624: Jacobean letters (New Brunswick, 1972), pp. 90–1). 14 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 245–6.

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the Marquis de Rosny, Henri IV’s special envoy sent to congratulate James on his succession, set out to identify the four groups of courtiers jostling for preferment, he relegated Ralegh to the rag-bag fourth division, ‘the others’: Les autres comme la Comte de Northumbelland, de Sutenton, de Comberland, les Milords Cobham, Ralek, Griffin [Markham] et autres seront tousiours de toutes les factions qui voudront remuer mesnage ou dedans ou dehors leur Royaume, voire aucuns d’eux contre leur proper Roy et leur patrie.15

Rosny’s remarks as they appear in his published memoirs are tainted by later elaboration, and by the wisdom of hindsight, but allowing for the simplicity of his message, and for the briskness with which he categorizes every courtier then in London, the assessment is fair enough. The envoy was a shrewd man, and a canny politician. And he had met Ralegh before. While he was in England for little more than a fortnight, he had benefited from long conversations with the resident ambassador, Northumberland’s good friend Christophe de Harlay, Comte de Beaumont. The names among ‘les autres’ are interesting. They divide into the politically significant, men like the Earls of Northumberland, Southampton and Cumberland, whom James could not afford to antagonize so early in the reign, and the potentially vulnerable, the likes of Cobham and Ralegh. Over the next two months or so, the significance of that distinction became clear. In Ralegh’s case one has also to consider his deep unpopularity – an outspoken Catholic gentlewoman, Katharine Gawen, wasted no time on James’s accession in denouncing the late Queen and the two courtiers who had controlled her. Bizarrely identifying Ralegh and the Lord Chief Justice Sir John Popham in this role, Gawen delighted in asserting that the pair of ‘bludsuckers’ were now ‘putt downe’. Lower on the social scale the so-called ‘poore mens peticion to the Kinge’, one of many attempts to seize the moment in 1603, singles Ralegh out as a man who deserves neither favour nor advancement.16 He was, in short, becoming a liability to his friends. When occasional opportunities arose to impress James, Ralegh, perhaps trying too hard, muffed them. Discussing foreign affairs with the King during a royal visit to Beddington Park, home of Sir Nicholas Carew, he advocated a vigorous prosecution of the war with Spain.17 He was it seems already 15 Maximilien de Bethune, duc de Sully, Memoires ou Oeconomies Royales d’Estat (Paris, 1664), ii, pp. 200–1. 16 HMC, Various Collections, i, p. 73; iv, p. 166. 17 E. Edwards, The Life of Sir Walter Ralegh . . . together with his Letters (London, 1868), i,

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thinking about, if not already drafting, his surviving tract on the subject.The tone of this work is quite uncompromising. Do not follow France’s lead, he says. Keep the Dutch as allies and strike hard against the Spanish empire – it is far more fragile than appearances might suggest.18 In 1603, however, views of this kind were misplaced.This was not what a monarch determined to make peace with England’s long-standing enemy wanted to hear, and after eighteen years of war most people in England simply sought an end to conflict. If Spain had been weakened by the struggle, England had suffered as well. These setbacks were bad enough, but worse was to follow. On 15 July, while at Court, Ralegh was detained for questioning in connection with a tangled and rather fatuous plot then coming to light, hatched by two Catholic priests, William Watson and William Clark, the financially desperate Nottinghamshire knight Sir Griffin Markham and – a potentially dangerous link – Cobham’s younger brother George Brooke. On the edge of this circle, tantalized yet repelled by the prevailing Catholicism, stood the puritan peer, Lord Grey de Wilton, an imprudent, hot-tempered and devout young man who had quarrelled openly with Essex, with Southampton and with just about everyone else at Court. Planned literally to its own extinction – these conspirators talked a good campaign without showing any sign of carrying it through – the socalled Bye Plot aimed to kidnap the King and to hold him hostage against promises of wholesale changes in government and an openly acknowledged toleration of Catholicism in England.19 Suspicions against Ralegh had clearly been building over the past few days. Northumberland was, at that time, in disgrace for spitting in the face of an old enemy, Sir Francis Vere, when in the King’s presence, and he had been placed under house arrest with the Archbishop of Canterbury at Croydon, to give him time to reflect on his indiscretion.With talk of treason in the air the Earl was naturally worried that this coincidental, transient punishment might be misinterpreted. He therefore wrote to James on 14 July, asking pp. 364–5; S. W. May, Sir Walter Ralegh (Boston, 1989), pp. 66–7. 18 Printed in Works of Ralegh, viii, p. 299–316. See below, Chapter Eleven (i), p. 248. 19 Much of what follows is based on M. Nicholls, ‘Two Winchester trials: the prosecution of Henry, Lord Cobham, and Thomas Lord Grey de Wilton, November 1603’, Historical Research 68 (1995), 26–48;‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s treason: a prosecution document’, English Historical Review 110 (1995), 902–24;‘Treason’s Reward: the punishment of conspirators in the Bye plot of 1603’, Historical Journal 38 (1995), 821–42. The facts are detailed by F. Edwards in The Succession, Bye, and Main Plots of 1601–1603 (Dublin, 2006). Edwards restates his conviction that Robert Cecil manipulated every conspiracy in the period, but overlooks the most recent secondary literature on this subject.

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forgiveness and seeking to clear his name. His covering letter to Cecil reveals all too clearly the direction of current investigations. Perhaps I should have knowen more of these matters if Rawleighe had not conceaved as he told me that I could keepe nothing from you. I am now glad of those thoughts in him and your freindship and mine never stoode me in better steede if he have done any thing that is not justifiable.20

On the discovery of treason, all the usual steps were taken. The Council ordered the closure of the Cinque Ports on 15 July, and proclamations were issued the following day for the arrest of conspirators then at large.21 James, inevitably, fretted; he was anxious to know the extent of this plot, alarmed that discontent should manifest itself so early in his reign. Cobham’s friend Arenberg, an experienced ambassador then negotiating a peace treaty between England, Spanish Flanders and Spain, discussed developments with his French opposite number, Beaumont, and wrote to his master Archduke Albert in Brussels on the sixteenth emphasizing both the disquiet of the King and the uncertainties of the time.22 Muddle prevailed, as it did so often in the early stages of a treason investigation, but there was no evidence to sustain charges against Northumberland and he was allowed a restricted liberty by 18 July. Ralegh was not so fortunate. In a confession taken on the same day, one of the Bye plotters admitted that he had heard Watson discuss plans ‘for the betrayeng a parte of the Navie into Sir Walter Raleigh his handes’, and the close friendship with Cobham – who thanks to his brother’s complicity was sinking ever further into trouble – had of course to be taken into account.23 A dreadful day then got worse.Twenty-four hours after implicating his brother in the Bye, George Brooke confessed under interrogation the existence of 20 TNA, SP 14/2/71. 21 Hatfield MS 187/95; J. F. Larkin and P. L. Hughes, Stuart Royal Proclamations: royal proclamations of King James I, 1603–25 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 41–3.The procedures followed in early modern treason investigations are explained and analysed in J. Bellamy, The Tudor Law of Treason (London, 1979). 22 H. Lonchay and J. Cuvelier (eds), Correspondance de la cour d’Espagne sur les affaires des PaysBas au XVIIe siècle (Brussels, 1923–7), i, pp. 165–6; BL, Add. 31111, fos 1–2. The events of 1603 had no lasting impact on Arenberg’s integrity as an envoy, see P. Croft, ‘Rex Pacificus, Robert Cecil, and the 1604 peace with Spain’, in G. Burgess, R. Wymer and J. Lawrence (eds), The Accession of James I: historical and cultural consequences (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 140–54. 23 Nicholls, ‘Treason’s reward’, p. 833.

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a second, linked conspiracy, in which Ralegh was allegedly a prime mover. Details remained unclear. George Brooke had not himself been involved in what eventually became known as the Main Plot; he had only known of its existence through conversations with Cobham. Although condemning his brother, Brooke’s allegations amounted to nothing more than hearsay where they touched on Ralegh.24 Nevertheless, no investigator could ignore such information. Ralegh was placed under house arrest in the charge of Sir Thomas Bodley, at Fulham. It was obvious what the next step should be.The investigators – members of the Privy Council assisted by the industrious Attorney General Sir Edward Coke – turned their attentions on Cobham, who coloured in a lurid picture. As Cobham told it, the Main was less practical than the Bye, but all the more sinister for its lack of substance. It was a plot based on grumbling and vapouring. The conspirators had discussed ways to foment rebellion and bring about a Spanish invasion, aiming at the death of the King and the elevation of Arbella Stuart in his place. Ralegh was now in great danger, and he was forced to manoeuvre. First he denied all knowledge of Cobham’s schemes. Shortly afterwards, he informed the Council of some suspicions that had just occurred to him, while at the same time assuring Cobham that he had revealed nothing capable of sinister construction.These shifts served only to increase suspicion. Ralegh was conveyed to the Tower on 19 July, and on the twentieth Cobham, confronted with evidence of Ralegh’s double-dealing, did something that he had not done under repeated questioning through the previous four days.25 He specifically implicated Ralegh in the Main Plot. Cobham did this in a remarkable way, fashioning Ralegh as the fomenter and instigator of the entire treason. As the Lord Chief Justice later affirmed in a written ‘certifficate’ presented at Ralegh’s trial, anger prompted these new revelations. Upon a ‘second vewe of Rawleighes letter [to the Council], Cobham brake owte into theis passions: “O Wretch, O Traitor”, iterating the same three or fowre tymes, and then saied: “I will tell yow all trulie”, confessing his purpose was to goe into Flaunders and into Spayne, and spake of getting of five or sixe hundered thowsand crownes, and that he and Rawleigh agreed to meete in Gersey uppon his coming owte of Spayne, and then they would take the advauntage of the discontentmentes of the people, 24 TNA, SP 14/2/59, 64; Nicholls, ‘Two Winchester trials’, pp. 37–8. Brooke was arrested on 14 July. 25 For the date of Ralegh’s transfer to the Tower see H.V. Jones, ‘The Journal of Levinus Munck’, EHR 68 (1953), 234–58 at p. 244.

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and thereuppon resolve what was to be done.’26 A second certificate read at the trial, and attested by every investigating counsellor, elaborates on the same, critical examination. The prisoner had obviously – and understandably – been incensed at his friend’s tactics: ‘at Cobhams first beginning of his speach he breathed owte manie exclamacions and oathes against Rawleigh, calling him traytor and affirming that he was privie to this purpose, and that he had never entered into this course but by his instigacion, and that he would never lett him alone’.27 The tale has a further twist. Having calmed down, and having realized that he had walked into a carefully prepared trap, Cobham retracted every word. This evidence born of passion, so crucial to securing Ralegh’s conviction at his trial, was presented in court through the curious, roundabout form of certified statements precisely because Cobham thereafter refused, over nearly four months, to confirm what he had said in anger on 20 July. Both affidavits assert that Cobham’s outburst came only after a second reading of Ralegh’s letter to the Council. In this way, an attempt was made to portray angry words as measured and deliberate. Here, indeed, was a subterfuge, made in the interest of preserving what most counsellors took to be the truth. Cobham and Ralegh, they believed, were both concealing something – precisely what they could not yet be sure – and for one moment their interrogations had breached the prisoners’ defence of silence. Cobham’s furious outburst would prove crucial in the cases against both men. All the suspects in custody were overwhelmed with despair at their misfortune. George Brooke declared that he had ‘fallen quicke into hell’.28 The Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Peyton, told Cecil on 21 July that Ralegh stood ‘styll uppon his inocencye, but with a mynde the most dejected that ever I sawe’.29 As the examinations proceeded, the prisoner’s mood grew darker, and darker still.Two days later Peyton wrote perceptively, if somewhat uncharitably, to Cecil: I never sawe so strange a dejected mynde as is in Sir Walter Rawly. I am exceedingly cumbered with hym, 5 or 6 tymes in a daye he sendeth for me in suche passions as I see his fortytude is competent to supporte his greefe.30 26 27 28 29 30

Nicholls, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s treason’, p. 919. Ibid. Hatfield MS 101/85. Hatfield MS 101/82. Hatfield MS 101/92.

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Observing that words were having little effect, and learning, perhaps, that Peyton was to replace him as Governor of Jersey, Ralegh took matters one stage further.31 After writing a letter of farewell to Bess he attempted suicide on 27 July: snatching up a table knife he tried to stab himself in the heart. According to some reports the result was a mere flesh wound. Others suggested that the knife, used by the prisoner to cut and eat his meat, ‘wounded [him] greatly’.32 There is, as at many other crisis points of Ralegh’s career, an element of dangerous play-acting here. Neither the theatricality of the gesture nor the essentially unchristian nature of the act were lost on observers. Some unfriendly, strained and eccentric anonymous observations on the suicide bid, circulating under the title ‘Sir Walter Rauleigh’s stabb’, linked these events to the execution of Essex (Essex died, and Ralegh might have died, on a Wednesday!), and maintained that Ralegh’s secretary Hancock poisoned himself at the same ‘despairing and godlesse hower’, in a suicide pact of some kind.33 When news of this incident was passed to the King, James responded to the commissioners through the Earl of Nottingham, insisting that ‘Rawly may now be well examyned and that at the examynasion you wold have some good precher with yow that he may make him know that it is his sole that he must wond and not his boddy’.34 Nowhere is there any expression or even a hint of sympathy. Ralegh had anticipated censure; his mind had been clear enough for that. ‘Be not dismaide’, he told Bess in his suicide note, ‘that I dyed in dispaire of Gods mercies, strive not to dispute it but assure thy selfe that God hath not lefte me nor Sathan tempted me. Hope and dispaire live not together . . . I am onely tempted with sorrowe, whose sharpe teeth devour my harte.’ This letter to Bess shows Ralegh at his melancholy best. He urges his wife, who as he gallantly points out is but ‘a yong woman’, to marry again. ‘It is nowe nothing to me; thowe art noe more mine nor I thine.’ The letter mentions, 31 Peyton thanked Cecil for the appointment on 25 July (Hatfield MS 101/94). The warrant of appointment, giving reasons for Ralegh’s removal from office, is dated 30 July (Hatfield MS 147/156). 32 Jones, ‘Journal of Levinus Munck’, p. 245; HMC, MSS of the Rt Hon. Lord Sackville of Knole, ii, p. 137. 33 J. Hutchins, The History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset (Westminster, 1861–73), iv, pp. 217–19. The anonymous author also upheld the use of torture in principle: ‘the property of the racke is not onelie to streatch the joynts, but reach the conscience, and make it give, which, fearfullie considered maie have power to terrifie both the joyntes and the conscience’. 34 Hatfield MS 101/100.

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for once, his illegitimate child, ‘my poore daughter to whome I have geven nothinge’. His words are a characteristic mix of the pragmatic and the emotional, doused with self pity. ‘For my selfe I am left of all men, that have done good to many, all my good turnes forgotten, all my errors revived and expownded to all extremitie of ill. All my services, hazardes and expences for my countrie: plantinges, discoveries, fightes, councells and whatsoever ells, malice hath nowe covered over.’ Cobham, of course, is to blame. ‘I am nowe made an enimie and traytour by the word of an unworthie man.’ No one else will take his part. Henry Howard has always been his enemy, and now even Cecil has forsaken him. Rather curiously, he does not mention Northumberland – perhaps that would be to detract from the argument, or perhaps the worth of true friends needs no expression. Ralegh lists his creditors, a public message which tries to make the (frankly, false) point that he has not grown rich on any royal favours at home, or on pensions from abroad. His estate is small enough, and, mistakenly as it turns out, he considers it safely bound up in trust, beyond the reach of the law. ‘My plate is at gage in Lumbard Streete’, and around £1,700 is owed to named creditors, £600 to the London financier and King’s jeweller Peter Vanlore alone. Finally, he spares a thought for Lawrence Keymis – the loyal confidant who is now also a prisoner in the Tower. Keymis had, as he himself told Cecil in August 1603, lost the 100 marks annuity paid out of Jersey revenues, and his plans for a plantation in the Indies, which clearly depended on Ralegh’s influential support, had been ruined.35 That sympathy was merited; guilty only of serving his friend too diligently, Keymis remained in prison until 31 December 1603.36 As the cynics predicted, Ralegh’s wound proved trivial. Peyton reported him substantially recovered within a week, and, subsequently, the prisoner’s spirits returned. Ralegh realized that the sole evidence of any substance laid against him was Cobham’s statement of 20 July, and he also learnt that Cobham was no longer standing by that statement. It is hard to peer into Cobham’s mind at this point – there is already a sense that, for this distracted man, the true details in a disjointed sequence of bitter and unhappy conversations had 35 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 247–9. The authenticity of this letter was long questioned, for it survives in only one near contemporary copy. However, the reference to Ralegh’s daughter among other details suggests strongly that it was indeed Ralegh’s work. See A. M. C. Latham, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s farewell letter to his wife in 1603: a question of authenticity’, Essays and Studies 25 (1939), 39–42. For Keymis’s letter to Cecil see Hatfield MS 101/116. 36 TNA, E 407/56, fo. 90, Tower Bill for September–December 1603.

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given place to a version that preserved his honour in extremity. The most likely explanation is that Cobham took back his outburst on 20 July in order to protect his friend. He could see no other way of deflecting those intent on applying the rigour of the law to events which never quite merited that rigour. The prosecution always insisted that Ralegh was as dear to Cobham ‘as his hand and his harte’, indeed, that whatever Ralegh wanted from the association, Ralegh got.37 But that is to disallow Cobham any finer feelings of loyalty. A rather less likely possibility is that Ralegh and Cobham entered into a pact, guaranteeing not to accuse one another since, according to their understanding of the law, a single witness could not bring about the conviction of a suspected traitor. As Cobham later acknowledged, Keymis had advised him ‘not to be dismayed, for that he brought word from Sir Walter Rawly that one witness could not hurt him, or to that effect’.38 In fact the law of necessity allowed conviction with no witness to the treason, although even by early seventeenth-century standards at least one witness was thought to be highly desirable when bringing home a charge.39 Logic weakens this argument still further: Cobham could never hope to benefit from such a pact. He had admitted his guilt, and George Brooke was ready to testify against him. Either he was shielding Ralegh, a noble gesture but one that somehow sits out of place here, or he was telling the truth. The course of subsequent investigations into the Main Plot confirms that the confession secured on 20 July represented the high-water mark in attempts to construct a case against Ralegh. Examinations continued, the law term was postponed and removed to Winchester on account of plague in the capital, but all the while the only secure evidence detailing Ralegh’s supposed crime remained this curious, retracted, testimony. Though depressed, and suffering from a painful affliction in his leg, Cobham refused to incriminate his fellow prisoner any further.40 Ralegh was himself questioned, of course, but the thin, essentially inconsequential record of these examinations suggests that he maintained his innocence against every serious charge.The lack of substance in the case was not lost on observers, and many were simply bewildered by the turn of events. Cecil seems to respond to gossip when he writes to his colleague and friend Michael Hickes in August: ‘whatever you 37 Nicholls, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s treason’, p. 920. 38 TNA, SP 14/3/24. 39 L. M. Hill, ‘The two-witness rule in English treason trials: some comments on the emergence of procedural law’, American Journal of Legal History 12 (1968), 96–111. 40 Hatfield MSS 101/115, 102/157.

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heare of inocency know they are all in the King’s mercy’.That was the official line, applied to the suspects considered as a group, but Cecil appreciated that there was particular scrutiny of Ralegh’s case: ‘For Sir W. Ralegh,’ he continued, ‘his contempts are high, howsoever his crimes may fall in foro Judicii’.41 According to Sir Thomas Edmondes in a letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury, a member of the Council, the Judges who met to deliberate upon the case at Maidenhead in September made ‘noe question of fynding them all culpable, save onlie Sir Walter Rawleighe against whom it is sayd that the proofes are not so pregnant’.42 Edmondes added in a subsequent letter, however, that there was ‘a stronge pourpose to proceade severely in the matter, against the pryncipall persons’, and Ralegh was duly indicted along with other prominent prisoners, later in the month.43 When an outline of the prosecution case was prepared for Thomas Egerton, in October 1603, the weight attached to Cobham’s outburst was still all too clear.44 It is equally clear that privy councillors still regarded the case as persuasive. Writing to the ambassador Ralph Winwood in the Low Countries on 3 October, Cecil briskly sums up the position. Ralegh, he says, denies the accusations against him, aware as he is that Cobham has retracted his first accusation. Nevertheless, that ‘first Accusation is so well fortifyed, with other demonstrative Circumstances, and the Retraction so blemished by the Discovery of that Intelligence which they had, as few Men can conceive it comes from a clear Heart’. The rational man draws his own conclusions, but within this presentation of a logical case there are hints – doubtless apparent to the acute Winwood – that point to lingering doubts, doubts better left unwritten in these tense, early months of the reign. By way of further confirmation, the King’s Secretary takes refuge in the illusory objectivity of due legal process:‘Always’, he writes,‘[Ralegh] shall be left to the Law, which 41 HMC, Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath, ii, p. 51. The papers at Longleat are held with ‘certaine hellish verses devysed by that Atheist and traitor Rawley as yt is said’ (ibid., p. 52). It may indeed have been said, but the doggerel is unworthy of Ralegh’s pen, even on a bad day. M. Rudick (ed.), The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: a historical edition (Tempe, AZ, 1999), pp. 67–9. 42 Lambeth MS 3201, fo. 117. The judges met to determine whether there was a case to answer, in accordance with the old grand jury process which then applied under English criminal law. 43 Lambeth MS 3201, fo. 112; TNA, KB 8: PRO Deputy Keeper’s Fifth Report, App. II, pp. 135–7. 44 Bodleian Library, MS Carte 205, fos 131–135v; Nicholls, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s treason’, pp. 918–24.

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is the Right all Men are born unto.’45 The surviving testimony for the Bye and Main plots is substantial, but one or two documents have gone missing over the years, notably the complete record of some important statements by Sir Griffin Markham. As with many a contemporary criminal investigation there are also suggestions, here and there, that some evidence was deliberately not preserved, either as a housekeeping measure, with paperwork of little value, or perhaps to avoid embarrassment for leading figures at Court. One of Markham’s longer confessions survives only in an annotated abstract. Here one finds his assertion that George Brooke had advised him against bringing Northumberland into the Bye Plot, because the Earl’s ‘discontent with a faire word was presently pacified and for feare of revealing yt to Rawley who had power to bewitch him’. It is possible that a transcriber’s error was made when drawing up the abstract, since at Ralegh’s trial Markham was reported to have confessed that Brooke had advised him, for this very reason, to avoid telling Cobham too much. An alternative explanation is that Markham had misunderstood the information he had received from Brooke, and that a subsequent comparison of their testimony had shown up his mistake; these lines are indeed lightly crossed through in the abstract of Markham’s confession. Either way, it is impossible to miss the power of persuasion, amounting to an almost magical compulsion, so easily attributed to Ralegh. The reader might also wonder why Northumberland’s name should have appeared at all in this context, and at the thought processes that lay behind the error, if error it was.46 Unaware of his close shave, the Earl passed an uneventful summer and autumn. He followed the Court on progress, relaxing on his estates at Syon House and Petworth, and observing the usual, genteel courtesies towards influential friends through gifts and visits, the costs of which are carefully recorded in household accounts: Cecil’s book-keeping, for example, documents a reward given to Northumberland’s servant, who had brought a gift of grapes from Syon.47 Ambassadors caught up in this miasma were better deployed elsewhere. Arenberg departed quietly. His last audience with the King was on 1 October,

45 E. Sawyer (ed.), Memorials of Affairs of State (London, 1725), ii, p. 8. 46 TNA, SP 14/3/54; cf. 14/4/83, p. 10:‘for Brooke said unto Sir Griffine Markhame take heed how yow do make my Lord Cobham acquainted for what soever he knoweth Rawleigh the witche will gett it out of hym’. 47 Syon MS U.I.50a, U.I.50(3); Hatfield MS Accounts 6/31.

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and he left Court on the eleventh.48 It was a timely move, for the prisoners were soon to be brought to the bar, and statesmen and lawyers were steadily working through the logistics that underpinned every early modern state trial. In October a decision was taken to hold the trials in Winchester; Reading, the other alternative considered, was perhaps too close to plagueridden London. Cobham and Grey were brought down from the capital on 4 November, the other prisoners following on the tenth, with a halt at Bagshot.49 A cavalcade of local gentry and their followers provided a secure escort: at least 140 men rode with the party from Bagshot to Winchester.50 For Ralegh in particular it was a trying journey; he had scorned the pursuit of popularity in the past, and now his contempt for the common man was vigorously returned.51 Everywhere he encountered hatred, and glee at his impending downfall. Sir William Waad wrote that the mob in London had shouted for his death. It was ‘hob or nob’ whether the prisoner ‘should have been brought alive through such multitudes of unruly people’, united in condemnation, and Waad was not alone in noting the temper of the moment.52 Verses circulated, mocking an upstart broken and destroyed. Nowe may you see the soodaine fall Of him that thought to clime full hie A man well knowne unto you all Whose state you see doth stand Rawlie.53

Stories invariably arise to colour the downfall of great men; these occasions remain in the memory. As his coach rolled across Hounslow Heath, Ralegh noticed an old man – a creditor – standing by the roadside. He made a point of halting the coach, declaring his debt publicly, and beseeching the King to 48 Jones, ‘Journal of Levinus Munck’, p. 246; cf. Hatfield MS 101/156. 49 J. Stow, The Annales of England . . . Continued . . . by E. Howes (London, 1615), pp. 828–9. 50 TNA, E 407/56, fos 92–8; Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, November 17, 1859, to June 20, 1861, 2nd series,1, pp. 58–63, in which the editor, W. H. Hart, also records a tradition that links Ralegh with a house on Brixton Hill. 51 The fatherly advice given by Burghley to Robert Cecil is often repeated: ‘I advise thee not to affect, or neglect, popularity too much. Seek not to be Essex: shun to be Raleigh.’ For Joel Hurstfield, this was ‘the authentic voice of Polonius’! See J. Hurstfield, The Queen’s Wards: wardship and marriage under Elizabeth I (London, 1958), p. 257. 52 TNA, SP 14/4/76; Lambeth MS 3201, fo. 161v. 53 Rudick, Poems, p. 187.

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‘be good to this worthy gentleman’. Both wept.54 Treason trials in this period were never sedate affairs. Public spectacles, with seats commanding high prices on the open market, they served to express revulsion at the actions of individuals who threatened the head of state and, by extension, the state itself. Always there was a sense of theatre in these proceedings. Spectators openly passed judgement on what they were seeing, as they would have done in the Globe or the Rose.55 Procedures in court were driven by accusation and confrontation: the prisoner faced evidence presented to him for the first time on the day of trial, by the monarch’s expert legal representatives, and he was obliged to respond as best he might, alone and with only his own wit to guide him. There was usually some verbal cut and thrust, and always ample scope for any presentation of the prosecution and defence cases to become blurred, particularly for an audience unfamiliar with the detail. Even by the standards of the day, however, Ralegh’s trial, staged in the thirteenth-century Great Hall of Winchester Castle on 17 November, was noted for its obscurity. The prosecution case was subtle, and demanded clarity and patience from the advocate. At times, however, anger and frustration led rather to incoherence, and incoherence resulted in a still more insidious confusion and in a sense of unfinished business, both at the time and in the many accounts of the trial that survive today.56 The charge that confronted the prisoner was based on Cobham’s testimony of 20 July, enlivened with innuendo, and with hearsay detail from George Brooke’s many statements. Ralegh, the indictment insisted, had consipired ‘to deprive the King of his government . . . to raise up sedition within the Realme, to alter Religion . . . to bring in the Romish superstition, and to procure forraigne enemies to invade the Kingdomes’. He and Cobham had discussed how to advance Arbella Stuart to the throne of England.They had agreed that Cobham should seek the 600,000 crowns from Arenberg, and that he should also lobby the governments in both Brussels and Madrid to further these aims, with Arbella’s written support if possible. The two conspirators would then meet in Jersey to discuss how best to spend the money. On the 54 A. R. Beer, My Just Desire: the life of Bess Ralegh, wife to Sir Walter (New York, 2003), p. 149. 55 The obvious theatrical power of the occasion was recognized by Christopher Lee in his play ‘The Trial of Walter Ralegh’, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the afternoon of 5 November 2003. 56 The sources for Ralegh’s trial are listed in Nicholls, ‘Two Winchester trials’, p. 26, n. 2.

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basis of these discussions, Cobham had brought Brooke into the plot.57 Their actions had subsequently confirmed their intentions. Cobham had indeed written letters to Arenberg, and had sent them by the Ambassador’s servant, Matthew De Renzy.58 To no one’s surprise, Ralegh pleaded not guilty. Commanding his stage, Ralegh made a particularly strong impression on eye-witnesses. He was full of a strange confidence that sometimes comes to men and women on trial for their lives. From the very start, he seemed to know and understand his role; the first impression was particularly telling. When brought to the bar Ralegh ‘sate upon a stoole within a place made of purpose for the prisoner to be in, and expected the comming of the Lords, during which time he saluted divers of his acquaintance with a very steadfast and chearefull countenance’.59 When invited to do so, he courteously declined to challenge any member of the jury, pointedly acknowledging the integrity of the landed English gentleman: ‘I know none of them; but think them all honest and Christian men. I know my own innocency and therefore will challenge none. All are indifferent to me.’ The jurymen were duly sworn: four knights, four esquires, four gentlemen. Here Ralegh set the tone for his behaviour throughout the trial; his composure earned him general admiration. During his ordeal, the prisoner was ‘humble, yet not prostrate; dutifull, yet not dejected [to the Lords,] towards the Jurie affible, but not fawning; not in dispaire nor beleeving, but hoping in them, carefully perswading them with reasons, not distemperately importuning them with conjurations; rather shewing love of life, then feare of death’.60 For most of the day he also showed the respect due to the King’s Counsel, losing his temper only when it paid him to do so. Of course this called for fine judgements, though a prisoner on trial for high treason had little choice but to try. It was, in any case, a role made for Ralegh. Coke the Attorney General, on the other hand, was heavily criticized. Very few people admired the way in which he presented his case for the 57 [Overbury] The Arraignment and Conviction of Sir Walter Rawleigh . . . Coppied by Sir Tho: Overbury (London, 1648), pp. 2–4; TNA, KB 8/58. 58 On de Renzy, who later transformed himself into a Gaelic scholar, see B. Mac Cuarta (ed.), ‘Matthew de Renzy’s letters on Irish affairs, 1613–1620’, Analecta Hibernica 34 (1987), 107–82; Mac Cuarta, ‘A planter’s interaction with Gaelic culture: Sir Matthew de Renzy (1577–1634)’, Irish Economic and Social History 20 (1993), 1–17. 59 [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 1. 60 Inner Temple Petyt MS 538/36, fos 273v-274r; [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 6.‘Correct’ behaviour when on trial for treason could make a difference, see Nicholls, ‘Treason’s Reward’, passim.

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prosecution.Thomas Overbury, who was either an eye-witness or the copier of an eye-witness account, noted that, in line with orders from ‘above’, the Attorney General had dutifully alluded to the balancing act demanded of a new King; James wanted to be tolerant, but in both politics and religion he also wished to make it clear that there were boundaries beyond which his subjects could not trespass. Moreover, Coke had indeed shown ‘great wisdome and care’ in assembling the ‘presumptions’ that fortified Cobham’s accusation.61 But Overbury’s positive spin has about it a touch of desperation; he concedes that the same wisdom and care were too often absent on the day of the trial. Even allowing for his obvious ‘zeale in the Kings service, and . . . the passion which overwhelmed him in the cause of his Countrey’, ‘all the assembly could have wished that [Coke] had not behaved himselfe so violently and bitterly, nor used so great provocation to the prisoner’. Most already knew how Coke set about his prosecutions; as Overbury reminded his readers, the Attorney General was to some extent prejudged by his past record, by ‘the insolency of his owne disposition given to tryumph upon poore delinquents, and men in misery’.62 Indeed this was in several ways a typical Coke prosecution, full of bombast, full of showy learning, attempting a methodical presentation of the facts, but short on elegance and subtlety, and falling into the trap of highlighting, inadvertently, every weakness in the prosecution’s argument. And he grovelled more than was proper. Many ‘thought him full of impertinent phrases and compliments, and specially when hee spake of the King, his Issue, or of the Lords’. ‘After he said hee would say nothing of them’, according to one onlooker, Coke fell ‘into grosse and palpable adulation of them to their faces’.63 Adulation was understandable, given the universal wish to flatter a new king and his advisers. ‘We are all men,’ said Lord Grey at his trial a few days later, ‘and princes favoures as showres on the springing grasse.’64 But the crowd in open court expected flattery to go hand in hand with flair, and in this expectation they were disappointed. Coke’s brutal assault on Ralegh’s morals and character went badly awry. It was all very well to call Ralegh names, and Coke used plenty of names that day, likening Ralegh to a ‘monster’, a ‘viper’, ‘an odious fellow’, ‘the rankest traitor in all England’. But if the lambasting concealed a less than straightforward case, and was indeed 61 62 63 64

[Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, pp. 5, 20. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 5; Inner Temple Petyt MS 538/36, fo. 273v. Bodleian Library, MS Carte 77, fo. 78; Nicholls, ‘Two Winchester trials’, p. 45.

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openly seen to conceal it, the public grew uneasy, and restive. At Winchester, the ‘standers by begann to hyss and Mr Attorney to be something daunted’.65 Nevertheless, Overbury had a point: Coke’s ‘wisdome’ helped him to understand the essential requirement. Diverted by all the name-calling, people too often fail to see what he was trying to achieve at Winchester that day. Ever methodical, Coke recognized that the best way to bring home the charge against Ralegh was to expose the prisoner’s weaknesses: the flaws in his character and his dubious reputation. Having reminded the court what sort of man they were dealing with, he could then fit Ralegh squarely to the ‘type’ of character expected in a shiftless traitor. For all his fine words, his airs, his graces, Ralegh would thus be shown to be no different from other conspirators, men and women who broke faith. So Coke threw before the court everything that ‘hath been scattered upon the wrack of report’, while dutifully pointing out to the jury that this was hearsay, that they must ‘carry a just mind’, and should seek to ‘condemn no man, but upon plain evidence’. In Coke’s hands such an assault lacked any finesse, but by the end of the day no listener was able to forget that Ralegh had never been noted for his honesty. It is also just possible that Coke was playing a more personal game. As Karen Cunningham observes, he used the trial ‘as a forum for publicizing his long-held notion that the Tudors were mere interlopers’, making his ‘bid for patronage by revising the royal succession, accusing Ralegh of plotting to “depose our rightful King, the lineal descendant of Edward IV” rather than Henry VII’.66 Of course, Coke’s tactics carried their own risk. They allowed Ralegh full scope to present himself as a victim, as the wronged yet still faithful courtier. The eloquence of self-pity, Ralegh’s favourite form, now found powerful expression within the theatre of a courtroom. He brushed aside the prosecution’s denunciations with contempt. If words were all that the Attorney could throw at him, he crowed, then there was really no case to answer. He furiously denied the insinuation, drawn from George Brooke’s confession, that he had spoken of improving the situation in England by ‘taking away’, or murdering, the ‘king and his cubs’. Focusing on the Attorney’s apparent malice – Coke, he said,‘used him basely, barbarously, and rigorously’ when laying such words to his charge – Ralegh took comfort in the fact that no evidence could be brought 65 TNA, SP 14/6/37. 66 K. Cunningham, ‘“A Spanish heart in an English body”: the Ralegh treason trial and the poetics of proof ’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 22 (1992), 327–51, at 339.

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forward to support these smears.67 In Ralegh’s view the whole case for the prosecution amounted to nothing more than innuendo and false conclusions. Where, he asked, was the substance behind these absurd charges? And where, indeed, was the logic? What could possibly have prompted him to seek money from a bankrupt Spanish king; everyone knew that Madrid would not spend one penny more fomenting trouble within England? Here Ralegh dwelt on the bugbear of Spain to his own advantage, reminding the court that the enemy was impoverished by war. The Spanish King’s Jesuits, ‘his Jesuites begged from door to door in Spaine’. Even if bribes and subventions were available, why should Ralegh expect to receive any money from Spain when he had nothing to give in return? Would King Philip really listen to Cobham’s folly? For that matter, would Ralegh? What did they take him for? Answering these rhetorical questions, he advanced a wonderful array of medieval English peasant-traitors, associating disloyalty with low birth, and distancing himself from both. Would they have him ‘A Cade? A Kett? A Jack-Straw?’68 Coke made it part of his battle-plan to tease out the differences between the childish Cobham and the Machiavellian Ralegh. But Ralegh was on sure ground when refuting the artificial distinction. Cobham – as he reminded the jury and as biographers have failed to remind readers ever since – was ‘not such a babe’ as Coke made out, having ‘dispositions of his own, and passions of such violence that his best friends could never temper them’. ‘How’, he asked, finally, ‘could I stop my Lord Cobham’s mouth?’69 By focusing on his friend, Ralegh was again highlighting the prosecution’s great problem and his own principal defence: with Cobham unwilling to confirm his accusations, the Attorney was unable to call a convincing witness. Instead, the jury were treated to a statement from a sailor, resplendent in a ‘blew cassock’, who reported how while last in Lisbon he had been told by ‘a Portugall Gentleman’ that Ralegh and Cobham were about to spring some unspecified plot against the King.70 What do you make of that, Ralegh asked in astonishment.That your treason had wings, Coke replied. If we did not know the man better, we might suspect that the Attorney General himself nodded here to the weakness of his evidence. Again and again Ralegh exploited that weakness. Cobham’s testimony was, he pointed out, the product of passing anger. Ralegh appealed to the Lords present. Familiar with the man and his 67 68 69 70

[Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 6. Ibid., pp. 19–20. See Nicholls, ‘Two Winchester trials’, p. 35. [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 11.

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ways, they all knew that Cobham,‘in his choller . . . had accused his friends of greater matters than these, and had been sorry for it afterwards’.71 His actions after the Main Plot had in no way been out of character. The frailties in Cobham’s evidence highlighted problems already recognized in prosecutions brought on the word of a single witness. Whether or not English law actually required at least two witnesses to press home a count of treason, the rationale behind a two-witness rule still endured. Ralegh, who knew his Old Testament, pointed out that ‘the law of God liveth for ever’, and that ‘by the whole consent of the Scripture’ conviction on the word of one witness was insufficient.72 He had prepared carefully, working with the loyal Harriot on his legal case. Notes in Harriot’s papers include a list of supportive passages from the Bible, insisting inter alia on two witnesses in a capital trial, glossing the arguments that Ralegh used so purposefully that day.73 The argument was, however, not without its problems. Scriptural precedent was all very well, but as Englishmen, the judges at Winchester preferred to look at the specific limitations set out by treason legislation enacted in Parliament over the past 250 years. When statutory requirements on the number of witnesses had been repealed, or had lapsed, then common law principles prevailed. Common sense also challenged the vigour of Ralegh’s case. In some circumstances one witness was manifestly sufficient. Again, though, Ralegh was prepared to fight the judges on their own ground. The least that they could do was to present their man. ‘You tell me of one witnesse, let me have him’.74 Quoting English precedent and, for good measure, both Daniel and Deuteronomy, Ralegh asked over and again for Cobham to be put on the witness stand: ‘Master Atturney,’ he said, ‘if you condemne me upon bare inferences, and will not bring my accuser to my face: you try me by no law but by the Spanish inquisition’.75 Prove these practises by one witnesse, and I will confesse my selfe guilty to the King in a thousand treasons. I stand not upon the law, I defie the Law, if I have done these things I desire not to live: whether they be treasons by the law or no.76 71 72 73 74 75 76

Ibid., pp. 12–13. Ibid., p. 17. J. W. Shirley, Thomas Harriot: a biography (Oxford, 1983), pp. 308–10. [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 17. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., p. 17.

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Here he received some unexpected support. Cecil endorsed his request. This was not the Secretary’s first sympathetic intervention that day; Cecil had already agreed with Ralegh when he claimed that any evidence against him provided by George Brooke might be tainted by a personal animus, and indeed that Cobham might well have presumed to use Ralegh’s name in negotiations with Spain, without his friend’s consent. There was a certain courage in this, given the circumstances, though being Cecil, and being scrupulous, he had added that it was difficult to know whether Brooke’s love for his brother could be outweighed by dislike of Ralegh.77 Again and again, though, the lawyers said no, and Cobham remained in his cell. When Coke tried to play on Ralegh’s own argument, suggesting that Ralegh had carefully concealed his complicity in treason from everyone except Cobham, the prisoner finally lost his temper: he ‘furiously started up, and said to him, Master Atturney, you must not thinke that all that maketh for me is policy, and all that maketh against me is plain, and God revealeth it . . . what indifferency is there in this my Lord Chiefe Justice?’78 This rare outburst of righteous anger in an otherwise very controlled performance emphasized the rather obvious point that he made. The case for the prosecution contains several curiosities. At one point in proceedings, Ralegh was accused of reading a manuscript tract written thirty years before against the Stuart succession by the MP and lawyer Robert Snagge. He had, said Coke, obtained the book from Lord Burghley’s library while searching with Robert Cecil’s ready permission for ‘Cosmographycall descriptions of the West-Indies’. Worse still, he had passed the work on to a discontented Cobham, deliberately encouraging that discontent. Here Coke again brought out Ralegh’s reputation for dishonesty. He introduced the evidence to show Ralegh as the false friend, the betrayer of confidences, but of course this detail could and did point another way. At once, Cecil was again on his feet, defending his own decision to let Ralegh see the tract, veering to and fro in unconvincing fashion between his respect for Ralegh, his regret that ‘so compleat a member in a common-wealth was fallen away’, his irritation that the book had been removed without his knowledge, his defence of his father’s zeal in collecting such titles (who else, he asked, should do so?), and a frank admission that his trust had only recently been eroded: ‘for some infirmities of Sir Walters the bonds of his affection had been crackt’. It was an extraordinary outburst from such a man in such a 77 Ibid., p. 7. 78 Ibid., pp. 15–16.

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position, and it hinted at panic. Yet in his anxiety Cecil was perhaps only speaking the truth; ‘reserving his duty to the King his Master . . . hee swore by God he loved [Ralegh], and found a great conflict in himselfe’.79 The Secretary’s nervous intervention shifted the focus from the prisoner. With some of the pressure taken away for the moment, Ralegh was able simply to point out the flaws in Coke’s reasoning. He rejected any ill intent, arguing that it was hard indeed to tie a charge of treason to so trivial a circumstance, and suggesting that Cobham had simply picked up the book from a table, even that he had actively ‘discommended’ the book to his friend. In a personal aside, which reminds us about the pragmatic implications of an impending duel, Ralegh referred to a challenge that he had once received from Sir Amias Preston, and his consequent efforts to put his papers in order, should the worst happen. The prisoner also referred to his former working relationship with Cecil, a nostalgic recollection of happier days. He had often dropped in on his friend when the latter had ‘a searcher with him with a packet of libells’, but surely Cecil would not be faulted for the fact that on such occasions he had passed one or two to Ralegh for perusal?80 Something is learnt in these exchanges about the Secretary’s working habits. The discussion of Snagge’s book now seems trivial, but it held dangers for Ralegh. He could not afford to see too many flaws in his character exposed. The underlying suggestion that men who were not privy counsellors had no business looking at subversive texts, that the act of reading was itself a token of disloyalty and sedition in these people, was pressed home with some vigour.81 Given a final opportunity to address the jury, Ralegh played cleverly on their emotions and prejudices, reminding them of the odds stacked against him. It was worth evoking the sympathy accorded to an underdog. As lawyers, Coke and his colleagues were experienced in presenting a flawed case; between them they had a wealth of expertise and practice. Ralegh, by contrast, had never studied law before his arrival in the Tower. He was ‘weake of memory and feeble as you see’ – many must have smiled at this, but did he mean them to? His final point targeted the night fears of any English citizen: would the jurymen themselves be content to be ‘judged upon 79 Ibid., pp. 8–9. 80 Ibid., p. 9. 81 See R. Davies, ‘“The Great Day of Mart”: returning to texts at the trial of Sir Walter Ralegh in 1603’, Renaissance Forum 4:1 (1999); Cunningham, ‘“A Spanish heart in an English body”’, pp. 342–3.

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suspitions and inferences’? How, indeed, would they feel were unsubscribed, withdrawn evidence brought against them to substantiate a capital charge? If such practices were to prevail in law, could any man ever again hope to be safe from arbitrary power?82 Here the prisoner’s argument resonates down the centuries. In the end, however, Ralegh’s ‘bare denyall’ of the charges was insufficient.83 It was not Coke’s words that condemned him, but rather Cobham’s, and the persistent reflection that, in accusing Ralegh, Cobham accused himself. The transient nature of the accusation did not destroy the case. So far as Cecil was concerned, Cobham had refused to subscribe his confession simply ‘because he thought [as a nobleman] he was priviledged by his degree’.84 Perhaps in this way Cecil suppressed a troublesome conscience, or perhaps there is some truth in what he said. For all the obvious flaws in Coke’s prosecution he got the essential part right, preserving, defending and upholding the integrity of Cobham’s confession, through thick and thin. If what Cobham had said on 20 July was true, Ralegh merited a traitor’s death. It was as simple as that. The trial therefore turned on the detailed scrutiny of Cobham’s statement. Here the sense of theatre in these proceedings is particularly strong. Choosing his moment, towards the end of the day, Ralegh produced with a flourish a letter written by Cobham, and smuggled from one prisoner to the other, which exonerated him from complicity in the Main Plot. He was, however, trumped by Coke, who immediately brandished in front of an astonished court a second statement from Cobham confirming his previous accusations. Cecil, still apparently smarting from Coke’s use of the Snagge evidence, intervened yet again, reading Ralegh’s evidence (for, as Ralegh noted, he knew Cobham’s handwriting) and publicly rebuking Coke for trying to suppress the evidence. In all this brouhaha, the crucial nature of Cobham’s ‘restatement’ went unremarked. For the document in Coke’s hand departed significantly from the charges allegedly made on 20 July. In the statement now brought forward, Cobham maintained that Ralegh had encouraged him to negotiate with Arenberg, hoping to secure an annual pension of £1,500 in return for foreign intelligence. He added that,‘coming from Greenewich one night’, Ralegh had passed on information on ‘what was agreed upon betwixt the King and Low Countrymen’ for transmission to Arenberg, insisting that 82 [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 21. 83 BL, Harley MS 39, fo. 318v. 84 [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 15.

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Ralegh had been the principal cause of his own discontent. Though this is far from the extravagant sweep of treason embraced in his outburst of 20 July, the court seems to have interpreted Cobham’s letter as an elaboration on that testimony, and, reasonably enough, to have focused on the fact of accusation.85 That was sufficient to persuade a by now bewildered jury of Ralegh’s guilt, and they wasted no time in returning a unanimous verdict. The prisoner was guilty of treason. Presiding over the trial as Lord Chief Justice, Popham duly sentenced Ralegh to the traitor’s death, to be hanged, drawn and quartered. An elderly man closely involved in the enforcement of Elizabethan legislation against religious nonconformity, he could not ignore the whiff of atheism that still clung to the prisoner, exhorting Ralegh to listen to no one – not Harriot, nor any other clever fellow – who might try and persuade him that there was no God!86 Popham’s speech was sharp, if cloaked with conventional regret. Choosing his words carefully, he labelled Ralegh as a ‘revenger’, listing at the same time all the reasons why the prisoner had no cause to seek revenge. Ralegh had, of course, been a man of accomplishments – he had been ‘fit and able to have served the king in good place’ – but now his gifts only magnified his faults. In Popham’s conventional vision of the world there are comforting, familiar patterns to the fall of statesmen, which Ralegh for all his talents cannot quite escape. Perhaps he had simply tried to climb too high; the Englishman in Popham, so full of schadenfreude, speaks out clearly here.87 A hostile poem by Thomas Rogers, dating from 1603, made the same point, if more gracefully: I pittie that the summers Nightingale Immortall Cynthias sometimes deare delight That us’d to singe soe sweet a Madrigall Should like an owle goe wander in the night Hated of all, and pittied of none Though swan-like nowe hee make his dyeinge moane.88

85 Nicholls, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s treason’, pp. 907–8. 86 The effect on Harriot of so public and extraordinary a censure must, as John Shirley suggests, have been profound (Thomas Harriot: a biography, pp. 316–24). 87 See Cunningham, ‘“A Spanish heart in an English body”’, p. 344. 88 Rudick, Poems, p. 182. See F. B.Williams Jr,‘Thomas Rogers on Raleigh’s atheism’, Notes and Queries 213 (1968), 368–70.

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Ralegh, however, was not quite finished. He ‘desired that the King might know the proofes against him’, and hoped that his jury would never have to answer for their verdict. He said that ‘the death of him and my Lord Cobham should witnesse betweene them’, conceded only that he ought never to have concealed Cobham’s ‘offer’, and, emphasizing the limits of his concession, sought forgiveness for that failing alone. Beyond this, there was nothing to do but seek mercy from the King and keep his dignity. He ‘talked a while with the Lords in private’ and then ‘went back with the Sheriffe to the prison, with admirable erection, yet in such sort, as a condemned man should doe’.89 The story of Ralegh’s trial does not end with the sentence passed on 17 November, for Cobham’s subsequent confessions, after Ralegh’s conviction, confirm the impression that he was at last ready to restate, in a modified form, his accusations made in the heat of the moment, months earlier. Cobham’s own trial was postponed for a few days, apparently to permit further questioning. Examined on 22 November, the prisoner provided some fascinating further detail on the discussions that had followed Ralegh’s arrival from the Court at Greenwich that spring night, introduced with such telling effect at the recent trial.The course of this evening conversation now becomes clear enough; very recent events had left Ralegh furious and scheming, to the point of indiscretion. According to Cobham Ralegh had arrived full of ‘discontent uppon certeine woords that that day as he sayed had passed between the lord Cecill and him’.90 In the heat of the moment, he had then pressed Cobham to negotiate with Arenberg ‘that he should doe best to advertise and advise the king of Spaine to send an armie against England to Milford Haven’. Popham was right; a desire for revenge had moved him to this folly. Characteristically, Ralegh had advocated a bold approach, informed by history: ‘many more’, he had growled, in a prophetic utterance, ‘had been hanged for words then for dedes’.91 It is important to note that no specific accusation relating to an invasion landfall had been made at Ralegh’s trial.92 89 BL, Cotton Titus C VII, fo. 92v; [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 25. 90 TNA, SP 14/4/91. The French Ambassador, a close friend of Northumberland, writes of Ralegh’s fury at being dismissed from his captaincy of the guard in late April (S. R. Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603–42 (London, 1883–4), i, p. 94–5). While Cecil clearly bore the brunt of that outburst, an April date seems too early for the incident here mentioned by Cobham. 91 TNA, SP 14/4/91. 92 Arguing that an undated ‘abstract’ of the treasons, compiled by Coke, shows the Milford Haven evidence to have been known to the authorities as early as August, Edward Edwards failed to spot that the passage relating to Milford Haven is a later alteration,

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Cobham’s 22 November confession then repeats the story of the Spanish pension, essentially in the same words employed in his earlier letter read at the trial. Ralegh, he declared, had asked him ‘at another tyme after this’, to solicit from Spain a personal pension of £1,500 in return for intelligence, ‘that any thing that the king of England should attempt against Spaine or concerning the Lowe countries or the Indiaes might be prevented’. Here again, Ralegh is cast as the instigator, since Cobham by his own admission approached Arenberg for money after this meeting. This short confession at first sight appears to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s in testimony already given.93 The initial impression is of an interrogation with specific ends in view. That interpretation, though, may mask an altogether more radical resifting of the evidence. Though brief, the testimony in the confession of 22 November marks the end of a long ordeal. Just three days later, Cobham at last appeared in court at Winchester; as a peer, he was tried by his fellow noblemen in the Court of the Lord Steward. Insofar as we can reconstruct proceedings at this rather poorly reported trial, the Milford Haven charge, and the accusation that Ralegh sought a pension from Spain, must be seen as replacing everything that had been alleged before. Dudley Carleton, who attended the arraignment, noted that Cobham accused Ralegh on these two points, and does not mention other charges laid against Sir Walter in July, but it was Cecil who detailed the change in emphasis most clearly when he summarized the trials a few days later for the benefit of English ambassadors in foreign courts. As always, he chose his words very carefully. No longer did Cobham suggest that Ralegh had known about his plans for travel to Spain and no longer was Ralegh guilty of conspiring to raise a large sum of money for sinister ends. The terribly damaging hints at regicide and at a transfer of the crown to Arbella Stuart were now set down to the imagination of George Brooke alone.94 the document as originally compiled carrying the charge set out in the indictment. Even though the prosecution did not proceed as he had planned, it is hard to think of a reason why Coke, armed with so damning an accusation, would have failed to make use of it at the trial (Edwards, The Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, i, p. 439; ii, p. 462–3;TNA, SP 14/4/80). 93 Providing an elaboration of Cobham’s cryptic 20 July reference to talk of ‘plottes and invasions’, for example (Nicholls, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s treason’, p. 915). 94 For Cobham’s arraignment see Nicholls, ‘Two Winchester trials’, pp. 43–4. Two other reports of the trial by Michael Hickes (not himself present) and Thomas Phellippes (who may or may not have been) only assert that Cobham accused Ralegh of either aggravating or inciting his discontent. For Cecil’s letter, see TNA, SP 84/64, fos 78–80, at fo. 79v.

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Ralegh instantly saw the significance: his conviction had been based upon flawed evidence, now reshaped by his only accuser.Writing on 28 November to five Privy Counsellors who had confronted him the day before with Cobham’s fresh evidence, he reminded them that ‘the first accusation for which I was committed, indyted and arrayned your lordships do know to be falce, and yet it was by your lordships most constantly beleved, and my Lord Cheif Justice avowed that it could not be otherwize because the Lord Cobhame accused hyme sealf also therin. Then, my lords, if I had perished therfore yow all finde that I had perished innocent and that the presumption of the mony was also inferred agaynst mee and would have strenghtned my condemnation: and yet neather trew.’ There are even hints in this letter that some Counsellors may have shared Ralegh’s doubts. ‘Your lordships’, wrote Ralegh, ‘also saw that the night before my arrynment he spake not a word of this when he then studied all he could to distroy me.’95 The prisoner certainly felt strong enough to adopt an ‘I told you so’ approach, recycling the case that he had prepared for his own trial, emphasizing that this was exactly why God’s law and English custom together upheld the two-witness principle. In the end, though, he was sensible enough to admit that the law had run its course. Since the utter complexity of two and a half centuries of treason legislation had blurred any obligation on the prosecution to produce two witnesses in line, he said, with most proceedings under the Common Law, only the King’s mercy could now save him from the scaffold. It was a very different Coke who prosecuted the two peers, Cobham and Grey, in the days following Ralegh’s arraignment. The Attorney General dealt ‘very mildly and respectably’ with both, though in both cases, of course, the status of the prisoner encouraged deference. Besides, Cobham and Grey lacked Ralegh’s sense of the occasion and presented an altogether lesser challenge.96 Cobham ‘heard his enditement with much fear and trembling, and would sometimes interrupt it by forswearing what he thought to be wrongly inserted’. The poor man did himself few favours at the bar. He answered ‘submissively’, but overdid the humility, making ‘such a fasting-dayes peece of worke of it that he discredited the place to which he was caled. Never was seene so poore and abject a spirit.’97 Some spirit, some resolution was expected from a nobleman on trial for his life, even from those prepared 95 Letters of Ralegh, p. 261. 96 Lambeth MS 3201, fo. 162 97 Lambeth MS 3201, fo. 161v; Bodleian Library, MS Carte 80, fo. 623v.

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to admit their faults. Just the same, Cobham’s grovelling submission was perhaps a wiser strategy than that adopted on the following day by Grey, who addressed the court like a puritan minister for upwards of two hours, lecturing them on the punishments that God reserved for judges tempted into substituting a political decision for a just verdict, be they princes, lords, lawyers or peasants.98 In the face of compelling evidence for his guilt – Grey had clearly planned to deliver a petition to the King backed up by armed force, and had also been embroiled in Watson’s plot – he fought obstinately for his life, at one point launching into an ‘invective speech against the law’ which, unsurprisingly, failed to ‘serve his turne’.99 Rather, it was condemned by onlookers as ‘most indiscreet’.100 Coke, still smarting from recent events, warned Grey not to tread Ralegh’s path; he should instead confess his guilt without further ado, for quibbling the week before had failed to help ‘the master of shifts’.101 Predictably, neither humility nor bombast prevailed. Both noblemen were duly convicted of treason, and sentenced to death.102 In seeking to understand the nature of Ralegh’s treason, these clues from Cobham’s trial are themselves reinforced by later evidence. The distinction between testimony given in July and November is soon reiterated. After the final arraignments, the Council ordered Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Winchester, to visit Cobham, ostensibly to cater for the prisoner’s spiritual comfort, but also to resolve remaining discrepancies. Cobham, wrote the Bishop, when reporting an interview with the prisoner on 4 December, had repeated the assertions made at his own trial. He was also standing by his original accusation in regard to ‘the other point of bringing money to Gersey’, but – and the qualification is significant – Bilson added that Cobham was not now prepared to swear to this: ‘He desireth this may be a direction . . . not that he avoucheth both thos to be certaynly true, but the later [that is, the Milford Haven story] only.’103 While consistently denying knowledge of what Cobham had planned to do on the continent, Ralegh had never denied the 98 Bodleian Library, MS Carte 80, fo. 623v; Lambeth MS 3201, fo. 162; See Nicholls, ‘Two Winchester trials’, pp. 44–5. 99 Stow, Annales, p. 831. 100 Lambeth MS 3203, fo. 150v. 101 BL, Harley MS 2194, fo. 65v. 102 Grey continued to struggle for the right tone in letters written to the King after his trial, in which he begged for mercy (Hatfield MS 102/38, 39, 66). 103 Hatfield MS 102/47.

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planned rendezvous in Jersey, and Cobham was now in effect corroborating his friend’s testimony on that point. He continued to insist that Ralegh had prompted and fostered his own treasonable offences, but the lack of detail in that charge was evident to all. History has at no point been kind to Cobham and it was a harsh fate that overtook him in 1603. He showed considerable fortitude, and consistency, throughout a protracted nightmare. As the prosecution always emphasized, the confessions that he made were self-incriminating, and his vacillations were surely prompted by contemplation of this unpalatable fact. Ralegh attributed what we might call the November charges to the persuasions of Cobham’s redoubtable wife, yet there is little reason to suspect that Cobham, at that late stage, really hoped to escape with his life.104 Any expectation of clemency seeped away as the days passed, but still, in Frances Howard’s account, he took the sacrament on 7 December, steadfast in his assertion of Ralegh’s guilt.105 On the scaffold, composed, dignified, and prepared for death, he repeated the same accusations.106 Assuming that Cobham was induced, whether by his wife or through his own contemplation of eternity, to cast the blame elsewhere in this way – hardly a difficult assumption to make – the relative moderation in the charges that he then laid against Ralegh serves only to enhance their credibility. Conclusions thus become compelling. The consistent picture drawn from Cobham’s later testimony, of a discontented Ralegh denouncing James along with his ministers, toying with the possibility of a Spanish assault on the nation that had treated him so shabbily and exploring the possibility of a pension from a foreign prince, surely captures his treasonous offence. Lost in the murky background to this picture are the instigators of that discontent. James and Cecil played their part, no doubt, but so too did Cobham. Maybe – and this is an uncomfortable thought to the biographer – he helped induce Ralegh’s anger, was the promoter rather than the victim. Across the Channel at Fontainebleu, rumours in late April 1603 had associated Ralegh’s dismissal as Captain of the Guard with Cobham’s discontent. Indeed in these tales it is Cobham who returns ‘very discontent’ over the ill treatment he 104 The Countess of Kildare had written to her husband in October: ‘help your sleffe iff it maye be, I saye no more, but dra not the yueke of others burdens’ (SP 14/4/36xii). 105 Hatfield MS 187/135. 106 Gardiner, History of England, i, p. 139. Cobham could not win – his bravery on the scaffold was discounted by critics:‘We might see by him’, sneered Dudley Carleton,‘it is an easier matter to die well then live well.’ (Bodleian Library, MS Carte 80, fo. 627v).

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has received at Cecil’s hands.107 Such rumours chime with William Watson’s confession of 18 August, which emphasizes the bitterness that Cobham had felt after James’s succession.108 There are two partners in this friendship, and the dynamic of friendship is more complicated than at first might appear. Ralegh never denied that he had listened patiently to Cobham’s ‘unwise and lavish projects’.109 Again, it is possible that he was being honest. In law, Ralegh’s jury returned a correct verdict, even when that verdict is judged against Cobham’s revised accusations, which they never heard. Decades later, Bishop Godfrey Goodman dismissed the Main as ‘a kind of embryon, wherein discontented persons had but a kind of plot to betray one another’, and his view has prevailed ever since. But there was more to it than that, even if the bounds of the plot remain obscure.The seventeenth-century historian and MP John Rushworth understood long ago that the Main was ‘a dark kind of treason’, with ‘the veil . . . still upon it’.110 Rushworth’s veil certainly covers something, and that something does not reflect well on Ralegh. According to the Statute of 1351 it was high treason ‘to compass or imagine’ the death of a king, and there can be little doubt that Ralegh both imagined something of the kind and, crucially, gave voice to those thoughts. The dying words put into the mouth of one of Ralegh’s judges, Francis Gawdy, that Ralegh’s trial had ‘injured and degraded the justice of England’, the legend that has repentant jurymen begging Ralegh’s ‘Pardon on their Knees’, and the absurd tale that Coke, waiting outside the Court, expressed bewilderment at a treason conviction, arguing that he had prosecuted Ralegh for misprision, represent the verdict of an overly sympathetic posterity, and overlook the judicial niceties of the case in question.111 Coke, who lived a long and busy life, did indeed eventually undergo a change of heart on the proof of treason, as lawyers in the seventeenth century began to wrestle with what it really meant to compass and imagine the death of a monarch, as the notion of mens rea continued to evolve, and as judges set out to ensure that there would be no repeat of the tragicomedy at Winchester. Another prominent seventeenth-century judge, Sir Matthew 107 108 109 110

Hatfield MS 99/162a. Hatfield MS 101/123. Hatfield MS 102/51. G. Goodman, The Court of King James I, ed. J. S. Brewer (London, 1839), i, p. 115; J. Rushworth (ed.), Historical Collections (London, 1721–2), i, p. 4. 111 Edwards, The Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, i, p. 388; The Works of Francis Osborn, Esq. (London, 1682), p. 429; Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, p. 239.

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Hale, was among many to question the prudence, if not the legality, of Cobham’s absence from the witness stand; the adversary process, he wrote, ‘beats and bolts out the truth much better’.112 That was all for the future. Lawyers in Britain and America have never forgotten Ralegh’s ordeal, as a recent Supreme Court hearing in the United States makes clear: after reference to the Winchester trial, the Justices concluded that ‘dispensing with confrontation because testimony is obviously unreliable is akin to dispensing with jury trial because a defendant is obviously guilty’. This, they noted, ‘is not what the Sixth Amendment [to the Constitution] prescribes.’113 A more immediate consequence of the trial lay outside the judicial sphere. In the popular imagination a broken man was transformed from villain into hero. The composure he had shown, a harsh if technically correct verdict, together with Coke’s excesses turned loathing into sympathy. Many observers came to agree with Ralegh’s assessment, reached during the trial, that he had not received his birthright as an Englishman, a fair hearing. As Dudley Carleton put it a few days later, ‘never was a man so hated and so popular in so short a time’.114 The same view was expressed by those indefatigable commentators on the political life of early modern England, the libellers and pamphleteers who had so consistently dismissed Ralegh as an upstart temporizer. Nor was this sympathy transient. Many years later, Archbishop William Sancroft drew on what he saw as the travesty of justice at Winchester in 1603 when tracing causes of the catastrophe of Civil War.115 The Jacobean Court was perturbed but not entirely surprised by this sympathy for a condemned traitor. Philip Ayres has argued that Ben Jonson’s new play Sejanus, grounded in impeccable and remote Roman history as the author was quick to point out, nevertheless fell foul of a Privy Council incensed by apparent parallels between the trial of Caius Silius in Act III and too recent events at Winchester. This may be. The parallels run only so far, and the evidence, based on a cryptic remark of William Drummond, is ambiguous.116 Indeed, there is some reason to believe that members of the 112 [M. Hale], The History and Analysis of the Common Law of England (London, 1713), p. 258. 113 See A. D. Boyer, ‘The trial of Sir Walter Ralegh: the law of treason, the trial of treason and the origins of the confrontation clause’, Mississippi Law Journal 74 (2005), 869–901. The Supreme Court case referred to is Crawford v.Washington (2004). 114 Bodleian Library, MS Carte 80, fo. 622v. 115 Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 299; A. R. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his readers in the seventeenth century, speaking to the people (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 19. 116 B. Jonson, Sejanus his fall, ed. P. J. Ayres (Manchester, 1999), pp. 16–22.

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Council shared the widespread belief that justice had not quite been done. In his journal of important events, Cecil’s secretary Levinus Munck was ambivalent. ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’, he wrote, Was . . . found guilty of high Treason for practising with the Lord Cobham to disturb his Majestys possession of this Crown, by invasion from abroad, and Sedition both here at home and in Scotland; notwithstanding that Sir Walter, to all mens admiration dyd as much, as the witt of man could devise, to clear an offender.

Here Munck expressed the views of his master.117 Cecil called the whole sorry saga of the Bye and Main a ‘tragedy’, and his demeanour through the trials suggests a man increasingly convinced that there was no other appropriate word.118 The protracted crisis, and the disgrace of his brother-in-law Cobham, had made his own position far more difficult. Among those who take refuge from the complexity of history in the simplistic fashioning of all-powerful, Machiavellian statesmen, there has always been a tendency to suppose that Cecil might, possibly, have had a guiding hand in these treasons, but, as with the Gunpowder Plot two years later, no credible contemporary evidence supports such views. In 1603, Cecil’s future looked distinctly shaky. The most trusted servant of a dead monarch cannot always count on the favour of that monarch’s successor, and while James appreciated Cecil’s good offices and loyalty at the succession, he was also deeply indebted to those like Henry Howard and the Earl of Southampton, who had lost out under Elizabeth, and who had only qualified respect and less affection for the Secretary. In such circumstances, it would have been the height of daring, or folly, to have manufactured complex conspiracies, even had time, imagination and resources permitted such creativity. The precarious nature of Cecil’s position in 1603 was not lost on the man in the street. In this new political world, little would have surprised the pragmatic Londoner. Thomas Gayton, writing from Gray’s Inn to his wife Margaret on 15 July, told her that he had bought the cloth that she wanted, adding by way of the latest news that Anthony Copley, racked for his part in the Bye Plot, had implicated Lord Grey. Rumour, he added, suggested that Copley had also confessed to Sir Robert Cecil’s involvement in the 117 Jones, ‘Journal of Levinus Munck’, p. 247. The last sentence echoes Cecil’s letter to the ambassadors passing on details of the trial (TNA, SP 84/64, fo. 79). 118 Lambeth MS 3201, fo. 151.

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conspiracy.119 All sorts of wild stories reached English merchants overseas during that nervous, plague-ridden summer: King James was dead, three or four great noblemen were in revolt.120 On 27 July, the bailiffs of Colchester wrote to Cecil telling him that when they had announced and celebrated the King’s coronation, word had suddenly spread through the crowd that Cecil had fled from Court, and that the King had promised a reward for his arrest.121 Five hundred ‘soldiers’ were levied in London for the coronation day, ‘to withstand any tumults and disorders’.122 Preparations on this scale, of course, disclose the fears of the time.

119 120 121 122

TNA, SP 46/60, fo. 173. TNA, SP 94/9, fo. 54v, letter from R. Cocks in Bayonne. Hatfield MS 101/102. F. Devon, Issues of the Exchequer . . . during the Reign of King James I (London, 1836), p. 7.

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The death sentences passed on Ralegh and his fellow prisoners left their lives in the King’s hands. If he had wished to do so, James could have chosen to pardon any of them, conditionally or unconditionally, or he could simply have suspended execution of sentence. For the moment, however, he did nothing, and courtiers found it hard to guess the intentions of a new monarch.While hoping for the best, the condemned men could only prepare for the worst, and Ralegh wrote another farewell letter to his wife. Predictably, this letter is similar to the lines penned just before Ralegh’s suicide attempt the previous summer. Sentiment mingles characteristically with sententious advice, pragmatic arrangements and a measure of common sense. Here he tells Bess that the Sherborne estate is safe – ‘honest cosen Brett can testifie soe much’ – and that ‘Baylie oweth mee 200li . . . Adrian Gilbert 600li’.There he urges her to dwell on the eternal: ‘teache your sonne alsoe to love and feare God whilst hee is yett younge’;‘Lett my good God hold you both in his armes’.‘Doe not hide your selfe’, he tells Bess,‘many dayes after my death but by your travailes seeke to help your miserable fortunes and the right of your poore child. Thy mourninge cannot availe mee: I am but dust.’ ‘God is my wittnesse I meant you all my office of wynes’, he insists. ‘But if you can live free from want, care for noe more: the rest is but vanitie.’ While we should read this as a public letter – there is no reference to an illegitimate daughter here – it never strays too far from personal affection. No one who glances at these lines can doubt that Ralegh loved his wife, in his own, particular fashion. One of the final paragraphs directs our thoughts to the land and the people who made the man: I cannot write much. God hee knowes how hardly I steale this tyme while others sleepe, and itt is alsoe high tyme that I should separate my thoughts from the world. Begg my dead body which liveinge was denyed thee and either laye itt att Shirbourne (if the land continue) or in Excester church by my father and mother. I can say noe more, tyme and death call mee away.

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As Joyce Youings notes, this is the only reference to his parents in Ralegh’s surviving letters. He was seldom inclined to look back along the road travelled.1 In the many copies that come down to us, this interesting letter is undated. Latham and Youings suggest that it was written after 4 December; the Bishop of Winchester, reporting to the Privy Council that day, thought that Ralegh yet displayed ‘a lingering expectation of life’, even though the Bishop’s very presence seemed to confirm the prisoners in their collective belief that execution was imminent.2 Ralegh’s scorn for ‘death, and all his mishapen and ouglye shapes’ is sometimes taken to refer to the traditional punishment meted out on those condemned for high treason, and some speculate, accordingly, that his words might have been prompted by the bungled, bloody executions of Watson and Clark, the Bye plotters, on 29 November.3 Death by hanging, drawing and quartering was fashioned by symbolism, and it was certainly not pretty. However, his phrase might just as easily have been elegant form; the ugliness of death was a commonplace in contemporary writing, this ugliness and the darkness of transition softened alike through penitence, patience and reconciliation to God’s will. There is less resignation in other letters. Ralegh wrote frantically to his friends, and to the King, pleading for his life, and a chance to make amends. In one letter sprinkled with scriptural references he begged, not for a pardon, but simply for ‘tyme att the kings mercifull hands’, for just a year’s respite from execution. He sought that year ‘to geve to God in a prison and to serve hyme’.4 The piety is touching, if not entirely convincing. Perhaps it was prompted by Popham’s pointed reference to atheism when passing sentence. Self abasement did not come easily; in writing to Bess Ralegh asked her to recover the many grovelling letters to monarch, statesmen and friends. I sought life on any terms only for you and for our son, he says, but now ‘I disdaine my selfe for begging itt’.5 The King and his Council soon decided to limit the number of executions. Dudley Carleton told John Chamberlain that counsellors had already 1 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 263–6. Note Professor Youings’ comments on the two versions of this letter (p. 265, n. 2). 2 Letters of Ralegh, p. 265; Hatfield MS 102/54. That was clearly what Cobham thought; see his letter to Cecil, Hatfield MS 102/59. 3 Letters of Ralegh, p. 266, n.11. 4 Ibid., p. 262. 5 Ibid., p. 265.

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‘joyned most in opinion and advise to the king now in the beginning of his reigne to shew as well examples of mercy and severity, and to gayne the title of Clemens as well as justus’.6 Interestingly, too, an influential Scots lobby pressed for mercy; their support was never forgotten by a grateful Ralegh.7 James, of course, noted the views of those around him. New monarchs usually tread carefully. We know that the King read a letter from Ralegh before 4 December, forwarded, apparently, by the Sheriff of Hampshire, Benjamin Tichborne.8 We know too that while James signed the death warrants for Markham, Grey and Cobham, he delayed doing so in Ralegh’s case ‘until the Lord Cobham’s death had given some light how far he would make good his accusation’, as Cecil described the thought processes soon afterwards.9 According to the Earl of Worcester, writing on 6 December, Ralegh was also given time to speak to Thomas Harriot, at his own request.10 Reading between many lines, it is likely that he had all along been marked out for clemency. James, however, did not wish to cut short the suspense. He sanctioned the execution of a penitent Brooke, arguably the most guilty of all the gentlemen involved, authorized Tichborne to prepare a scaffold – twelve feet square and railed about – and put Cobham, Grey and Markham, in turn, through a particularly grim charade.11 Each man was led to the block, believing that all hope had gone. In a final flourish, all three were obliged to stand on the scaffold and confess the justice of their fate; only then were they reprieved on the King’s command.12 James’s theatrical gesture at Winchester has about it something of the Duke’s justice, meted out at the end of Measure for Measure, first performed in 1604; it demonstrates a capriciousness which might be well-intentioned, but which harbours a sliver of malice and revenge. Ralegh is said to have watched in bemusement from his prison window, but he soon discovered that he would share in this strange act of mercy. James allowed him his life on 9 December. 6 Bodleian Library, MS Carte 80, fo. 626v. On the motives for clemency see also D. Newton, The Making of the Jacobean Regime: James VI and I and the government of England, 1603–1605 (London, 2005), p. 41. 7 See Letters of Ralegh, p. 309. 8 Hatfield MS 102/48. 9 E. Sawyer (ed.), Winwood, Memorials of affairs of state (London, 1725), ii, p. 11. 10 Lambeth MS 3201, fo. 159. 11 Hatfield MS 187/133. 12 A copy of the King’s warrant for a stay of execution in respect of Cobham and Grey is at Hatfield MS 102/62. See also MS 102/70.

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Thereafter, the tension eased swiftly.The guilty men were returned to their London gaols on 15 December.13 Just before Christmas, Dudley Carleton wrote to John Chamberlain, promising news of ‘our doings’ in and after the trials, and adding with some understatement that the principal prisoners, now ‘safe in the Tower’, were ‘more at harts ease’ than they had been at Winchester.14 Ralegh dutifully thanked both King and Cecil, and hoped for liberty. Initially, the signs were encouraging. Sir Griffin Markham, despite his central role in the Bye Plot, was soon released from the Tower and sent into exile, and both Anthony Copley and Bartholomew Brookesby, also convicted of treason in November, were freed and pardoned in 1604. Lord Zouche, a member of the Privy Council, wrote from Ludlow on 23 December 1603, expressing his delight at the King’s decision to avoid a series of executions, and hoping that James would now test the prisoners’ protestations of loyalty, something that could, of course, only be done by granting them their freedom.15 However, it gradually became clear that royal mercy had limits. Sparing the prisoners’ lives was one thing; setting them loose in the world once again was quite another. Grey remained incarcerated in the Tower until his death in 1614. Cobham, growing old, lonely and increasingly senile, surrounded by his excellent library in the Beauchamp Tower, was permitted a measure of freedom only in 1617, two years before his death.When the library was taken away from him, at the end of his life, it was said to contain ‘1000 good bookes of all learning and languages’.16 History has never quite judged him fairly. Things were no different with Ralegh. Initially he believed that, through Cecil’s good offices, he might yet be pardoned, or at least, like Markham, that freedom might lie in exile. He saw himself for what he truly was, a knight and gentleman, prudently drawing apart from the peers who shared his imprisonment. James would no doubt find it easier to spare the ‘small fry’. Perhaps he might one day permit Ralegh to build a new life ‘in Holland wher I shall perchance get sume imployment uppon the Indies’.17 There was no restraining his imagination. Eventually, though, even Ralegh began to realize that he was destined ‘to dy in perpetuall prison’, though he still could not bring himself to understand why. Surely, he wrote to the Secretary, surely 13 14 15 16 17

BL, Harley MS 2194, fo. 66. TNA, SP 14/5/20. Hatfield MS 102/89. TNA, SP 14/103/67, Thomas Wilson to the King, 2 November 1618. Letters of Ralegh, p. 284.

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Cecil would not wish to punish him in this way? But the decision did not lie with Cecil; every day of imprisonment made that more obvious.18 Incarceration was comfortable enough. Following some structural changes, during which he was lodged temporarily in the Brick Tower, he was allowed his two rooms in the Bloody Tower, a ‘stilhows’, or laboratory, a private garden for his exercise and congenial company.19 And, like Cobham, Ralegh had his books. Five hundred and fifteen titles in at least five languages are listed in his commonplace of c.1607.20 He received an allowance of £208 per annum for food, fuel and light, a figure later increased by 50%.The growls and cries from the animal pens of the Tower Menagerie, a couple of hundred yards distant, would perhaps have been comforting enough, once they had grown familiar rather than exotic.21 When Sir Gawen Harvey, son of the Lieutenant of the Tower, catalogued the letters from Cecil to his father late in 1605, he revealed arrangements that permitted fairly liberal access to the Tower’s more eminent prisoners. In 1604 and 1605, Cecil had sanctioned visits to Ralegh from John FitzJames, Lawrence Keymis, Dr Leonard Poe, Sir John Gilbert, ‘Captain Wood and Spilman’, Sir Carew Ralegh, ‘my Lord of Pembroke’s man’, Nicholas Sanders, Peter Vanlore, George Hull, Sir George Carey and John Shelbury. John Talbot, a secretary-cum-schoolmaster, also came and went, apparently as he pleased. Ralegh learned to trust and rely on Talbot, ‘one that lived with mee eleven yeares in the Tower, an excellent generall skoller and a faithfull trew man as lived’.22 There is no indication that anyone was actually refused access. The list of those authorized to visit Cobham in the same period is as long, while Lord Grey’s visitors, interestingly enough, include Ralegh’s brother-in-law Sir Arthur Throckmorton.23 At times, there is an impression of ‘come one, come all’. Casual sightseers 18 Ibid., p. 285. 19 TNA, SP 14/19/112. The enclosed garden of the Lieutenant’s lodging, extending towards Tower Green, is difficult to visualise today, but is shown clearly on the Haiward and Gascoyne survey of the Tower, executed in 1597. 20 W. Oakeshott,‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s library’, The Library, 5th series, 23 (1968), pp. 285–327. Ralegh rarely signed his books, but a further instance to those listed by Oakeshott is St John’s College Cambridge D.8.47, a copy of Werner Rolevinck’s highly popular Fasciculus Temporum ([Paris], 1518). 21 D. Hahn, The Tower Menagerie (London, 2003), p. 89. 22 J. M. Levine, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh and the ancient wisdom’, in B. Y. Kunze and D. D. Brautigam (eds), Court, Country and Culture: essays on early modern British history in honor of Perez Zagorin (Rochester, NY, 1992), pp. 89–108, at 95. 23 Hatfield MS 191/139.

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would occasionally chat with the prisoners, who do not seem to have felt at all restrained in their conversation. Frustrated by their somewhat insolent attitude, and possibly by the Council’s reluctance to order a closer confinement, the Lieutenant considered the prisoners, as a group, ‘impatient of any restraint’.24 Thomas Harriot (also serving in some more official capacity as his ‘steward’ at Sherborne), Walter Warner, and possibly Sir William Lower and that other dilettante astronomer Sir Allan Percy, the Earl of Northumberland’s brother, all dropped in on academic pretexts, using Ralegh’s growing library, and discussing new discoveries in the arts, sciences and in geography.25 From 1605, after his arrest on suspicion of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, Northumberland himself was a fellow prisoner, quartered in the Martin Tower at the opposite corner of the fortress. Others had travelled further. Two South Americans, brought back from the 1595 voyage and from subsequent expeditions, lived nearby and visited regularly. They were but two of the twenty or more native Americans brought to England over the years, on Ralegh’s orders.26 Indians from Trinidad and Guiana now called on him; by Ralegh’s own later account the future Cacique of Caliana was for two years his servant in the Tower.27 Meanwhile, George Percy, Northumberland’s youngest brother, set out for Jamestown with the first band of settlers, and remained there for more than five years, maintained at the Earl’s expense.28 Tower prisoners might have been locked away, but in the mind’s eye they roamed widely through their correspondence with friends and agents. Surviving lists for the libraries assembled by Ralegh and Northumberland indicate a division of the labour, Ralegh specializing in geography and history, while Northumberland collected books on military matters, mathematics, chemistry and architecture.29 Percy family tradition has it that a globe now at Petworth House, dating from 1592, was a gift from Ralegh to the Earl while both were prisoners in the Tower. Educational aids of this 24 Hatfield MS 189/2, 3 and 6. 25 Hatfield MS 115/21; J. W. Shirley, Thomas Harriot: a biography (Oxford, 1983), pp. 323–4. 26 A. T. Vaughan, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s Indian interpreters, 1584–1618’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 59 (2002), 341–76. 27 See Vaughan, ‘Ralegh’s Indian interpreters’, pp. 367–8. 28 M. Nicholls (ed.), ‘George Percy’s “Trewe Relacyon”: a primary source for the Jamestown settlement’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 113 (2005), 212–75. 29 Oakeshott, ‘Ralegh’s library’, p. 288. For Northumberland’s books see G. R. Batho’s article in The Library, 5th series, 15 (1960), 246–61.

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sort were commonly found in well-appointed libraries of the period, and Northumberland is known to have owned celestial and terrestrial globes while in captivity.30 If collaboration did indeed take place within the Tower, perhaps Cobham’s books – principally by classical authors, it would seem, though the precise details are lost – should also be considered as contributing to the shared library. Certainly these books were collected for a purpose. Scholarship was encouraged, by the King and by members of his Court; like Boethius, the prisoner was urged to find comfort in study. Cobham struggled with classical translation and in the early days of his confinement Lord Grey sent his mother a translation of Cyprian’s work on patience, pointing out in the accompanying letter that, like the Saints, he was now obliged to suffer in his faith.31 The remark was somehow typical of this temperamental, pious, wayward young man. Northumberland worked on literary conceits, and on a still very readable advice to his son, while Ralegh, as we shall see, trumped them all with his massive History and other significant works. Access granted so liberally to friends and servants was not usually denied to members of the prisoner’s close family. For much of the time, Ralegh’s wife and child were allowed to come, stay and go without significant restriction, and indeed a third son, Carew, was baptized in the Tower Church of St Peter ad Vincula on 15 February 1605. The name represented a nod towards both sides of the family; by chance, the baptismal name of Ralegh’s older brother was also the maiden name of Bess’s mother. Another namesake, the erudite Cornish antiquary Richard Carew of Antony, stood as a godfather.32 Anna Beer reflects on the couple’s childlessness across eleven years, and speculates that Ralegh might not have been the father, that Bess might indeed have had an affair with a peripheral courtier, Edmund Lascelles.This notion, however, depends on theories of Ralegh’s medical impotence caused by (hypothetical) syphilis supposedly contracted in Guiana, on one snippet of gossip, and on an equally problematic subsequent identification.33 Ralegh, though depressed by the financial implications of another child, seems to have accepted Carew without demur, and, if it is allowed that the couple 30 H. M.Wallis,‘The first English globe: a recent discovery’, Geographical Journal 117 (1951), 275–90. 31 Bodleian Library, MS Carte 80, fo. 604. 32 Richard Carew had dedicated his 1602 Survey of Cornwall to Ralegh. 33 A. R. Beer, My Just Desire: the life of Bess Ralegh, wife to Sir Walter (New York, 2003), pp. 166–8.

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had indeed experienced problems, conception in 1604 may simply reflect the fertility peak of a woman in her late thirties. Captivity in fact seemed to draw Ralegh and Bess closer together, just as it smoothed away the disputes and frustrations between the Earl and Countess of Northumberland. Like the Countess, Lady Ralegh showed enduring strength in adversity. She did not hesitate to denounce Henry Howard directly for his underhand hostility. She sat for a striking portrait, now in the National Gallery of Ireland, marshalled her kinswomen to support her continuing appeals for fair financial treatment and took a house on Tower Hill, convenient in its proximity to her husband’s gaol. Bess’s continued presence in or about the Tower came to be assumed, to the extent that, when the terms of Ralegh’s imprisonment were tightened in 1611 by order of the Council, the prisoner begged Sir Walter Cope, Chamberlain of the Exchequer, to ‘move my Lord Treasorer in my behalf, that by his grace my wife might agayne be made a prisoner with me, as she hath bine for six yeeres last past’. The Lord Treasurer was none other than Robert Cecil, by now Earl of Salisbury. Formally, if perhaps a touch ironically, Ralegh rested confident in Cecil’s underlying affection and good nature:‘the blessings of God cannot make him cruell that was never so’. His desire that Bess should be with him in that ‘unsavery place’ was, Ralegh argued, but a minor detail.34 Bess did not necessarily regard the matter in the same way. She had proved particularly reluctant to comply with the new measures, and the Council had been obliged to direct the Lieutenant of the Tower, rather prissily, that ‘Lady Raleighe must understand his Majisties express will and commandment that she resort to her house on Tower Hill, or elsewhere, with her women and souns to remayne there, and not to lodg hereafter within the Tower’.35 The King’s wishes remained all important, and for James the matter was still personal.When in September 1606 Bess had come to Court and knelt before him, James had simply sidestepped the obstacle, walking by without a word.36 For all the family bravado, confinement vexed and burdened Ralegh. He experienced periods of deep depression, even allowing for the doleful common form that pads out his business letters to Cecil and other Counsellors. ‘For myne owne tyme,’ he tells Cecil in the winter of 1604–5, ‘good my lord consider that it cannot be calde a life but only misery drawn out and spoone 34 Letters of Ralegh, p. 332. 35 HMC, Eighth Report Appendix I, p. 88b; BL, Add. MS 11402, fo. 112. 36 Lambeth MS 3202, fo. 65.

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into a long thride’.37 From the earliest days of his imprisonment, Ralegh suffered from some form of ‘palsy’ or paralysis, and from a chronic shortage of breath.38 As he told Cecil in 1605, ‘I am every second or third night in danger ether of suddayne death, or of the loss of my lymes and sense, being sumetyme two howres without feeling or motion of my hand and whole arm.’39 Dr Leonard Poe, a practitioner with a fashionable clientele, attended him in September 1604, and in March 1606 Peter Turner, another greatly respected physician, found that Ralegh was complaining of a numbness in his left side, ‘and his tong taken in sum parte, in so mych that he speketh wekely’.40 Turner recommended a move to warmer quarters, only to find the Council much less sympathetic. In the winter of 1610–11 Bess reported that her husband had ‘been lately punished with an extreame cold’.41 With Ralegh, there is always a suspicion of exaggeration, or a neurotic pessimism, and he understandably hoped that a long list of symptoms would eventually elicit some measure of pity, even though nobody ever seemed to listen. ‘I complayn not of it’, he wrote to Cecil, musing on his health.‘I know it vayne for ther is none that hath compassion therof.’42 While his life had been spared, Ralegh still had to face the other unpalatable consequences of a conviction for treason. Legally, he was a dead man; his lands and goods lay at the King’s disposal. Monarchs did not always respond vindictively in these situations, particularly if there were dependent relatives to consider, and James was at first minded to be generous. Ralegh’s goods and chattels were granted to his servants John Shelbury and Robert Smith on 14 February 1604 for the use of his wife and child, specifically in order to settle his many debts.43 Ralegh’s wine licencees were ordered by the Privy Council to pay their arrears to the trustees one week later, and the right to grant wine licences was given to Ralegh’s old ally the Earl of Nottingham and his son only in December 1604. Shelbury and Smith dutifully discharged their obligations. In the circumstances it was difficult to protect every interest; predators had been eyeing Ralegh’s property ever since his arrest. On 16 October 1603 Cecil had written to the Scots courtier 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Letters of Ralegh, p. 287. Ibid., p. 285. Ibid., p. 292. TNA, SP 14/19/112. BL, Add. MS 72709, fo. 1. Letters of Ralegh, p. 292. T. Rymer, Foedera, Conventiones, Literae . . . (London, 1726–35), xvi, pp. 569–72.

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Sir James Elphinstone, warning him that others also hoped for profit from Ralegh’s downfall, and adding, frankly, that there was in any case little to secure.44 Ralegh’s principal estate was, after all, entailed to his son, and so did not fall into the Crown’s hands following the sentence passed at Winchester. This, of course, was the prisoner’s chief consolation. On 3 August 1604 the Sherborne estate was granted by letters patent to family trustees, who held it on behalf of Lady Ralegh and young Walter for the duration of Ralegh’s life.45 Unfortunately, the consolation was short lived. Within months it became apparent that the conveyance of the Sherborne estate to Wat, dated 20 January and sealed on 12 April 1603, contained a flaw. The clerk who had copied it from a draft had omitted ten crucial words. Legally, this omission left Ralegh in freehold possession of the estate at the time of his treason and trial, and Sherborne was thus, after all, forfeit to the King.46 James havered, wondering whether to honour the spirit rather than the letter of the deed, and to confirm Ralegh’s family in possession, but the pressure of Court obligations eroded altruism, and by the end of 1609 the land had passed to James’s favourite, the handsome Scot Robert Carr. Ralegh wrote to Carr, urging a man whose ‘faire day is but now in the dawne’ against erecting his ‘first buildings upon the ruines of the innocent’. If Sherborne were lost, he noted, ‘there remaynes nothing with me but the name of life, dispoiled of all ells but the title and sorrow thereof ’.47 Would any compassionate man seek a family’s ruin in this way? But Carr was the rising star; the Ralegh of twenty years earlier. Sherborne was soon his. This was the nature of patronage and reward at the Jacobean Court. A favourite’s path to fortune invariably meant that others missed out, while others still sometimes lost property or possessions. As a libel later written against Carr put it, the pretty Scot had looted everything he possessed from competitors and rivals:

44 Hatfield MS 101/157. 45 Letters of Ralegh, p. 284. 46 A signed counterpart survives at Sherborne Castle (SHR/C/M). The conveyance was made to Sir Arthur Throckmorton, Alexander Brett (Bess’s cousin) and Thomas Harriot. The words ‘That the said Sir Walter should stand and be seized’ are omitted from the twentieth line. The volume of Deeds 1593–1610 at Sherborne identifies the missing words at fo. 17. 47 Letters of Ralegh, p. 308.

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Rawley thy house, Westmorland thy lands, Overbury thy witt, Essex thy wife demands.48

John Chamberlain, who always relished the turn of fortune’s wheel, commented that for all Bess’s desperate efforts to retain the property it was ‘past recall’. Now Ralegh might readily ‘say with Job naked came I into the world and naked shall I go out’. Chamberlain captured a sentiment obviously common among Londoners at the time: the oversight, he wrote,‘is said to be so grosse, that men do meerly ascribe yt to Gods owne hand that blinded him and his counsaile’.49 Gross it was, but such things are there to be spotted in legal documents if one goes looking for them. Others had more sympathy for the prisoner, less patience with the contrivances of lawyers. Is John Webster condemning Ralegh’s treatment when in The White Devil he likens whores to ‘those brittle evidences of law/Which forfeit all a wretched man’s estate/ For leaving out one syllable’? The consequences were serious indeed. With the estate first in question, and then lost, creditors pressed urgently for their money while sources of new credit dried up.50 Again, however, the process was not as brutal as it appears. After protracted negotiations, and with some assistance from Cecil, the Raleghs secured generous compensation: a lump sum of £8,000 and an annuity of £400, payable to trustees for the lives of Bess and young Wat, then an undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.The three trustees were all men who had stood by the Raleghs in bad times as well as good: his old friend Thomas Harriot, the lawyer John Shelbury and Ralegh’s loyal lieutenant and companion Lawrence Keymis.51 Ready money was always prized at Court, and Bess was very soon able to lend a substantial sum to the Countess of Bedford in return for an annuity. As for Sherborne, it changed hands again and again in these years, always just out of reach of the ever hopeful Raleghs. Intending it for his eldest son, the King purchased the estate from Carr in February 1610, and Carr then repurchased it after Prince Henry’s untimely death in November 1612. 48 See P. Croft, ‘Libels, popular literacy and public opinion in early modern England’, Historical Research 68 (1995), 279. 49 Letters of Chamberlain, i, p. 280, letter of 10 January 1609. 50 HMC, Report on manuscripts in various collections,Volume VIII (London, 1913), pp. 3–4. 51 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 313–15. The recipient of Ralegh’s letter, apparently Cecil, has been generous and helpful in devising the terms. Sherborne Castle, SHR/C/M, Legal Documents 1593–1610, fos 19r-23v.

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Occasionally, alteration was forced upon the routine of prison life. The Tower of London was a royal palace, and as such it was required during the ceremonial entry of the new King and Queen to London during March 1604, an event held over from the coronation festivities of the previous summer on account of the plague. Prisoners were moved out as the monarch and court moved in. For a couple of weeks Ralegh, Cobham and Grey were transferred across the city to the Fleet Prison.52 Other changes had a more lasting impact. The appointment of a new Lieutenant was always a sensitive time for prisoners, and when the fussy, diligent former diplomat William Waad was sworn in during August 1605 several key prisoners kept their distance, not quite liking or trusting what they saw. In Waad’s own version of events, Cobham was sullen, his mood swings verging on insanity. Ralegh, characteristically, at first expressed his dislike of the new man, then tried to be civil.53 The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 sparked fresh disruptions. Shocked by the scale of this treason, the Government explored some tenuous links between Ralegh and the most prominent plotters, Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby.The most fruitful line of enquiry led from the unfortunate Northumberland, now also imprisoned in the Tower. Evidence provided under interrogation very soon demonstrated that the Earl’s distant cousin and trusted estate officer Thomas Percy, a man whom Northumberland had appointed a Gentleman Pensioner, a member of the King’s own bodyguard, had been closely involved in the plot for the past eighteen months. Percy had leased the vault under the House of Lords, where Guy Fawkes, posing as his servant, had lurked with dark lantern, watch and a slow fuse on the night of 4 November, awaiting his moment to detonate nearly a ton of gunpowder. There were other grounds for suspicion as well. Northumberland had dined with Percy at Syon House on 4 November, and King James, not unnaturally, suspected that the Earl might have been warned to stay away from Parliament on the following day. If Northumberland was indeed complicit in treason, his old friendship with Ralegh took on new significance. Ralegh, it transpired, had recently been in contact with Captain Edmund Whitelock, one-time supporter of Essex, and subsequently a client of the Percy family.54

52 TNA, E407/56, fo. 99, bill of the lieutenant of the Tower for January to March 1604. 53 Hatfield MS 112/13. Note the biography of Waad by Fiona Bengtsen, Sir William Waad, lieutenant of the Tower, and the Gunpowder plot (Victoria, BC, 2005). 54 Hatfield MS 112/160.

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Whitelock had also been present at the Syon dinner party.55 The plotters had spoken of recruiting Tower prisoners to their cause, of mobilizing all the discontented people of England, regardless of religion. Had these contacts facilitated such a mobilization?56 Moreover, Ralegh had on occasion spoken to the wife of the recently departed French ambassador, Beaumont, another good friend of Northumberland who was independently suspected of some involvement in the Gunpowder treason. All of these circumstances were put to Ralegh, who quickly dismissed them. He had, so he insisted, no ‘other affaire with Captain Whitlock then familier and ordinarie discource’. From time to time he had indeed tested the old friendship with Northumberland through indirect channels – he was looking for allies wherever they might be found – but he had always received ‘a drie and frindless awnswere’. As for the Ambassador’s wife, he had merely spoken politely to her in the presence of another lady. Aware of his growing reputation as a chemist, she had, he recalled, asked for ‘a little balsemum of Guiana’, and ‘Whitlock being then in her cumpany I sent it by hym to her’.57 What could possibly be sinister in that? In the tense aftermath of treason, however, no one was prepared to accept straightforward answers. Along with two surviving plotters, Fawkes and Thomas Winter, Northumberland faced further questioning on his connections with Ralegh, while Sir Walter was himself interviewed by the Council. Trying to offset the inevitable damage done by notoriety and rumour, Ralegh soon afterwards walked along the wall in his garden, so that the public could see him happy, and resolute. Waad regarded this as an attempt to suggest that the Lords had called Ralegh before them to clear him rather than to investigate his recent actions, even to give him permission for Wat to travel on the Continent, or to allow his doctors greater flexibility in their visits.A suspicious man, as Lieutenants of the Tower had to be, he duly tightened the restraints on his charge.58 Bess for her part came under suspicion for some autumnal ‘spring cleaning’. She had recently ordered the polishing of armour at Sherborne, an action which Ralegh, with absolute lack of gallantry, discounted as merely the folly of one whose imperfections he really ought to conceal!59 55 TNA, SP 14/216/137. 56 M. Nicholls, ‘Strategy and motivation in the Gunpowder plot’, Historical Journal 50 (2007), 787–807, at 794–5. 57 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 295–6. 58 Hatfield MS 113/88. 59 Hatfield MS 113/94, Waad to Salisbury, 13 December 1605.

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There was, of course, no good reason to interpret domestic economy as a preparation for treasonous military action. Some of this thin evidence, however, demonstrated the depth of loyalty to Ralegh in the south-west of England, while the trenchant comments on English justice overheard by John Wodenothe in the crowd that watched the Earl of Northumberland’s trial in Star Chamber on 27 June 1606, proved that this personal sympathy extended to the heart of London as well.60 As James and his ministers recognized through their determination to sift every shred of testimony, their prisoner and his ordeal at Winchester were far from forgotten. Nerves settled, and the Gunpowder investigations eventually subsided without incriminating Ralegh. Northumberland was less fortunate. He was convicted of several ‘contempts’, and was sentenced to imprisonment at the King’s pleasure. Although no substantial charge was ever brought against him, the Earl remained a prisoner in the Tower until an amnesty on the King’s fifty-fifth birthday, in 1621.61 Imprisonment under sentence of death for high treason did not necessarily hinder the pursuit of a Jacobean gentleman’s favourite pastime – litigation. In February 1611 Ralegh, through his agents John Shelbury and Robert Smith, launched a suit against his erstwhile financier, William Sanderson.62 This process has from the start an appearance of futility, profitable only for lawyers. Shelbury and Smith accused Sanderson of fraudulent accounting when handling sums raised for Ralegh’s Guiana expedition, a charge that was almost impossible to prove. The long and complex series of events at the heart of the case already lay in the distant past, while the business methods of an experienced merchant financier were of course ingenious and obscure. Taking the case to court may have been one move in a bid to force a favourable final settlement from Sanderson, but the attempt, if such it was, backfired, and proceedings dragged on for at least two years, Sanderson growing convinced that a key document had been tampered with by Ralegh’s men. Crushed by debts of his own, Sanderson was in no position to settle out 60 Hatfield MSS 113/33 (the examination of Harry Wattes on 23 November 1605), 119/151, 119/152. 61 On these events and the process against Northumberland see M. Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot (Manchester, 1991), pp. 185–210. 62 ODNB, under Sanderson; TNA, C24/372/125 and 126; STAC 8/260/4; J. W. Shirley, ‘SirWalter Raleigh’s Guiana finances’, Huntington Library Quarterly 13 (1949–50), 55–69; R. A. McIntyre, ‘William Sanderson: Elizabethan financier of discovery’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 13 (1956), pp. 184–201.

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of court, or indeed to back down. Necessity and common purpose brought together the most unlikely allies in an early modern courtroom. Those who supported Ralegh through their testimony included John Meere, here giving short shrift to Sanderson’s principal argument for forgery.63 1611 was a particularly difficult year. That summer, Ralegh faced lengthy questioning by members of the Privy Council, among them his old nemesis Henry Howard, now Earl of Northampton. These new suspicions seem to have grown out of charges recently laid against the Earl of Northumberland by his former servant, Timothy Elks. Northumberland, so Elks insisted, had known rather more about the Gunpowder Plot than had hitherto been revealed, and – dragging in a name from the past – he had confided in the by now deceased Whitelock. These were dangerous days for Northumberland; the King had always suspected that he might have been directly involved in the treason, and it now seemed that those suspicions had been well founded.64 This Whitelock connection explains, in part, the renewed attention paid to Ralegh, but there was another, equally significant reason. Once again demonstrating his ability to choose the wrong moment, Ralegh had recently begun to write discourses criticizing the marriages with the house of Savoy proposed for Prince Henry and his sister by the Council in the spring of 1611. The initial manuscript had been widely circulated, and his strong opposition to this Catholic double wedding had made quite an impact.65 Those who favoured the alliance, including the King, Cecil and Henry Howard, were less than pleased. Hostility runs through these summer investigations, in contrast to relatively gentlemanly proceedings during the far more significant events of 1603 and 1605. Following the examination of Northumberland, Howard told Robert Carr that the counsellors had had ‘a bout with Sir Walter Ralegh’, and that they had found him ‘as bold, proud and passionate as ever. The lawless liberty of the Tower, so long cockered and fostered with hopes exorbitant, [had] bred suitable desires and affections. And yet’, Howard concluded, ‘your lordship may assure His Majesty that by this publication he hath won little ground.’66 These developments baffled ordinary Londoners. John More told William Trumbull that, in the common opinion of the street, Ralegh had been placed 63 See R. Davies, Thomas Harriot and the Guiana voyage in 1595 (Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar Occasional Paper 24, [1997]), pp. 10–12; above, Chapter Eight, p. 175. 64 Nicholls, Investigating Gunpowder Plot, pp. 200–1. 65 See below, Chapter Eleven (i), pp. 248–9. 66 Letters of Ralegh, p. 329, n. 3.

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under close arrest for his ‘unseasonable and untrue brags that the Lord Cobham doth now repent him of his accusation’.67 The old ‘injustice’ of the Winchester courtroom was still a topic of conversation in educated circles, a matter which required no elaboration. As usual, Ralegh faced up to hostility rather well. It was the tedium of endless captivity that really tested his morale. Now he fought back energetically, deploring the injustices of circumstance that left him, ‘after eyght yeers imprissonment . . . as straygtly lockt up as I was the first day’. Corresponding with Queen Anne, he declared that, given a choice, he would prefer to ‘dye, once for all, and therby to give end to the miseries of this life, than to strive against the ordinance of God, who is a trew judge of my innocencie towards the King’.68 By then, he knew his friends. The Queen had all along shown sympathy to the Tower prisoners. Some suggest that this was one of the few means she had of hurting an inconsiderate and neglectful husband, but it is possible that expectations were being carefully managed; James derived no benefit from denying his prominent prisoners all hope of mercy. Anne pleaded for Ralegh’s release, and rather ostentatiously dined at Syon House in June 1607. But in the short term these gestures were to no avail.69 The frustrations of imprisonment weighed particularly heavily when the teenager Wat, on leaving Oxford, set out on a tour of the Continent in 1612, accompanied by the poet and playwright Ben Jonson. Jonson’s own memories provide us with vignettes of a lively, rather disturbing progress through northern Europe. Parisians were alienated by eccentric references to the crucifixion – Wat took an inebriated Jonson round the streets, spread-eagled on a cart – while Ralegh’s money was squandered without thought.The unlikely travelling companions returned to England just over a year later, though Wat promptly headed back to the Continent to fight a duel.While Bess, according to Jonson, took the reports of wild behaviour in her stride, seeing the father in the son and recalling Ralegh’s energy and outspokenness as a young man, Sir Walter, the wisdom of age now upon him, was infuriated by Wat’s crude gestures. Anna Beer justifiably suggests that these differing reactions highlight the close relationship that had developed between mother and son, but there is, if we can trust Jonson’s tale, also a reliable and rather obvious clue here to 67 HMC, Manuscripts of the Marquess of Downshire Volume III (London, 1938), pp. 108–9, letter dated 18 July 1611. 68 Letters of Ralegh, p. 329. 69 On the Syon dinner see Alnwick Castle, DNP: MS 101, fo. 35; Syon MS U.I.50(4c), a breving book for expenses in the Tower.

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the nature of relations between Ralegh and Wat.70 It may be that the father knew his boy rather too well, and that he was alarmed by this knowledge. Some of the older man’s concern was justified. Wat was quick-tempered, actually a very violent youth, a lusty fighter, never put out of countenance or baffled, as Aubrey elegantly gives it. Even by the standards of Jacobean England, his sense of humour was heavy, and crude. At Oxford, during Coursing, or the highly competitive process of disputing theses in the Schools of the University which often led to tensions and fights among the Colleges, he ‘putt a turd in the box, and besmeared it about his antagonist’s face’.71 Amid preparations for the Guiana expedition of 1617, father and son were invited to a grand dinner, and Ralegh, sensing trouble, prudently extracted a promise to behave. When Wat forgot himself and made an inappropriate remark at table, Sir Walter gave him ‘a damned blow over the face’. Wat did not presume to hit back. Instead, he turned in his chair, struck ‘over the face the Gentleman that sate next to him, and sayed “Box about: ’twill come to my Father anon”’. The witticism, such as it was, lived on: Aubrey reflected that ‘Box about’ had become a ‘common-used Proverb’.72 A good deal of this is predictable. Ralegh’s anger, at the dinner table and on hearing of Wat’s escapades overseas, amounted to a recognition that he was himself now so far away, in space and time, from the delights of an active life that confronted his son. The reflection preyed on his mind. He fretted that he might be forgotten, and become irrelevant in a world that had moved on. When the spectacular scandal surrounding the mysterious death of Sir Thomas Overbury broke in 1615, Ralegh’s name was at no point brought into play.73 New prisoners arrived in the Tower, and departed, but for Ralegh, as for Grey, Cobham and Northumberland, there seemed no way out of gaol, no way back to freedom, and a life lived close to the centre of affairs. If anything, the prospects of release appeared to recede as the years passed, and, significantly perhaps, after the deaths of Robert Cecil in 1612 and Henry Howard – ‘his majestie’s 70 Beer, My Just Desire, pp. 194–5. 71 A. Clark (ed.), ‘Brief Lives,’ Chiefly of Contemporaries, Set Down by John Aubrey (Oxford, 1898), ii, p. 194. 72 O. L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives (London, 1949), p. 256. 73 On the Overbury affair see D. Lindley, Trials of Frances Howard: fact and fiction in the court of King James (London, 1993). Overbury, like Ralegh, was infamous for his pride. One contemporary remarked that it was ‘a great question who was the proudest, Sir Walter or Sir Thomas Overbury, but the difference that was, was judged on Sir Thomas’s side’ (Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, p. 254).

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erwigg/With a Papistical bald crowne, and a Protestant perewigg’, as one hostile epitaph had it – in 1614.74 Neglect and oblivion might be fought off in various ways. From his cell, Ralegh continued to sponsor exploration in the Americas, augmenting his memories of Guiana, and digging out an ever richer goldmine in his mind. The lure of gold and silver was powerful. Quite early on, Ralegh’s prospects for release appeared to turn on the feasibility of another voyage, retracing the preliminary expedition of 1595. He was staking everything, more and more obsessively, on the vision of golden mountains, of treasure deep within a far-off continent. Every adventure across the Atlantic, English, Spanish and French, was turned to serve that purpose. As Joyce Lorimer points out, the (unfounded) enthusiasm created by Christopher Newport’s mineral samples brought home from Jamestown, coupled with a temporary deterioration in Anglo-Spanish relations, ‘prompted Ralegh to see the Guiana mines, which had been of little interest to him in 1595, as his ticket to freedom from the Tower’.75 In the summer of 1607 he approached the Secretary, and suggested that if Cecil and Queen Anne would each take a third stake in the venture, which he calculated would cost £5,000, then he and his friends would finance the rest. Ralegh had worked out answers to the obvious objections: he himself would travel under another’s command, as a private gentleman, so as to guarantee his return to England. It would doubtless reassure James to know that he had a well-placed Scot, John Ramsay, Viscount Haddington, in mind for this command. ‘Wee will break no peace, invade none of the Spanish towns. Wee will only trade with the Indiens and see none of that nation except they assayle us.’76 Remembering the process of creative rewriting that had sharpened Ralegh’s rather vague accounts of mines in Guiana eleven years before, Cecil declined the bait, though he could never quite discount the possibility of wealthy conquests in the New World, and allowed or even encouraged the prisoner to bring back fresh proposals four years later.77 Others were much more ready to listen, caught up as they were by gold-fever. ‘Sir Walter Raleigh’, wrote John Chamberlain late in 1609, ‘hath a ship come from Guiana richly laden they say with gold ore, and Sir Thomas Rowe with a 74 See Croft, ‘Libels, popular literacy and public opinion’, p. 278. 75 J. Lorimer, Untruth and Consequences: Ralegh’s Discoverie of Guiana and the “salting” of the gold mine (Hakluyt Society Annual Lecture for 2006), p. 14. 76 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 297–301. 77 Ibid., pp. 322–5, 333.

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ship and pinnesse is going that way to seeke his fortune.’78 Later that year Ralegh is found cultivating Henry Prince of Wales, then fifteen years old, advising him on shipbuilding in a long, technical letter recommending a compact design with appropriate gun lines.79 There are indications, clearer when viewed in retrospect, that Ralegh saw in the young man a personal and a national future blessing. Scrutiny of the surviving evidence prevents us from reading too much into this unequal friendship. As Anna Beer has pointed out, Henry received and responded to many applications for patronage. ‘A search for favour has been consistently inflated by scholars into a special relationship.’80 However, it is also possible to dismiss too easily the many clues that point to a potentially significant patron–client alliance. Both Cecil and Henry Howard were wary of Ralegh’s influence with the young prince.81 All that charisma, coming together, might prove problematic. Besides, the truth is not always as important as a widely shared public perception. Tradition has it that Henry stood aghast at his father’s treatment of Ralegh: no one else, he suggested, ‘would keep such a bird in a cage’.82 One Spanish agent in London, writing soon after the Prince’s death, reported it as fact that Henry had secured a pledge from his father to set Ralegh free.83 Whatever the true nature of their relationship, Prince Henry’s death from typhoid in 1612 – despite the application in extremis of a ‘quintessence’ supplied by Ralegh, ‘which he sayes they shold have applied sooner’ – was clearly a blow to the prisoner’s hopes of liberty.84 Regime change, or even the ever closer prospect of such change, would surely have improved Ralegh’s lot; it was understandable that he dwelt thereafter on a lost future. With no prospect of better times to come, he stopped work on his The History of the World. Ralegh drew the great book to a close with the rise of Rome. ‘It hath pleased God’, he wrote, ‘to take that glorious Prince out of the world, to whom [the words in his History] were directed; whose unspeakable and never enough lamented losse, hath taught mee to say with Job, Versa est in 78 Letters of Chamberlain, i, p. 292. 79 See below, Chapter Eleven, p. 250. 80 A. R. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers in the Seventeenth Century, Speaking to the People (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 24. 81 S. R. Gardiner, History of England from the accession of James I to the outbreak of the Civil War, 1603–42 (London, 1883–4), ii, p. 137. 82 E. Lodge, Portraits of lllustrious Personages of Great Britain,Volume IV (London, 1835), sub. Henry Prince of Wales. 83 J. Lorimer (ed.), Sir Walter Ralegh’s Discoverie of Guiana (London, 2006), pp. 296–7. 84 Letters of Chamberlain, i, p. 389.

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Luctum Cithara mea, et Organum meum in vocem flentium.’85 No one can set aside so public a valediction. As for the medicine which failed to save Henry’s life, Ralegh’s ‘cordial’ became famous, its properties passing into legend.86 Soon after Sir Walter’s death, the scholarly Bathsua Makin nurtured her lifelong interest in healing through the acquisition from Bess of ‘all Sir W[alter] Ralegh’s receipts’. She is said by Samuel Hartlib to have been ‘very well acquainted’ with Ralegh’s son Carew, but her interest is symptomatic of the respect that Ralegh’s work seems to have commanded.87 Even in the eighteenth century the Hanoverian royal family were prepared to try his most ambitious recipe as a treatment of last resort. According to the diary of the Earl of Egmont, when George II’s consort Queen Caroline fell ill with complications following a rupture in November 1737, she was given Ralegh’s cordial to ease the pain, for it proved to be ‘the only thing stayed with her’. Some improvement was noted that same night, but this was not sustained, and the unfortunate Queen died ten days later.88 The concoction of cordials is in character. An undated letter from Sir Charles Cavendish to the Countess of Shrewsbury, and the dedication in the 1596 edition of Paracelsus’s 114 Experiments and Cures prepared by John Hester point to a longstanding interest in medicine.89 A collection of chemical and medical recipes in Ralegh’s hand survives in the British Library, and he is credited, often spuriously, with creating many a pill or salve.90 That reputation, of course, did nothing to dispel the doubts surrounding Ralegh’s character. Nostrums and poisons, the curative and the fatal arts, lay close together in the public imagination. Earlier in 1612, reporting the death of Sir Philip Sidney’s daughter Elizabeth, the dowager Countess of Rutland, John Chamberlain remarked that Ralegh had been ‘slaundered to have geven her certain pilles that dispatcht her’, and when Ralegh himself fell sick in

85 HW, Book 5, Chapter 6, Section 12. 86 An extraordinary version was presented by the physician Nicaise Le Fèvre in the 1660s to the Royal Society. According to Le Fèvre the cordial’s ingredients included pearls, musk, ambergris, the stone of the oriental bezoar, serpentary of Virginia and herbs (Le Fèvre, A Discourse Upon Sir Walter Rawleigh’s Great Cordial (London, 1664)). 87 See ODNB, under Makin. 88 HMC, Diary of the first Earl of Egmont,Volume II (London, 1923), p. 442. 89 Lambeth MS 3203, fo. 378; ESTC 19180. On Ralegh as chemist see P. Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh écrivain: l’oeuvre et les idées (Paris, 1968), pp. 678–82. 90 BL, Sloane MS 359.

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February 1615 some, the cynical Chamberlain among them, quickly put the illness down to his chemical experiments.91 One or two contemporaries suggested that Ralegh’s interest in experimental science ran deeper still. He is said to have built a furnace for smelting metal, to have worked on the purification of salt water and to have studied methods for preserving meat on ocean voyages. Taking enthusiasm and expertise for granted, Francis Bacon wondered whether Ralegh, and Northumberland, might be actively encouraged to carry forward experimental work in their Tower cells. The prisoner’s strategy here is perfectly clear. Ralegh was staying, by one means or another, in the public eye. He was never an easy man to overlook: as early as September 1603 Londoners were reminded that the Rappahannock Indians who staged a display of canoeing on the Thames had been brought back by an expedition sailing under his sponsorship to search for the lost colonists.92 Writing popular history, concocting cure-alls, commenting on political developments, walking in the grounds of the Tower and saluting passers-by, he made sure that, despite the passage of years, no one could quite forget the King’s most notorious prisoner.

91 Letters of Chamberlain, i, pp. 374, 377, 582. 92 A. T. Vaughan, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s Indian interpreters, 1584–1618’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 59 (2002), p. 357.

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11(i)

The Tower Writings:The Tracts

Like many before and after him, from Boethius and Thomas More to John Bunyan and Charles I, Sir Walter Ralegh found that imprisonment provided the time to write without distractions.1 During the first decade of his long incarceration he converted himself into something like a one-man thinktank, issuing a flow of tracts on the affairs of the day and on broad issues of statecraft. Their number and their range are striking. All those written between 1603 and 1613 circulated initially in manuscript and were printed only later, in every case after Ralegh’s death. ‘Publication’ by the circulation of manuscripts was still common practice in the early seventeenth century and had certain advantages. In particular, manuscript texts were more difficult to censor and could be freely passed round groups of friends.2 Ralegh had published two works in print before his imprisonment: A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Iles of the Acores and The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana.3 The Report described the final fight and heroic death of Ralegh’s cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, who had sailed to the Azores in 1591 with an English fleet under Lord Thomas Howard in the hope of capturing the Spanish treasure fleet on its return from the Indies. Unhappily a much bigger Spanish fleet of fifty-three vessels caught them there. Whether Ralegh was moved to write in order to defend the honour of his kinsman or to counter Spanish boasts of victory is uncertain: either or both are possible. Certainly he wanted to celebrate the heroism of Grenville without denigrating the more powerful, and living, Howard. 1 A. R. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers in the Seventeenth Century, Speaking to the People (Basingstoke, 1997) is essential for Ralegh’s prose writings in the Tower; appendices 1 and 2 list these works fully. 2 A. R. Beer, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s Dialogue betweene a counsellor of state and a justice of peace’, in S. Clucas and R. Davies (eds), The Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parliament (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 127–41, at 128–9. 3 Above, Chapter Five, for The Discoverie. Both works are published in facsimile by Scolar Press (London, 1967); the Report is now sometimes referred to as The Last Fight of the Revenge; Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 3–6; Beer, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s Dialogue’, pp. 127–31.The best account of the last fight of the Revenge is in A. L. Rowse, Sir Richard Grenville of the ‘Revenge’ (London, 1937), pp. 300–20.

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The writing is vigorous and direct, the narrative compelling. Ralegh opens with a blast against the claims of the Spaniards, who according to their usuall maner, fill the world with their vaine glorious vaunts, making great apparance of victories: when on the contrary, themselves are most commonly & shamefully beaten and dishonoured.

By contrast, he claims, the English celebrated true honour without boasting. Ralegh turns then to the story of the encounter. Howard, with six of the Queen’s ships and six supply vessels, together with the Barke Ralegh and some pinnaces, was anchored off Flores, the most westerly island of the Azores, when he was warned that the Spanish fleet was sailing towards him from Ferrol. About half the men in each ship were sick and many of the rest were ashore. Howard decided to weigh anchor and abandon his station, but the Revenge delayed as it picked up the men ashore. While Howard and the rest of the fleet got clear, Grenville refused ‘to turne from the enimie, affirming that he would rather chose to dye, then to dishonor himselfe, his countrie, and her Maiesties shippe’. Ralegh admits that ‘the other course had beene the better’, but insists that Grenville refused to take flight ‘oute of the greatnesse of his minde’. The Revenge was soon surrounded by huge Spanish galleons, each with a company of soldiers. The fight began at three o’clock in the afternoon and lasted well into the night. By daybreak, after fifteen hours of fighting, the English had run out of ammunition and the Revenge was unable to move. Grenville, seriously wounded, ordered his Master Gunner to split and sink the ship rather than let her fall into the hands of the enemy. The Master Gunner would have obeyed, but the Captain and the ship’s Master begged Grenville to try for a ‘composition’ with the enemy, arguing that those sailors who were not wounded could still do the Queen good service if they were allowed to live.The majority of the ship’s company sided with life rather than death and the Master was taken to the Spanish General, Don Alphonso Bazan, who offered terms: the prisoners would be spared and would be taken to England, where the ‘better sorte’ would pay a reasonable ransom. These terms were agreed by the company in the Revenge, it being, wrote Ralegh, ‘no hard matter to diswade men from death to life’. Grenville was then taken aboard Don Alphonso’s ship, where he died of his wounds. The conduct of the English commanders raised controversy in London. Some criticized Howard for not coming to the rescue of the Revenge. To this Ralegh replied that ‘the verie hugeness of the Spanish fleet . . . would

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have crusht them between them into shivers’.The dishonour and loss to the Queen would have been greater than any harm that might have come to the enemy. Even so, Howard himself would have been willing to sail ‘between the squadrons’ had the other captains and masters of the fleet not refused to become a prey to the enemy when there was no hope or possibility of victory. It would have ‘il sorted the discretion and trust of a Generall to commit himself and his charge to an assured destruction without hope or any likelihood of prevailing’. Sir William Monson, a naval captain who later fought at Cadiz in 1596, accused Grenville of ‘wilfull rashness’ in failing to follow his Admiral ‘as all discipline of war did teach him’. To that Ralegh replied that Grenville had acted from the desire for glory out of the greatness of his heart. In doing so Ralegh was trying, not quite convincingly, to defend the rational conduct of Howard while praising Grenville’s valour. But he was able triumphantly to claim victory for the English force thanks to the violent storm that arose shortly after the fight, scattering the Spanish ships and sinking many of them, including the captured Revenge. Thus, insisted Ralegh, God was protecting the Queen against the malicious purposes of her enemies. By contrast, Spanish accounts of the fight claimed that the storm arose from the soul of Grenville in Hell, which ‘raised up all the devils for the revenge of his death’. As with Ralegh’s poetic canon, the authenticity of some of his prose works from the Tower is doubtful. In particular, two of the best known, Maxims of State (1642) and The Cabinet Council (1658), were probably written by other hands. Both are compilations from books of advice by such writers as Guicciardini and Machiavelli. The most substantial of them, The Cabinet Council, was falsely ascribed to Ralegh by John Milton, but is in fact derived from a manuscript written by one ‘TB’.4 Texts acquired prestige and perhaps selling-power by virtue of Ralegh’s name and he himself occasionally confused matters by recycling works with different titles or dedicatees.5 With one important exception, the Instructions to his Son and to Posterity, Ralegh’s tracts from the decade 1603 to 1612 deal with ship-building, naval 4 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 157–63 and app. 2. For Milton’s complex reasons in making the attribution see M. Dzelzainis, ‘Milton and the protectorate in 1658’, in D. Armitage et al. (eds), Milton and Republicanism (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 181–205. The Advice of a loving Sonne to his aged father,The Life and death of Mahomet, Observations touching trade, and The Sceptick are now generally dismissed from the Ralegh canon. 5 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 24–5.

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affairs, sea-battles, royal marriages, diplomacy and foreign war. Except for the earliest of these, A Discourse touching a War with Spain and of Protecting the Netherlands, probably written in 1603, they were all either addressed to Prince Henry or written at the Prince’s request. It does not follow from this that Sir Walter was a member of the Prince’s inner circle, but it is more likely that he was himself seeking the patronage of the heir to the throne.6 A Discourse touching a War with Spain is, however, directly addressed to the new King, urging him in effect to pursue the policy of the ‘war party’ under Queen Elizabeth. Above all, Spain must be prevented from subduing the Netherlands. The King of Spain, Philip III, was poor now, but would never forget the humiliation he had suffered at the hands of the Dutch. The latter were strong at sea but weak on land, where they had to rely on allies or mercenaries. If King James did not provide help they would be forced to turn to the King of France, and such an alliance would be dangerous to England. However, while he was generally sympathetic to the Dutch cause, Sir Walter issued a word of caution. Dutch fleets were much more powerful than England’s and lay across England’s trade-route to the Baltic. Furthermore, the Dunkirk pirates, allied to the Dutch, had, according to Sir Walter, seriously damaged the merchants of the south-west counties. Ralegh returned to the theme of relations with Spain in debates over proposed marriages for James’s only surviving daughter, Elizabeth. Approaches had been made for a match with Elizabeth by the Elector Palatine and by the Duke of Savoy in 1611. The Prince of Wales was especially attached to his sister and was unhappy about the proposed Savoy marriage. Evidently he enlisted Ralegh’s support to prevent it. While France and Spain had good reasons for alliances with Savoy, England had none, insisted Ralegh. Savoy was very unlikely to help England against Spain and the Princess was unlikely to gain either dignity or honour from the match. Furthermore, she and the house of Savoy were of different religions. Ralegh recommended a marriage with the Prince Palatine of the Rhine, who had succeeded to his title as a minor in 1610. This was the match eventually chosen, with disastrous results for Princess Elizabeth, who lived most of her married life in exile after she and her husband were driven from the Kingdom of Bohemia and from the Rhine Palatinate by Spanish troops.7 Ralegh’s complementary discourse on the proposed marriage between Prince Henry and a daughter of the Duke of Savoy was written in the 6 Above, Chapter Ten; Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 22–9. 7 Above, Chapter Ten; Works of Ralegh, viii, pp. 223–36.

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following year.8 The arguments, he writes, are all in the realm of public policy; and while there are some grounds for the match on the side of Savoy, there are none on the side of England. ‘There is’, he writes, ‘a kind of noble and royal deceiving in marriages between kings and princes; yea, and it is of all others the fairest and most unsuspected trade of betraying.’ He used the occasion of this proposed royal marriage to argue the case for a more aggressive policy towards Spain. Saying that he knew nothing against the Duke of Savoy, he insisted that ‘it is the Spaniard that is to be feared; the Spaniard, who layeth his pretences and practices with a long hand’. Ralegh again argued in some detail that Savoy would never come to England’s aid against either France or Spain, her only potential enemies. He launched into an attack on Spain, lamenting that Elizabeth had not listened to himself and his friends:9 [I]f the late Queen would have believed her men of war, as she did her scribes, we had in our time beaten that great empire in pieces, and made their kings of figs and oranges, as in old times. But her Majesty did all by halves, and by petty invasions taught the Spaniard how to defend himself, and to see his own weakness; which, till our attempts taught him, was hardly known to himself. Four thousand men would have taken from him all the ports of the Indies; I mean all his ports, by which all his treasure doth or can pass.

The passage has often been quoted, but it is less often remembered that it was written for the heir to the throne and was widely circulated in manuscript. Asked whom the Prince should marry, Ralegh favoured a French match, but counselled delay for the time being. In the end the question answered itself, for the Prince of Wales died in November 1612, to the grief of the nation and especially to the enemies of Spain.10 Ralegh was determined that the Prince should be aware of the importance of the navy and of its current weakness. To that end he wrote three tracts, or parts of tracts, to instil in him an understanding of the subject. Henry’s interest in the matter may have been first aroused when King James gave him an old warship, the Victory, in about 1607, ordering Phineas Pett, his principal shipwright, to rebuild her. The Prince wrote to Ralegh for advice, which he was of course delighted to give, producing a manuscript tract and a substantial 8 Works of Ralegh, viii, pp. 237–52. 9 Ibid., p. 246. 10 Some versions of this tract were addressed to Prince Charles: see Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 24.

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letter. The tract, Observations concerning the Royal Navy, is wide-ranging in its approach.11 Ralegh urged on Prince Henry the need for naval reform. Some of his proposals are obvious: ships should be strongly built; should sail well in all weathers; and some at least should be harboured towards the west so that they can get out of port quickly on the approach of an enemy fleet. The essential reforms are two. First, the temptation to build huge ships with a great battery of cannon must be resisted. It is more important that they be manoeuvrable. Second, corruption must be rooted out. Only the sworn servants of the King should be appointed as captains. At present, he says, the navy is less well officered and manned than are merchant ships. At the same time Ralegh wrote a long letter to the Prince, criticizing Pett’s design for the new ship, which was to be known as the Prince Royal. Essentially, in Ralegh’s view, Pett’s proposed design was too long and too heavy: 600 tons could in effect carry as much ordnance as 1,200 because a smaller ship would be more manoeuvrable and could turn twice as fast as a larger. One hundred feet long and thirty-five broad would be a good proportion. Pett’s vessel would be too high and therefore unsafe:‘safety’, wrote Ralegh,‘is more to be respected then showes or niceness for ease’. The height might be possible for ordinary mariners, but ‘menn of better sort, unused to such a life, cannot so well endure the rolling and tumbling from side to side’.12 He recalled the fate of the Mary Rose, which spectacularly sank in 1545 because the gun ports were too low in the water. Nevertheless, Sir Walter’s cautions were ignored and the Prince Royal weighed in at 1,147 tons when completed. Within ten years it was declared unseaworthy; but that was due more to the unseasoned timber supplied by Pett than to his design.13 A Discourse of the Invention of Ships probably belongs to the same group of tracts as the Observations. After a brisk gallop through the story of ship design from the earliest times, including Noah’s Ark, rafts and canoes, Ralegh reached the sixteenth century, describing in some detail improvements in the ships of his own day. He then turned, rather abruptly, to the weakness of the English navy under James I. Ralegh wrote that he could remember when one of the Queen’s ships could have made forty Hollanders ‘strike

11 For the history of this tract see Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 23, 25–7. 12 This recalls Ralegh’s comment on his own sufferings on the Orinoco, he having been better ‘dieted’ than ordinary mariners. Above, Chapter Five. 13 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 301–4. On ship design see N. A. M. Rodger, ‘The development of broadside gunnery, 1450–1650’, Mariner’s Mirror 82 (1996), 301–24.

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sail, and to come to anchor’.14 The Dutch freely ‘acknowledged the English to be domini maris Britannici (lords of the English sea)’. Now things were different. Although the English did not have as many merchant ships of 500 tons as they had had in Elizabeth’s day, ‘yet are our merchants’ ships now far more warlike and better appointed than they were, and the navy royal double as strong as then it was’. However, the Dutch too had grown in power.This could not be through having more ships and men. Rather it was the result of ‘the detestable covetousness of such . . . persons as have gotten licenses, and given way to the transporting of the English ordnance’.15 The English have now ‘forged hammers and delivered them out of our hands to break our own bones withal’. He had already proposed a ban on the export of ordnance in the Parliament of 1601 and he repeated it here.16 The most interesting of the naval tracts, Of the Art of Warre by Sea, was originally written, according to Ralegh himself,‘for the Lord Henrie, Prince of Wales . . . but God hath spared me the labour of finishing it by his losse’.17 What survives is a small fragment of a much larger work, now lost. In a letter to Bess from the Tower on 4 October 1618, Ralegh asked her to search in his cedar chest for some ‘paper books’ and to send them to him. ‘The title of one of them’, he says,‘is the Art of War by Sea’.18 Unless Sir Walter was being deliberately deceptive, this looks like the plan of a large work, containing at least fifteen chapters: for instance, ‘Cap 11 That the Inglish, who might have mastred ye world by sea, have lost that advantage by the neglegence, ignorance, & covetousness of private persons.That the Inglish may in a short time recover this power.’ At the end of a slightly longer passage he writes that hee that commaunds the sea commaunds the trade, and hee that is lord of the Trade of the world is lord of the wealth of the worlde . . . and hee that hath the wealth hath the dominion. For Ambition is served by men, Men are bought, monies buyes them, money is gotten by trade.

The key to English success, he insists, is ‘our forcible trade into the Levant [which] was the cause of our building or [our?] warlike shipps’. One longs

14 15 16 17 18

Works of Ralegh, viii, p. 327. Ibid., p. 330. Ibid., p. 331; above, Chapter Eight, p. 178, at n. 59. P. Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh écrivain: l’oeuvre et les idées (Paris, 1968), p. 596. Letters of Ralegh, p. 372; Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 25, 28.

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for more, for we seem to have here the sketch of a theory of sea warfare.19 A Dialogue between a Jesuit and a Recusant, dated 1611–12, stands somewhat apart from Ralegh’s other work. No manuscript copy exists and its first publication was in Laurence Echard’s Abridgment of Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World.20 It is a strange, discursive work, containing echoes from some of Ralegh’s other tracts, a long excursus on the kings of Poland, the commercial strength of the Dutch and the misdeeds of the popes.We cannot be wholly certain that the work is Ralegh’s, but it deserves attention.21 The attack on the Jesuits is fairly conventional, designed to separate loyal English Catholics from the treasonous designs of the Order and to encourage the King and Prince Henry in an aggressive policy towards Spain. However, the concluding pages of the tract are surprising. Commenting on the poverty of King James, Ralegh criticizes the English Parliament for its denial of his right to levy impositions (taxes on imports) on his subjects. ‘Should we tie the king so precisely to the law as he may not lay an imposition upon things superfluous? Would the commonwealth be worse off without currants?’22 The author attributes the trouble to luxury and laxness of morals. In earlier days nobles and gentlemen would live in their counties and provide hospitality, but now ‘my lady must live in London. Oh, the abominable pride and vanity of this age!’ As so often, women were to blame! The corruption of the time and the temptations of London were familiar themes for the moralists of the Jacobean age, but it is surprising to find them in a tract about the villainy of Jesuits and popes. It is also strange to find Ralegh, if he is indeed the author, attacking the parliamentary critics of James’s taxes.23 The most readable of the Tower Tracts was Ralegh’s Instructions to his Son and to Posterity, probably written in about 1609 and first printed in 1632, with several subsequent editions over the years.24 This ‘advice’ was a pop19 Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 599–601. 20 For the text see L. Echard, An Abridgment of Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World . . . with Some Genuine Remains, publ. by P[hilip] Raleigh (London, 1700), pp. 27–70. Philip Ralegh was Sir Walter’s grandson. 21 On the attribution to Ralegh, Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 59–62. 22 The Crown’s attempt to levy a tax (an imposition) upon imported currants had led in 1606 to the significant legal dispute known as Bate’s case and to parliamentary dispute. Below, Chapter Eleven (iii). 23 On the concept of ‘hospitality’ and its alleged decline at this time see F. Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1990), chs 1–3. 24 Works of Ralegh, viii, pp. 557–70; Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 110–11, 123, 125–7, 129–32.

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ular genre at the time, gently lampooned in Polonius’s famous speech to Laertes in Hamlet. Lord Burghley, Francis Osborne, Sir William Monson and Ralegh’s companion in the Tower, the ninth Earl of Northumberland, all tried their hand at it. Indeed Burghley produced two sets of advice and Northumberland three. Burghley’s instructions to his eldest son, Thomas, emphasize the importance of morning and evening prayers and of knowing the scriptures: Thomas should read the Psalter twelve times a year, the New Testament four times and the Old Testament once. Burghley is more relaxed and practical in giving advice to his other son, Robert, who possibly had less need of constant Bible-reading.25 Sir Walter’s advice is also largely secular. Only the final section of ten mentions God: you should let God be the author of all your actions.The rest of the work is a Machiavellian prescription for getting on in the world, with little concern for education or morality. In choosing friends you should choose your betters or at least your equals rather than your inferiors, ‘shunning always such as are poor and needy’; but equally you should not tie yourself to a great man who may attempt unlawful things. In choosing a wife, ‘the only danger therein is beauty, by which many men have been betrayed’. Remember that while affections do not last, ‘yet the bond of marriage endureth to the end of thy life; and therefore better to be borne withal in a mistress than in a wife’. If your affection changes for a mistress, you are free to choose again.Yet you should not marry a plain woman for she may produce uncomely children,‘and comeliness in children is riches’. Just as you should be careful in breeding horses and other beasts, so you should ‘value the shape and comeliness’ of your children.You should not be ‘sour or stern’ to your wife; but leave her no more than you have to after your death.26 The remaining sections are conventional, lacking Ralegh’s usual sense of style. Do not listen to flatterers; keep out of private quarrels; do not talk too much; do not tell lies; and keep your anger under control. Above everything, you must look after your estate: know the value of your possessions, do not spend anything before you have got it (a touch of Polonius here), and never act as a surety for anyone. More revealing of Sir Walter’s desires for his son and of his own past feelings come to light in an undated letter, probably written in about 1610 to

25 L. B. Wright (ed.), Advice to a Son: precepts of Lord Burghley, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Francis Osborne (Ithaca, NY, 1962), pp. 1–6. 26 Works of Ralegh, viii, pp. 558–61.

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young Wat, then aged around sixteen.27 Ralegh began by urging upon his son a vigorous and active life: Awaken thyself to industrye and rowse upp thy spiritts for the world. Greate possessions would make thee lazie: I would have thee to be the sonne of thyne owne fortunes aswell as my sonne.

He urges Wat to follow the same objectives as he did himself: to honour God and to do good in the commonwealth, and he continues by reflecting on his own state of mind and on the vanity of the world.Thinking about death, he claims that he feels no more ‘perturbation’ than I have donne in my best health to arise from table when I have well dyned and thence to retyre to a pleasant walke. I have had my parte in this world and nowe must give place to fresh gamesters. Farewell.

Ralegh reflects that ‘All is vanity and wearynes’, which we both love and complain about. Foolishly we struggle against the role decreed for us by God’s ordinance and providence. Instead of being content to fulfil our roles as best we may, we strive for greater position. ‘Oure heades swymme and our harts beate within us as if wee were att sea . . . Wee are toyled and hazarded with tempests and stormes that arise abroad.’ Our fortunes depend not only on ourselves, but also on ‘adventures that lye not in oure management’. Publicke affaires are rockes, private conversations are whirlepooles and quickesandes. Itt is alike perilous to doe well and to doe ill . . . Nevertheles, my sonne, take harte and courage to thee.Thy adventure lyes in this troublesome barque. Strive if thou canst to make good thy station in the upper decke.Those that live under hatches are ordained to be drudges and slaves.

He certainly spoke from experience.The struggle between divine providence and the freedom of man to choose was to be an underlying theme of Ralegh’s most ambitious prose work, The History of the World.

27 Printed in full in Letters of Ralegh, pp. 317–18.

11(ii)

The Tower Writings:The Great History

A man of Ralegh’s energy and ambition needed a large project in order to survive long years in captivity. He had always been an ardent reader and a more impressive project than The History of the World could scarcely be imagined. The resources were ready to hand. Ralegh’s 515 volumes constituted a large private library, strong in history, geography and cosmology; and, as we have seen, it was complemented by the libraries of his two aristocratic neighbours in the Tower, the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Cobham.1 He also had friends, some of them scholars, to help and talk with him: Ben Jonson asserted that ‘the best wits of England were employed for making of his historie’, and others have implied that Ralegh was heavily reliant on other scholars.2 Given the size of his project – it was about one million words long – it could hardly have been otherwise. Ralegh knew French, Spanish, Italian and Latin, but he needed help with Hebrew and Greek; and friends like Sir Robert Cotton could help him with the loan of books from their own libraries.3 These were fertile times for writing history. The older genres of chronicles and antiquarian description were gradually being displaced by works modelled on such classical authors as Cicero and Tacitus. Instead of merely recording events or providing descriptions, writers like Francis Bacon and John Hayward sought to uncover motive and character. Emphasis upon morality and judgement became less prominent. Ralegh’s work was, however, unusual in one important respect. While most history written in England during the first half of the seventeenth century was restricted to the British past, Ralegh extended his vision to the wider world. Only Johann Sleidan’s Briefe Chronicle of the foure principall Empires was available to English readers, and that in a translation of 1563 by Stephan Wythers. Some commentators have seen the patronage of Prince Henry as crucial to Ralegh’s enterprise, both in its origins and in the disastrous effects of 1 Above, Chapter Ten, pp. 228–9; W. F. Oakeshott,‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s Library’, The Library 23 (1968), 285–327. 2 C. H. Herford and P. Simpson (eds), Ben Jonson (Oxford, 1925–52), i, p. 138. 3 Letters of Ralegh, p. 319.

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the Prince’s death in 1612. ‘It was for the service of that inestimable prince Henry’, wrote Ralegh in his preface, ‘that I undertook this work . . . It is now left to the world without a master.’4 But although Henry was greatly mourned at Court and in the country at large, it is unlikely that his patronage was all-important. If the Prince really did sympathize with his plight, Ralegh could reasonably have hoped for freedom from the Tower sooner rather than later; but the publication history of this and other prose works by Ralegh suggest that he may have sought other patrons as well, including Henry’s younger brother Charles.5 As to the abandonment of the work after the publication of its first part, in his final page Ralegh announces that this will be succeeded by a second and third part, ‘which I have also intended, and have hewn out’.6 One need not take this entirely seriously, but it suggests that the death of the Prince was not decisive in causing Ralegh to abandon the project. According to John Aubrey, sales were slow at first and his bookseller told him that he would be the loser by it. Ralegh flew into a passion and allegedly burned the second part. However, the story seems unlikely.7 At about the same time the possibility of reviving the Guiana expedition may have become brighter, persuading him to leave the History alone. Perhaps also the disapproval of the King discouraged Ralegh from continuing with his project. It is not of course unknown, then and now, for a historian to announce the preparation of a major work of history that never appears. Ralegh probably began to write the History in or around 1611; at any rate, it was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 11 April that year by Walter Burre, bookseller. Three-and-a-half years later, in November or December 1614, the great work appeared, in a single volume of almost a million words with an elaborate frontispiece but with no name on the title-page. On 22 December the Archbishop of Canterbury was ordered by the King to call in the work and suppress it. In the following January John Chamberlain reported to Dudley Carleton that Ralegh’s book ‘is called in by the King’s commaundment, for divers exceptions, but specially for beeing too sawcie in censuring princes . . . he takes yt much to hart, for he thought he had won 4 HW, preface, sig. E3v; L. Tennenhouse, ‘Sir Walter Raleigh and the literature of clientage’, in G. F. Lytle and S. Orgel (eds), Patronage in the Renaissance (Princeton, NJ, 1981), pp. 235–58. 5 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 22–31. 6 HW, Book 5, Chapter 6, Section 12. 7 O. L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives (London, 1949), p. 257.

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his spurres and pleased the King extraordinarilie.’8 A few months later the Stationers’ Company was ordered by the King to hand over the confiscated volumes to one John Ramsay to be ‘disposed of at our pleasure’.9 Probably Ramsay then sold them, which would account for the survival of several copies. Two more editions followed in 1617 after Ralegh had been released from the Tower. Each of these now had a title-page bearing a portrait of the author. It is not clear why the original edition had neither title-page nor author’s name. The first edition did, however, include an elaborate, symbolic frontispiece with the word Providentia at the top, surmounting a globe, flanked by the figures of Fama Bona and Fama Mala. Below are the figures of Testis Temporum, Magistra Vitae, Lux Veritatis, and so on. The text opens with a lengthy preface, discussing the nature of historical writing and those principles of public conduct that could be derived from it. Essentially, The History of the World is philosophical history, in which Ralegh seeks to uncover fundamental truths about the role and purpose of God and the lessons that could be drawn from the past. He reveals, too, his own beliefs and values. The first two of the five books of the History are largely concerned with events described in the Old Testament, from the creation of the world until the Babylonian Captivity. However, while these events occupy the foreground, there are background accounts of other regions, in particular of the Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian empires. The last three books deal with the Persian Empire and its defeat at the hands of Greece, the exploits of Xenophon, the conquests of Alexander, and the rise of Rome until the second Punic War and the absorption of Macedon around 146 BC. In these later books Old Testament history occupies little space, and major differences in approach are opened up between the two halves of the History. Defending the claims of history in his preface, Ralegh wrote that in one respect ‘it triumphs over all human knowledge, that it hath given us life in our understanding . . . yea it hath triumphed over time, which, besides it, nothing but eternity hath triumphed over: for it hath carried our knowledge 8 N. E. McClure (ed.), The Letters of John Chamberlain (Philadelphia, 1939), i, p. 568; E. Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 (London, 1876), iii, p. 207; v, p. lxxvii; W. A. Jackson (ed.), Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company, 1602 to 1640 (London, 1957), p. 357; J. Racin,‘The early editions of Sir Walter Ralegh’s The History of the World’, Studies in Bibliography 17 (1964), 199–209; J. Racin, Sir Walter Ralegh as Historian: an analysis of The History of the World (Salzburg, 1974), p. 7. 9 Jackson, Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company, p. 357.

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over the vast and devouring space of so many thousands of years’. Through the study of history we can perceive the world as it was when it was young. ‘It is not the least debt which we owe unto history, that it hath made us acquainted with our dead ancestors.’ In a word, he concluded, ‘we may gather out of history a policy no less wise than eternal; by the comparison and application of other men’s fore-passed miseries, with our own like errors and ill deserts’.10 ‘It is’, he wrote later, ‘the end and scope of all history, to teach by examples of times past, such wisdom as may guide our desires and actions.’11 Kings and princes have committed many cruelties to make themselves masters of the world; yet the empires of the past have left ‘no fruit, flower, grass, nor leaf, springing upon the face of the earth . . . No; their very roots and ruins do hardly remain.’ Ralegh gives various explanations for the decline and fall of empires, saying that he will resolve the question by looking at some examples of the rule ‘that ill doing hath always been attended with ill success’. To make the point he turned in the preface of the book to the history of the Norman kings and their successors. Henry I, when he had ‘by force, craft, and cruelty . . . dispossess’d, over-reach’d, and lastly made blind and destroyed his elder brother Robert duke of Normandy, to make his own sons lords of this land: God cast them all, male and female, nephews and nieces (Maud excepted) into the bottom of the sea’. Similarly, God avenged subsequent cruelties upon the descendants of the kings, as Richard II suffered from the cruelties of his grandfather, Edward III, as well as his own; and his supplanter, Henry IV, ‘saw (if souls immortal see and discern any things after the bodies death) his grand-child Henry the sixth, and his son the prince, suddenly, and without mercy, murdered; the possession of the crown (for which he had caused so much blood to be poured out) transferred from his race’.12 So the story of wickedness and retribution continued. ‘Now’, he went on, ‘for king Henry the eighth: if all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in the world, they might all again be painted to the life, out of the story of this king.’13 In the end God took away all of Henry’s descendants without issue: Edward, Mary and Elizabeth all died childless, leaving the succession to James, who received the crown from the hand of God. None of the foul spots discernible in other monarchs were visible in James. Above all, through 10 11 12 13

HW, preface, sig. A2v. HW, Book 2, Chapter 21, Section 6. HW, preface, sig. A3. HW, preface, sig. B1v.

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him God gave England the blessing of the union of England and Scotland. ‘Put all our petty grievances together, and heap them up to their height, they will appear but as a molehill, compared with the mountain of this concord.’14 Perhaps surprisingly, Ralegh omitted almost all mention of the reign of Elizabeth. No doubt it would have been tactless to include her name when he wished to reserve all his praise for her successor. Some of that praise was indeed so fulsome that there must, given Ralegh’s continued imprisonment by James, be at least a touch of irony there. Kings and princes have been the same the world over in their wickedness, claimed Ralegh, and God has been consistent in punishing them through their offspring. While we all profess the love of God and knowledge of his commandments, our souls contain nothing but hypocrisy: ‘we are all (in effect) become comedians in religion; and while we act in gesture and voice, divine virtues, in all the course of our lives we renounce our persons, and the parts we play.’15 Ralegh was fond of theatrical metaphors: indeed, as Stephen Greenblatt has argued, it is possible to regard his whole life as a performance.16 ‘God, who is the author of all our tragedies, hath written out for us, and appointed us all the parts we are to play: and hath not, in their distribution, been partial to the most mighty princes of the world.’ Luck shifts in an unforeseeable way: ‘the change of fortune on the great Theatre is but as the change of garments on the less’. The same theme is echoed in his late poem ‘What is our life?’: mothers’ wombs are seen as the ‘tiring houses’, Earth as the stage and Heaven as the spectator.17 Turning to the question of human destiny, Ralegh asked what power the stars have over us? Do they determine our destinies? They were not, he wrote,‘created to beautify the earth alone, and to shadow and cover her dusty face’; but are instruments of divine providence.We may be inclined to many things by the stars at our birth, but there are forces which work against their influence, like parental upbringing or the company of dissolute men: ‘Vessels will ever retain a flavour of their first liquor.’ He does not agree with those who would deny all power to the stars, but neither would he ascribe to the view that they have ‘the same dominion over our immortal souls, which they 14 HW, preface, sig. B2. 15 HW, preface, sig. C2. 16 S. J. Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh: the renaissance man and his roles (London, 1973), esp. ch. 4; see A. Righter, Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (London, 1964), ch. 3 for the general context of this metaphor. 17 HW, preface, sig. D1v. Cf. Rudick, Poems, no. 29; above, Chapter Seven, p. 162.

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have over all bodily substances, and perishable natures’.18 Ralegh then considered the concepts of prescience, providence, predestination and fortune, all four of them often mistakenly confounded with one another. Prescience is God’s infallible foreknowledge of all things, but this foreknowledge is not a cause of anything in the future. Providence, by contrast, is not only the knowledge of all things but is also ‘the cause of their so being’, as the scriptures teach us. Predestination concerns only men, not animals, and is used only of their salvation. The idea of Fortune came relatively late onto the literary scene. Hesiod had no word for her, but from Homer onwards she ordered everything. When men could not find a manifest cause for anything, it was attributed to Fortune, but ‘whom the poets call fortune, we know to be God’. God, indeed, is the dominant force in Ralegh’s History, especially in the first two books. Everything that happens is brought about by God: ‘there is not therefore the smallest accident, which may seem unto men as falling out by chance, and of no consequence: but that the same is caused by God to effect somewhat else by; yea, and oftentimes to effect things of the greatest worldly importance’. In the biblical world, God appointed leaders, guided His people to the promised land, smote (a favourite word) the enemies of Israel, issued precise and detailed instructions for the building of Noah’s Ark, and punished the Israelites when they worshipped false gods. He worked through men, and sometimes women, to achieve His ends. For instance, when Pharaoh, frightened by the increase in the population of the Hebrews, ordered all male Hebrew children to be killed, God ‘moved compassion in the heart of Pharaoh’s own daughter, to preserve that child [Moses]’, who later became the wisest of men and the deliverer of his own people.19 Writing of the various times when Jerusalem was destroyed, Ralegh commented that ‘all the great ages of the world have with their inhabitants . . . suffered the same shipwreck. And it hath been God’s just will, to the end others might take warning, if they would . . . not only to punish the impiety of men . . . but He hath revenged himself of the very places they possess’d.’20 In biblical times it was plain why God punished wicked or dissolute rulers, because the Prophets delivered His messages eloquently. Now, ‘the same just God, who liveth and governeth all things for ever, doth in these our times give victory, courage, and discourage, raise, and throw down kings . . . and nations for the 18 HW, Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 11. 19 HW, Book 2, Chapter 5, Section 10. 20 HW, Book 2, Chapter 12, Section 3.

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same offences which were committed of old’; but we no longer have the Prophets to explain His doings to us.21 Today, he wrote, ‘the wise men of the world’ see only the ‘second causes’ and neglect the higher. Ralegh’s own story of events in the classical, as distinct from the biblical world took little account of higher causes, perhaps because he lacked the guidance of the prophets to explain them. He illustrated the distinction between second causes and higher by considering the civil wars between Israel and Judah after the reign of Solomon. Attempting to explain why the two kingdoms failed to reunite, Ralegh insisted that ‘to say that God was pleased to have it so, were a true, but an idle answer (for His secret will is the cause of all things) . . .Wherefore we may boldly look into the second causes.’ He attributed the continuing division of these kingdoms to the weight of taxation imposed by Solomon and his successors in Judah.Their doings ‘prove them to have used a more absolute manner of command, than the kings of the ten tribes [i.e. of Israel]’. It may be significant that he was writing when complaints were mounting against James I’s levy of impositions.22 In the early chapters of his History, until the time of Moses, Ralegh made no attempt at continuous narrative. There is, for instance, virtually nothing said of Abraham’s immediate successors – Isaac, Jacob, Esau or Joseph – since ‘it is not our purpose, neither to stand upon things generally known to all christians, nor to repeat what hath been elsewhere already spoken’.23 Rather than do this, he examined specific problems of biblical interpretation: on, for instance, chronology, topography, the nature of government and the use of historical evidence. A suffocating body of reference to biblical debates supports (and obfuscates) his arguments on these subjects. He was helped in this by the huge Latin compendium of commentaries on Genesis assembled by Benedictus Pererius, published in Rome a few years earlier. This work devotes 166 folio pages to the first chapter of Genesis alone, the phrases ‘in the beginning’ and ‘heaven and earth’ from verse one naturally providing major topics for discussion. Pererius allowed Ralegh to appear even more learned than he really was; and sadly some of the most beautiful passages in Genesis were buried under these mountains of commentary.24 21 22 23 24

HW, Book 2, Chapter 19, Section 3. HW, Book 2, Chapter 19, Section 6; below, Chapter Eleven (iii), pp. 275–6. HW, Book 2, Chapter 1, Section 13. A.Williams, The Common Expositor: an account of the commentaries on Genesis 1527–1633 (Chapel Hill, 1948), ch. 1; B. Pererius, Commentariorum et disputationum in Genesim (Cologne, 1601).

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One such topic of debate, more entertaining for modern readers than most, arose from Ralegh’s fascination with geography. He was determined to locate the Garden of Eden, rejecting the view that Moses’ descriptions of Eden were ‘mythical and allegorical’, in spite of the insistence of Origen, Ambrose and others on that view. Eden, he wrote, was ‘the proper name of a region’ which contained Paradise and lay east of Judaea. He identified it finally, after a great deal of wandering over the Middle East, with the neighbourhood of the city of Mosul on the River Tigris.25 Throughout the History, Ralegh tried to relate the origins and events of other civilizations to the story of the Jews. He argued that Egypt was peopled before the Flood, two or three hundred years after the time of Adam; that writing and astronomy were known in Babylon 3634 years before Alexander’s conquests; that Enoch was born 1034 years before the Flood; and so on. The task was not easy since the use of BC dates was not general until the eighteenth century. Greek years were numbered according to the sequence of Olympic games, Roman by the holders of consular office. At the end of the History Ralegh provided a chronological table, which he admitted was not perfect; neither is it easily understood by modern readers unfamiliar with such tabulations.26 Ralegh’s earlier books were principally based upon scripture, whose evidence he accepted implicitly. Problems arose when the sources, whether biblical, Greek or Roman, were incomplete or ambiguous. Conjecture was then permitted to supply lacunae and the careful use of fables and myths became legitimate. In telling the story of Theseus, he recalled Plutarch’s comment that Greek historians and poets were like cosmographers who find many empty places of which they know nothing and ‘fill the same with strange beasts, birds, and fishes . . . Soe do the Grecian historians and poets imbroider and intermix the tales of ancient times with a world of fictions and fabulous discourses.’27 Writing of the early settlements in Italy he said that ‘much fabulous matter hath been mixed with the truth of those elder plantations’ and that ‘most fables and poetical fictions were occasioned by some ancient truth’.28 For example, 25 26 27 28

HW, Book 1, Chapter 3, Sections 1–15, Williams, The Common Expositor, ch. 5. HW, Book 1, Chapter 8, Section 9. HW, Book 2, Chapter 13, Section 7. HW, Book 2, Chapter 24, Sections 1 and 2; E. Larkum, ‘Providence and politics in Sir Walter Ralegh’s The History of the World’ (Oxford D. Phil thesis, 1997), pp. 26–7. We are indebted to Dr Larkum for her illuminating discussion of this and other topics in the History.

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considering the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts, he compared various theories about their objective, concluding that they sought ‘steep falling torrents’ in the region of the Caucasus, ‘which wash down many grains of gold . . . and the people there inhabiting use to set many fleeces of wool in those descents of waters, in which the grains of gold remain’.29 Ralegh’s analysis of the origins and development of government owed much to Aristotle, without a great deal of acknowledgement.To begin with, he described how God ordered Moses to summon seventy elders, probably the fathers of families, who became the first governors, with their eldest sons under them. As populations grew and vice multiplied, it became clear that ‘the soft weapons of paternal persuasions . . . became in all over-weak’. ‘Licentious disorder (which seemed to promise a liberty upon the first acquaintance) proved upon a better trial, no less perilous than an unendurable bondage.’ Gradually kings were created by God, and later, in order to restrain them, laws. Following Aristotle, Ralegh divided the true forms of government into three: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. Each had its own perverted form: tyranny, oligarchy and ochlochratia (‘the turbulent, unjust ruling of the confused multitude’).30 All subjects must obey their king implicitly, asserted Ralegh, for God would punish any people who resisted their ruler by sending a tyrant to rule them. ‘The examples are not to be numbred of God’s punishments upon those that have resisted authority ordained and established by God. Neither ought any subject to resist the power of kings, because they may be taxed with injustice or cruelty, for it pleaseth God sometimes to punish his people by a tyrannous hand.’ Men must rely on God to help them and remember that tyrants are sometimes sent by God himself to punish them. Furthermore, the king, and only the king, is above the law and has power to exempt himself from the constraints of law. Ralegh challenged the thirteenth-century lawyer, Bracton, for claiming that kings are subject to human law: they are not, for they are created by divine laws and only declared by human law to be kings. ‘Therefore the prince cannot be said to be subject to the law.’31 Men must remember that God himself will punish kings who act tyrannically: ‘Oh, by what plots, by what forswearings, betrayings, oppressions, imprisonments . . . and under what reasons of state and politic subtilty, have these fore-named kings . . . pulled the vengeance of God upon themselves, upon theirs, and 29 HW, Book 2, Chapter 13, Section 6. 30 HW, Book 1, Chapter 9, Section 2. 31 HW, Book 2, Chapter 4, Section 16.

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their prudent ministers!’32 Rehoboam, son and successor to Solomon, supplied Ralegh with an example of God’s intervention. Petitioned by his people to reduce the heavy taxes levied by Solomon, Rehoboam responded by increasing them. Ignoring the ‘grave and advised men that served his father’, Rehoboam relied for advice on ‘his familiars and favourites’, probably a slightly concealed reference to James’s Scottish courtiers. After the arrival on the scene of Jeroboam, a rival son of Solomon, the people revolted, murdering a tax-collector and forcing their king to flee in alarm. Rehoboam then surrendered the kingdom of Israel to his rival.To add to his problems his own kingdom, Judea, was invaded by Egypt and placed under Egyptian tutelage. Thus Rehoboam was punished by God for burdening his people and for setting up false gods. But the people were also censured for forgetting ‘the bonds of nature and their duty to God’.33 However, it was not always so simple. Although men were ordered by God to obey lawful authority, the Bible gave several warnings about the dangers of rule by a single person. For example, after the death of Gideon, his bastard son, Abimelech, murdered his brothers and seized the throne.The one survivor of this massacre, Jotham, then warned the people against tyrants with a parable.The trees went out to anoint a king, asking various candidates in turn to rule them. The olive said it was contented with its fatness, the fig with its sweetness, and the vine with its juice. Only the bramble accepted the crown, with disastrous results. Jotham prophesied that a fire would come out of the bramble, and in the end the principal city, Sechem, was fired and Abimelech killed.34 Ralegh gave another example of the problem: in the time of Samuel the elders of Israel asked to be given a king who would rule them more effectively than the ageing Samuel and his sons were doing. The prophet, not surprisingly disliking this request, consulted God, who told the elders of ‘the inconveniences and miseries which should befal them’ under a king. At first, said God, speaking through Samuel, this would not be intolerable; but after a time the subjects would be threatened: the king ‘will use their sons in his own service to make them his horsemen, charioteers, and footmen’. While none of these things would really be grievous to the best subjects, for it would be agreeable to them to serve the king as his commanders, more serious threats might arise.The tyrant ‘will take up your fields, and your vineyards, 32 HW, preface, sig. C2. 33 HW, Book 2, Chapter 19, Section 2; Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 48. 34 HW, Book 2, Chapter 13, Section 7. Judg. 9: 6–15.

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and your best olive trees, and give them to his servants, with other oppressions’. There were, said Ralegh, different interpretations of this passage. One group of scholars said that Samuel was describing here a king that did not fear God. The arguments on the other side, Ralegh said, were given in James I’s The true law of free monarchies, ‘which treatise I may not presume to abridge, much less here to insert’. This was not particularly helpful. In commenting upon this text Ralegh was at his most obscure and ambiguous. He appeared to be saying that one group was teaching that men should obey in patience whatever the provocation, and the other that kings should keep to the law. His problem was to reconcile the doctrine of absolute obedience with the actual conduct of kings in the world. His resolution of the contradiction was, first, that since kings and princes do often behave unjustly, particularly in seizing other men’s property, subjects should beware and undergo tribulations with patience. Secondly, kings themselves should be warned by history that, for their own survival and that of their descendants, they should rule in such a way as to preserve the love and respect of their subjects. In other words, Ralegh was concerned as much with giving cautionary advice as with laying down absolute principles.35 Ralegh’s vision of history was increasingly military. While in the first two books most attention is given to religion, above all to God’s judgements upon the Israelites for their backsliding and to the smiting of their enemies in battle, the stress shifts as we move from biblical to classical times. Secular causes come to dominate the story. At the same time a stronger narrative line appears with increasing amounts of detail: the Peloponnesian war is covered in eleven pages, the second Punic war in ninety. Battles on land and sea are the arbiters of national destiny. Apart from chapters on the origins of government and on the nature of law, Ralegh neglected civil affairs.36 Sometimes, running ahead of himself, he reflected on the general nature of wars. Branching out from a discussion of the Cimmerian invasion of Lydia, he considered the effects of different kinds of war upon the inhabitants.The miseries of war, he said, were worst when a whole nation or part of it left its homeland and displaced an existing population. The invaders brought so little with them that they needed to take all the possessions of the defenders: ‘their lands and cattel, their houses and their goods, even to the cradles of the sucking infants’. The example of British history showed the effects. The 35 HW, Book 2, Chapter 16, Section 1; Book 2, Chapter 19, Section 6; 1 Samuel 8; James I, The true law of free monarchies; Larkum, ‘Providence and politics’, chs iv, vi. 36 HW, Book 1, Chapter 9, Sections 1–4; Book 2, Chapter 4, Sections 3–16.

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Saxon invasions sought the ‘entire possession of the country’ and managed to eradicate most of the British race; the Danes, by contrast, were not strong enough to become ‘absolute conquerors’ but were too powerful for the Saxons to drive them out. In time some of them became acquainted with one another and were able to live peaceably together. However, while he was aware that war could result in terrible hardship and suffering, Ralegh mostly accepted it as part of the natural order of things.37 Ralegh’s heroes were generally men of arms and honour. In the biblical chapters, peaceable rulers like Samuel and prophets like Isaiah got some attention, but in the classical chapters such men were eclipsed by the captains of war. Socrates and Plato get one mention each: Socrates on his death, Plato on his advice to the tyrant Dionysus of Sicily. Solon and Pericles appear nowhere in the text. The heroes are all military leaders: Cyrus the Great of Persia, Epaminondas of Thebes, Alexander of Macedon, Scipio Africanus and Hannibal of Carthage. No doubt Julius Caesar would have been another, probably the greatest, had the History reached that point. Cyrus the Great, King of the Persians, conqueror of Babylon and creator of the Persian Empire, rose to power as a general in the Persian army. He was a skilful tactician, who took Babylon by draining the Euphrates and thus enabling his troops to enter its walls through the dry river-bed. He not only delivered the Jews from captivity, but also rebuilt the temple of God in Jerusalem.38 In this he was ‘an instrument of God’s goodness, and a willing advancer of his kingdom upon earth’. Following the Peloponnesian War, Thebes rose to dominance within Greece under the leadership of Epaminondas. He invaded the Peloponnesus, almost took Sparta and marched instead to Mantinea, where he faced the alliance of Spartans and Athenians. Using a wedge formation he forced open the enemy squadrons and gained the victory, although dying himself. Ralegh’s praise is unstinting: he was ‘the worthiest man that ever was bred in that nation of Greece, and hardly to be matched in any age or country’. He excelled in every virtue: justice, sincerity, temperance, wisdom and magnanimity. He was ‘a perfect composition of an heroic general’. In private he was grave, yet affable and courteous, ‘a lover of his people, bearing with men’s infirmities, witty and pleasant in speech’.To these qualities were added ‘great ability of body, much eloquence and very deep knowledge in all parts of 37 HW, Book 2, Chapter 28, Section 4/3; below, Chapter Eleven (iii), concerning A discourse of the original and fundamental cause of . . . war. 38 HW, Book 3, Chapters 2–4.

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philosophy and learning’. He did not restrict himself to contemplation, but gave Thebes, hitherto an underling, ‘the highest command in Greece’. In his combination of civil and military virtues, Epaminondas might have been a role-model for Ralegh himself.39 Ralegh could hardly deny a place among his heroes to Alexander the Great; but he praised him in moderation. By contrast with Epaminondas, according to Ralegh,Alexander had only to contend with weak commanders. Darius is portrayed as a popinjay, more like a performer in a masque than a man of war, who hoped to beat Alexander. Where Quintus Curtius, Ralegh’s principal source for the battle of the Issus, wrote of the Persians that ‘the order of their marching was in this manner. The fire which they call holy and eternall, was carried before upon silver aulters’, Ralegh interpolated a completely new and unwarranted section: The manner of his coming on . . . was rather like a masker than a man of warre, and like one that took more care to set out his glorie and riches, than to provide for his own safetie, persuading himself, as it seemed, to beat Alexander with pompe and sumptuous pagents.

Concluding his account of the opening phase of the battle, Ralegh wrote: In this sort came this May-game-King into the field, incombred with a most unnecessary strain of strumpets, attended with troupes of divers Nations, speaking divers languages . . .

It is a splendid piece of rhetoric, designed to reduce Alexander’s standing as a general, but it goes well beyond Ralegh’s principal source. Recent accounts of the battle give Darius credit for good tactical sense and attribute his defeat mainly to the superior training and morale of the Macedonian cavalry, as well as to Alexander’s tactical brilliance.40 Gradually, as Alexander advanced into Persia, he fell into Persian ways: he wore Persian garments and ordered his nobility to do the same, imitating in all things ‘the proud, voluptuous, and detested manners of the Persians, whom he had vanquished’. Alexander was as valiant as any man, but, Ralegh 39 HW, Book 3, Chapter 12, Section 7. 40 Racin, Sir Walter Ralegh as Historian, pp. 159–62; R. Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (London, 1973), p. 174; P. Briant, Darius dans l’ombre d’Alexandre (Paris, 2003). We are grateful to Mr Lane Fox for drawing our attention to this source.

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insisted, courage alone is not enough; he was generous, but his liberality was out of proportion.41 The hero with whom Ralegh most closely identified was probably Hannibal.42 Towards the end of the Second Punic War, Hannibal was defending Carthage against the advancing troops of Publius Cornelius Scipio. Before the Batttle of Zama, Hannibal expressed a desire to meet his rival. The two men rode out of their respective camps and met half-way between their companies, where they dismounted. ‘They remained a while silent, viewing one the other with mutual admiration.’ Hannibal then spoke, saying that it would have been better for both states to have kept their armies within the bounds of Africa and Italy.What they had each gained was no compensation for the ships that had been lost or the blood that had been shed. ‘But since things pass’d could not be recalled . . . it was meet for them to consider, unto what extreme dangers their own cities had been exposed by the greedy desire of extending their empires abroad . . . and that it was even time for them . . . to make an end of their obstinate contention.’ Hannibal, fearing that Scipio, much the younger man, might reject such overtures in the hope of victory, spoke of the mutability of fortune and urged the cause of peace; but his overtures were nevertheless rejected and battle joined. Both generals addressed their armies. Scipio rode up and down ‘exhorting his men to do valiantly; using words not many, but very forcible’. He told them that ‘their victory in this war, should make them lords of all the world . . . but that if they were beaten, he asked them whither they would fly . . . And therefore there was none other way, but death or victory’. Hannibal was in a more difficult situation.The lords of Carthage would not let him delay battle until expected reinforcements arrived, as they did a few days later. ‘He encouraged therefore his men, with words agreeable to their several conditions’: mercenaries were promised bountiful rewards; Carthaginians threatened with ‘inevitable servitude’ if they lost; his old Italian fellow-soldiers reminded of victories they had won against greater numbers and against better troops than those they faced that day. 43 Ralegh was good at battles and Zama provided one of his great set-piece descriptions. Roman discipline held against ‘the boisterous violence of these untrained Barbarians’, while Hannibal’s mercenaries got no help from those who should have supported them. The new Carthaginian levies fled when 41 HW, Book 4, Chapter 2, Sections 16 and 23. 42 There is an excellent analysis in Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 51–5. 43 HW, Book 5, Chapter 3, Section 21.

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they saw the mercenaries begin to retire, and took the Ligurian and Gallic allies with them.‘Fear and indignation caused those that were at once chased by the Romans, and betrayed, as they thought, by their own fellows, to turn their arms with an heedless fury against both the one and the other. Thus were many of the Carthaginians beaten down and slain, through their indiscretion, by their own mercenaries.’ As his men fled, Hannibal himself stood firm, ordering his men to turn their pikes against those of their own side who would have rushed him. The ground over which the Romans had to march in order to reach Hannibal ‘was covered with such thick heaps of dead bodies and weapons, and so slippery with blood’, that Scipio feared he might not be able to reach his rival. However, he did so, and the main confrontation of the battle began. Scipio ‘advanced towards Hannibal, who entertained him after another manner than ever he had been received before’. The earlier part of the day seemed like a mere prelude ‘in regard of the sharp conflict that was maintained between these notable soldiers’. It was ended when Italian and Numidian cavalry returned from pursuing the fleeing Carthaginian horse to charge Hannibal in the rear. He fled to Carthage, where he appeared before the Senate and recommended that they make peace. They did so reluctantly and with a great deal of moaning over the terms.44 Hannibal himself found refuge in the kingdom of Bithynia, and when Roman troops came to capture him, committed suicide. Scipio, now known as Scipio Africanus, died in voluntary exile, accused of bribery, in the same year. They were, wrote Ralegh, ‘as great captains as ever the world had; but not more famous than unfortunate’. Had Hannibal been prince of the Carthaginians and able to command the necessary supplies, ‘he had torn up the Roman empire by the roots. But he was so strongly cross’d by a cowardly and envious faction at home’ that he failed.45 In this Hannibal was not alone among military men, and here Ralegh embarked on one of his principal complaints against monarchs and their courts. There is no profession more unprosperous, than that of men of war, and great captains, being no kings. For, besides the envy and jealousy of men; the spoils, rapes, famine, slaughter of the innocent, vastation [sic], and burnings, with a world of miseries laid on the labouring man, are . . . hateful to God.

44 Ibid. 45 HW, Book 5, Chapter 6, Section 2.

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Successful captains have ‘been rewarded in the end, either with disgrace, banishment, or death’. He instanced, among many others, Coriolanus, Scipio Africanus, Joab captain of David’s forces and Parmenio and Philotas among Alexander’s captains. The Turks advanced it as a general principle that every warlike prince should destroy his greatest men of war.46 For once he refers to the late Queen of England. Elizabeth, he claimed, was no different from other monarchs, for all her old captains by land died poor men. It is clear why the actors in prosperous actions generally die neglected. ‘Those which are nearest the persons of princes (which martial men seldom are) can with no good grace commend, or at least magnify a profession far more noble than their own.’ But, he said, King James had honoured more martial men than other kings had done in the last hundred years.‘He has given a coronet to Lord Thomas Howard’ and he had rewarded others with peerages.47 In fact James did not particularly favour military men: he was averse to the business of war and simply gave more titles of nobility generally.48 Ralegh was always ready to demonstrate his military experience and expertise with specific examples and advice. There is a well-known instance when, writing about Alexander’s use of fire to drive his enemy from a defensible position, Ralegh remarked that he had observed similar tactics when he was serving in France during the third civil war: bundles of flaming straw had been lowered down to drive defenders from caves in which they had been hiding. Sir John Burgh had nearly been trapped on the island of Margharita ‘by having the grass fired behind him’, but had luckily discovered the danger in time. Ralegh warned captains invading ‘those countries’ always to burn the grass and sedge to the east of them, otherwise they might ‘die the death of honey-bees, burnt out of the hive’.49 Digressing from the wars of the Romans in Sicily, he emphasized the importance of naval defences. A commander must study the capacity of different types of ship and plan accordingly. Had Lord Admiral Howard listened to some of the ‘malignant fools’ around him and engaged the Spanish navy directly in 1588, he would undoubtedly have endangered England. The Spaniards had one hundred men on board to twenty of ours, whereas a mere 46 Ibid. 47 Howard was created Lord Howard de Walden by Elizabeth and Earl of Suffolk by James. 48 HW, Book 5, Chapter 6, Section 2. 49 HW, Book 4, Chapter 2, Section 16; cf. Book 5, Chapter 2, Section 14.

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twenty men on board defending would have the advantage over one hundred attacking. But in the open sea twenty ships have the advantage over one hundred by using their artillery. In the Low Countries especially, ships and river boats had huge advantages over land forces. Maurice of Nassau set off in 1590 to besiege either Bois-le-Duc or Geertruidenberg; but when the wind changed he suddenly set sail down the Meuse and then up the Rhine for Zutphen, which he captured, for the Spanish army could not march eighty miles around Holland and over great rivers to prevent him.50 Could England ‘without help of her fleet . . . debar an enemy from landing’? He answered firmly that she could not, because a fleet could always outdistance an army. If an invading fleet was seen off the Lizard at sunset it could be off Portland by morning, while it would take an army six days to march the distance. A strong army at sea could not be prevented from landing where it wanted ‘unless it be hindered, encountered, and shuffled together, by a fleet of equal or answerable strength’. Ralegh’s own difficulty in landing his troops at Fayal in the Azores in 1597 had sometimes, he said, been thought to contradict this. He replied that he could have chosen another landing-place, but that he ‘had more regard of reputation . . . than of safety. For I thought it to belong unto the honour of our prince and nation, that a few islanders should not think any advantage great enough, against a fleet set forth by queen Elizabeth.’ In spite of fierce resistance from the islanders, Ralegh’s company was able to capture the town. The relevance of this to Ralegh’s general proposition about sea-power is not at all clear, for his success was due rather to his own indifference to danger than to the advantage of attacking from the sea. It is hard to resist the view that he was more concerned with defending his honour and his own conduct of affairs than with establishing principles of military conduct.51 Ralegh’s final reflections on history are suffused with melancholy and pessimism. Few men, he claimed, have shown themselves able to learn the dangers of seeking absolute power or the transitory nature of success until too late. As great princes have been cast down by God or robbed of their posterity, so have kingdoms and empires. He had left Rome in the History almost at the height of her power, but soon ‘it shall begin to lose the beauty it had; the storms of ambition shall beat her great boughs and branches one against another; her leaves shall fall off; her limbs wither, and a rabble of barbarous 50 HW, Book 5, Chapter 1, Section 9. 51 Ibid. see above, Chapter Six, pp. 128–9; A. Gorges, Relation of the Ilands Voyage, printed in Purchas his Pilgrimes (London, 1625).

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nations enter the field, and cut her down’. (One wonders whether the young Edward Gibbon, who admired the History, was influenced by this passage in his choice of subject matter?) Great kings have been stirred ‘by the desire of fame, which ploweth up the air, and soweth in the wind, [rather] than by the affection of bearing rule’. ‘They have purchased the report of their actions in the world, by rapine, oppression and cruelty, by giving in spoil the innocent and labouring soul to the idle and insolent, and by having emptied the cities of the world of their ancient inhabitants.’They remember the glorious actions of their predecessors but not their final destinies. Yet fame is of no value to the dead. Princes neglect the teaching of God and listen only to the counsel of death. ‘Death, which hateth and destroyeth man, is believed; God, which hath made him and loves him, is always deferred.’‘Death alone . . . can suddenly make man to know himself.’ It is a message of profound gloom and pessimism: there is no indication of the coming Incarnation of Christ or the promise of redemption. Having claimed at the outset that history can teach us valuable lessons he contends in his concluding pages that all is determined by God and implies, contradictorily, that God’s plan has been rejected by man.52 Some have attributed Ralegh’s despair to the death of Prince Henry, his patron, in 1612, and Lefranc has claimed that his praise of death was a concealed thrust against James I, but these explanations seem reductionist. It may be nearer the mark to say that the pessimism and self-pity were earlier reflected in the lines of the ‘The Ocean to Cynthia’ and had now been sharpened by a decade of imprisonment.53 It has to be said that Ralegh’s History is not much to the modern taste.The earlier chapters are heavily encumbered with thickets of biblical commentary, forming a dense barrier between his readers and his narrative. The work is seriously unbalanced, with the earlier sections of narrative rapidly covered, the later sinking under the weight of detail. Ralegh is often unscrupulous in his treatment of evidence, for instance in his ridiculing of Darius as war leader. The book was, however, widely admired in its own day and beyond. Eight editions were published, three of them before the end of the reign of James I. The last complete one was the Oxford edition of 1829. Its admirers ranged from Milton and Cromwell to Gibbon.54 What attracted Ralegh’s contemporaries to this monumental work? First, its very scale was majestic 52 HW, Book 5, Chapter 6, Section 12; Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 149–54. 53 Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 150–54; P. Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh,écrivain: l’oeuvre et les idées (Paris, 1968), p. 333; above, Chapter Seven, pp. 153–60. 54 Below, Chapter Fourteen, p. 332.

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and bold, in keeping with its author. Second, there was nothing comparable to it in English.Third, its author’s own fame attracted readers, especially after he had been posthumously recruited to the Protestant and parliamentary causes. Fourth, it was philosophical history which illuminated the workings of Providence and therefore appealed especially to seventeenth-century Protestants. Finally, the writing was vigorous, hard-edged and muscular. Henry Fenton wrote of it in his Dissertation on reading the classics, published in 1713: Ralegh’s ‘style is the most perfect, the happiest, and most beautiful of the Age he wrote in, majestic, clear and manly . . . the Spirit of Rome and Athens seems to be breathed into his Work.’55 On the problems of composing contemporary history, Ralegh warns: ‘whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth’.56 On the origins of government he writes that: ‘necessity . . . made both the wise and foolish understand at once, that the estate of reasonable men would become far more miserable than that of beasts, and that a general flood of confusion would a second time overflow them, did they not by a general obedience to order and dominion prevent it’.57 Sardanapalus, King of Assyria, was ‘a most luxurious and effeminate palliard . . . passing away his time among strumpets, whom he imitated both in apparel and behaviour’.58 Ralegh has this to say on treaties: ‘the rusty sword and the empty purse do always plead the performance of covenants’.59 On the uses of experience he is equally pragmatic: ‘the cheese-wife knoweth it as well as the philosopher, that sour runnet doth coagulate her milk into a curd. But if we ask a reason of this cause, why the sourness doth it? whereby it doth it? and the manner how? I think that there is nothing to be found in vulgar philosophy, to satisfy this and many other like vulgar questions.’60

55 H. Fenton, A Dissertation on Reading the Classics (London, 1713; Scolar Press facsimile edn), pp. 199–201. 56 HW, preface, sig. E4. 57 HW, Book 1, Chapter 9, Section 1. 58 HW, Book 2, Chapter 20, Section 2. 59 HW, Book 5, Chapter 3, Section 4. 60 HW, preface, sig. D2v.

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11(iii)

The Tower Writings:The Dialogue of Counsel

While The History of the World was in the press during the spring and summer of 1614 financial pressure on King James forced him to call Parliament. His total debts came to £500,000 and the annual deficit to £160,000. In 1610, Robert Cecil had proposed a permanent settlement of the problem in the shape of a Great Contract.This entailed the surrender by the King of certain unpopular sources of revenue in return for a guaranteed annual income of £200,000. Between the objections of some parliamentarians that the figure was too high, and the King’s reluctance to surrender any sources of income, the Great Contract failed and Parliament was dissolved.Three years later, with the situation again desperate, James yielded to the persuasions of a group in his Privy Council that the only cure lay in Parliament. It opened on 3 April 1614. James met it with a bad grace, declaring loftily that he would not bargain with them like a merchant. The central issue lay in the taxes known as impositions: these were customs duties levied on imports and authorized only by the King, not by Parliament. In 1606 the King’s right to do this had been challenged by a merchant, John Bate, who refused to pay a duty on currants that he was bringing in from the Levant. The royal right had later been vindicated in a test case, Bate’s Case, brought in the Court of Exchequer. James had offered in 1610 to levy no new impositions without parliamentary consent provided that the existing taxes were allowed. His offer was refused.1 While impositions were the principal issue throughout the 1614 Parliament, other matters inflamed opinions on both sides. Some members of the House of Commons complained that the elections had been improperly influenced by the Crown through its agents, known as ‘undertakers’. There was no firm evidence for this, but that did not prevent members from making wild assertions. In the Lords, Bishop Neile of Lincoln attacked the Commons for 1 D. L. Smith, The Stuart Parliaments, 1603–1689 (London, 1999), pp. 53–7, 107–9; T. L. Moir, The Addled Parliament of 1614 (Oxford, 1958), passim, for a general introduction. See also C. Russell, The Addled Parliament of 1614: the limits to revision. Stenton Lecture 1991 (Reading, 1992); M. Jansson, Proceedings in Parliament, 1614. House of Commons (Philadelphia, 1988); S. Clucas and R. Davies (eds), The Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parliament (Aldershot, 2003).

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so much as questioning the King’s right to levy impositions. Speaking on a proposal from the Commons that there should be a joint meeting of the two Houses, Neile virtually accused the lower House of sedition. United by this, the Commons responded with bitter attacks upon Neile himself and, by extension, on the clergy generally. By the end of May relations between the Houses had become so inflamed that discussion of the royal finances had almost come to a halt, and at the beginning of June the King threatened to dissolve Parliament within a week. The announcement provoked furious reactions from the Commons. John Hoskins, lawyer, wit and MP for Hereford, attacked the King’s Scottish counsellors, especially Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset, suggesting that they all be sent home.2 He unwisely referred to the Sicilian Vespers, the rising of Sicilians against the rule of Charles of Anjou in 1282. In this atmosphere of bitterness and contention James carried out his threat and dissolved Parliament on 7 June. No statutes had been carried and nothing had been done to remedy the King’s financial needs. James thought, rightly, that the royal revenue was wholly inadequate for his needs; the Commons believed, understandably, that he had wasted his money on Scottish favourites and feared that if he were allowed to continue levying impositions Parliament would never meet again. In this situation a rational solution was unlikely to be agreed. In the next few years something was done to reduce the King’s annual deficit, but the capital of the debt remained. The Privy Council was divided on the solution. Although a majority favoured the recall of Parliament, the Howards, Earls of Nottingham and of Suffolk, with the earl of Somerset and Sir Thomas Lake, Secretary of State, opposed it. The Spanish ambassador, Diego de Sarmiento, used his considerable influence with James to prevent it, correctly believing that most members of the House of Commons were hostile to Spain.3 Early in 1615 Ralegh entered the debate with an address to the King urging him to summon Parliament. It was his first literary intervention in domestic politics and may have been prompted by the presence in the Tower with him of John Hoskins, imprisoned for his remarks on the Sicilian Vespers. For more than a decade the address remained in manuscript form without a formal title, until it was printed in 1628 as The Prerogative of Parliaments in

2 ODNB, under Hoskins, John (1566–1638). 3 Sarmiento later became Count Gondomar, under which name he is now better known.

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England. Proved in a Dialogue between a Counsellor of State and a Justice of Peace.4 That the address remained in manuscript did not of course mean that its readership was restricted to the King. As we have already noted, circulation of manuscripts as a means of publication was common in the early seventeenth century and had certain advantages.The survival of several manuscript copies of the Dialogue shows that this was the case here.5 The Counsellor in the Dialogue stands for a prominent nobleman, possibly Robert Carr, certainly one of the inner ring of royal government, the Justice for Ralegh himself. The Justice’s strategy for persuading James to call Parliament was to tell the story of individual Parliaments, reign by reign, demonstrating that kings never suffered from them and often gained advantage. The Counsellor tries to show that kings did on occasion suffer damage and that therefore James would be well advised to avoid them. When the Counsellor is able to point to some damage suffered by the king from a particular parliament, the Justice ripostes that it was not a true Parliament. This does not make for exciting or entertaining reading. Ralegh does not dispute the right of the king to levy impositions, or indeed other taxes, without parliamentary consent. Indeed, he shows little interest in the legal arguments presented earlier in Bate’s case and in Parliament itself. In his view, when the king needed money for an emergency the taxpayer must provide.6 By contrast, William Hakewill, speaking in 1610, had argued that the common law provided certainty between king and subject and that this certainty together with the ‘provision made by the Common Law, are in my poor opinion, Arguments of direct proofs that the King cannot impose.’7 In Ralegh’s Dialogue, when the Counsellor argues that whatever is done by the king on the advice of his intimates or of the Privy Council ‘is done by the king’s absolute power’, the Justice agrees with him: ‘And by whose power is it done in Parliament, but by the king’s absolute power? Mistake it not, my 4 The original MSS remain in the State Papers, Domestic, James I (SP 14/85 and SP14/84/44). A later edition is to be found in Works of Ralegh, viii, pp. 151–221, which is used here. 5 Above, Chapter Eleven (i), p. 245. A. R. Beer, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s Dialogue betweene a counsellor of state and a justice of the peace’, in S. Clucas and R. Davies (eds), The Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parliament (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 128–9. 6 A R. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers in the Seventeenth Century, Speaking to the People (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 63. 7 Quoted in J. P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots: politics and ideology in England, 1603–1640 (London, 1986), p. 143. Hakewill’s speech was published in 1641 as The Libertie of the Subject.

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lord: the three estates do but advise, as the privy-council doth.’ However, although kings have absolute power to tax their subjects without their consent, they would in practice be unwise to do so. Ralegh, or rather the Justice, goes on to ask: Is it a loss to the king to be beloved of the commons? If it be revenue which the king seeks, is it not better to take it of those that laugh, than those that cry? . . . Is it not more honourable and more safe for the king that the subject pay by persuasion, than to have them constrained?

He then asserts that ‘there is nothing in the great Charter against impositions: besides that necessity doth persuade them’.8 Ralegh had put forward similar views in The History of the World, asserting unequivocally that subjects have no right to disobey or resist their prince. That right belongs solely to God.Yet, while Ralegh’s opinions are theoretically consistent, they are in practice difficult to reconcile with his assessment of princes. In the preface to the History he presents an almost uniformly black picture of monarchs, culminating in the cruel and malignant Henry VIII.9 His commentary on Samuel’s advice to the people of Israel against handing government to a single person contains a bleak warning.10 Writing in the History of the contrasting stories of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, he reports that while the kings of Israel ruled by retaining the love of the people, those of Judah forfeited that love and suffered. He saw the government of these kingdoms and of England as resting upon the love of the people. For a good form of government sufficeth by itself to retain the people, not only without assistance of a laborious wit, but even against all devices of the greatest and shrewdest politicians.

Monarchs will succeed provided that they have won and retained ‘the hearts of the people, who will be sure to come in on their side’; and monarchs can best achieve this ‘with the blood of some great officers’.11 He illustrates the point in the ‘Dialogue’ by pointing to Henry III obtaining a grant from a thirteenth-century parliament for payment of his debts after he had ‘squeezed 8 9 10 11

Works of Ralegh, viii, p. 213; Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 63. Above, Chapter Eleven (ii), p. 258. HW, Book 2, Chapter 16, Section 1; above, p. 264. HW, Book 2, Chapter 19, Section 6.

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those sponges of the commonwealth’, Hubert be Burgh and his associates.12 However, Ralegh writes, the political balance has changed since the days when it depended on the outcome of struggles between over-mighty subjects and the monarch. ‘The lords in former times were far stronger, more warlike, better followed, living in their countries, than now they are.’ Earls could then bring to the war a thousand ‘barbed horses’ and barons five or six hundred; but few of them now could deliver twenty. The threat to the king from over-mighty subjects has therefore vanished; but the people must still be contented, their power being ‘in the flower’, and by implication the best way to please them is by removing evil and greedy counsellors and by summoning parliament.13 Ralegh does not make entirely clear who he has in mind by ‘the people’, but the term is likely to include those who are compelled to bear arms and pay subsidies, rather than the landless poor and wage-earners. When the Counsellor asks what conditions would be demanded of the king if he were to call Parliament, Ralegh stresses the need for freedom of speech there. ‘If any man of the commons’ house should speak more largely than of duty he ought to do, all such offences [ought] to be pardoned and that to be of record.’14 He insists that this does not entail a licence for men to speak what they want. He also criticizes the privy counsellors for imprisoning the king’s subjects. In the opening address to King James, he refers in obscure and contorted language to his own condemnation by ‘the borrowed authority of my sovereign misinformed, seeing their arms and hands that flung it are most of them already rotten’. Ralegh’s pleasure at the deaths of his judges and the image of their rotting limbs is perhaps understandable; but the logic is weak.15 He returns to the matter of imprisonment early in the main text when he refers to the imprisonment of the parliamentary dissidents, Cornwallis, Sharpe and Hoskins in 1614, ‘with no suspicion of treason there’.16 Towards the end of the Dialogue he insists that ‘that which hath been ever grievous, and the cause of many troubles very dangerous, is, that your lordships, abusing the reasons of state, do punish and imprison the king’s subjects at your pleasure’. To this the Counsellor replies that the Justice (Ralegh) should take care in speaking ‘against our greatest, [for] those men in the end shall be your judges in their own cause: you, that trouble 12 13 14 15 16

Works of Ralegh, viii, p. 165. Ibid., p. 183. Ibid., p. 211. Ibid., p. 153. Ibid., p. 162.

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yourself with reformation, are like to be well rewarded.’17 With that threat he confirms Ralegh’s fears. Ralegh wrote one more tract before he left the Tower in 1616: A Discourse of the Original and Fundamental Cause of War. In it he draws general conclusions from The History of the World and from later events in the Christian era. The range of his knowledge is impressive. ‘The ordinary theme and argument of history is war . . . the exercise of violence under sovereign command against withstanders.’ Its essential components are ‘force, authority and resistance’.18 Ralegh distinguishes three different kinds of war: necessary; voluntary or arbitrary; and civil. Necessary wars occur when a country is ‘overlaid by the multitude which live upon it’ and is compelled by fear of famine to seize new lands. Foreign war may serve, as King Ferdinand of Aragon said, ‘as a potion of rhubarb, to waste away choler from the body of the realm’. It will also involve great misery for the people. Western Europe has been happily free from such ‘inundations’ for the last six hundred years, but few kingdoms in Asia have escaped them.19 Voluntary or arbitrary war has many causes: fear of harm or invasion; desire for revenge; anger at injustice; religious conflict; and ambition. ‘Of old times’, he says, ‘perhaps, before Helen of Greece was born, women have been the common argument of these tragedies.’ Interestingly enough, the Indian chief Topiawari had made a very similar point when Ralegh visited him on his first Orinoco voyage. Papal claims to have the power to dispense subjects from their allegiance might have caused England ‘as furious a war as ever’ in Elizabeth’s reign ‘if Pope Pius’s bull could have gored as well as he could bellow’.20 ‘Intestine or civil war’ is the third kind. In discussing it Ralegh returns to the theme of the Dialogue, arguing the case for obedience to all legitimate authority. He calls Tacitus and Machiavelli in support.The former insists that ‘we ought to submit to what is present, and should wish for good princes, but whatever they are, endure them’. Machiavelli calls this ‘a golden sentence’.21 ‘No nation’, says Ralegh, ‘was ever bettered by a civil war’. In words that prefigure those of Thomas Hobbes later in the century, Ralegh argues that 17 Ibid., pp. 215, 218. 18 The Discourse was first printed in 1650.The edition used here is that in Works of Ralegh, viii, pp. 253–97. 19 Ibid., pp. 253–6. 20 Ibid., pp. 257–77; above, Chapter Five. 21 Ibid., p. 279. For the influence of Machiavelli on Ralegh’s writings see P. Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh écrivain: l’oeuvre et les idées (Paris, 1968), pp. 224–53.

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when men ‘fly to arms’ against one another, it becomes a state of war, in which they are returning to the state of nature where all covenants and agreements are void. In this state, ‘natural conscience is not a sufficient curb to the violent passions of men out of the laws of society’. Each man becomes subject to whoever is more cunning or stronger than himself.22 However, ‘wise governors will not bear hard upon the people’, for if abuses of government grow to a height the ‘true majority’ may discharge the rulers, since the latter can show no patriarchal right. If those ‘possessing the supreme power are incurably defective . . . the majority of the people . . . have a right to change the same, [and] I think naturally they must’.Yet if ‘there is no such plain dangerous defect’, even the majority has no right to remove the rulers, for then ‘all governments would be at the will and pleasure of the people’, which would be disastrous. But Ralegh gives no answer to the crucial question: who is to decide whether or not there is an incurable defect in the governors?23 In history, writes Ralegh, civil war often followed when the people were led into rebellion by great men intent on pursuing their own interests. He instances the French wars that had only recently finished with the Treaty of Vervins in 1598. They had been begun and continued by ‘some few great men of ambitious and turbulent spirits, deluding the people with the cloak and mask only of religion, to gain their assistance’. The massacre of St Barthomew’s Day in 1572 had, he insists, no more religion in it than the Sicilian Vespers. No greater plague, he repeats, can come upon a country than a civil war. He illustrates his point from the horrors perpetrated in Rome during the second century BC following the revival of the Agrarian Law by the Gracchi brothers: lands taken from Rome’s enemies and previously divided among the nobles should under this law be shared among the people. Unparalleled hatred was unleashed between the Senate and the people. ‘The common people were butchered after a most inhuman manner . . . the soldiers had liberty to kill all they met.’ The fate of leaders and commanders was even worse and the dissensions continued until the fall of the Republic, which they had brought about.24 The common people of England have also been drawn to shed one another’s blood ‘for such a liberty as their leaders never intended they should have’.They have fought battles to redress grievances, which has always led to 22 Works of Ralegh, viii, p. 279. 23 Ibid., p. 281; Beer, Ralegh and his readers, pp. 129–30. 24 Works of Ralegh, viii, pp. 282–94.

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an increase of those same grievances. Learned scholars abroad believe that England is the commonwealth which is best governed, and men should not look for any other liberty than a good government. In the aftermath of his execution, Ralegh became the favoured voice of the growing opposition to the King. James’s son-in-law, Frederick, the Protestant Elector Palatine, was defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620 and expelled from his Rhine Palatinate by Spanish troops in 1623. James was put under pressure by English Protestants to secure his restoration. At first he attempted to do this by seeking help from the Habsburgs themselves and negotiating a marriage between Prince Charles and a Spanish princess. Negotiations failed during a fruitless attempt by Charles and the new royal favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, to woo the princess in Spain. Charles and Parliament then agreed on war with Spain shortly before the death of King James, and on Charles’s accession Buckingham opened the war with a disastrous naval expedition to Cadiz. In the same year Parliament refused to grant the usual customs duties, normally granted for the life of the reigning monarch, for more than one year. A threat to impeach Buckingham led the King to dissolve Parliament before he could secure their agreement to a renewal of the customs. At this point, difficult enough, he entered war with France as well, thus involving the country in hostilities with both the major European powers.To provide for his military expenses he demanded a forced loan and imprisoned those who refused to pay. The issue brought into play Ralegh’s Dialogue, which had been circulating in manuscript for some years. Anna Beer has shown that, apart from the two copies in the State Papers, at least eleven others exist in various repositories. One of these was owned by Sir John Eliot, of Port Eliot, Cornwall, who marked certain passages in the text. Elected to Parliament in 1628, Eliot was imprisoned for his refusal to pay the forced loan, and from prison he wrote his Petition from the Gatehouse, justifying his action.There are echoes of Ralegh’s Dialogue here, although he goes beyond Ralegh in various ways, principally in using statute to argue that men should not be compelled to pay taxes or give loans except with the consent of Parliament freely given. Like Ralegh, however, he claims that if men gave freely without compulsion more money would be raised for the King, he objects to imprisonment without trial on the ground that it is contrary to Magna Carta, and expresses the fear that if the King’s wishes were granted now, ‘future ages’ might strike at property.25 25 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 111–15, 181–3; The Petition of Sir John Eliot,

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There are signs in one of Eliot’s draft speeches of Ralegh’s influence: he uses the phrase ‘squeezing of these sponges of the commonwealth into the king’s coffers’; and when Eliot was under examination by the Council in 1626, he referred to having read ‘the treatise which passes from hand to hand under the name of Sir Walter Raleigh by way of a Dialogue’.26 Ralegh’s role was further established by publication of the Dialogue in 1628. Nominally published in Hamburg or alternatively Midelburg, in fact in London, it went into five editions within the first year, followed by another two in 1640. Its new title, The Prerogative of Parliaments, largely dropped pretence of impartiality between Counsellor and Justice. Between 1620 and 1628 Ralegh’s reputation as a patriot was becoming established. Gallant and honourable soldier, sworn enemy of Spain, he was presented as a Protestant hero in two remarkable, fictional tracts by Thomas Scott, who became preacher to the English regiment in Utrecht.27 In the earliest of these, Vox Populi or Newes from Spain, Scott imagines the Spanish Ambassador, Gondomar, arriving in Spain to give an account of his English embassy to an assembly of all the Councils of the Spanish kingdom. He is the archetype of the evil counsellor. He tells his audience that his aim throughout has been to make his master ruler of the world, advancing the Spanish state and Roman religion together. One of his finest achievements, he claims, was the bringing ‘to an ignominious death, that old Pyrat [Ralegh] . . . one of the last now living, bred under that deceased English Virago [Elizabeth]’. Scott returned to this theme with Sir Walter Rawleighs Ghost or Englands Forewarner.28 The fictional Gondomar is about to address Philip IV’s counsellors on the state of England and the possibilities for a Spanish invasion. The morning before he is due to attend upon the counsellors he goes to the garden of the Prado to walk by himself and to marshal his thoughts. Suddenly a most beautiful light begins to shine and he is struck with fear; the ghost of Sir Walter appears in shining armour and the ambassador falls upon his face in terror.‘Why’, he asks, ’have you come to disturb my rest?’ He admits to having prisoner in the Gatehouse, in behalf of the liberty of the subject, incorporated in J. Eliot, The Arguments upon the Writ of Habeas Corpus (London, 1649). 26 Quoted in J. N. Ball,‘Sir John Eliot and parliament, 1624–29’, in K. Sharpe (ed.), Faction and Parliament (Oxford, 1978), p. 180 and fn; on Eliot, see also H. Hulme, The Life of John Eliot, 1592–1632 (London, 1957). 27 For Scott see P. G. Lake, ‘Constitutional consensus and puritan opposition in the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish match’, Historical Journal 25 (1982), 805–25. 28 Published Utrecht, 1626. A facsimile edn was published in 1974.

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been the ‘Nose of the Spanish State’ and to have plotted Ralegh’s downfall, claiming that this was ‘the last worke or master-peece of all my wisedome and pollicie’. The apparition then gets angry and accuses Gondomar of having been ‘a pack-horse to advance your master to universal monarchy’.The defeat of Spanish armies had not quenched their King’s ambition, but had turned it to murder, asserts Ralegh, citing the Gunpowder Plot, Ravaillac’s assassination of Henri IV and the expulsion of the Elector from the Palatinate as examples of Spain’s villainy. Ralegh had now been appropriated to the parliamentary and Protestant causes, and for the next three decades continued to act as their spokesman from the other side of the grave.29

29 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, chs 5 and 6; below, Chapter Fourteen on Ralegh’s legacy.

12

The Last Voyage

Down the years, many writers have dismissed Ralegh’s second voyage to Guiana as the hopeless pursuit of a fantasy. Even without the benefit of hindsight, friends and foes alike doubted the viability of the enterprise, long before he set sail. For some, the prisoner had deluded himself with daydreams. Locked away in the Tower, he had been conquered by his own vivid imagination; the seductive narrative of the Discoverie had eventually beguiled its author as well. Joyce Lorimer argues persuasively that the quantities of gold and silver, and Ralegh’s confidence in the details, grew after Robert Cecil’s death in 1612. Without sober counsel to rein him in, Ralegh let his ‘desperation to get out of the Tower and his firm “belief ” in the riches of Guiana induce a fatal amnesia which led him to forget how his original reports on gold mines had been airbrushed and augmented for publication in 1596’.1 Though always cautious in committing precise details to paper – the Spaniards, he said, would exploit any leaks – Ralegh maintained, from about this time, that he had compelling evidence for the existence of a seam of gold in the sandy rock found close to the Spanish settlement at San Thomé. And of course he insisted that everything to be found there belonged by right to the Queen. His expedition to Guiana in 1595, and the welcome that he had received from the native peoples, had given England her prior claim to colonize and exploit the region. Others, less charitably, wondered what the old fox was up to now. Surely Ralegh realized that Spanish settlements on the Orinoco had multiplied since 1595, and that, for all his disclaimers, the voyage would mean bloodshed? Was that perhaps what he wanted, one means to foment dissent between England and Spain being as good as any other? Here was a way to frustrate the carefully nurtured plans of James I and the Spanish ambassador Gondomar, who had long endeavoured to persuade a sceptical Philip III that the new Prince of Wales, James’s younger son Prince Charles, should marry his daughter, the Infanta Maria Anna. And might not the frustration of these political and dynastic ambitions be encouraged by France? There were grounds for these 1 J. Lorimer, Untruth and Consequences: Ralegh’s Discoverie of Guiana and the “salting” of the gold mine (London, 2007), pp. 6–7.

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suspicions; when a plan is developed over many years the motives and mechanisms for keeping it alive are often extremely complex. However, it is perhaps more accurate to take the expedition at face value: this was Ralegh’s final gamble. He had to believe that precious metals could be found in Guiana, and he clung to every piece of supportive evidence, gleaned over twenty years. As he wrote in 1618, in that forthright style of his that permitted no room for doubt, ‘My one design was to go to a gold mine in Guiana, and tis not a feigned but a real thing that there is such a mine about three miles from S. Thomas . . . these things are as sure as that there is a God’.2 That assertion came to him easily enough; Ralegh had been defending, embellishing, and finally believing his new ‘truth’ since the 1590s.3 Certainty of this sort, however, flew in the face of other truths – the knowledge, for example, that Spain had failed to exploit any significant gold or silver deposits in the region. Nevertheless, the personal conviction behind his words matched the desire of many Englishmen and women to believe everything he had to say. Repeated assertions, made in such a way, whet appetites and attract speculators. The author of the Discoverie had been open in his belief that ‘the desire of gold’ trumped most objections to a brave adventure, and what had been true after his first Guiana voyage remained true twenty years later.4 This conviction, so eloquently expressed, began to play on influential minds. A significant number of leading courtiers at last saw a reason to set Ralegh free.The Countess of Shrewsbury, who also spent years in the Tower after conspiring in the escape from confinement of her niece Arbella Stewart, is said to have lent her support to Ralegh’s appeals and Bess of Hardwick’s daughter was a persuasive woman, even in adversity.5 At the Jacobean Court, however, money counted for more than fine words, and it seems very likely that substantial payments eased the prisoner out of the Tower. Looking back on the events of his childhood, Carew Ralegh recalled long afterwards that it had been necessary to bribe two well-connected courtiers, with £1,500 going to each. The fact that Carew, after so many years, put names to both men adds credibility to his tale. However, Carew’s further recollection, that an additional £700 might have secured Ralegh full liberty, and quiet 2 J. Lorimer, ‘The location of Ralegh’s Guiana gold mine’, Terrae Incognitae 14 (1982), 77–95, at 88–91. 3 Lorimer, Untruth and Consequences, pp. 14–19. 4 See ibid., pp. 9–10. 5 Letters of Chamberlain, i, p. 618.

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cancellation of the Guiana proposals, seems to have been wishful thinking. The prisoner’s freedom was always conditional; while his ambitions had won over many principal courtiers, those powerful men and women would in due course expect some return for their support. Prominent among the conditional friends was James’s new favourite George Villiers. Ralegh wrote effusively to Villiers, acknowledging the help that had put him ‘againe into the world’, and assuring the favourite that, should his voyage succeed, credit would fall where it was due. Ralegh, however, knew that credit was not necessarily its own reward. ‘If I doe not also make [the voyage] profitable unto you’, he wrote, ‘I shall shew my self exceeding ungratefull’.6 As favourites rose, so favourites fell. Popular rumour connected Robert Carr’s imprisonment after the Overbury scandal with Ralegh’s release. Everyone knew, or assumed, that Ralegh bore Carr a grudge for having ‘stolen’ Sherborne, and some who liked to dwell on implausible conspiracy set these new alterations down to Sir Walter’s ‘wit and policie’. As so often, however, the later attribution of political change to the work of Machiavellian statesmen conceals far more than it reveals about these murky developments.7 Ralegh was in no position to plot or scheme.The royal commission eventually issued to him as commander of the Guiana expedition was paradoxical, and did not by any means amount to a pardon. The standard phrase ‘trusty and well-beloved’ was omitted in the preamble, and although Ralegh enjoyed powers of life and death over the volunteers in his fleet he was still himself, technically, a dead man in the eyes of the law. James and his ministers took a calculated decision that went far beyond bribes and venality. Ralegh’s increasingly outspoken attacks on the regime set him apart as the most prominent political dissident in England. No one should underestimate the power of Ralegh’s criticisms; as Steven May points out, his 1611 Dialogue between a Jesuit and a Recusant contains ‘an astonishing rehearsal of the king’s failures’, his lavish generosity to Scots courtiers, his planned innovations in taxation, his disdain for English political traditions.8 By freeing this man, and entrusting him with a hazardous mission that took him far from England, a critic was silenced, at least for a time. Given the resentment following the failure of the so-called Addled Parliament in 1614, and the tensions surrounding James’s 6 Letters of Ralegh, p. 337. 7 [F. Greville], The Five Yeares of King James (London, 1643), pp. 66–7. 8 S.W. May, Sir Walter Ralegh (Boston, 1989), pp. 80–4. See above, Chapter Eleven (i).The lively irony of the Dialogue suggests that Ralegh would have made a very successful playwright.

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recourse to non-parliamentary taxation, it made sense to deflect opposition.9 Seen this way, the decision was essentially politic, with perhaps just the smallest gesture of reconciliation. Early-modern government functioned through cooperation and consent, and as the pragmatic King and his equally pragmatic ministers knew all too well, it was ultimately counter-productive to dismiss or ignore the views of those who thought as Ralegh thought. Ralegh was released on 19 March 1616, and at once set about planning his expedition.10 A surviving ‘estimate of the chardge of 4 Ships and 2 Barques with their victualls and other necessaries for a voyage to Guiana in the West Indies’ must date from around this time. Ralegh reckoned the costs of his voyage at just under £10,000 – an underassessment, like so many back of the envelope summaries – with around £4,000 allowed for victualling. Other projected costs in the document, for spare shirts, fishing nets, flyboats, surgeons’ chests, great barges for river work, canary wine and aqua vita for medicinal purposes, and copper desalination furnaces, among other necessaries, are also given in rough, rounded totals.11 In the exuberance of liberty, Ralegh was calculating in broad sweeps. As with Elizabethan voyages in the previous century, the Crown’s partnership was keenly solicited. James was invited to pay in what he wished, and to take a proportionate share of the anticipated profit. However, little he said or did comforted those at Court determined on preserving peace with Spain, and Ralegh, to his disgust, was obliged to give a full account of his intentions to Gondomar. Complying with the letter of this order, he did not quite tell all. It is said that Ralegh discussed with the new Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Francis Bacon, in the course of a long meeting in Gray’s Inn Walks, the possibility of seizing the silver fleet, brushing aside Bacon’s comment that this would amount to an act of piracy. ‘Tush, my Lord’, he asked rhetorically, ‘did you ever hear of any that was counted a pirate for taking millions? They are poor mychars [i.e. mitchers, or petty thieves] that are called in question for piracy, that are not able to make their peace with that they get.’ At this point in the conversation he moved into his familiar, optimistic stride.‘If I can catch the fleet, I can give this man ten thousand and that man ten thousand, and six hundred thousand 9 S. Clucas and R. Davies (eds), The Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parliament: literary and historical perspectives (Aldershot, 2002); C. Russell, The Addled Parliament of 1614: the limits of revision (Reading, 1992). 10 J. R. Dasent et al. (eds), Acts of the Privy Council of England (London, 1890–1964), p. 456. 11 E. A. Strathmann,‘Ralegh plans his last voyage’, Mariner’s Mirror 50 (1964), 261–70, from Folger Shakespeare Library MS G.b.10.

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to the King, and yet keep enough for myself and all my company.’ That was the old boast of the Elizabethan privateer, but the ‘if ’ was emphatic, and the words perhaps best left unsaid.12 Bacon was playing devil’s advocate. King James’s decision to free Ralegh implicitly accepted his argument. Behind all the calculations lay an understanding that, were gold to be discovered in Guiana, England would maintain its rights to exploit the mines, even to the point of war with Spain. James, who despite appearances had the measure of Gondomar, was quite prepared to defy Madrid, so long as the rewards were sufficient.13 Both the Spanish minister and his monarch knew this, and the knowledge added to the vigour of their protests. Afterwards, the English government blamed the seductive power inherent in Ralegh’s glorious vision of Guiana, but admitted he had only asserted ‘that which every man was willing to believe’. How could any King deny his subjects the chance of treasure and glory, after all Ralegh’s enchanting tales?14 Passed on by gossip, reports of these ‘private’ conversations with leading statesmen convinced many people that the voyage was, first and foremost, a pursuit of plunder. John Chamberlain, as ever, spoke for the worldly wise: ‘I feare’, he wrote to Carleton on 29 March 1617, as Ralegh sailed round the coast from London to Plymouth, ‘he doth but go (as children are wont to tell theyre tales) to seeke his fortune.’15 Ralegh too seems to have been thinking more pragmatically about the future. Now he was free, one notes a certain sobriety; the prisoner’s gold-fever is gone. Perhaps, as in 1595, he had expected that court or international politics would frustrate the voyage, leaving him both safe and at liberty. Now, as then, he found himself committed against his own better instincts, obliged to make the best of things. As we have seen, he scrambled about, imagining ways in which his fleet might work some service for England, but as his thoughts progressed England was not the only beneficiary. Could he perhaps be of use to the Savoyards in their war against Spain, to the French protestants, or even to the French monarch? Ralegh spoke to the French ambassador Des Marêts in the spring of 1617, and if the envoy is to be believed he declared that, since he had been ‘so evilly and tyrannically treated by his own king, he had made up his mind, if 12 SP 14/99/77, quoted in L. Jardine and A. Stewart, Hostage to Fortune: the troubled life of Francis Bacon, 1561–1626 (London, 1999), p. 422. 13 V. T. Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage (London, 1932), pp. 40–1. 14 Ibid., p. 336. 15 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 67.

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God sent him good success, to leave his country, and to make the King of France the first offer of whatever might fall under his power’.These overtures may simply have sought to draw French adventurers and their money into his Guiana project, but there was perhaps another agenda too.16 If accurately reported – and it is unlikely that Des Marêts was lying – the conversation can be seen as preparing the way to a refuge after failure, as well as allocating the possible rewards of success. The Guiana fleet eventually set out from Plymouth on 12 June 1617, fourteen ships carrying about one thousand men, an altogether larger affair than 1595. Ralegh sailed in his brand-new flagship, the 440-ton Destiny, built by Phineas Pett and launched only six months earlier. Lawrence Keymis joined him, of course, as did George Ralegh, his nephew. Gentlemen volunteers, some able, some ambitious novices, contributed their £30, £40 or £50 to the expedition funds, younger sons and brothers of the Earl of Huntingdon, the Earl of Pembroke and Lord North among them.The voyage also attracted its fair share of enterprising opportunists – and scoundrels – including the playwright turned pirate Lording Barry.17 Somehow, the costs were met, or at least pledged, with the Raleghs ostensibly throwing in all that they had in the world, including the £8,000 compensation for Sherborne. The last significant family assets were sold, along with Bess’s house at Mitcham, as Ralegh admitted afterwards in his Apologie for the voyage.18 Many others also invested heavily in the venture, among them Sir Arthur Ingram, who later assigned any profit that he might make on the expedition to Richard Calthorp of London, and Ralegh’s vice-admiral, John Penington, who emerges from obscurity at this point to begin a prominent naval career under the early Stuarts.19 The mayor of Plymouth laid on a splendid dinner, at a cost of £9 paid by the town authorities, and a drummer called ‘Sir Walter Rauleighs company aboord’ ship on departure, but

16 S. R. Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603–42 (London, 1883–4), iii, pp. 47–55, 150n remains a coherent and plausible summary of the dealings with France. Letters of Ralegh, pp. 340–2; R.Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh (London, 2002), pp. 468–76. 17 See ODNB and C. H. L. Ewen, Lording Barry: poet and pirate (London, 1938). 18 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 331. 19 BL, Add. MS 73085, fo. 2. See ODNB. Ralegh thought highly of Penington, describing him in March 1618 as ‘one of the most sufficient gentlemen for the sea England hath’ (Letters of Ralegh, p. 349; Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 290, fo. 4v). See also SP 14/98/62.

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even amid the bravado of these farewells there was plenty of pessimism.20 ‘God speed him’, wrote Chamberlain, ‘and send him a better viage then I can hope for.’21 The early stages were far from auspicious. Storms and adverse winds detained the fleet off the southern coast of Ireland for nearly two months, Ralegh enjoying the hospitality of Richard Boyle, later Earl of Cork, the man who had taken his unprofitable Munster lands off his hands, fifteen years earlier. Finally, at six o’clock on the morning of 19 August, a fair wind allowed the ships – ‘xii salle small and gret’, as he told Bess in a letter sent back on an English bark early in the voyage – to make their way south from Cork.22 The Atlantic crossing was laborious, via Lanzarote and La Gomera in the Canaries, and the Cape Verde Islands, where a landing proved impossible in heavy seas. Illness took its usual, arbitrary toll. Forty-two men died on Ralegh’s ship alone, including his personal servants, his cook, and the scholarly John Talbot, Ralegh’s servant and friend through the Tower years.23 On board another ship, however,Thomas Thornehurst rejoiced that not one man had been lost from the company during the crossing.24 The officers did what they could. Ralegh knew the value of lemons to ‘comfort’ his sick men, and the consequent importance of maintaining good relations with islanders who provided these essentials. He admitted in his journal of the voyage that the baskets of fresh fruit sent by the wife of the Governor on La Gomera ‘were better welcome unto me than a 1,000 crownes could have bine’.25 Treading all the while on eggshells, he sought and received from the Governor a letter to Gondomar, ‘witnesing how nobly we had behaved our selves’.26 Yet sensible gestures of this sort could never hope to counter hostile rumour back home. Early deserters returned to London, eagerly spreading reports that their captain had ‘turnd pirat’ by way of excusing 20 Plymouth municipal records, as cited by T. N. Brushfield, Raleghana ([Plymouth], 1896–1907), published as a series in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, viii, p. 135. 21 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 85. 22 BL, Add. MS 72709, fo. 8. These are Bess’s words in a letter to Nicholas Carew. 23 Letters of Ralegh, p. 345; BL, Cotton MS Titus BVIII, fos 168v, 169. 24 BL, Add. MS 34216, fo. 49r. 25 Ralegh’s journal of the voyage to 13 February 1618, BL, Cotton MS Titus BVIII, fos 162–175v, printed by Sir Robert Schomburgk (ed.), The Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana . . . by Sir W. Ralegh (London, 1848), pp. 177–208. This quote at fo. 167. 26 BL, Cotton MS Titus BVIII, fo. 167.

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their own cowardice.27 These were problems stored up for the future; out on the ocean, Ralegh had to contend with a number of more pressing difficulties. The incompetence and inexperience of his crew manifested itself in various ways. One September night a pinnace, ‘having all her men asleap and not any one att the wach drove (?) under our bowspreet and sunck, but the men were saved, though better worthy to have bine hanged then saved’.28 The open Atlantic brought violent winds and driving rain: ‘I was my self so wete as the water ran in att my neck and out att my knees as if it had bine powred on me with pailes’; ‘we were all drownd in our cabins’.29 Flat calms and persistently adverse westerly winds were just as infuriating, as were the pitch-dark days when captains unable to take their latitude were forced to steer their ships by candlelight. Never comfortable at sea, Ralegh himself fell heavily, succumbed at the beginning of November to ‘a burning fever then which never man indured any more violent’, and was unable to face solid food for nearly a month. Even so, the sheer joy of liberty is never entirely absent from his journal. He rejoiced to see ‘Magelanns cloude . . . which riseth and setteth with the stares’, noted the great number of sea-birds on an island off the coast of Guiana (so many that ‘they kild them with staves’) and did his best to interpret empirically the weather phenomena encountered. ‘I observed this day’, he wrote in his entry for 14 October, ‘and so I did before, that the morning rainebow doth not give a faire day as in Ingland.’ Rainbows proved so reliable an indicator of bad weather that he began to think, on seeing another one, that ‘the raine would never end’. Off Trinidad, yet another rainbow made a ‘perfait cirkell’ in the sky, ‘which I never saw before’.30 The expedition did not arrive in harbour, at the mouth of the Cayenne River, until 14 November, and for some weeks, despite assistance from the local Indians, it was in no condition to take the next step. The men were weak and the ships were in a poor state after so many weeks at sea. Ralegh took the occasion to write via a messenger invalided home from his fleet: Peter Alley was carried back to Europe by a Dutch merchant, Captain Jansen 27 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 104, letter dated 18 October 1617. The teller of tales, one Captain Bayley, who apparently left Ralegh’s fleet at Lanzarote, was later imprisoned for defamation and desertion in the Gatehouse in January 1618 (Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 131; SP 14/95/20; APC 1618–19, pp. 7–9, 55–6). 28 BL, Cotton MS Titus BVIII, fo. 168. 29 Ibid., fos 168, 168v. 30 Ibid., fos 169, 171, 172, 173v–174.

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of Flushing, and Bess eventually received the letter in February 1618. Amid news of death and sickness, Ralegh reassured her that Wat was well, ‘havinge no distemper in all the heate under the line’. He paid his respects, pointedly, to Queen Anne, bragging by way of conclusion that the Indians roundabout ‘all offer to obey me’.31 Of course, Alley brought home one or two other reflections on the venture, and while some, like the optimistic paper by ‘R. M.’ titled ‘Newes of Sir Walter Rauleigh’, painted a rosy picture of the voyage and its prospects, others told a very different tale. Alley himself was hardly sanguine or complimentary.32 That pessimism was justified. Ralegh, his years catching up with him, found it hard to shake off the privations of the voyage, and the land commander, Sir Warham St Leger, was also in poor health. In their places, Lawrence Keymis and George Ralegh took command of the five boats that set out on 10 December, carrying ‘a moneth vittles or somewhat more’.33 These vessels were of shallow draft; they alone could hope to negotiate the sandbanks of the Orinoco delta. By Ralegh’s own tally, four hundred soldiers and sailors were embarked. In his instructions to his lieutenant, he confessed that this ‘skume of men’ might not sustain such a mission, but, he observed, they would have to do. He still expected Keymis to recognize landmarks last glimpsed more than two decades earlier, and to exploit mines that no Englishman had ever seen. A glimmer of common sense creeps in when he permits the expedition to bring back just a ‘baskett or two’ of ore, if the mine proved less productive than expected. The King would, after all, still require proof that his story was more than just a fable.34 The little flotilla did what it could. Three vessels survived the dangerous shoals at the mouth of the Orinoco, battled against strong river currents, and arrived at the small Spanish fortified settlement of San Thomé on 2 January, while Ralegh and his ships lay to off the coast of Trinidad, scuffling with the hostile Spanish settlers and awaiting developments. The English then took San Thomé by storm, in a poorly planned night assault. Some accounts, which perhaps carry a touch of self-justification, suggest that this aggression was a spontaneous response to provocation, that it followed a bungled Spanish 31 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 345–6. 32 For the ‘Newes’, eventually published in 1618, see Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, pp. 148–53. 33 BL, Cotton MS Titus BVIII, fo. 173v. 34 These instructions were set out after the event by Ralegh in his ‘Apologie’ (Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, pp. 324–5).

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ambush, sprung on an English camp pitched, just as provocatively, close to the settlement.35 The evidence available suggests that Keymis, broadly in accordance with Ralegh’s orders, and perhaps surprised by the strength of the foursquare defences when compared with the squalid little settlement of the 1590s, hoped to use a show of force to mask excavations at the putative mine.The sudden Spanish response had then precipitated a fight in which an assault on the town had developed of its own accord. Fatalities in the brief, bitter struggle included the Spanish Governor, Diego Palomeque de Acuña, and Ralegh’s son.Wat’s turbulent life ended in an act of ‘unadvised daringnes’; he was shot as he led his men forward. But his last words, characteristically mixing exuberance with barbed bravado, were eventually to tell against his father. ‘Come on, my hearts’, he is supposed to have said, ‘here is the mine that you must expect; they that look for any other mine are fools.’36 That was a rallying cry, of course, but the hostile English government argued later that Ralegh’s own secret scepticism had been articulated in the dying breath of this impetuous young man. Whether or not the attack on San Thomé was pre-planned, it directly violated the commission under which the Guiana fleet sailed. Ralegh subsequently tried to excuse this aggression by claiming in his ‘Apologie’ that San Thomé had been moved twenty miles from its original site, and that the English, after beating off the ambush, found themselves attacking the new settlement before they quite realized the significance of the action. But the evasion, based apparently on a statement from Keymis, smacks of desperation. According to reports from Diego Palomeque, filed in support of a subsequent claim for redress submitted by his kinsman Francisco de Avila of Seville, San Thomé had been weakened and exposed by internecine conflict, and did indeed stand on a new site. However, this was no more than a mile from the original settlement, seen by Keymis twenty years before.37 The English buried Wat and their other casualties within the church, Wat himself before the high altar.They plundered what they could; as late as 1621 Francisco de Avila was still rather optimistically seeking compensation for the loss of 500 quintals of tobacco and other goods to a total value of 30,000 ducats.38 Then they tried to work out what to do next. At this point Keymis 35 Spanish accounts of the capture of San Thomé are copied in BL, Add. MS 36321, esp. fos 1–10, 53–118. See Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, pp. 162–237. 36 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 344. 37 See the helpful note in Trevelyan, Sir Walter Raleigh, p. 497. 38 Huntington Library MS HM 60322.

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began to lose his nerve, and, indeed, any hold that he might have had over his men. The principal problem, of course, lay in the fact that no one knew for certain where the mine, or mines, might be found. Following his orders, he made some show of attempting to locate them, but the attempt was half-hearted, and unproductive. ‘One night’, as the clergyman Samuel Jones later told the Privy Council, Keymis ‘accompanied only with his men, went out privately and brought in some mineral ore which he cheerfully shewed Captain Thornhurst: but being tried by a refiner, it proved worth nothing, and was no more spoken of.’ Jones was quite certain that the mine, as Ralegh had described it, lay close to San Thomé.39 If Ralegh had indeed seen alluvial gold in 1595, perhaps in surface deposits of limonite, then the possibility of relocating such deposits after twenty rainy seasons was remote. Discredited and afraid, Keymis found himself in a very difficult situation. The Spanish had melted away into the hinterland, but they remained a military threat, executing further ambushes and killing several English adventurers. Launches were eventually sent further up the Orinoco. The English travelled another 180 miles upstream, but they discovered neither gold nor silver.40 At this point, the gamble was seen to have failed; belatedly, Keymis realized that any discovery of a silver mine would benefit only the Spanish. He and his men were no longer strong enough to guard it, work it and carry away its contents. Terrified of what Ralegh would say, he secured the signatures of those who travelled upstream, men prepared to swear that they had done their honest best in impossible circumstances.41 After an occupation of twenty-nine days, San Thomé, the target of increasingly frequent and effective guerrilla raids by the Spaniards and their Indian allies, was burnt to the ground and the expedition returned to the river mouth. News proceeded ahead of the main party; rumours carried by Indians were circulating in the fleet, early in February. These told of a great fight 39 J. Lorimer, ‘The location of Ralegh’s Guiana gold mine’, Terrae Incognitae 14 (1982), pp. 90, 94; Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 235. 40 C. Le Neve Foster long ago suggested that the Caratal goldfield was the inspiration for Ralegh’s great mine (‘On the Caratal gold-field’, Proceedings of the Geological Society in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 25 (1869), 336–43). Joyce Lorimer argues that a mine did exist near San Thomé, and even that James knew of its existence, carefully concealing that knowledge from Gondomar, ‘The location of Ralegh’s Guiana gold mine’, passim. 41 A. M. C. Latham, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s gold mine: new light on the last Guiana voyage’, Essays and Studies 4 (1951), 94–111, at 107–8.

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at San Thomé in which the Spanish governor and two English officers had been killed. It seems likely that the first notice of casualties came to Ralegh at this point, for he writes in his journal of details ‘which I forbeare to sett downe till I know the trewth’.42 Things fall apart a little in his mind, as other reports travel down river: February inadvertently becomes January in the diary, his thoughts are elsewhere.43 The journal of his voyage ends abruptly on 13 February; on that day or on the next, Ralegh was told of his son’s death. He met Keymis, at first with reserve, then with increasingly furious accusations, refusing to accept any apology, and declaring that his lieutenant’s obstinacy had undone him. Keymis’s desperate arguments, that his advance upriver was expected, that the Spanish were weakened by the attack on San Thomé, that no mine could ever be exploited by the English given the strength of Spanish settlements in the Orinoco basin, were all rejected.44 Greenblatt is quick to see in Ralegh’s reaction his ‘fanatical self-absorption, the lack of a sense of the other’, but in the circumstances his hostility is surely a normal response, easy to understand.45 This is the frustrated anger of bereavement. Keymis was the first to admit that ‘the disgrace of not bringing our men to this Mine will, I know, whilst I live rest heavy upon me in the judgment and opinions of most men’, and his actions had cost Ralegh a son.46 In so many words, and by his own admission, Ralegh told Keymis that he ‘must leave him to himself to answere it to the King and the State’.47 Keymis replied ‘I knowe then, Sir, what course to take.’48 He retired to his cabin. First he tried to put a bullet through his breast, but the shot from a ‘pockett pistoll’ was deflected by a rib. He then ‘thrust a long knife under his short ribbs up to the handle and died’, as Ralegh relates in a crisp passage to Bess, writing to her as if to a man. He may simply not have been thinking, the tone itself an indication of true distraction. His letter seems to lack calculation of any kind.49 Ralegh received news of the suicide with contempt. By putting an end to his life, Keymis had merely been conceding his absolute responsibility 42 BL, Cotton MS Titus BVIII, fo. 174v. 43 BL, Cotton MS Titus BVIII, fo. 175. 44 This is a summary of the argument set out by Keymis while returning to Trinidad, see Latham, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s gold mine’, pp. 108–11. 45 S. J. Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh: the renaissance man and his roles (London, 1973), p. 168. 46 Latham, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s gold mine’, p. 110. 47 Letters of Ralegh, p. 355. 48 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 328. 49 Letters of Ralegh, p. 355.

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for failure. Thereafter, Ralegh pragmatically blamed a dead subordinate for every misfortune: the mine, he insisted, could have been found, ‘notwithstanding [Keymis’s] obstinacy’.50 ‘That . . . my Instructions were not followed, it was not my falt.’51 Viewed objectively, the obstinacy was Ralegh’s. Those instructions had been overly optimistic, and based on a dismissal of political and geographical realities. He was not in the mood to hear explanations, because he knew that it really was his fault after all. In this crisis, Ralegh planned a second expedition to San Thomé. The mine, he reasoned, must have been overlooked, it might still be exploited. No one else on the expedition paid much attention. Faced with the challenging journey upriver, and the ever-present threat of Spanish reinforcements – they had all along feared a stronger military challenge based on the information passed to Madrid at King James’s command – his men refused to countenance the idea, and soon afterwards the fleet sailed north, two captains deserting him ‘at the Granadas’. Even then, having ‘clensed’ his ship of sick men, Ralegh conjured visions of revictualling in Newfoundland and of plundering the Spanish treasure fleet.52 In the desperate letter to Bess from St Kitts on 22 March he tried and failed to formulate plans, his words flowing with grief. He is coherent only when expressing pride in the dead Wat, who had killed one of the Spanish ‘captaines’, and in asking that his news might be reported truthfully to the truest friends that remained – ‘my Lord of Northumberland and Sil[vanus] Skory and . . . Sir John Leigh’. Ralegh had, he was sure,‘tabacco enough to pay’ for the refit; the modest plunder from San Thomé could be put to good use, and thereafter, maybe, God might send him ‘somewhat’ to restore his fortune.53 There was never much chance of that; his demoralized followers only wanted to go home. In the last week of March the rest of his fleet deserted, leaving Ralegh in the Destiny, alone off Nevis.With an openly discontented crew – the grumblers included ‘some of . . . the best men . . . some of them being gentlemen’ – he sailed north towards Newfoundland, where by his own account he faced down a mutiny, then across the Atlantic to Kinsale, where many in the company quite understandably melted away, 50 Ibid., p. 356. 51 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 325. 52 Much later, he made out that he had pretended a commission from France to the rebellious fleet. Plundering Spanish silver would, he said, satisfy his French masters while placating the English king (SP 14/99/58,Thomas Wilson to King James, 21 September 1618)! 53 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 354–5.

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fearing the King’s displeasure.54 Ralegh, with the remnant of his force, sailed on to Plymouth. There he began a fight to justify his actions, and eventually to fight for his life. Ralegh could have been under no illusions as to his reception, but he pretended that the King’s ‘grave displeasure’ came as a surprise. The arguments were familiar: Guiana could not be Spanish territory, when he himself had taken possession of the country in 1595 ‘by virtue of a cession by all the native chiefs of the country’.55 The French and the Dutch had also claimed the territory, he added, but in point of law ‘His Majesty has a better right and title than anyone’.56 The argument, in his own eyes quite robust, did not alter much in the months ahead. Again and again he glossed it with reflections on his own sincerity: at no point, he argued, had he seriously considered turning buccaneer, though opportunity and temptation had always been there. While many had broken their word to him, through desertion and treachery, he would not now disgrace and inconvenience the people who had pledged sureties for his return. ‘It should not be sayd to your Majestie that your Majestie had given libertie and trust to a man whose end was but the recoverie of his libertie and who had betrayed your Majesties trust.’57 His actions in returning home, he insisted, spoke for themselves. Indeed they did, though his intentions during those frantic, dangerous and stressful weeks at sea remain very difficult to pin down. Ralegh is never slow to exaggerate the strains under which he laboured, but the concluding remarks in a contemporary letter credibly reflect the terror arising from close confinement at sea with a hostile crew. ‘Want of sleep’, he writes, ‘for fear of being surprised in my cabin at night has almost deprived me of my sight and some return of the palsy which I had in the Tower has so weakened my hand that I cannot hold the pen.’58

54 55 56 57 58

Ibid., p. 357. Ibid., pp. 358–9. Ibid., p. 359. Ibid., p. 363. Ibid., p. 359.

13

The ‘Martyr’

The failure of his expedition left Ralegh stunned. ‘My braines are broken’, he wrote to Bess on 22 March 1618, ‘and tis a torment to mee to write . . . as Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins died heart-broken when they failed of their enterprize, I could willinglie doe the like.’‘Comfort your heart (deare Bess): I shall sorrow for us both’, he added. ‘I shall sorrowe the lesse because I have not long to sorrowe, because not long to live.’ His letter is signally if perhaps logically unbalanced: a short essay of despair, a long, bitter postscript pouring out accusation after accusation, against Keymis, against his men, against betrayal by those at Court – he meant the King but could not say so – who had insisted on passing his plans to the Spanish. Self-obsession and the neuroses of an unsuccessful military commander far from Court mix with grief, but the grief is painfully genuine. ‘There was never poore man soe exposed to the slaughter as I was.’ Documents found at San Thomé, he said, proved that well enough.1 Here is some instinctive self-justification.The desperate letter to Bess was despatched along with a still more graphic account for Ralegh’s steadfast supporter Sir Ralph Winwood. Winwood’s letter was indeed the first of the two to be written. But Winwood had died in London late in October 1617, bled too soon in a fever, some said, and as in 1603 few about the King were prepared to offer unqualified support to a vulnerable man. News of the attack on San Thomé reached London in May, and gave Gondomar the perfect excuse to press his uncompromising agenda. ‘Piratas! Piratas!’ he bellowed at the readily-persuaded monarch. A royal proclamation of 9 June responded angrily to reports that the peace between England and Spain had been compromised on the Orinoco.2 Ralegh’s ship was impounded by order of the Lord Admiral soon after he came ashore, and at the end of July, in accordance with directions from the Privy Council, Ralegh himself was conveyed to London by his cousin Sir Lewis Stucley,Vice-Admiral of Devon and Sir Richard Grenville’s nephew. 1 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 353–6. 2 J. F. Larkin and P. L. Hughes, Stuart Royal Proclamations: royal proclamations of King James I, 1603–25 (Oxford, 1973), i, pp. 391–3.

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Bess travelled with him. So did the loyal Captain Samuel King, and so too did Guillaume Manoury, Stucley’s French doctor, now given the thankless task of overseeing Ralegh’s health.While still at Plymouth, under persuasion from Bess and King, Ralegh made an abortive attempt to escape by ship to France, but then, while trying and failing to locate a French vessel in Plymouth roads, wrapped in the mist of a summer night, he changed his mind, resolving to see matters through at home. It can only be assumed that he panicked over the consequences for his wife and son, or maybe he calculated that James’s show of anger was essentially a diplomatic device. Perhaps, making the kind of political judgement that works for some, he hoped that the Spanish alliance would soon come to grief. Stucley had taken his time in travelling down from London to the West Country, and had lingered in Plymouth, possibly out of charity for a shattered man, or possibly because he understood that both the King and Privy Council would have tacitly welcomed a successful flight from justice.3 At all events, he was now censured for his casual attitude. On receiving a particularly humiliating injunction from the Council to delay no longer, he subsequently took their warning to heart.4 The ride up to London was therefore pressed as quickly as possible, via Sherborne and a meeting with Sir John Digby, the new owner of Ralegh’s house.The party then travelled on to nearby Poyntington Manor, home of an old friend, Sir Edward Parham, the only suspect to have been acquitted on a charge of high treason in the trials that followed the Bye Plot.5 At Salisbury, feigning sickness with Manoury’s connivance, so as to gain a few days in which to think and write, Ralegh composed an ‘Apologie for the ill successe of his enterprise to Guiana’, building on the reasons for failure laid out in his letter from St Kitts. In particular, he excused his own shortcomings by highlighting the frustrations encountered by other, larger military expeditions, expounding all the while on the inadequacies of his men, ‘the very skume of the world, Drunkards, Blasphemers, and such like’.6 Subordinate officers had been little better. The ‘Apologie’ is very careful to answer every 3 P. Hyland, Ralegh’s Last Journey: a tale of madness, vanity and treachery (London, 2003), pp. 45–6. 4 APC, 1618–19, p. 220. 5 See M. Nicholls, ‘Treason’s Reward: the punishment of conspirators in the Bye plot of 1603’, Historical Journal 38 (1995), 837–8. 6 V. T. Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage (London, 1932), p. 317. His faked illness convinced those on the spot, though more distant commentators, aware of Ralegh’s subtleties, speculated whether he might have ‘taken a dramme of somwhat to do himself harme’ Letters of John Chamberlain, ii, pp. 163, 167).

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point of criticism made by the malcontents among his fleet captains.7 Yet he maintained that he could have coped with every one of these challenges, had it not been for a further, fatal handicap: the nature of his commission had made it all but impossible to impose his authority on this ‘rabble’. Every man in his fleet had known that he had not been pardoned. There was no point in leaving anything out. Ralegh also advanced some familiar arguments, insisting again that Guiana was English territory, and that his actions in the face of Spanish aggression there had been entirely justified. Indeed he threw responsibility on King James: if Guiana did not belong to the English Crown, he argued, why had the King permitted him to set sail in the first place? A recent massacre of English traders was brought forward to support his contention that the peace with Spain, carefully nurtured over fourteen years, was nothing but a sham. Ralegh did not hesitate to put this particularly bluntly. ‘To breake peace where their is noe peace’, he wrote, ‘is impossible.’8 Shrewdly – perhaps too shrewdly for the purpose – Ralegh returned to the injustice that he felt he had suffered in 1603. Since the Spanish King so clearly wished to frustrate Ralegh’s voyage, he had only to reveal to James the details of the supposed intrigue for which Ralegh had long since been sentenced to death.9 The ‘Apologie’ is a strong polemic, and a robust self-justification, brimming over from time to time into abuse of erstwhile friends. Occasionally it echoes Ralegh’s defence at Winchester, mocking the absurdities in some of the accusations laid against him and dwelling on the impossibility of a fair hearing: ‘As good successe admitts of noe examination of errors soe the contrarie allowes of noe excuse howe reasonable or just soever.’10 Yet it also inadvertently demonstrates some longstanding reservations about the existence of workable gold reserves in Guiana. If he had begun, across more than twenty years, to believe his own propaganda, deep in his heart he seemed to know that it had been propaganda, and that his recent voyage had been a gamble that had failed. It was one thing to find traces of gold washed up on a river flat, another to profit from a goldmine. ‘What madnes’, he asked, ‘would have made me undertake this journey, but the assurance of the Myene; thereby to have done his majesty service, to have 7 A. M. C. Latham, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s gold mine: new light on the last Guiana voyage’, Essays and Studies 4 (1951), 95. 8 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 334. 9 Ibid., p. 334; Hyland, Ralegh’s Last Journey, pp. 108–9. 10 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 322.

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bettered my Countrie by the trade, and to have restored my wife and Children to the estate they had lost.’11 What indeed? The commitment of honour, the giving of his word had meant that his liberty was linked to the discovery of treasure. One other point is made repeatedly. Carefully piecing his argument together, Ralegh consulted his manuscript journal of the early part of the voyage.12 While he dwelt on that record of events, and turned all the circumstances over in his mind, he came to the conclusion that he had been plagued with the worst kind of luck. How could any commander contend against the ill fortune that had followed him from the old world to the new, and back again? ‘An unfortunate man I am.’13 Ralegh writes with his usual vigour and clarity, reaching out to a wide, popular audience, and to posterity. He was, it seems, already looking beyond the immediate source of any mercy. Many of the issues that he raised were unlikely to reassure the King, and all too likely to annoy him. The only other interpretation again points to political naïveté. A principal weakness of the ‘Apologie’ and other late appeals to James is that they were constructed on a simple premise: that once the King understood Ralegh’s predicament, he would recognize honesty and reward him as a faithful counsellor.They assumed, in other words, a reparable bond between the two men. Ralegh, who misread so many of his contemporaries, once again misread the King; he overlooked the fact that James had given his word to Gondomar, and to Gondomar’s master, that there would be no ‘injury to the vassals or the territories’ of Philip III.14 Arriving at Salisbury on his summer progress, James had already heard many slanted accounts of the voyage from, among others, Roger North, one of those who deserted Ralegh at Nevis. Persuaded that Ralegh had all along planned an escape to France, aware that Englishmen in Spain were now vulnerable to reprisals from an incensed Spanish crown and infuriated by any suggestion that royal ambivalence had ruined the expedition, the King rejected the ‘Apologie’ and ordered Ralegh on to London. The final leg of a miserable journey was duly completed, early in August. Lodgings in the Tower were under preparation, by order of the Council, but as a concession to his recent illness Ralegh was first permitted to recuperate

11 12 13 14

Ibid., p. 331. See S. W. May, Sir Walter Ralegh (Boston, 1989), pp. 113–14. Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 332. Gondomar to the President of the Hacienda, quoted in J. Lorimer (ed.), Sir Walter Ralegh’s Discoverie of Guiana (London, 2006), p. 304.

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at Bess’s house in Broad Street.15 Even there, he was once again a prisoner of the state; a thorough inventory of every item found in his immediate possession was taken on 10 August.16 James’s abrupt dismissal brought home to Ralegh the danger of his situation. The ‘Apologie’ very soon began to circulate in manuscript, finding a receptive audience.17 Ralegh was in need of friends, and had no reason to be choosy. Suddenly, a haven in France seemed both attractive, and also a long way away. At Brentford, while on his journey up to London, Ralegh had turned down an offer of help conveyed from the French resident agent, Le Clerc, assuring him that all would be well. But after considering his options these friendly words, and the solution that they offered, prompted him into action. Through Captain King, Ralegh attempted to hire a ship that would carry him down the Thames and across the Channel. The ship’s captain revealed these plans to the authorities. Stucley was informed of the scheme, and, belatedly, learnt from the contrite doctor himself of Manoury’s connivance in Ralegh’s recent medical deceptions. He began to play games of his own, pretending friendship with the prisoner, and a willingness to assist in his escape. Still posing as a sympathetic confidant, Stucley accompanied Ralegh and King in a small vessel, sailing downstream from London. King had arranged a rendezvous with the ship off Gravesend, but just past Woolwich, Ralegh, seeking anonymity in a cloak and broad brimmed hat with a green ribbon, put ashore and was arrested. As John Chamberlain put it, Ralegh had been bewrayed, or in a sort betrayed by Sir Lewes Stukeley (who had the charge of him) and brought backe by certain boates that waited for him about Wolwich. Sir Lewes did nourish him in the humor with promise to assist and accompanie him, but yt was a fowle pas de clerc for an old cousener to be so cousened and overtaken.18

The cozener cozened, yet again! Ralegh’s former servant Edward Cottrell, and King’s boatswain Hart, also put service to King James and the state above loyalty to Ralegh that day, but it was Stucley, with his pretence of friendship, 15 APC, 1618–19, p. 239; TNA, SP 14/98/78. 16 TNA, SP 14/98/79; APC, 1618–19, p. 254. 17 For an indication of the instant high profile it attracted see May, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 115. 18 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 165.

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with his Judas-like embraces at the denouement, with his avid acceptance of the contents of Ralegh’s private bag when the prisoner was committed to the Tower, who was subsequently reviled for his ‘betrayal’. Though Ralegh contented himself at the time with telling Stucley that ‘these actions will not turn out to your credit’, he attacked him vigorously thereafter, at every opportunity. Stucley’s subsequent career suggested to contemporaries that God’s hand was afterwards turned against him. The poor man endured an appropriately biblical fate: he was arrested and sentenced to death for clipping coin in 1619 and, after receiving a contemptuous, dismissive pardon from James, died lonely and insane on Lundy Island in 1620. Or so the story goes.19 Stucley’s own ‘Appollogie’, written soon after the escapade on the Thames, his insistence that he had simply done his duty to the Crown, and his impassioned Petition to the King, perhaps written for him by the Devonshire rector Leonell Sharpe, did nothing to change public opinion. As Chamberlain wrote, he was ‘generally decried’.20 This was all rather harsh.The rebuke that Stucley had received after Ralegh’s first abortive escape attempt now left him little scope to help the prisoner, even if he had wanted to do so. Had Ralegh escaped, Stucley would have been blamed, and his career would have been destroyed. He was damned whatever he did.When Stucley writes of Ralegh in his Petition that ‘an Angel of darknesse, did put on him the shape of an Angel of light at his departure [Ralegh’s execution], to perform two Parts most cunningly; First, to poison the hearts of discontented people; Secondly, to blemish me in my good name, a poore instrument of the just desires of the State, with false imputations’, the assessment rings true.21 Without presuming to guess the impact of Divine judgement, it appears that a mixture of bad luck, improvidence and debt destroyed Stucley’s career.22 Events now began to gather momentum. On 14 August privy counsellors 19 S. R. Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 1603–42 (London, 1883–4), iii, p. 154. See also the article in ODNB. 20 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 167. Stucley’s ‘Appollogie’ survived in a single MS copy as Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 830, 29. It should not be confused with his Petition, a longer piece serving a wider purpose, published after Ralegh’s death. See T. N. Brushfield, Raleghana ([Plymouth], 1896–1907), published as a series in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, vii, pp. 28–41. 21 [Stucley] To the kings most excellent majestie.The humble petition and information of Sir Lewis Stucley . . . (London, 1618), p. 2. 22 Hyland in Ralegh’s Last Journey offers a sympathetic reappraisal of the much-reviled Stucley. See esp. pp. 160–1.

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began to look closely at the case, taking evidence from Stucley and others.23 Sensing this new threat, Ralegh appealed for support from George Villiers, by now Marquess of Buckingham. In a brief, impassioned defence of his intentions, he assured the favourite that he had only one ambition left, to return to Guiana, in a French ship if need be.There he would find the elusive mine, and so prove to the King that his ‘late enterprise’ had been ‘grownded uppon a trewth’.The inventory of his immediate possessions, taken on arrival at the Tower, included a map of Guiana, a map of the Orinoco and three sea charts showing the West Indies. These were still among his most treasured possessions. Surely, he argued, James would draw a distinction between ‘offences proceeding from a life havinge naturall impulsion without all ill intent, and those of an ill hart’.24 Queen Anne, desperately sick with the dropsy that eventually killed her, also wrote to Buckingham, begging him to help save Ralegh’s life. She also appealed to her husband for mercy.25 But none of this did much good. The King hardly listened to his wife any more, while Buckingham believed that England’s long-term interests were best served by an alliance with Spain. In comparison, Ralegh’s life mattered little. Though she was not permitted to visit her husband, Bess replied to his letters, helping him preserve his sanity as health failed and hope faded. Knowing that all messages were relayed to the uncompromisingly hostile Secretary Robert Naunton, her words were moderate, and pragmatic, yet full of love and comfort. ‘I am sorry’, she wrote on 18 October, responding to Ralegh’s complaint that a rupture was destroying him from within, ‘to hear amongst many discomforts that your health is so ill, tis merely sorrow and grief that with wind hath gathered into your side. I hope your health and comforts will mend and mend us for God.’26 Under diplomatic pressure from Spain to have the ‘pirate’ hanged at the earliest opportunity, or even sent to Spain for execution, King and Council considered their options. Had Ralegh made good his original opportunity, had he fled to France from Plymouth, the problem might have been removed. James, who had in some sort promised extradition to Madrid, and who now faced Council opposition to so demeaning a gesture, would no doubt have been relieved. Ralegh, however, remained in England, and so long as he 23 24 25 26

TNA, SP 14/98/82, letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Sir Thomas Lake. Letters of Ralegh, pp. 368–9; TNA, SP 14/98/79. See also SP 14/103/67. See Hyland, Ralegh’s Last Journey, p. 143; May, Sir Walter Ralegh, pp. 118–19. Quoted in A. R. Beer, My Just Desire: the life of Bess Ralegh, wife to Sir Walter (New York, 2003), p. 216.

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did, the position of a king determined to maintain the Spanish alliance was far from easy. Alliances are not made or broken on the fate of a single man. Procrastination and imprisonment in the Tower might well have sufficed. On the other hand, James had no particular wish to spare Ralegh. Believing that he had been let down, indeed betrayed, by someone who owed him life itself, the King wondered whether a decision to spare or pardon Ralegh would be worth all the consequent diplomatic fuss. The Council commission established to probe his offences first questioned Ralegh on 17 August. Members of his crew, some humble, some prominent, and his subordinate captains and commanders were also interrogated.27 William Herbert, George Ralegh, Roger North and John Chudleigh all communicated their confidence that Ralegh had really believed in the mine – though perhaps he had relied too much on Keymis’s uncorroborated reports – tainted by a suspicion that he had been working in league with France. The French agent’s interpreter, de la Chesnée, who had approached Ralegh at Brentford on his master’s behalf, was questioned too. That ambiguity compromised Ralegh’s chance of survival. Convinced despite the captains’ testimony that tales of the mine had been exaggerated if not fabricated – the failure of the voyage had been proof enough of this – but half-believing rumours that Ralegh’s voyage was one element in a conspiracy fomented by France, the commissioners persevered. The prisoner was interviewed repeatedly, first by members of the Council, then by Sir Thomas Wilson, Keeper of the State Papers, acting under a Council commission dated 10 September.28 Wilson was no impartial examiner; he openly sought incriminating evidence from this ‘Arch-hypocryte’, asking God to preserve James ‘from having many such dangerous subjects’.29 The frustration of the Council is obvious at this point; they clearly believed that Ralegh was withholding important information, and that he was toying with them. Accordingly, Wilson was given permission to take a firm line with the ‘hypocrite’. He had Ralegh’s loyal servant Robin removed from the Tower, and replaced with someone more reliable. Diligent in his duty,Wilson nevertheless met with some initial resentment and obstruction from both the Lieutenant of the Tower, who fretted that his authority was being undermined, and from the Earl of Northumberland, who tried to deny Wilson a convenient lodging 27 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 91. 28 TNA, SP 14/99/3, letter from John Pory to Dudley Carleton, 5 September 1618; 14/99/7, Wilson’s commission. 29 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, pp. 272–3.

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in the Tower on the grounds that the rooms under discussion were needed for occasional visits by his son. Ralegh’s old friend was still doing what he could.30 By 17 September, though, Wilson had his way. The Lieutenant was (at least temporarily) reconciled and Ralegh was moved from the Wardrobe Tower to the Brick Tower, even though the transfer involved shifting stills and other chemical apparatus.31 As in most of his reports, Wilson attempted a little witticism to tickle his august audience. ‘I have bene wholly busied in removeing this man to a saffer and higher lodging’, he declared,‘which though it seemes nearer heaven, yet is ther noe meanes of escape from thence for him to any place but to Hell.’32 Despite Wilson’s efforts, however, the pickings were meagre. At one moment Ralegh would suggest that he might have more to tell, particularly on his links with France. At the next he would dismiss this information as worthless, reminding Wilson that the King would hardly credit, let alone pardon a man who spoke out merely to save his own life.33 A new approach seemed necessary. James at this stage declared himself content to receive letters from Ralegh, provided that the prisoner set out substance, and did not presume to play any more of his old games.34 Here was a hint that an honest admission might make a good impression; it was a clever move which prompted Ralegh to candour. He wrote, and wrote again, laying open every secret of his heart according to the optimistic Wilson.35 In particular, Ralegh acknowledged that he had indeed received a commission from the Duke de Montmorency, Admiral of France, given to him by a French intermediary.36 That candour, however, eventually proved to be another political misjudgement, for it may finally have edged James away from mercy. Comparison with 30 31 32 33 34

Hyland, Ralegh’s Last Journey, p. 166. The order for his transfer is dated 14 September (TNA, SP 14/99/11i). SP 14/99/25. Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 271. TNA, SP 14/99/10i. TNA, SP 14/99/21, Naunton to Wilson, 16 September 1618; 14/99/25, Wilson to Naunton, 17 September. 35 TNA, SP 14/99/48/69,Wilson to the King, 18 and 24 September 1618. Ralegh seems to have written three letters to James around this point. Only the last of them, dated 4 October 1618 in the surviving copy in the Archivo General de Castilla, Simancas, seems to be extant (Letters of Ralegh, p. 375). 36 Letters of Ralegh, p. 374.The letter of 4 October appears to have responded more honestly and fully to interrogatories dated 24 September (TNA, SP 14/99/71), which might yet suggest a ‘new style’ continental dating of the Simancas copy, notwithstanding the reasonable reservations expressed in Letters of Ralegh, p. 375.

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earlier, more guarded, letters only served to confirm the King’s opinion that he was dealing with an evasive liar.37 The burden on a prisoner in these circumstances is immense. Ralegh found some solace in his ‘chymicall stuffes, amongst which’, Wilson wrote sarcastically, ‘there are so many spirits of things, that I think there is none wanting that ever I heard of, unless it be the spirrit of God’.38 Dismissing the present, Ralegh preferred to dwell on the long ago, on the injustice of 1603, which he now put down to the machinations of the recently disgraced Earl of Suffolk and the long-dead Earl of Northampton – two scapegoats who could not respond.39 Many Greeks and Romans, he reflected, had been brave enough to kill themselves rather than face execution, and there were some theologians who believed that, in certain circumstances, suicide might not be a sin. Northumberland’s father, who had shot himself while a Tower prisoner in 1585, had taken matters into his own hands, and had faced his end with courage.40 Suicide had preserved his earldom and his estate for his son. Close to death, Ralegh was communing with Tower ghosts, coming to terms with his own mortality and pondering on his present and future reputation.41 Still there were glimpses of an earlier Ralegh, a memory of the old vanity, self-pity, and wit. He told Wilson that, while he had combed his hair for an hour every day before being consigned to the Tower, he had since given up such conceits. There was no point in all that combing now, he said, if the hangman were soon to have his head.42 Some of the self-belief remained too, as he bragged about his own abilities, not least when developing a process to distil sea water.43 There is also the first hint that Ralegh was working out his own response to the threat that he faced, that he was determined to perish ‘in the light’. If death was becoming inevitable, he reasoned, a hugger-mugger ‘Roman’ suicide, however noble, only played into his enemies’ hands. Ralegh would make sure that he died on a public stage, speaking out against all those who had dragged him down.44 37 38 39 40 41

TNA, SP 14/99/72, 73. Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 271. TNA, SP 14/99/10i. Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, pp. 270–1. The point is made by Edward Edwards, and also by Walter Oakeshott in rather a different context: ‘Carew Ralegh’s copy of Spenser’, The Library, 5th series, 26 (1971), pp. 1–21, at 16. 42 CSPD, 1611–18, p. 575. 43 TNA, SP 14/99/96ii. 44 See his conversations in late September as reported by Wilson (TNA, SP 14/99/77).

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In mid-October, Wilson was commended for his efforts and told that he might hand Ralegh over once again to the Lieutenant of the Tower. He left at once, recognizing that his efforts had proved substantially unproductive. As an afterthought to the same order, Naunton agreed that Bess should be set at liberty from her house-arrest.45 Ralegh understood the significance of these developments. The investigatory phase was to all intents and purposes over; it no longer mattered if he had a conversation with his wife. ‘When you are gone’, he had told Wilson at the end of September, ‘I shalbe delivered to the secular powre as they cale it.’46 For those minded to hear these things, the remark conjured an image of the heretic handed over for burning, even of Christ delivered to the Romans. The King of Spain then freed James from any promise to extradite Ralegh; for Philip III, home-grown justice would now suffice.47 But what form should home-grown justice take? As one of Carleton’s correspondents, Edward Harwood, wrote early in October, if Ralegh were to be executed, the matter would have to be handled ‘handsomely’. If, on the other hand, the honour of the state could not be guaranteed then the prisoner was likely to live, for all that James hoped to oblige Spain and his own inclinations.48 No one wanted another fiasco like the 1603 trial. On the eighteenth, the commissioners reported their findings to the King in the form of a document drawn up by Ralegh’s old adversary Sir Edward Coke.The paper strives for objectivity. It begins by pointing out the obvious: Ralegh stands attainted of high treason, ‘which is the highest and last work of law’. Legally dead already, he cannot be charged with crimes committed since. A trial of new offences is therefore redundant. Nevertheless, while it might be perfectly proper to proceed to execution forthwith, other factors should be considered. Ralegh’s ‘late crimes and offences are not yet publicly known’, and a ‘great effluxion of time’ has passed by since his attainder.Taking these things into consideration, it might make good sense to publicize his crimes in the form of a narrative. That was one path, straightforward, and legally correct. However, the commissioners then expressed their preference for another way forward. They thought it advisable to call Ralegh before the Council and principal judges in the formal surroundings of the Council chamber. Moreover, ‘some 45 46 47 48

TNA, SP 14/103/36; Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 285; APC, 1618–19, p. 276. Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 279. See TNA, SP 14/99/74, Philip III to de Ulloa. TNA, SP 14/103/14, letter dated 3 October 1618.

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of the nobility and gentlemen of quality [might] be admitted to be present to hear the whole proceeding, as in like cases hath been used’.Thereafter, the King’s legal counsel might proceed against him on charges centred around ‘his acts of hostility, depredation, abuse as well of your Majesty’s commission as of your subjects under his charge, impostures, attempt of escape, and other his misdemeanors’. The Commissioners had reservations over the extent to which dealings with France should feature in the indictment. They saw little point in working the affair up into a diplomatic crisis, and although, of course, the decision lay with James, they recommended that a veil should be drawn over that particular aspect of the case. The Commissioners suggested that Ralegh should be heard, that he should face witnesses ‘if need be’, but that afterwards he should be ‘sent back; for that no sentence is, or can be, given against him’. Of course, if a sentence could not be passed down, there should still be some judgement, some public process of assessment.The Lords and judges would advise the King ‘whether in respect of these subsequent offences, upon the whole matter, your Majesty if you so please, may not with justice and honour give warrant for his execution upon his attainder’. The matter should be recorded in ‘a solemn act of council . . . with a memorial of the whole presence’. Furthermore,‘the heads of the matter, together with the principal examinations touching the same’, should be given to members of the Council ‘that they may be perfectly informed of the true state of the case, and give their advice accordingly’. Again, thoughts go back to Winchester, and to the detailed abstract of treasons that Coke and others had produced as an aide memoire.49 At once brave and principled, these recommendations represent the Commissioners’ collective belief that to refuse Ralegh a hearing – and one that came as close as might be to a fresh trial – would be to deny him justice. After so long, and in all the circumstances, the King’s decision to spare Ralegh’s life in 1603 could not now simply be set aside without compromising both the law and James’s honour. Their letter is dated from York House, and the precedent they hint at is surely that of the late Earl of Essex, who was censured by the Lords in that very building during the summer of 1600, a few months before his rebellion. When the offence was capital, there was in fact no obvious ‘like’ case, but the assertion would itself convince. The Commissioners’ stand on the principle of a hearing, for such it was, has never been accorded the respect that it deserved, though it does seem to have drawn 49 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, pp. 295–6.

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a response at the time. All of a sudden, rumours ran through London that everything would turn out well for the prisoner, that he ‘had the libertie of the Towre’, and while some of this may have resulted from garbled news of Wilson’s discharge, the measure of sympathy shown by prominent statesmen might also have influenced the public mood.50 James, however, was dissatisfied with the Commissioners’ line of argument. Even to him, simply issuing a warrant for execution of the 1603 sentence seemed unduly arbitrary, but he wanted no public or semi-public hearing either. The King knew his man too well. There was, he wrote, a risk that this ‘would make [Ralegh] too popular, as was found by experiment at the arraignment at Winchester, where by his wit he turned the hatred of men into compassion for him’.51 There was also, of course, something inconsistent in executing a sentence punishing conspiracy with Spain on a man who had so recently attacked and plundered a Spanish settlement in the New World. Mindful of Coke’s bungling fifteen years earlier, the King favoured another course. Ralegh should be called before the Commissioners alone,‘those who have been the examiners of him hitherto’.There would be no supernumerary nobility, no additional gentlemen of quality who might sympathize with the prisoner and then spread favourable opinions of his arguments and behaviour. Examinations would be read out, the Attorney General and Solicitor General would inform against him, Ralegh might speak, and ‘others confronted with him, who were with him in this action’. On one point James agreed with the Commissioners: the French dimension should be disregarded. It would suffice to say that Ralegh had intended to escape on a French ship. A hint was safe enough. The conclusion is blunt. His Commissioners envisaged a process of law, with at least a show of impartiality. The Council and Judges would advise the King whether he might proceed to execute the attainder. By now, however, James was determined that Ralegh should die: ‘And then’, he wrote, ‘after the sentence for his execution which hath been thus long suspended, a declaration [should] be presently put forth in print, a warrant being sent down for us to sign for his execution.’ There is an undeniable logic to the course that he advocated, but in setting out his logical argument James could not rise above the personal. On the back of the sheet he urged his Commissioners to emphasize Manoury’s testimony, Ralegh’s open bragging that he would if necessary pursue the Spanish silver fleet, and, particularly, 50 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 173. 51 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 296.

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‘his hateful speeches of our person’.52 A cause has to be strong to sustain resistance on a point of principle. Burying whatever reservations they might still have held, the Council did as they were told and summoned Ralegh before them on 22 October.53 Sir Henry Yelverton, the Attorney General, accused him of blatant lies: Ralegh had deceived a King who had generously overlooked his treasons, he had known all along that there was no treasure in Guiana. ‘Not weary of his fault, but of his restraint of liberty’, he had given ‘promise of a golden mine’. Ralegh had planned to foment war between England and Spain, he had abandoned his men, and he had betrayed his King. In accordance with James’s injunctions the Solicitor General Sir Thomas Coventry then highlighted Ralegh’s shifty behaviour since his return to England, his attempts to run away, his efforts to win over Manoury and Stucley, his pretence of illness at Salisbury (he had ‘fancied himself mad, and . . . looked vomative’) and his criticism of the King as, to paraphrase Manoury, a monarch whose word was not to be trusted. Once again, things said in the heat of the moment, to those he considered friends, were being laid to his charge. Ralegh found it difficult to contest many of the details; instead, he challenged their significance. In his reply he reached back further across time, recalling the apparent harshness of the verdict handed down at Winchester: ‘he hath heard that the King said that he would not bee tried by a jury of Middlesex’. He had, he insisted, fully believed in the mine, and he had not abandoned his own men in Guiana. Certainly he had spoken of attacking the Spanish silver fleet had the main project failed, and he had indeed said that his confidence in James had been ‘deceaved’. But he also denied, rather desperately, that he had ‘used any other ill speeches against the King’.54 His words were to no purpose. The Commissioners, who as the acute and sympathetic Harlow reminds us ‘cannot be said to have been a packed tribunal’, were convinced that the mine had been a politic fantasy, that the voyage to Guiana had been in some measure prompted by France, and that relations between England and Spain had been jeopardized by the ambitions and delusions of one man.55 Englishmen remembered all too clearly the 52 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 297. 53 Stebbing’s analysis of the 1618 ‘trial’ process is still of considerable value (W. Stebbing, Sir Walter Ralegh: a biography (Oxford, 1891), pp. 359–70). 54 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, pp. 297–300, transcribed from BL, Lansdowne MS 142, fo. 396. 55 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 93.

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protracted misery of war in the 1590s, and like their King they were in no mood to return to those evils. James was informed that no doubt remained in respect of the prisoner’s new offences. When making that assessment, the Commission held Ralegh, as commander of the expedition, accountable for the mistakes of subordinates, and it is hard to see how they could reasonably have done anything else. Setting their ‘Declaration’ alongside the testimony of those examined during the summer, evidence supported judgement. So the matter was settled. Ralegh was notified on 24 October that James had resolved to proceed with execution of the original sentence, and that he must prepare himself for death.56 On 28 October, sentence was confirmed in the prisoner’s presence by Sir Henry Montagu, Lord Chief Justice, at the highest criminal court in England, the Court of King’s Bench in Westminster. An attempt was again made to suggest that this was the culmination of a familiar legal process, for John Chamberlain, when writing to Carleton just after the event, stated that the protocol followed, ‘as they say the manner . . . when a man lives above a yeare and a day after he is condemned’.57 ‘The Recordes of his arraignment at Winchester was opened’, and Ralegh was asked why execution should not proceed according to that judgement.58 For once, he seemed at a loss. Not knowing what else to do, Ralegh tried yet again to excuse his proceedings on the voyage to Guiana, only to be cut short.The King, he was told, had decided, ‘upon some occasions best knowne to himselfe’, that the old sentence should now be executed, and only arguments in law against that decision could be entertained.59 Here, again, there is a sense in which scrupulous judges distance themselves from the arbitrary exercise of royal power; they ostentatiously confine themselves to process. Testing the only legal argument that came to his mind, Ralegh suggested that the commission issued to him before his voyage, conferring on him as it did powers of life and death, amounted to a pardon for any previous offences. This tactic had been foreseen, however, and the omission of the standard words ‘trusty and well-beloved’ was now used against him: when the commission was issued he had not yet earned the trust that would imply a pardon, and no broad construction might be placed upon an 56 William Camden, Diary (1603–1623), hypertext ed. D. F. Sutton (Irvine, 2001), entry for 24 October 1618. 57 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 175. 58 [Overbury] The Arraignment and Conviction of Sir Walter Rawleigh . . . Coppied by Sir Tho: Overbury (London, 1648), p. 26; Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 302. 59 [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 26.

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act of pragmatic royal opportunism. Montagu reminded him again that, since he had not been pardoned expressly in his commission, what he had or had not done in Guiana was quite irrelevant to the question at hand, which was whether the King might indeed now confirm a sentence of execution passed in November 1603. Ralegh was trapped, and he knew it. He took the only course open to him and threw himself on James’s clemency, once again pointing out flaws, as he perceived them, in the Winchester verdict: ‘as concerning that judgment which is so long past, and which I think here are some could witness, nay His Majesty was of opinion, that I had hard measure therein’.60 Yelverton spoke elegantly, superfluously pointing out once again that Ralegh had fifteen years past been ‘convicted of high treason . . . and then received the judgment of death’. While the King had graciously permitted him to live until now, ‘that justice calls unto him for execution’. Of course, one might regret the whole business, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh hath been a statesman, and a man who in regard of his parts and quality is to be pitied. He hath been as a star at which the world hath gazed; but stars may fall, nay they must fall when they trouble the sphere wherein they abide.’61 It was almost over. Montagu, a careerist but also a convinced Christian of a rather puritan cast, made a considered and in the circumstances courageous speech, affirming his own belief in the prisoner’s character and religion, asserting that Ralegh could prepare to meet his end without superfluous advice even from a Lord Chief Justice, and praising his The History of the World, an ‘admirable work’ that testified to its author’s Christian beliefs. Perhaps here too there is a trace of implicit censure, laid upon a King who disliked the work, and who now insisted on severity. ‘You must do’, he said, ‘as that valiant captain did, who perceiving himself in danger, said in defiance of death, death thou expectest me, but maugre thy spite I expect thee.’62 Defiance and spite are words fit for subtlety, full of ambiguity in seventeenth-century English usage: if death was spiteful, so too, perhaps, was the royal agent of death. Nevertheless, Montagu concluded by doing what the King, and the law, expected him to do. He granted execution. Ralegh responded with his accustomed dignity, asserting his loyalty to the King, and asking that he might not be ‘cut-off suddenly’. ‘I have’, he said, ‘something to do in discharge of my conscience, and something to satisfy his Majesty in, something to satisfy 60 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 303. 61 Ibid., p. 302. 62 Ibid., pp. 303–4.

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the world in, and I desire I may be heard at the day of my death.’63 Like most other condemned prisoners he was granted this last favour. Ralegh then asked for pen and ink; he had some writing to do in preparation for the morrow.64 That same day, a royal warrant signified the King’s wish that Ralegh should be spared the full legal penalty of treason: hanging, drawing and quartering. James would be satisfied with beheading, a commutation invariably granted to the nobility, and, less consistently, to a gentleman.65 Ralegh spent his last night in the Gatehouse prison, not far from the scaffold site, consulting with the courteous and devout Dean of Westminster, Robert Townson, writing letters and talking to Bess. He smiled on hearing that she had been granted the disposal of his body. It was well, he said, that she had the disposal of him when dead, for she had not always enjoyed such control over the living man!66 At some point in these hours of meditation, if a robust tradition in the titling of manuscript copies is to be credited, Ralegh wrote on the flyleaf of his Bible, the last of thousands of books to rest in his hands, a poignant couplet, ‘on the Snuffe of a Candle’, developing a stanza in what one might assume to have been a favourite among his own works, ‘Nature that washt her hands in milke’. Cowards feare to die but courage stout Rather than live in snuffe wilbe put out. Even such is tyme that takes on trust Our Youth, our joyes, and all wee have And paies us but with age and dust Within the darke and sylent grave When wee have wandred all our waies Shuttes upp the story of our daies. From darknes, sylence, grave, and dust The Lord shall raise mee upp I trust.67

63 Ibid., p. 304. 64 Queen’s College Oxford, MS 32, fo. 14r; see A. R. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers in the Seventeenth Century, Speaking to the People (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 88. 65 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, pp. 304–5. 66 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 180. 67 M. Rudick (ed.), The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: a historical edition (Tempe, AZ, 1999), p. 133; above Chapter Seven, p. 164.

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He was woken at around four o’clock, long before the autumnal sunrise. First his cousin Charles Thynne called, then Townson arrived to celebrate communion. Ralegh ate his breakfast – ‘a dishe of fried steakes [and] eggs roasted’ according to one account – and calmly smoked his pipe; Townson believed that he was treating death as just another journey.68 If he said so out loud, then Ralegh, never slow on his cue, took the metaphor with him to the scaffold.The condemned man dressed, smartly, swinging on a wrought black velvet gown, and choosing a hat. On one finger, so the story goes, he wore a diamond ring, given him by Elizabeth I. After a cup of sack to ward off the chill, he set out at around eight o’clock, as many as sixty guards escorting him to the scaffold in Old Palace Yard. Another report has him walking ‘betweene the Sheriffs of Middlesex’.69 The crowd pressed around. Ralegh gave his nightcap to a bald well-wisher: ‘thou hast more need of it now than I’, he said. Stories congregate round the dying hero: setting aside the intentional humour, this one brings to mind the mortally wounded Sir Philip Sidney, passing a flask of water to a common soldier on the battlefield of Zutphen, more than thirty years earlier.70 This was to be Ralegh’s final stage. His performance on the scaffold, like his performance when on trial for his life, was judged by contemporaries in both theatrical and moral terms, in keeping with the values of the age.71 Once again he commanded that stage; exploiting the moment through gestures, embracing friends, kissing the axe, working the crowd, fixing the event in memory. To save his voice, counsellors and peers watching from a nearby window, including the Earl of Arundel and James Hay, Viscount Doncaster, recently married to Northumberland’s daughter Lucy, came down to the scaffold to hear more clearly what he had to say. Their presence and cooperation demonstrated their support for the condemned man. Here were friends as well as witnesses; the nuances were always subtle in a scaffold crowd, but 68 Hyland, Ralegh’s Last Journey, p. 205. See the analysis of Ralegh’s last moments by A. Fleck, ‘“At the time of his death”: manuscript instability and Walter Ralegh’s performance on the scaffold’, Journal of British Studies 48 (2009), 4–28, at p. 22. Death as a journey: a classic seventeenth-century conceit, frequently encountered. See P. Marshall, Beliefs and the Dead in Reformation England (Oxford, 2002), p. 309. 69 [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 27. 70 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 312. 71 On the theatre of the scaffold see J. A. Sharpe,‘Last dying speeches: religion, ideology and public execution in seventeenth-century England’, Past and Present 107 (1985), 144–67; R.Wunderli and G. Broce, ‘The final moment before death in early modern England’, Sixteenth Century Journal 20 (1989), 259–75; Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, ch. 4.

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sympathy and regret for the royal decision were as evident now as they had been among the judges during the previous fortnight. Despite, or maybe because of the competing attractions of Lord Mayor’s Day in the City, plenty of other men and women were on the scene too, including ‘Christopher’, a South American Indian, a former servant of the Governor of San Thomé, brought by Ralegh from Guiana.72 Weeping frequently, and helped by his ‘noate of remembrance’, Ralegh embarked on a lengthy speech.73 The Spanish ambassador understood that it had lasted three-quarters of an hour, while Chamberlain wrote drily to Carleton that ‘they had no thancks that suffered him to talke so longe on the scaffold’.74 It is a speech that survives in many different copies and forms, forms which in their variety demonstrate the authorial involvement of an audience as well as the speaker.75 Despite protestations of frailty, his voice held up well. One commentator, turning critic in response to the theatricality of the moment, observed that Ralegh’s voice, like his courage, ‘never failed him’, even though there were some who thought it more forced ‘than natural, and somewhat overdone’.76 The most likely sequence in which he took the many points recorded in contemporary accounts of his speech is preserved in Thomas Harriot’s notes, for Harriot too stood in the crowd on that October morning.77 People hear what they want to hear, and later readers, busy constructing a political identity for a dead man, read what they want to read as well.78 The prologue was conventional, with the condemned prisoner discounting any shivers (they should be attributed to his recurrent fever, not to fear) and welcoming the fact that he was to die in a public place,‘where he might with freedome disburden himself ’. Literally, he was walking from darkness to light, 72 Vaughan, ‘Ralegh’s Indian interpreters’, p. 371. The celebrations in the City perhaps explain why the execution did not take place on Tower Hill. 73 [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 31; Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 88; Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 176. 74 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 179. 75 Of the various versions of this long speech, the most complete and reliable is perhaps that printed by R. H. Bowers, ‘Raleigh’s last speech: the “Elms” document’, Review of English Studies NS 2 (1951), 209–16. 76 BL, Harley MS 7056, fo. 50r. 77 BL, Add. MS 6789, reproduced in J. W. Shirley, Thomas Harriot: a biography (Oxford, 1983), p. 447. 78 See the excellent analysis of the scaffold speech in Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 82–108.

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and, so the implication ran, his journey – the passionate man’s pilgrimage – led on ultimately to eternal light.79 Forgiving his enemies and traducers – that too was common form, and he did not necessarily mean what he said – Ralegh worked through some well-worn themes. He insisted that there had been no ulterior motive to his expedition, that he had not plotted with France, and that he had never considered seeking refuge abroad. Late in his address he asked the Earl of Arundel to confirm that in conversation before the recent voyage, standing in the gallery of his ship, Ralegh had undertaken to return to England, come what may. On this they had shaken hands, as gentlemen bound in honour. Arundel obliged. ‘It is true’, he said. ‘I do very well remember it.’ Ralegh was determined to confront every hostile story, even to the extent that, as Steven May suggests, the speech lacks proportion, is overly absorbed on the ‘immediate’ and the ‘trifling’, while omitting any reflections on the grand themes, the threat posed by Spain and the menace of resurgent continental Catholicism.80 Some of the old bravado was there still, compounding this distortion. Ralegh could not resist talking about the mutiny that had frustrated any further exploration for treasure in Guiana, reminding the crowd that he had won over the mutineers through force of personality, and that he had even honoured his pledge to seek their pardons.The execution of Essex still troubled him, and towards the end of his speech he glanced back to a February day in 1601.81 ‘There was a Report spread, that I should rejoice at the death of my Lord of Essex, and that I should take Tobacco in his presence; when I protest I shed Tears at his Death, though I was one of the contrary Faction’. And in another report:‘I was of the contrarie faction I confesse, but I wished not his death, for I knew when he was gon, I should not be soe much accounted of ’. Still another account puts it more bluntly: I knew, Ralegh said,‘that yt would be worse with mee when he was gone, For those that sett upp mee against him, did afterwards sett themselves against mee’.82 People, he suggested, had never really understood their relationship; they had been misled by Essex’s paranoia. He said he would have liked to have stood closer to the Earl at his death, for he had known that Essex wished to be reconciled at the last. Unfortunately, the Captain of the Queen’s Guard had been stationed 79 80 81 82

Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 830, fo. 102v. May, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 122. See Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 93. Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, pp. 309–10; Queen’s College Oxford, MS 121, fo. 517r; Bowers, ‘Raleigh’s last speech’, p. 215.

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in the Armoury that day, high in the White Tower. Duty had kept the two men apart. There was nothing in his heart for Keymis, who had betrayed him through incompetence as certainly as Stucley had betrayed him in malice. Manoury – ‘a runnagate frenchman’ – was dismissed as unworthy of further reflection. Manoury’s reports of dishonourable words spoken against James should be set aside as unreliable, Ralegh implied – as if that mattered any more. In explaining why he had given the time of day to such a man, Ralegh pointed to a shared interest in ‘Chimicall medicines’, and conceded his weakness for ‘a merry witt’.83 As for James, himself, detachment rather than apology set the tone. ‘Now what have I to doe with Kings; I have nothing to doe with them, neither doe I feare them; I have onely now to doe with my God, in whose presence I stand, therefore to tell a lye, were it to gaine the Kings favour, were vaine.’84 Some meaner, milder sins he confessed readily: he had indeed tried to escape to France, and he had indeed pretended to be ill at Salisbury. Then again, ‘the Prophet David did make himself a Fool, and did suffer Spittle to fall upon his Beard to escape the hands of his Enemies, and it was not imputed to him as sin’. Ralegh had done this only ‘to prolong Time till his Majesty came, hoping for some Commiseration from him’.85 The evident procrastination and dissimulation should, he said, be set down to passing weakness rather than cunning design: ‘I had advertisement from above that yt would goe hard with me; I desired to save my life’.86 That life, he reflected, had been full. Ralegh summarized his own career, a career lived in a world already far remote from this good and Godly death on the scaffold. He had been, he admitted, ‘a Man full of all Vanity’; he had lived ‘a sinful Life, in all sinful Callings, having been a Souldier, a Captain, a Sea-Captain, and a Courtier, which are all places of Wickedness and Vice’.87 Here, from the man himself, were the roles that Greenblatt and others see him playing, but the valedictory retrospect states only bare truth. By his own, credible, assessment, Ralegh had filled these roles, not played them. 83 Bowers, ‘Raleigh’s last speech’, p. 213. 84 [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 29. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, highlights the irony in his words here – the state had given him a final stage and the freedom to say whatever he wanted: ‘I am now the subject of Death’ (pp. 92, 104). 85 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 308. 86 Bowers, ‘Raleigh’s last speech’, p. 213. 87 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 310.

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If in recent months he had valued life too highly, he was concerned now only to make the best impression possible, to remind people of what they were losing and, in so doing, to emphasize the significance of his death. No one in the crowd questioned his courage. Putting off his doublet and gown, he ‘called to the Headman to shew him the Ax, which being not presently shewed him, he said, I pray thee let me see it, Dost thou think that I am afraid of it?’ Touching the edge of the blade he jested with the Sheriff that here was ‘a sharp Medicine . . . a Physitian for all Diseases’.88 Gestures were as important as words. ‘Going to and fro upon the Scaffold, on every side he prayed the Company to pray to God to assist him and strengthen him.’ The energy of the man does not dissipate, he was as Aubrey reminds us ‘no Slug’. There is a hint in Ralegh’s words of irony in extremis, and a rather more certain measure of sound and bombast looking into the abyss.89 The modern reader can find it all rather terrifying, for there is savagery here on both sides. Contemporaries, though, saw piety and resolution. As far as anyone might discern, wrote Chamberlain, his end was in ‘every way perfect’.90 Writing four decades later, Francis Osborne took the view that Ralegh’s ‘death was by him managed with so high and religious a resolution, as if a Roman had acted a Christian, or rather a Christian a Roman’.91 Aubrey recorded another subtlety, remembered by those present: ‘In his speech on the Scaffold, I have heard my cosen Whitney say (and I thinke ’tis printed) that he spake not one word of Christ, but of the great and incomprehensible God, with much zeale and adoration, so that he concluded that he was an a-christ, not an atheist.’92 Ralegh then forgave the kneeling executioner.93 The man had, it seems, been unsettled by the tone, or more likely by the length of Ralegh’s oration. He was ‘much daunted’, according to one account, ‘att [Ralegh’s] resolution and courage, in so much that Sr Walter Raleigh clapped him on his back divers times; and cheered him up’.94 In these ways a prisoner might pretend that he had in his own hands 88 Ibid., p. 310. In another version, Ralegh says ‘this is that that will cure all sorrows’ (p. 313). 89 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 310; O. L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives (London, 1949), p. 254. 90 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 177. 91 F. Osbourne, Historical Memoires on the Reigus of Queen Elizabeth, and King James (London, 1673), ii, p. 477. 92 Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, p. 259. 93 [Overbury] The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 34. 94 BL, Harley MS 6353, fo. 85v.

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the direction of the scene.95 At no point, however, had Ralegh confessed the crimes for which he was now to die. And at no point did he expressly glorify the King. To the discerning crowd at a public execution, so used to formulaic expatiation of sins and praise of royal justice, much could be said through omission. By departing from a norm, Ralegh again succeeded in committing the scene to public memory. I saw in every stander by Pale death, Life only in thine eye.96

There was time for a final example of confidence, and resolution. ‘Being asked which way he would lay himself, on which side the Block, as he stretched himself along and laid his Head on the Block, he said, So the Heart be right, it is no matter which way the Head lieth.’97 He rejected a blindfold, saying that, since he had no fear of the axe itself, he would not tremble at its shadow. The usual arrangements were made, that the condemned prisoner would pray a while, and then stretch out his arms as a signal to the headsman. Ralegh prayed, and reached forward. The axe did not fall. Again he pushed forward, urging an end: What do you fear? he asked. ‘Strike, man.’98 Even in the horror of death Ralegh seemed to control his own final moment, and ‘the last act’, according to the familiar contemporary proverb, ‘carrieth away the applause’.99 The axe fell, rose and fell again. His head, severed at the second blow, was placed into a red leather bag, and his ‘wrought velvett gowne’ was placed over his body.100 The head was then removed in a mourning coach of Lady Ralegh. Bess, characteristically, kept it by her thereafter.101 More familiar than most with history’s capricious judgements, Ralegh had feared the verdict of posterity, asking Arundel when the Earl left the 95 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 88. 96 Rudick, Poems, p. 193. 97 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 310. Greenblatt points out the coincidence in wording with Ralegh’s discussion of the custom of praying to the east in his The History of the World (Sir Walter Ralegh: the renaissance man and his roles [London, 1973]), p. 21. 98 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 313. 99 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 91. 100 Bowers, ‘Ralegh’s Last Speech’, p. 215. 101 Or so says Oldys, who has it that the head was ‘long preserved in a case’. It was, it seems, eventually buried with Carew Ralegh (see below, p. 346). See Brushfield, Raleghana, viii, pp. 126–31. Chamberlain records soon after the execution, and almost certainly erroneously, that head and body had been buried together (Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 180).

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scaffold ‘to desire the King, that no Scandalous Writing to Defame him may be Published after his Death’. But he need not have worried. Onlookers were impressed, and their reports impressed others. A ‘muttring went through the multitude never died a braver spirritt’.102 Someone in the crowd shouted that the country had ‘not such another head to cut of ’.103 Another, more politically minded individual is said to have wished that Secretary Naunton possessed such a head, and such brains! It was his own words that survived, and left an enduring impression: the eighty or so surviving manuscript copies of those last words are often coupled in manuscript commonplaces to accounts of events at Winchester in 1603: bookends to Jacobean tyranny.104 Plans were hatched to publish his speech, although no English version appeared before 1648.105 That really did not matter; Ralegh’s last words would in time gain vitality from the flexibility of manuscript circulation. ‘Denied the fixity of print’ by a hostile government, they continued through the ‘scandalous world of manuscript coverage’ to respond very effectively to the views of ‘scribes and owners’.106 As Anna Beer points out, the theatre of the scaffold might represent justice done, but it did from time to time also highlight the opposite. Stucley was obliged to admit, in the course of desperate attempts to clear his name, that ‘they say he died like a Souldier and a Saint, and therefore then to be beleeved, not only against me, but against the attestation of the State’.107 Ralegh’s refusal to admit his guilt on any capital charge and his constant equanimity led many observers to believe – some for the first time – that he had been innocent all along, and that King and state had put to death a loyal Englishman on contrived charges. Even the Spanish agent conceded that Ralegh had behaved with exemplary courage, showing a spirit that had ‘never faltered’. ‘The death of this man’, he wrote, ‘has produced a great commotion and fear here.’108 Pragmatic onlookers were left to marvel at the ‘large Effusion of Blood, which proceeded from his Veins’, concluding that Ralegh had ‘had stock enough left of Nature, to have surviv’d many Years, though now near 102 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 310; Quoted in Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 96. 103 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 177; Hyland, Ralegh’s Last Journey, p. 214. 104 May, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 122. 105 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 95–6; Fleck, ‘Ralegh’s performance on the scaffold’, p. 7. 106 Fleck, ‘Ralegh’s performance on the scaffold’, pp. 23, 28. 107 Quoted in Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 92. 108 Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, p. 315.

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Fourscore Years old’.109 Arithmetic was clearly not their strong point.Though one account suggests that it was taken away by Bess for burial in Exeter, next to Ralegh’s parents, and though a surviving letter from Bess hints at the possibility of an interment at Beddington, the home of Arthur Throckmorton, it is virtually certain that the body, minus the head, was buried ‘privately’, without monument, at St Margaret’s Westminster on the day following, close to the place of execution.110 So most contemporary accounts insist, and so the burial register for St Margaret’s records. Why should it lie? Some have suggested that Ralegh was buried there at the behest of a government fearful that the sight of a headless corpse on its progress to Beddington might rally discontent against the regime.111 It may equally be the case that Bess had second thoughts. A few have even seen a final if rather obscure touch of defiance against the King. The scaffold speech is only one part of Ralegh’s testament. Latham and Youings accept as Ralegh’s last surviving letter a short text, surviving only in John Donne’s Collection of letters made by Sir Tobie Mathews, addressed to the King, or, perhaps, to Queen Anne. They suggest that its elegance makes an appropriate final word. Certainly it shows Ralegh at his best: the man who could face his end with fortitude and equanimity, like those admirable Romans of old. My sad destiny hath been such that I could never present Your Majesty but with a prospect upon my complaints and miseries, in stead of doing you services which might have been acceptable to you. I have not spared my labour, my poor estate and the howerly hazard of my life, but God have otherwise disposed of all, and now end the dayes of my hope. I must neverthelesse, in this little time which I am to live, acknowledge and admire your goodnesse and in all my thoughts, and even with my last breath, confesse that you have beheld my affliction with compassion. And I am yet in nothing so miserable as in that I could never meet an occasion wherin to be torn in pieces for Your Majesties service.112

The measure of sad destiny, and life wasted, was apparent to all. After the execution the crowd dispersed, carrying away their own impressions of this 109 110 111 112

Ibid., p. 310. Dick, Aubrey’s Brief Lives, p. 259. Brushfield, Raleghana, viii, pp. 125–6. Letters of Ralegh, pp. 376–7.

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act of mean legality. It is interesting, and perhaps significant to note that several future political opponents of Charles I were present that morning, including John Eliot, John Hampden, John Pym and Algernon Percy, future tenth Earl of Northumberland. Pym recalled that Ralegh had met his end ‘with great applause of the beholders, most constantly, most Christianly, most religiously’.113 The Jacobean regime had faced a political test of how best to deal with a dissident; how to proceed handsomely. Time would judge how well the King and his ministers had met that test.

113 HMC, Tenth Report: appendix, vi, p. 85; C. Hill, Intellectual origins of the English Revolution (Oxford, 1965), pp. 208–11; Stebbing, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 397.

14

The Legacy

Taking his farewell of Arundel on the scaffold, Ralegh the pilgrim picked up his burden. ‘I have a long journey to go,’ he said, ‘and therefore will take my leave.’1 However, he has never really gone away. A focus for gossip and legend when alive, Ralegh has not been forgotten in death. As Isaac D’Israeli observed, he continues to fill ‘a space in our imagination’.2 For Aubrey, he possessed an ‘awfulness and ascendancy in his Aspect over other mortalls’, an ‘ascendancy’ – call it charisma, or dash, or swagger – that is remembered, analysed and admired, if not always excused.3 Writing in the early 1960s, A. L. Rowse dwelt on that magnetism; even then, Ralegh had ‘not ceased to compel the imagination of the English public, indeed of English-speaking people across the world, in America as much as in Britain’.4 This obsession with the dead Ralegh was an instant phenomenon. As Yelverton said, a star had fallen; reasons had to be sought, and lessons learnt. Ralegh was news. Immediately after the events in Old Palace Yard, Edward Harwood told Dudley Carleton that London ‘at this tyme is onely full of the famous and worthy ende’.5 Throughout late November 1618, as the great comet or nova in the zodiacal constellation Ophiuchus shone in the night sky, Chamberlain pondered on the significance of events, sending Carleton copies of letters, verses and ballads, passing on the evolving legend of Ralegh’s last night, and telling how the condemned man had joked to keep up Bess’s spirits, before saying his farewells after midnight and snatching a few brief hours of sleep.6 In doing so, Chamberlain fell into his accustomed role of the 1 V. T. Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage (London, 1932), p. 310. 2 Quoted in R. Lawson-Peebles,‘The many faces of Sir Walter Ralegh’, History Today 48:3 (March 1998), 17–24, at p. 23. 3 O. L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey’s Brief Lives (London, 1949), p. 257. 4 A. L. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons (London, 1962), p. v. 5 TNA, SP 14/103/55. 6 Though King James quickly dismissed it as ‘but Venus with a firebrand in her arse’, his considered response to the phenomenon was more complex, and the ‘herauld starr’, which was visible in England from 18 November to 16 December, lingered long in the collective memory, its significance redefined with the passing years (J. Doelman, ‘The comet of 1618 and the British royal family’, Notes and Queries 54 (2007), 30–5).

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gently selective critic. For the most part this flow of Raleghana was proving ‘poore stuffe . . . not worth the overlooking’.Yet his letters acknowledged that the works were being looked over all the while: print had responded to high demand.‘We are so full still of SirWalter Raleigh’, he wrote,‘that almost every day brings foorth somwhat in this kind.’ It was only to be expected that some of these scribblers and balladeers took a routine approach, putting words of repentance into Ralegh’s mouth, but the fact that other efforts were called in by the censor shows that a less conventional message was gaining a large audience. Everyone knew that an official account of these events was at press, but Chamberlain added that any proofs put forward in this official declaration of Ralegh’s treasons ‘had neede be very pregnant and demonstrative, or els they will hardly prevaile’. He was right. Pitted against a powerful image of Ralegh on the scaffold, the Crown’s sober response was never likely to win over hearts and minds.7 Another of Carleton’s correspondents, John Pory, took it for granted that his friend would already have read much on the topic. Still he could not resist contributing to the process of exchange: ‘being a matter of so muche marke and renowne, it is fitt, that all tounges and pennes both good and bad should be employed about it’. There was no juicier topic for the newsmongers that side of Christmas, and the juice was sharper for the authorities’ evident unease. Pory reported the common opinion that Ralegh’s ‘death will doe more harme to the faction that sought it, then ever his life could have done’.8 Public regard for a worthy Englishman grew steadily. On New Year’s Day 1619 John Holles told his son in London to ‘gather up as many of Sir W. Rawlies verses, and letters as yow can, ex unguibus leonem’.9 It is significant that the executioner’s traditional words – ‘behold the head of a traitor’ – are recorded in only one version of Ralegh’s final speech and death.The legitimacy and morality of royal justice were left unconfirmed, to withstand if they could the scrutiny of succeeding generations.10 7 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, pp. 179, 185. A. Fleck, ‘“At the time of his death”: manuscript instability and Walter Ralegh’s performance on the scaffold’, Journal of British Studies 48 (2009), 4–28, at p. 15. 8 TNA, SP 14/103/61. 9 H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts 1558–1640 (Oxford, 1996), p. 158; A. Beer, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s Dialogue betweene a counsellor of state and a justice of the peace’, in Clucas and Davies, The Crisis of 1614, p. 138, n. 16. 10 A. R. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers in the Seventeenth Century, Speaking to the People (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 104. Even for later commentators willing to give James some benefit of the doubt, the execution of Ralegh was a thing apart. It may have been

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Anna Beer suggests that Bess, working from her house ‘hard by Austin Friars’, was behind this torrent of writings, that the publication at this point of the letter Ralegh had written to her when facing death in 1603 depended on her connivance. It is a persuasive argument, even though Ralegh’s speech on the Westminster scaffold was itself powerful enough to fuel interest and promote a new English martyr.11 Not that the message, following so close on the fiasco in Guiana, was entirely positive. A year after his ignominious return, the failure of Ralegh’s expedition still tainted his reputation, particularly among the many who had ventured their savings in the voyage. One such was the author ‘I. H. gent’, perhaps John Heath of New College Oxford, whose capable epigrams in his 1619 collection The House of Correction refer more than once to the calamity of a failed speculative investment: Thus I lost all; wherefore it is a signe, The[y] found no Mine of gold, yet gold of mine.

I. H.’s work also responds to continuing debate over the causes of Ralegh’s failure, summarizing all that had gone wrong in just ten lines. Most interestingly, he has a high regard for Keymis, which could only reflect poorly on the captain who had so readily blamed and abandoned a loyal associate. Sundry oppinions abroad are spred, Why the Gwyanians no better sped; Some say, they were prevented out of Spayne, Others, because some did returne agayne: Some say, ’twas sicknesse: others, their abode So long ere they put from the English Rode. Some say, their General’s absence: but the most Say, Captaine Kemish death, when he was lost, All was overthrowne, he onely was to doe it, And that Sir Walter came but Rawly to it.12

the King’s only tyrannical gesture, but, as gestures of tyranny go, it was bad enough. See R. Houlbrooke, ‘James’s reputation, 1625–2005’, in Houlbrooke (ed.), James VI and I, Ideas, Authority, and Government (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 169–90 at 171. 11 A. R. Beer, My Just Desire: the life of Bess Ralegh, wife to Sir Walter (New York, 2003), pp. 231–4; A. Clifford, The Memoir of 1603 and the Diary of 1616–1619, ed. K. O. Acheson (Peterborough, 2007), p. 171. 12 I. H. [John Heath?], The House of Correction (London, 1619), sigs C2v, C3v. M. Rudick

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So many people noted the ambiguities of Ralegh’s last voyage. Some even tried to portray his Guiana expedition as a religious venture, crowned by martyrdom.13 For most, though, 1618 told a simpler tale. Ralegh had failed in Guiana, just as he had failed on many other occasions in a busy life. Even so, his end had made up for all the shortcomings. Public opinion, while nodding to the normative ballad literature, concluded that a great wrong had been done, and that the King, somehow, had to make amends.14 For all its careful structure, its mockery of the dead man as a manipulative, insincere actor, the official account of the process against Ralegh, the King’s ‘Declaration of the demeanour and carriage of Sir Walter Ralegh’, was read widely as an admission of error and miscalculation, falling back as it did on a rather demeaning catalogue of private conversations between Ralegh and those who had set themselves up as his friends, while condensing the current criticism of recent proceedings into a few over-simplified sentences. By reverting to the legal argument that Ralegh had died in accordance with English Law, the ‘Declaration’ served only to question the fundamental justice of any law that could put a man to death in these particular circumstances. This approach actually invited comparisons, encouraging readers to choose between two versions of the truth. All too many English men and women, after reading Ralegh’s ‘Apologie’ and an account of his execution, decided to believe him and not the King.15 James struggled to come to terms with these developments. Pory has the King relieved that the most vitriolic criticism is being directed against Stucley. ‘I have done amiss. Raleigh’s blood be upon thy head.’16 He must

13 14 15

16

(ed.), The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: a historical edition (Tempe, AZ, 1999), pp. 190–1. We are grateful to Dr Will Poole for drawing our attention to these epigrams. The memorial poem ‘Upon Sir Walter Rawleigh’, in Rudick, Poems, pp. 196–7. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 96–104; Rudick, Poems, pp. 191–205. The ‘Declaration of the demeanor and cariage of Sir Walter Raleigh’ was published, hastily, late in November (T. N. Brushfield, Raleghana ([Plymouth], 1896–1907), published as a series in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, vii: 2, 44–7). Long attributed to Bacon, it was in fact the work of several counsellors and officials, Bacon among them. James contributed some finishing touches. It is most easily accessed in Harlow, Ralegh’s Last Voyage, pp. 335–56. On responses see the letter from ‘A. Throckmorton’ – perhaps Sir Arthur – written on 31 October 1618 and preserved with a copy of the ‘Apologie’ in St John’s College Cambridge, MS I.4. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 103–4. SP 14/103/74, John Pory to Carleton, 7 November 1618. Pory confirmed that Ralegh’s mathematical instruments had, in accordance with a royal warrant, been seized for the Lord Admiral’s use (cf. 14/103/71).

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have hoped that the fuss, like the nova in the night sky, would gradually fade away. But Ralegh’s subversive influence proved particularly robust. In May 1620, Thomas, Earl of Kellie, wrote to John, Earl of Mar from his house on the Strand, telling him that Lord North’s brother, who had sailed with Ralegh, had ignored an express command from the King and had set out on a voyage of his own, ‘whitche trubills his Majestie verrye mutche, and the more becawss he hes cawsed the Spanishe embassadoure to wret to Spaine that he shuld not goe’. These independent spirits were particularly bothersome. James thought ‘his reputatione tuiched ather that he intendit not to staye him, or then that he had not the meanes to staye him’.17 In his lifetime, Ralegh was always to some degree a ‘bore about himself ’, but when he was no longer on hand to point out the obvious, the better traits in his character, and his nobler and more generous actions, became ever more apparent.18 His silence permitted others to manipulate the remembered facts, and encouraged the creation of new truths. Written words now spoke for him, and Ralegh’s talents as a writer ensured a particularly positive legacy. Readers began to shape Raleghs all their own: authority, as we are constantly reminded, does not always come from the author. During the late 1610s and early 1620s many in England were deeply alarmed by the growing threat from the Catholic Habsburgs in both Germany and Spain. The humiliation suffered by James’s daughter Elizabeth when her husband was driven from his lands in Bohemia and the Palatinate by Catholic armies scandalized Protestant opinion at home, and demonstrated to some the bankruptcy of James’s pacific policies. Against this backcloth, Ralegh embarked on his first posthumous career, as a Protestant, popular hero, a victim of the same shabby royal appeasement towards Catholic powers, an opposition figure motivated by principle rather than by personal advancement. It was, perhaps, an obvious construct. Ralegh could all too easily be considered a martyr to appeasement, viewed as he was by so many as ‘Spaines Arch-Foe’.19 Arch-foes are always worthy of respect. John Pory has the Earl of Northumberland reflecting on events from his Tower cell, soon after Ralegh’s death. The Spanish, Northumberland suggested, would have been 17 HMC, Supplementary Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Mar & Kellie (London, 1930), p. 100. 18 Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons, p. 186. 19 From an anonymous contemporary poem commemorating his death. See J.T. Shawcross, ‘A contemporary view of Sir Walter Ralegh’, ANQ 5 (1992), 131–3.

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better advised to give £100,000 in bribes rather than have Ralegh killed, were the Spanish marriage for Prince Charles to proceed, whereas if the match failed, the English should have stumped up the £100,000 rather than kill someone of this calibre.20 While overly neat, and from a friendly source, the Earl’s reflection captures the dead man’s growing reputation. Northumberland’s view was ardently promoted by Bess, whose own memorial miniatures of her dead husband and dead son show both as military heroes, the likeness of Wat curiously, and perhaps deliberately similar to the beautiful 1588 Hilliard miniature of Ralegh at the zenith of his career. Bess’s Ralegh remained, nevertheless, a multi-faceted individual: she diligently pointed out through marginal notes the close and fruitful association with Edmund Spenser in her son Carew’s copy of Spenser’s 1617 collected works.21 Ralegh’s status as a protestant martyr drew some unexpected admirers. Godfrey Goodman, no radical republican, would one day kiss Ralegh’s skull reverently.22 The roll call of those impressed by the exciting combination of magisterial history and oppositional politics included William Drummond, James Harrington, and in later years Marvell, Bunyan, William Penn, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and the puritan poet Anne Bradstreet in Massachusetts.23 Several of those present at the execution seem to have settled there and then on the Ralegh that they would remember.24 John Eliot discerned a Roman hero, and remained uncertain only ‘whether death were more acceptable to him, or he more welcome unto death’.25 To Eliot and several other future opponents of Charles I’s personal rule he was ‘our Ralegh’.26 Eliot’s annota20 SP 14/103/74. Pory cites here a ‘great Lord in the Tower who knew Ralegh well’, clearly Northumberland. 21 Oakeshott, ‘Carew Ralegh’s copy of Spenser’, pp. 1–21. Oakeshott suggests that the volume belonged to Ralegh, and that it carries his annotations. 22 G. Goodman, The Court of King James I, ed. J. S. Brewer (London, 1839), i, p. 69. 23 C. Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford, 1965), p. 211; L. Gim, ‘Representing the “Phoenix Queen”: Elizabeth I in writings by Anna Maria van Schurman and Anne Bradstreet’, in E. H. Hageman and K. Conway (eds), Resurrecting Elizabeth I in Seventeenth-century England (Madison, NJ, 2007), pp. 168–84 at 174. 24 A Mr Pym, probably John Pym, is identified by Bess as one of only two neighbours destined to share her venison at Christmas, when living as a widow in Boswell Court in 1623 (BL, Add. MS 72709, fo. 3). 25 [Eliot] The Monarchie of Man, by Sir John Eliot, ed. A. B. Grosart (London, 1879), i, 158–9. 26 P. Hyland, Ralegh’s Last Journey: a tale of madness, vanity and treachery (London, 2003), pp. 216–17.

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tions to his copy of the Dialogue, preserved in his manuscript copy of the work, show him grasping the weighted arguments, highlighting the points of current relevance, and using Ralegh’s text as a basis for his own Petition from the Gatehouse.27 Oliver Cromwell did not attend the execution, but one senses occasionally in his later speeches, and in the development during the 1650s of his Western Design for an English empire in the Caribbean, that he was certainly present in spirit. Others were quick to take up a popular theme. We have seen how, in Sir Walter Rawleighs Ghost, the radical exile Thomas Scott presented a man fit and able to save the country from popery, born not for himself or his family, but for England.28 Even the thickest walls at Whitehall and the Escorial cannot shut out a ghost. A very protestant spectre, Ralegh returned to confound Habsburg machinations, the honest advocate of godly war.29 Once resurrected, the dead do not rest easily. Ralegh’s ghost, as G. M. Trevelyan observed, ‘pursued the House of Stuart to the scaffold’.30 The desirability of confronting Spain and the Empire on the battlefield and at sea was one of those fault-lines in the future royalist-parliamentarian divide, a symbol of the ageing, nostalgic support for Parliament eventually so prominent in the early stages of the Civil Wars. Michael Rudick points out that Scott’s conjuration is symptomatic of the seventeenth-century tendency to draw from and invent the words of ‘Elizabethan worthies’ when commenting ‘on immediate concerns’.31 A worthy past was, however unrealistically, characterized by good government. The 1628 rebranding of Ralegh’s Dialogue as The Prerogative of Parliaments was, we have noted, instantly popular. As Anna Beer writes, ‘Ralegh’s “private” advice to James was thus appropriated to an increasingly urgent and public debate about the nature of government, and it is in this context that the work became politically active’.32 People continued to read the Prerogative; Ralegh’s Instructions to his son were bowdlerized and transformed into a far more religious work in the popular editions of the 1630s, and during the next two decades, while the British Isles were torn apart and then reshaped by war and novel forms of government, radicals plundered Ralegh’s History for illustrative examples 27 28 29 30 31 32

Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 113. Ibid., pp. 119–20. See Chapter Eleven (iii) above, p. 283. D. Colclough, Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 108–9. G. M. Trevelyan, History of England (London, 1926), p. 388. Rudick, Poems, p. xxviii. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 66.

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of the workings of Providence. Full of ambiguity – sometimes deliberately introduced by the author, and sometimes not – The History of the World carried near canonical status, and every leading writer and politician, on both sides, was therefore obliged to ‘negotiate’ with Ralegh’s texts as well as with posthumous portrayals of Ralegh the man.33 In 1650, Cromwell, admiring economy with words (in others) and ever more aware of passing time, recommended one particular book to his son Richard: ‘Recreate yourself with Sir Walter Raughleye’s History: it’s a body of history; and will add much more to your understanding than fragments of Story.’34 Perhaps he found that he could relate to Elizabeth’s favourite, and James’s opponent. Like Ralegh, Cromwell had risen by chance from obscurity, his political prominence was the product of middle life; and both men revered the God of Battles. Milton read the History, as he read other works by Ralegh, and there are allusions to both Guiana and to Ralegh’s exploration of Genesis in Paradise Lost.35 In the 1650s several of Ralegh’s texts were published or republished, and some works by others were attributed to him, notably Maxims of State and Cabinet Council, the latter published by an admiring Milton. For a time, he becomes defined by his status as a best-selling author. In the first significant biography, appended anonymously to a 1652 edition of the History, the author suggests that King James’s dislike of Ralegh was in part the result of envy – he resented a greater literary talent. Evaluation of that talent was, however, peculiarly open to shifting fashion.When the ‘protestant hero’ came to be reassessed as a writer, more and more people set the heroism to one side, and began to pick holes in Ralegh’s scholarship. Criticism extended from his works to his life and conduct. The 1650s saw vigorous debate over Ralegh’s credibility as a ‘good’ person; even in the heyday of the English republic the foremost opponent of Stuart monarchy did not have things all his own way. Carew Ralegh and William Sanderson, son of the disgruntled principal investor in the first Guiana voyage, took up their pens and refought the courtroom battles of Winchester and London in predictably partisan, inconclusive fashion.36 That debate was multifaceted. In his lifetime Sir Walter had understood, 33 Ibid., pp. 139–75. 34 Cromwell to his son, 2 April 1650, in W. C. Abbott (ed.), The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (Cambridge, MA, 1937–47), ii, p. 236; Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 173, n.12. 35 S. W. May, Sir Walter Ralegh (Boston, 1989), p. 124. 36 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 169–71; below, p. 346.

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through experience, the dangers of misinterpretation. He tried in ways matched by few authors of his time to control the interpretation of his texts, but such control was never really possible, especially when later generations fastened onto specific aspects in a complex character. Plainly, his name carried a powerful attraction for writers and publishers, either to sell works which were not actually his or to validate a message. As with the living man, however, it is not always easy to identify the message. No one can quite decide, for instance, whether Milton published Cabinet Council because he was offering it as an ironic criticism of Cromwell or because it gave sound advice on how best to endure tyranny. Or was he well aware that it served both turns? Ambiguity is everywhere. Ralegh seems to have been supplied with varying and very different identities by writers during the Commonwealth and Protectorate: for some he was the loyal if dashing representative of corrupt monarchies, for others he represented the scourge of kings, for others still he advocated aggressive commercialism. His work and his words retained currency as well; they were put to use by dangerously radical thinkers. From time to time Ralegh is quoted in Leveller tracts, something that he would certainly not have welcomed!37 In the long aftermath of the Popish Plot, epitaphs to the late Earl of Shaftesbury, a politician fired by a determination to preserve what he saw as the true Protestant succession, cast him as ‘Rawleigh Redevivus’.38 The intention was to flatter both Shaftesbury and Ralegh. Moving into the eighteenth century, as the Civil War generation died out, the heat of controversy died as well. Readers read Ralegh’s works and reflected on his life more objectively.That did not necessarily result in any loss of regard. John Locke stood with Cromwell on the value of Ralegh’s History, considering it an excellent source for gentlemen intent on improving their education.The vigour of the writing and the all-encompassing, monumental chronological scope still persuaded the educated reader to reach, occasionally, for the folio volume on the bottom shelf. But scholarship was moving on, and Ralegh’s limitations as a student of the ancient world were increasingly apparent. While they took the trouble to read Ralegh’s work, and while they acknowledged the scale of his achievement, Samuel Johnson and David Hume were less impressed than Milton.39 At the same time, the complex 37 May, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 131. 38 P. Misopappas, Rawleigh Redevivus; or the life & death of the right honourable Anthony late Earl of Shaftsbury (London, 1683). 39 J. M. Levine, ‘Sir Walter Ralegh and the ancient wisdom’, in B. Y. Kunze and D. D. Brautigam (eds), Court, Country and Culture: essays on early modern British history in honor

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lessons of his life were being simplified still further; remaining ambiguities were being deliberately lost. Some now discounted the scholarship altogether. Ralegh was squeezed, arguably diminished, into a composite image of the sturdy English soldier-scholar, the mould tentatively fashioned for him by Robert Naunton in Fragmenta Regalia long before – the archetypal ‘handsome and well compacted person’.40 A stock military hero, his bust rests between those of William III and Drake in the Temple of British Worthies at Stowe School, rather than in the neighbouring group of literary figures.41 John Campbell included him in his Lives of the British Admirals in 1742. Again, simplification hardly dented the prevailing sympathy. A very popular 1719 Tragedy of Sir Walter Raleigh, by George Sewell, portrayed him not for the first or last time both as a victim of perfidious Spanish intrigues and as an honest, virtuous family man. Family values played well on the eighteenthcentury stage, in Britain and in the American colonies.The diary of the Earl of Egmont shows just how some well-placed figures in the Hanoverian Court regarded the actions and character of a former king: Mr Vertu, the graver, a curious and knowing man in his profession, told me an anecdote concerning Sir Walter Raleigh’s unhappy fate that is worth setting down. He said the publisher of Sir Ralph Winwood’s letters in three vol. folio assured him that among Sir Ralph’s papers he found a letter directed to him at his country seat from the Duke of Buckingham, requiring him to deliver to Count Gundamor . . . the enclosed packet, and withal to let him know that on such a day Sir Walter Raleigh was to set out for America.That packet was undoubtedly the plan and scheme of the design which historians say King James obliged Sir Walter to give him before he went his voyage . . . and the same which Sir Walter complains in one of his letters (since printed) to have found in the Spanish Governor’s town when he plundered it.

of Perez Zagorin (Rochester, NY, 1992), pp. 89–108, at 92, 102–3. On other receptions of Ralegh’s great work see N. S. Popper, ‘Walter Ralegh’s History of the World and the historical culture of the late Renaissance’ (Princeton, PhD dissertation, 2007), pp. 417–30. 40 R. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, or, observations on the late Queen Elizabeth (London, 1641), p. 31. 41 These paragraphs owe a great deal to the work of Lawson-Peebles and Vivienne Westbrook. See particularly Dr Westbrook’s ‘What remains of Rawleigh/Raleigh/ Ralegh (1554–1618)’, EnterText 6:3 (Winter 2006–7), 67–90. For Stowe School, see pp. 78–9.

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Even if this were only a copy, Egmont wrote, it still served to warn the Spanish. He could not contain his disgust. ‘The barbarous murder of him at his return by straining the law shows there was a determined resolution to dispatch him one way or other.’42 The enemy of such a monarch would hardly fail to win respect. No wonder that Rysbrack’s popular eighteenthcentury bust shows Ralegh serene, his hat at a jaunty angle. George Lyttelton, the politician and writer, also took up Ralegh as a stock character, making him express unconventional opinions and give advice on the present times. Lyttelton’s unpublished ‘Observations on the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth’, written in 1733, picked up on Bolingbroke’s recent Remarks on the History of England in an engagement with the politics of Elizabeth’s reign. The essay turned on a fanciful conversation between Ralegh, Henry Wotton and Sir Francis Bacon, and, as any reader of Lyttelton might guess, it contained a number of less than subtle allusions to politics in the Age of Walpole.43 Simplified versions of Sir Walter Ralegh were easy to admire. The young Edward Gibbon, casting about for a subject in the early 1760s, settled at first on Ralegh,‘my Hero’, and only abandoned the project when he realized that Tudor and Stuart biography was already a crowded field, that the antiquary and herald William Oldys had published a comprehensive if uninspired history of his man, and that the choice, if pursued, might well lead to neglect and oblivion! Happily for history, Gibbon, after one or two other false starts, opted for an altogether ‘safer’ topic.44 By this point, Ralegh’s legacy has a transatlantic dimension. American revolutionaries, aware of Ralegh’s part in the prehistory of the Thirteen Colonies, also appreciated his value as a symbol of ‘opposition’. His The History of the World seems to have been widely read, or at least widely available in the libraries of colonial gentlemen.45 At the start of the Revolutionary War, in the summer of 1775, the Pennsylvania Packet newspaper conjured in an elegy to Dr Joseph Warren, a prominent casualty at the Battle of Bunker Hill, 42 HMC, Egmont, ii, p. 383. 43 See ODNB under Lyttelton. 44 The process is recorded in his diary. Gibbon’s own library copy of The History of the World is held in the fine Ralegh Collection at Chapel Hill. J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: the enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764 (Cambridge, 1999). 45 R. B. Davis, Intellectual life in the Colonial South 1585–1763 (Knoxville, 1977). We are grateful to Professor Larry Tise and Dr Michael Hill for sharing their investigations into the currency of Ralegh’s work in late eighteenth-century America.

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a parade of ghosts, past patriots all, with Ralegh at their head.46 Following a series of toasts to ‘prosperity, freedom & independency to the thirteen united states of America’, the Raleigh, a frigate built in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, saw distinguished service in the War of Independence, before falling into British hands.The name may have been chosen by Joseph Hewes, ‘father’ of the US Navy, and in the best naval tradition it was passed on, successive Raleighs sailing in the service of the United States over the next two centuries.47 A newly independent nation looked for heroes, national and local.The capital of North Carolina took the name of the state’s most famous founding father, and carefully preserved the association, as the lists of place and street names associated with Sir Walter bear witness.48 State tradition maintains that the city’s name was suggested by Commissioner James Martin, who served in the 1792 North Carolina General Assembly as representative from Stokes County.49 The Americanization of Ralegh, his memory and his memorialization, ran far beyond North Carolina. His name was given to cities, towns and counties in seven states, to trains, shops, businesses, road races and all sorts of natural features, apart from the more predictable hotels and inns, and brands of tobacco.To the Sir Walter Ski Club, and the Velvet Cloak Motel!50 ‘Sir Walter Raleigh Day’ was marked in public schools across North Carolina in 1954. In a gesture worthy of the man himself a pragmatic State government, working through a Sir Walter Raleigh Commission chaired by the Governor, used this occasion to cajole children into contributing their pennies and dimes towards the cost of a statue to Sir Walter in the capital.51 America has also remembered Ralegh as a pioneer of westward expansion, particularly when the enlargement of a nation took on a new dynamic during the nineteenth century.The poet Joel Barlow in his epic ‘Columbiad’ puts Ralegh back in armour, facing the setting sun, ‘his eye, bent forward, ardent and sublime, /Seem’d piercing nature and evolving time; /Beside him stood a globe, whose figure traced/A future empire in each present waste.’ 46 Lawson-Peebles, ‘The many faces of Sir Walter Ralegh’, p. 21. 47 H. G. Jones, ‘The Americanization of Raleigh’, in J. Youings (ed.), Raleigh in Exeter, 1985: privateering and colonization in the reign of Elizabeth I (Exeter, 1985), pp. 73–89, at 76. Subsequent Raleighs, of course, reflect the US Navy’s custom of naming ships for cities. 48 Jones, ‘The Americanization of Raleigh’, pp. 77–8. 49 See E. R. Murray, Wake: capital county of North Carolina (1983), i, pp. 85–6. 50 Jones, ‘The Americanization of Raleigh’, pp. 78–9. 51 Ibid., p. 87; NC Dept of Public Instruction, Sir Walter Raleigh Day, December 3, 1954 (Raleigh, 1954), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNCCH), CSWR T5.

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A century later, in his perceptive biography of Ralegh written for children, John Buchan put forward a similar argument, suggesting that ‘the British Empire of to-day, and the Republic of the United States, are alike built on his dreams’.52 Like Gibbon before him, Buchan was a young man seduced by the drama and colour of a life well lived. Unlike Gibbon, but very much like his subject, Buchan was also a politician who believed in the virtues as well as the practical benefits of Empire. Buchan died in harness, as Governor General of Canada, one winter’s night in Montreal in 1940. Ralegh would have welcomed such a death. The nineteenth century consolidated Ralegh’s next transformation from soldier patriot to sailor hero, the pioneer of empires in the east and in the west. In America, journals given over to education and instruction in the spirit of self-improvement carried uncritical biographies of Ralegh, focusing on Roanoke as a forerunner of enduring colonies in Virginia and New England.53 In Britain, popular histories and scholarly works suppressed Aubrey’s reference to the maid and the tree trunk, turning him into a knight errant, entranced by the far horizon. In Millais’ ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’ the child absorbs the mariner’s tales, while numerous school textbooks and William Theed in his romantic sculpture reminded Victorians of how a gallant adventurer stepped forward in doublet and ruff to throw his cloak before an appreciative Queen.54 And in extremis, of course, Ralegh had played the man, fought and (in his own way) triumphed against immense odds.There was a touch of Lancelot certainly, of Arthur quite possibly, in all this romancing. And there is a touch of the outlaw hero Robin Hood too, notably in the ‘greenwood’ Ralegh of Edward German and Basil Hood’s 52 Lawson-Peebles, ‘The many faces of Sir Walter Ralegh’, pp. 23–4. 53 See, for example, the biography of Ralegh in the Family Magazine; or monthly abstract of general knowledge (New York, Boston, Cincinnati, 1837), UNCCH, CSWR B42. A short factual biography at pp. 6–12, included as ‘a name dear to Americans’ on account of his efforts at colonization. 54 Now in the Tate, The Boyhood of Raleigh was painted in a house near the beach at Budleigh Salterton and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1870 (Brushfield, Raleghana i, pp. 28–9; viii, p. 139). Appropriately, a local resident and native of Jersey sat for Millais’ sunburnt sailor relating his tale to the young Ralegh. For Regenia Gagnier, the painting explores boundaries, between sailor and boys, between social strata, between nature and culture, between representation and real. Perhaps, she suggests, it touches on emigration too (‘Boundaries in theory and history’, Victorian Literature and Culture 32 (2004), 397–406, at 402–4). Theed’s 1853 bas-relief in the Prince’s Chamber of the Palace of Westminster is titled Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak as a carpet for Queen Elizabeth.

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1902 comic opera Merrie England. But it was not all Camelot. Remarkably after so many years, his History was still being read for pleasure, and instruction. Early in the nineteenth century it was one of the first books bought by the Congregational Minister, historian and founder of the British Quarterly Review, Robert Vaughan, and one can perhaps detect Ralegh’s style in some of Vaughan’s many works. Equally captivated by his literary abilities, John Hannah produced the first serious edition of Ralegh’s poems.55 A later, more cynical, age finds his patronage of science and his religious scepticism to taste. Growing rather bored with Ralegh the politician and sea dog, it highlights instead his unconventional intelligence. The wit that fascinated and repelled the first Elizabethans has again come to the fore. With Francis Bacon, Ralegh is regarded as the archetypal sixteenth-century renaissance man; as Fuller put it he was ‘dexterous . . . in all his undertakings, in Court, in Camp, by Sea, by Land, with Sword, with Pen’.56 The Welsh author David Lloyd suggested in the later seventeenth century that Ralegh was ‘a man that seemed born for any thing he undertook’.57 An early biographer, John Shirley, made the same point by deploying a rather different list, just as carefully attuned to the seventeenth-century mind. Ralegh had been ‘statesman, seaman, souldier, chymist, or chronologer; for in all these he did excel. He could make every thing he read or heard his own, and his own he could easily improve to the greatest advantage.’ It was hard, said Shirley, to pigeon-hole him.58 In what should be a liberating process the new more complicated Sir Walter Ralegh has, however, been sidelined. The pride shared by Britons and many North Americans eighty years ago has largely vanished.59 There 55 See ODNB. 56 T. Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (London, 1662), p. 262. 57 D. Lloyd, State-worthies, or, the States-men and Favourites of England since the Reformation (London, 1670), p. 672. 58 J. Shirley, The Life of the Valiant & Learned Sir Walter Rawleigh (London, 1677), p. 242. 59 On the pride in Ralegh as a founding father in the early twentieth century see, for

example, the programme for F. H. Koch, The Shepherd of the Ocean, October 1920, performed in Raleigh Athletic Park, NC. Koch was professor of dramatic literature at the University of North Carolina. The pageant/play is a triumphal piece. It includes ‘Raleigh’s vision of the New World’ in the first part, and ‘the lure of the Orinoco’ in the second. The performance ends with ‘the Sacrifice, October 29 1618’, set at ‘Midnight, the Tower of London’. The Epilogue, spoken by ‘the spirit of Youth’, details ‘the Triumph of Raleigh’s Vision’.

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are several reasons for this. Renaissance figures do not necessarily make good role models in a modern world characterized by specialization.There is perhaps something about the name, something fussy, something ‘Walterish’, that instinctively repels too many in modern society, just as it attracted people in centuries past – the soft victim of the Dennis the Menace cartoon strips has a lot to answer for. And there is always the poison of Ralegh’s association with cigarettes and with Ireland. The Beatles’ lyric – ‘Although I’m so tired I’ll have another cigarette/And curse Sir Walter Raleigh/He was such a stupid get’ – and Seamus Heaney’s transformation of the Elizabethan seducer into a ravisher of a whole nation in his vigorous poem ‘Ocean’s Love to Ireland’, are straws carried in the breeze of disparagement.60 Compared with the forest cavalier of Merrie England, and indeed the powerful bass role in Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, Benjamin Britten’s version of Ralegh in Gloriana is altogether more ambivalent. Heroes of Empire have for some become an embarrassment, and of course the absurd necessities of life in a Tudor court give ample scope to the clever modern comedian.61 The resulting marginalization has at times been quite literal. Ejected from its plinth in Whitehall, the charming little statue of Ralegh was consigned, after much parliamentary ado, to Greenwich, while another, tobaccosponsored statue by Vivien Mallock marks the man’s Devonshire roots in East Budleigh.62 It is not without significance that the great Hollywood epics have to all intents and purposes passed Ralegh by. In The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Vincent Price played him as a foppish villain against Errol Flynn’s doomed (and for once unsatisfactory) Earl of Essex and Bette Davis’s melancholy Elizabeth.63 In 1955, Richard Todd, resplendent in a prosthetic nose, attempted and failed to spark another ‘Davis as Elizabeth’ vehicle, The Virgin Queen. No one quite knew what to do with the plot, though under Henry Koster’s capable direction and with the help of gorgeous costumes 60 ‘I’m so Tired’ from the White Album (1968); S. Heaney, North (London, 1975), see Lawson-Peebles, ‘The many faces of Sir Walter Ralegh’, p. 24. 61 Consider, for example, Simon Jones’s characterization of Ralegh in the popular Blackadder TV series, and Stewart Lee’s delightful Elizabeth and Raleigh – Late but Live in 2008. 62 V. Westbrook, ‘What remains of Rawleigh/Raleigh/Ralegh’, pp. 80–7. 63 The Vincent Price version of Ralegh makes nice girls run a mile. See P. Hammer, ‘The private lives of Elizabeth and Essex and the romanticization of Elizabethan politics’, in S. Doran and T. S. Freeman (eds), Tudors and Stuarts on Film: historical perspectives (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 190–203, at 194.

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and a spirited performance by Joan Collins as Bess Throckmorton, the film still has its moments. Ralegh, in the shapely form of Clive Owen, fared no better in that post-modern disappointment Elizabeth: the Golden Age (2007). Owen essentially takes on Todd’s role, with as little conviction. Price, Todd and Owen present unimaginative wraiths; their characters convey no excitement to the fiction, and have precious little historical substance. But there is, of course, only so much that a latter-day Sir Walter can do. The supporting cast in any big-screen treatment of Elizabethan England is always doomed to merge with the background. On screen, there is room for only one hero(ine).64 Many heroes live on in the unconscious gesture, in the characteristic deed repeated for effect by those who come after, even if the repetition wanders far out of context. Men still spread their ‘cloaks’ for women they admire – in 2007 coats were flung down in the advertisements of a New York dating service and by an enthusiastic Labour MP, in the entourage of a candidate for the Party’s deputy leadership.65 And in the cynical, analytical twenty-first century there are still some prepared to argue that Ralegh represents the typical Englishman, if only in his utter complexity; every age approaches self-assessment on its own terms.66 These many reworkings of Ralegh all touch on truth. Sir Walter may credibly be seen as a victim of royal high-handedness. He wrote one of the most influential books published in the seventeenth century. Lines from his best poems, once encountered, are never quite forgotten.67 In his heyday he won power and renown through his accomplishments as a courtier. Fascinated by the possibilities of distant new-found lands, he funded and took an interest in pioneering voyages which led, in due course, to some remarkable transformations in English politics and society. He was certainly sceptical of some aspects of church doctrine, and he associated closely with people who may 64 Susan Doran calculates that Elizabeth must ‘hold the record for the most cinematically exposed British monarch’,‘From Hatfield to Hollywood: Elizabeth I on film’, in Doran and Freeman (eds), Tudors and Stuarts on Film, pp. 88–105, at p. 88. 65 The dating agency was Lavalife, while Stephen Pound kept a courtier’s eye on the wet pavement, only to see Hazel Blears neatly sidestep his coat! 66 The Scottish political commentator and author Andrew Marr chose Ralegh alongside, among others, Miss Marple as one of his four studies in Englishness for a BBC Radio 4 series in the autumn of 2007. 67 During the months after the death of her brother on the Italian Front in the last year of the Great War, Vera Brittain recalled how three lines from Ralegh’s ‘farewell verses kept beating through [her] brain’ (Testament of Youth (London, 1979), p. 446).

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well have been more sceptical still. Put briefly, he was a most astonishing and compelling man, touched by genius and by greatness, the focus of legend. All these things rightly intrigue us.The obvious flaws are every bit as fascinating. Many of those who encountered Ralegh at Oxford, in London, at the Elizabethan Court and on the high seas, either disliked him or distrusted him. Some considered him an upstart blessed only by good fortune, a liar, indiscreet, a theatrical charlatan, a man desperate to play some part in the high game of national politics, but betrayed by his own weaknesses. There is an abiding dark heart to his character, founded on melancholia certainly, but also on a cynicism cloaked in eloquence and theatre which reins in the adulation.There is, moreover, something terrifying in the memory of Ralegh pacing the scaffold, whipping up a crowd into religious fervour, moving, and all the while rejecting any real reconciliation with those who engineered his death.68 The report of a Spanish spy close to Ralegh in the early 1610s recalled how Robert Cecil had once remarked to the French Ambassador de la Boderie that, while Ralegh imprisoned was a loss to the nation, his release was unthinkable. Set loose in the world, ‘he would immediately take revenge upon his enemies and would be unbearable’. The report simplifies Cecil’s view, but it captures both Ralegh’s potential as a safe scapegoat and his capacity for anger and vengeance.69 Greenblatt suggests that the fusion of life and art was Ralegh’s great strength and also his abiding weakness; his vision could not take in more than a single consciousness, ‘he lacked a sense of the other, and his life consequently is a record of misunderstanding and faulty judgments’.70 Greenblatt may well be right, but this is still just a little too neat for comfort. Surely Ralegh is aware of the ‘other’ when, for example, he commiserates with Cecil so sensitively upon the loss of his wife? The weakness really lay in who he was, in his background. In Tudor and Jacobean England, misunderstanding and faulty judgement in politics at the very highest level might be forgiven in a courtier-statesman of 68 S. J. Greenblatt (Sir Walter Ralegh: the renaissance man and his roles (London, 1973), pp. 15–16) sees in Ralegh’s scaffold performance a ‘demonic parody’ of Thomas More’s execution. Raymond Himelick thinks that Ralegh in ‘The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage’ might draw on Thomas More’s Dialogue of Comfort in the ‘everlasting head’ language, and in the preoccupation with decapitation. This poem was attributed to Ralegh only posthumously, after 1625, although it had circulated anonymously twenty years before (Himelick, ‘Walter Ralegh and Thomas More: the uses of decapitation’, Moreana 11:2 (June 1974), 59–63; Rudick, Poems, pp. lxix–lxxii and poem 54). 69 See Lorimer, ‘Ralegh’s gold mine’, p. 84. 70 Greenblatt, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 167.

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high birth; such people had the means necessary to work through setbacks. It was much harder for the ‘expendable’ self-made man, and Ralegh, for all his political myopia, understood this well enough. The essential frailty of a courtier with more modest family assets and resources runs as a dull thread throughout this glittering story, for Ralegh, never forgetting that vulnerability, developed a sarcasm in both his writings and his conversations to cover the weakness. He masks, but never quite conceals it, for sarcasm too easily topples into pessimism and self-pity. As Naunton observed, Ralegh was fortune’s ‘tennis-ball’. Fortune – or Queen Elizabeth if one chose to read things that way – had ‘tost him up of nothing, and to and fro to greatnesse, and from thence down to little more, then to that wherein she found him (a bare Gentleman) . . . well descended, and of good alliance, but poore in his beginnings’.71 Ralegh had goals in his life, and they were the conservative goals of a younger son: he sought to establish his descendants as propertied men and well-matched women, able to play a significant role in local and national affairs. Understanding that the fulfilment of these ambitions required money and land, he urged his son to avoid poverty, and to cultivate his betters: poverty is shameful, the poor are despised and they are denied the means to choose their own destiny.With his many gifts and opportunities these goals were achievable, and indeed Ralegh achieved them all, at one point enjoying the free choice of destiny that he craved, only to squander both wealth and opportunity. In so many respects, his life is therefore a story of failure. Yet the paradox is, that throughout Ralegh’s lifetime and in all the centuries beyond, the failure redeems the man. Our admiration for a great Elizabethan, diminished by his lying, his self-regard, his pride and his clumsy vindictiveness, is augmented once again by an appreciation of human frailty. Reader – Should you reflect on his errors, Remember his many virtues, And that he was a mortal.72

71 Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, p. 30; Vivienne Westbrook points out that John Donne had used a similar analogy to describe Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel (‘that tennis ball whome fortune after tossing and banding brickwald into the hazard’). See ‘What remains of Rawleigh’, p. 89. 72 Inscription on a nineteenth-century tablet commemorating the burial of Ralegh in St Margaret’s Westminster.

15

An Epilogue: Family and Descendants

Bess lived to an advanced old age, perhaps into her eighties, though no one has ever been able to trace a record of burial and her biographer has found no document that mentions her by name after 1631. An early tradition, however, insists that she survived to see the outbreak of the Civil Wars, the destruction and misery of the 1640s that obliterated a familiar world while at the same time promoting her dead husband into a combination of icon and sage, a republican hero. Something, it seems, had been held back in 1617 – the Guiana expedition did not swallow every last penny of the Ralegh fortunes.The widow Bess did well enough for herself, supporting her younger brother Nicholas and drawing interest from royal loans.1 According to Oldys she outlived Ralegh by twenty-nine years, which would date her death to 1647 or 1648. Ralegh’s elder brother Carew also survived him. Carew was, if anything, more enthusiastic when teasing Ralph Ironside at Wolfeton, but this isolated episode of vicar-baiting did no lasting damage to a respectable county career. He represented Wiltshire in the Parliaments of 1584 and 1586, Ludgershall in 1589, Fowey in 1601 and Downton in 1603–4 and 1621. He also served as Lieutenant of the Isle of Wight and Captain of the Castle at Portland.The diplomat Sir Thomas Wilkes assigned his property at Downton to Carew in the early 1590s.2 Gentleman of the horse, in his youth, to the wealthy John Thynne of Longleat – one of those ‘servants’ to the aristocracy and high gentry who were men of stature in their own right – Carew followed another Tudor tradition by marrying Thynne’s widow, some time after 1580. The lady in question was Dorothy (d. 1616), daughter of Sir William Wroughton of Broad Hinton. Husband and wife settled at Downton House, near Salisbury. Carew was knighted by Queen Elizabeth at Basing House on 14 September 1601, and he was, like his brother, a friend of the Earl of Northumberland. In 1603 Carew lent the Earl a skilled riding master who

1 A. R. Beer, My Just Desire: the life of Bess Ralegh, wife to Sir Walter (New York, 2003), pp. 258–65. 2 See the article on Wilkes in ODNB.

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taught Northumberland’s groom how to make a horse ‘amble’.3 Though there was little of the soldier in him, he assisted with the logistics of the proposed 1594 expedition to Brest, serving with Sir George Trenchard in arranging victuals for foot soldiers at Weymouth.4 The records are just sufficient to suggest a taste for finer things. According to John Aubrey, Carew had ‘a delicate cleare voice, and played singularly well on the olpharion (which was the instrument in fashion in those dayes), to which he did sing’.5 The sweet, small voice of the Raleghs again. After his brother’s conviction for treason there are hints that Carew shared in the family’s disgrace. In October 1606 the Privy Council ordered him to ‘shewe more respect’ to the Ralegh family’s old adversary,Viscount Bindon, the Lord Lieutenant of Dorset. For good measure, they taxed him with ‘some unfitting wordes used against the said Viscount’. But despite the Council’s intervention it is easy to read too much into these things. Neighbourly disputes, and the vituperation that went with them, were hardly uncommon, out in the Jacobean shires.6 Carew’s second son, Walter (1586–1646), became Dean of Wells. A Chaplain in Ordinary to Charles I, and a member of the Great Tew circle, he married Maria, daughter of Sir Ralph Gibbs of Honington. Walter lived a sedate, scholarly life, up to a point, but the Ralegh spirit was there at the finish. Confined to his own deanery at the end of the First Civil War, he died following a scuffle with his gaoler.7 Sir Walter Ralegh’s only surviving son, Carew Ralegh, matriculated from Wadham College, Oxford, on 23 March 1621, and his name remained on the books of the College until 1623. Anthony Wood asserts that Carew was something of a poet when at Oxford, but the evidence for this is otherwise very thin. A single poem under his name is printed in Henry Lawes’ Ayres and Dialogues, of 1653. Poet or not, he does seem to have been a quieter, more patient man than his boisterous elder brother. Family friends stood by him after his father’s death. The Earl of Pembroke rather optimistically presented Carew at Court when he left Oxford, but James – who knighted the sons of more than one Gunpowder Plotter and who did not invariably pursue vendettas into a second generation – is said to have found him the 3 4 5 6 7

Syon MS U.I.3aa, Robert Delaval, declaration, 1 April 1603–25 March 1604. HMC, Hatfield, iv, p. 563. J. Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark (London, 1898), ii, p. 179. BL, Add. MS 11402, fo. 118. See ODNB.

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reincarnation of his father. For the time being that resemblance put paid to any Court career, and Carew promptly set off for a year on the Continent. Despite widespread sympathy, he escaped from the legal consequences of his father’s treason and was restored in blood only in 1628, James (perhaps again dwelling on the family likeness) having refused assent to an earlier private bill of restoration which had passed both Houses in 1624. Bess, moreover, now had to scrape together £4,000 as a loan to help finance an expedition to La Rochelle, though it again says something for the hidden resources of wellconnected women in the early seventeenth century that she managed this somehow.8 Charles I also insisted that Carew should renounce all remaining claims to the Dorset estates. So Sherborne remained with the descendants of Sir John Digby, Earl of Bristol, the former ambassador to Spain, and, for the moment, Carew looked elsewhere. In 1629 he bought from the Earl of Southampton an estate at East Horsley, Surrey, marrying Philippa, the widow of Sir Anthony Ashley and a cousin of the paramount royal favourite, the Duke of Buckingham. A man of some grace and accomplishment, he danced in Ben Jonson’s masque, Love’s Triumph, in 1630, and five years later became a gentleman of the privy chamber. The Raleghs were back at Court. Rehabilitation was not entirely straightforward. Carew could not rival his older brother when it came to the absurd indiscretion, but he had his moments. In 1639, his temper getting the better of him, he spent a week in the Fleet prison after quarrelling with and striking Sir William St Ravee at court, in a row over the size of a stag’s antlers, a robust and ambiguous subject for disagreement between gentlemen. He inherited his uncle Sir Nicholas Throckmorton’s property at West Horsley in 1643 – no doubt an expectation of this legacy had prompted his earlier purchase in the neighbouring parish – and over the next few years spent considerable sums on his new house. Carew supported his King in the First Civil War, but in time recognized that the English Republic offered opportunities to the family of its foremost ‘martyr’. Or, as the uncharitable Wood put it, he ‘cringed afterwards to the men in power’. The Digbys remained determined Royalists, and their hold on Sherborne now appeared superficially vulnerable. Carew sat as MP for Haslemere in the Rump Parliament from 1650 to 1653, serving on the Committee for Trial of Petitions and himself petitioning time and again for the restoration of his father’s lands in Dorset.9 One of these petitions was published after his death in 1669, under the title A Brief Relation of Sir 8 Beer, My Just Desire, pp. 252–3. 9 HMC, Various Collections, iii, p. 223.

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Walter Ralegh’s Troubles. But despite their Royalism the Digbys’ title was well documented, and legislators proved reluctant to contemplate the arbitrary abrogation of property rights after all the upheavals and misfortunes in the past decade. Carew secured only a consolation prize: an annuity of £500 out of the estate. He also found time to renew in a second generation his father’s bitter dispute with William Sanderson. Sanderson’s son, another William, was the author of a popular 1656 history of Mary Stewart and James VI, which contains a hostile analysis of Ralegh’s involvement in the plots of 1603. Unfortunately, Sanderson’s work, Ralegh’s rejoinder, and Sanderson’s rejoinder to the rejoinder leave us none the wiser as to who, ultimately, prevailed in the protracted legal exchanges during the 1610s.10 After Richard Cromwell’s resignation as Lord Protector in 1659 Carew returned to Westminster with the restored Rump Parliament, sitting frequently until its dissolution in March 1660. Again he walked pragmatically with the times; there was always something of the politician in Carew, a touch of his mother’s persistence alongside his father’s pragmatism, and perhaps he showed rather more common sense than either parent. A supporter of George Monck’s efforts to reach an accommodation with Charles II, he was appointed to his father’s former office, the governorship of Jersey, on 29 February 1660. At the Restoration he declined a knighthood; the honour was instead conferred upon his son Walter on 15 June 1660, but young Walter died in or about 1663, as did both his own children. With these deaths, the family’s hopes of recovering lost fortunes seem to vanish away. The fight at last goes out of Carew. Two years later he sold the West Horsley estate to Sir Edward Nicholas. Dying at his London house in St Martin’s Lane, Carew was buried with his father at St Margaret’s Westminster, on 1 January 1667. It is said that Sir Walter’s head was interred at the same time. Nothing is straightforward with the Raleghs, and a mystery surrounds Carew’s death. The parish register records that he was ‘kild’, and without doubt his passing was sudden, for a nuncupative will was subsequently registered in which he left his entire estate to his wife.11 The will dates Carew’s death by implication to 28 December, when he is supposed to have declared his testamentary wishes in the presence of his wife, Sir Peter Tyrrell 10 See R. Davies, Thomas Harriot and the Guiana Voyage in 1595 (Durham Thomas Harriot Seminar Occasional Paper 24, 1997), pp. 30–2; R. A. McIntyre, ‘William Sanderson: Elizabethan financier of discovery’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 13 (1956), pp. 184–201, at 195. 11 A nuncupative will is a will declared orally in front of witnesses.

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and Francis Cox.12 Curiously, the register for West Horsley maintains that Carew was interred in the burial place of the manor in September 1680. One interpretation, perhaps the only one, is that the body was reburied. Carew’s surviving son, Philip, lived on to 1705, making every attempt to honour the memory of his grandfather. He published three discourses by Sir Walter in 1702.13 Of Philip’s four sons, Walter, Brudenell, Grenville and Carew, three predeceased him. Brudenell, an unmarried naval officer, left everything to his father and named Philip as his executor when he died in the West Indies during 1699.14 The last surviving boy, Grenville Ralegh, an army officer, died at Chester in 1717.15

12 13 14 15

TNA, PROB 11/323, fo. 79v. A. L. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons (London, 1962), p. 334. TNA, PROB 11/454, fos 98v–99. Ralegh pedigrees can be found in J. L. Vivian, The Visitations of the County of Devon (Exeter, 1895), pp. 638–9, and P. Le Neve, Pedigrees of the Knights (London, 1873), p. 74.

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Index Adderley, Ralph 167 Admiral, Lord, office of 65–6 Admiralty, Court of 65 Affamacomock (aka Virginia) 62 Algonquian language 56 All Souls College, Oxford 29 Alley, Peter 292–3 Amadas, Philip, explorer 48 Amano River (now Manamo) 104 Arenberg, Count of 166, 195, 202–4, 212–14 Astley (Ashley), Katherine 11 Aubrey, John, biographer and polymath 7, 23, 26, 30, 69, 83, 96, 190–1, 239, 256, 320 Ayres, Philip, historian 220 Babington, Anthony, conspirator 36 Bacon, Antony, diplomat 45 Bacon, Francis, lawyer 9, 178, 243, 288 Bagot, Sir Antony 26 Ballinacorra Ford, nr Cork 17 Barlow, Arthur, explorer, 48, 51 Barlow, Joel, poet 336 Barry, David FitzJames 18 Barry, David, of Barryscourt 17 Barry, family of 17–18 Barrymore,Viscount 18 Barryscourt, nr Cork 18 Basyl, Simon, architect 83, 175 Baynham, Sir Edward, follower of Earl of Essex 173 Bazan, Don Alphonso, Spanish General 246 Beer, Anna, historian 75–6, 167, 229, 238, 241, 282, 322, 326, 331 Berrío, Antonio de, Spanish explorer 99–103, 109, 113, 118 Berry, Leonard, sea captain 117

Bilson Thomas, Bishop of Winchester 217, 224 Bingham, Sir Richard, soldier 14 Biron, Duc de, envoy of French King 177 Blackwater River, Ireland 39 Blount, Sir Christopher, soldier 129, 169 Bodleian Library, Oxford 7 Bond of Association 34 Bonetti, Rocco fencing master 34–5 Boyle Richard, later Earl of Cork 176, 291 Brett, Alexander, of White Stanton, Somerset 126–7 Brévint, Rev. Elie 40 A briefe and True Report 55–8 Brooke, George, brother of Henry 194–6, 210, 215, 225 Brooke, Henry, Lord Cobham 124–5, 131–3, 135, accused of treason, confesses 196–7 attacked by Henry Howard 183 friendship with Ralegh 165–71 Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports,165–6 role in Ralegh’s trial 204–16, his own trial and imprisonment 216–19, 226, 229 Brooke, William, Lord Cobham, father of above 124 Browne, Maurice 25 ‘Brownists’, religious sect 88 Buchan, John, biographer, Governor General of Canada 337 Burgh, Sir John, soldier 68 Burghley, Lord see Cecil, William Burre, Walter, bookseller 256 Bye Plot 194

368

INDEX

Cadiz, attack on 121–3 Calais, fall of to Spanish 119 Calfield, Captain Robert 106, 109 Camden, William, annalist 8, 16 Cantyman, Native American chief 102 Cape Verde Islands 12 Carapana, Native American chief 108–9, 116 Carew, George, later Baron Carew and Earl of Totnes 78, 87, 126–7 Carew, Richard, antiquary 87 Carew, Sir George, President of Council in Munster 12, 124, 176,181 Carew, Sir Nicholas, of Beddington Park, Surrey 193 Carew, Sir Peter, rebel 5 Carey, Sir George, Captain of the Isle of Wight 59, 67 Carleill, Alexander 46–7 Carleill, Capt. Christopher 46–7 Carleton, Dudley, correspondent 43, 215, 220, 224–6 Carolina Banks 52 Caroní River 100, 105–6 Carr, Robert, Earl of Somerset 232, 276–7, 287 Castiglione, Baldassare, writer and courtier 139 Cavendish, Sir Charles 73 Cavendish, Thomas, explorer 51–2 Caywaraco, son of Topiawari, disinherited, 108, 116 Cecil, Elizabeth (wife to Robert Cecil) 180 Cecil, Sir Robert, Secretary of State 47, 71, 76–8, 80, 85, 101, 109–11, 115, 120, 341 attitude to Guiana projects 240 breakdown of friendship with Ralegh 179–80 criticised by Ralegh in Parliament 177 death of his wife 124 embassy to France 131 entrusted son William to Raleghs 179 friendship with Bess 169 help to Ralegh in Meere’s case 176

letter from Bess 129 letter to British ambassadors 215 letters from Ralegh in Tower 230–1 as Master of the Court of Wards 185 at Ralegh’s trial 201, 211, 221 relations with Essex 128 in Sir Walter’s will 127 Cecil, William, Lord Burghley 20, 25, 29, 73, 131, 253 Chamberlain, John 136, 233, 242, 256–7, 289, 291, 303 313, 317, 320, 325 Champernowne, Henry 8 Champernowne, Katherine, third wife of Walter Ralegh, senior 2–3, 6 Channel Islands 136 Chapman, George, poet 117 Chesapeake Bay 53, 59–60 Choanoke, Native American village 53 Cholmley, Richard 91 Chowan River 53 Churchyard, Thomas, versifier 11 ‘City of Ralegh’ 59, 62 Clifford, Francis, fourth Earl of Cumberland 180 Clifford, George, third Earl of Cumberland 66 Clifton, Sir John 38 Clucas, Stephen, historian 92–3 Clyst St Mary, Devon 4 Coke, Sir Edward, Attorney General 173, 205–19, 309 Colchester, bailiffs of 222 Colthurst, Andrew 38 Copley, Anthony, Bye plotter 221 Cork, Ireland 13, 18 Cornelius, John 95 Cornwall, land defences in 130 Cotton, Sir Robert, antiquary 255 Cottrell, Edward, servant to Ralegh 303 Court, royal 11, 20, 23–9, 141 Coventry, Sir Thomas, Solicitor General 312 Cranfield, Lionel, Lord Treasurer 164 Croatoan, North American district 60–4 Cromwell, Oliver 331–2

INDEX

Crosse Robert, sea captain 102 Cumaná 109, 112 Cunningham, Karen, historian 207 Cussen, Cliodhna, sculptor 16 Darcy, Sir Edward 29, 168 Dare, Elinor, daughter of John White 60 Dare,Virginia, birth of 60 Davis, John, explorer 41 de Bry, Theodor, publisher 56, 58–9, 117 De Ponte, Elizabeth 3 De Vera, Domingo 100 Dee, Dr John, magus 47, 90 Dekker, Thomas 189–90 Denny, Edward 12, 19 Des Marêts, French ambassador 289 Desmond, Countess of 37 Desmond, Earl of 13 Desmond, Sir John of 14 Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex acts as Secretary of State 131 Cadiz expedition 120–4 campaign in Normandy 74 command in Ireland 132–3 created Earl Marshal 130 godfather to Raleghs’ son 77 invasion of Portugal 74 Islands Voyage 128–30 marriage of 79 ‘rebellion’ and trial of 169–71 relations with Ralegh 72–4 reprimanded by Burghley 131–2 Digby, Sir John, owner of Sherborne Lodge 300, 345 Dingle Peninsula, Ireland 12 Don Juan, nephew of Topiawari 116 Downe, William 117 Drake, Joan 3 Drake, John 3 Drake, Sir Francis, sailor 34, 54–5, 69 Drummond, William 220 Dudley, Guildford, husband of Lady Jane Gray 30 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester 11, 19, 25, 28, 34, 79

369

Dudley, Robert, illegitimate son of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester 101 Dudley, Robert, Lord Denbigh 25 Duke, Richard 31–2 Dumaresq, Daniel, page to Ralegh 40 Duncan-Jones, Katherine, literary historian 150 Durham House, London 29–30, 192 East Budleigh, Devon 2, 5 Edgcumbe, Sir Piers 2 Edgcumbe, Sir Richard 2 Egerton,Thomas, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal 132, 201 Egmont, Earl of 334 Eliot, Sir John, parliamentarian 282, 330–1 Elizabeth I, Queen of England 1, 16, 23–4, 45 allows Ralegh’s return to Court 123–4 attitude towards Cobham 182 becoming autocratic 182 crisis in relations with Essex 169–71 illness and death 189 praised by Ralegh to Indians 102–3, 106, 113 praised in Ralegh’s poems 142–4 rift with Ralegh 80–3 succession to 83 view of Essex, 134 Elks, Timothy, servant to Earl of Northumberland 237 Epuremei, Native American tribe 105–7, 113 Erskine, Sir Thomas, Scottish counsellor 192 Erskine, Thomas, Earl of Kellie 329 Essex, Countess of 25 Eustace, James,Viscount Baltinglass 14 Eveleigh, George 34 Exeter, Devon 4, 5 Farnese, Alexander, Duke of Parma 32 Faunt, Nicholas, administrator 45

370

INDEX

Fayal, Azores 128–9, 271 Ferdinando, Native American pilot 104 Fernandez, Simon, pilot 12, 48, 59–60, 63 Finch, Elizabeth 82 Finch, Sir Moyle 82 Fitzgerald, John FitzEdmund, Seneschal of Imokilly 17 Fitzgerald, Sir James 13 FitzJames, John, neighbour of Sir Walter 174, 227 Fitzmaurice, James, rebellion of 11, 12, 14 Fitzwilliam, Sir William, Lord Deputy of Ireland 80–5 Flores, Azores 246–7 Foxe, John, martyrologist 6 France, campaign in 1543 4 Wars of Religion in 8 Frederick, Elector Palatine 282 Frobisher, Martin, explorer 35, 68 Fuller, Thomas, writer 24–5 Gamboa, Pedro Sarmiento de, historian and explorer 100 Gascoigne, George, poet 10,141 Gawdy, Francis, judge 219 Gawen, Katherine, Catholic gentlewoman 193 Gayton, Thomas 221 Gerard’s Herball (1597) 69 Gibbon, Edward, historian 335 Gifford, Captain 106 Gifford, George, sea captain 102 Gilbert, Adrian 83, 126, 175, 185, 223 Gilbert, Captain John 109 Gilbert, Otho 3 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey 6, 12–13, 19, 26, 28, 45–6, 65 Gilbert, Sir John (d. 1608) 6, 34,136, 180, 186 Gillingham Forrest, Ranger of 32 Godwin, Thomas, bishop of Bath and Wells 31 Goodman, Godfrey, Bishop of Gloucester 219, 330

Goodwin, Hugh, left behind in ‘Guiana’ 108 Gorges, Arthur, poet and soldier 78, 122–3, 140, 162 Gorges, Edward 96 Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, supporter of Earl of Essex 169 Gould, Alice 39–40, 126 Gould, Justice, James 40 Greenblatt, Stephen, historian 143, 296, 341 Greenwich 24 Grenville, Captain John 106, 109 Grenville, Sir Richard, soldier 47–55, 61, 66, 122, 245–7 Grey de Wilton, Arthur, Lord 13–21 Grey de Wilton, Thomas, Lord 194, 206, 226 Grey, Lady Jane 30 Guiana, ‘Empire’ of 99 Guiana, expedition to (1595) finance for 101 meetings with Topiawari 105–8, 280 ‘Of the Voyage for Guiana’ 114 origins of project 100–1 Orinoco journey 103–9 return journey 109–10 Trinidad 102–3, 109 Gunpowder Plot 234 Hakewill, William, MP 277 Hakluyt, Richard, junior, geographer 47–50, 64 Discourse of Western Planting 49–50 Hakluyt, Richard, senior 47–9 Hale, Sir Matthew, judge 220 Hall, George of Exeter 4 Hammer, Paul, historian 130–1 Hancock, servant to Ralegh 34 Hannah, John, first editor of ‘Ocean to Cynthia’ 150 Harington, Sir John, wit 31, 82, 97, 172 Harriot, Thomas, scientist and explorer 39, 43, 47–58, 89–92, 101, 114, 117, 126, 209, 225, 228, 233, 317

INDEX

Harris, Christopher of Radford 127 Harwood, Edward, correspondent of Dudley Carleton 309 Hatfield House 140, 150–1 Hatorask, North America 59 Hatton, Sir Christopher, politician 25, 28, 35–6 Hawkins, Sir John, naval commander 81 Hayes Barton, Devon 2, 5 Hayes, Edward, sailor 45–6 Heaney, Seamus, poet 339 Heath, John, of New College, Oxford 327 Hele, Sir John, lawyer 166 Henry Prince of Wales 125, 237, 241 death 249 Herbert, Sir William 38 Hickes, Michael, secretary and confidant to the Cecils 86, 201 High Commission, Court of 95 Hilliard, Nicholas, painter 32, 330 Hispaniola, Island of 52 Hoby, Sir Edward 26 Hoby, Sir Thomas, translator of The Courtier 139 Holinshed, Ralph, annalist, Chronicles of 12, 14, 17 Holles, John 326 Hollywood, epics from 339–40 Hooker, John, historian, 4, 8, 12, 14–18 Horsey, Sir Ralph 95 Hoskins, John, lawyer and MP 276 hospitality, obligations to provide 252 Houghton, John 69 Howard, Frances, wife to Lord Cobham 136, 167 Howard, Henry, later Earl of Northampton 179, 183, 237, 239–40 Howard, Lord Charles, of Effingham (later Earl of Nottingham) 84, 100–1, 115–16, 119, 130, 167 Howard, Lord Thomas, later Earl of Suffolk 245–7

371

Howard, Thomas, Lord Bindon 176 Howe, George, settler, death of 60 Hudson, Hoyt, literary historian 140 Hulsius, Levinus, publisher 117 Iconuri, mountain 108 Ingram, Sir Arthur, courtier 290 Irish, William, sea-captain 59 Ironside, Ralph,Vicar of Winterborne Abbas 94 Islington, London 11 Pied Bull, public house 11 James VI and I, King of England and Scotland as King of England accession 190 attitude to History of the World 256–7 attitude to Ralegh 190–1,198, 225, 302, 311 Declaration of the demeanour . . . of Sir Walter Ralegh 328 disputes with Parliament 275–6, 287 finances of 275–6 as King of Scotland 84, 181–5, 189 Jamestown, North Carolina 70 Jarnac, battle of 8 Jones, Samuel, cleric 295 Jonson, Ben, playwright 172, 230, 238, 255 Keymis, Lawrence, explorer 50, 101, 109, 114, 116, 126, 199, 233, 290, 293–6, 299, 319 Kilcolman, Ireland, residence of Edmund Spenser 37 King, Samuel, Captain 300, 303 La Gomera, wife of the governor of 291 Lane, Capt. Ralph 47–55 Langharne, William, secretary to Sir Walter 26

372

INDEX

Lateware, Dr Richard, follower of Essex 147–8 Latham, Agnes, literary historian 140 Laudonnière, René de 9 Lefranc, Pierre, ‘literary historian’ 76, 147–8, 163, 172 Leicester, Earl of see Dudley, Robert Leighton (Laiton), Elizabeth 27 Ley, John, explorer 117 Lieutenancy, office of 32 Lismore Castle, Ireland 39 Lloyd, David, historian 338 Locke, John 333 Lorimer, Joyce, historian 110, 240, 285 Lost Colonists 64 Love’s Labour’s Lost 90 Low Countries, visited by Ralegh and others 167 Lyttelton, George, politician 335 Mace, Samuel, sea captain 64 Mackworth, Captain Humfrey 15 Macureguarai, town in ‘Guiana’ 107 McRae, Andrew, historian 178 Magrath, Meiler, Archbishop of Cashel 80 Malet, Sir Thomas 31 Manners, Roger, son of the Earl of Rutland 190 ‘Manoa’, mythical city 99, 111, 117–18 Manteo, Native American 48, 60, 63 Margarita, La, island of 68 Markham, Sir Griffin, Bye Plotter 194, 202, 226 Marlowe, Christopher, playwright 91 Mary I, Queen of England 1 Mary, Queen of Scots 26, 32 Matthew, Toby, archbishop 43 Mawle, Robert 38 May, Steven, historian 24, 139, 287, 318 Meere, John, of Castletown 126, 175–6 Menatonon, Native American chief 53 Mendoza, Bernadino de, diplomat 16, 46 Middle Temple, London 10 Mildmay, Sir Walter, politician 34

Millais, J. B., painter 337 Milton, John 332–3 Moncontour, battle of 8 monopolies 179, 192 Monoury, Guillaume, French doctor 300, 312, 319 Monson, Sir William, naval captain 247 Montagu, Sir Henry, Lord Chief Justice 313–14 Montmorency, Duc de, Admiral of France 307 More, John, Londoner 237–8 More, Sir William 34 Morequito, Native American chief 100, 105 Morequito, port of 105, 107 Mount Brandon, Ireland 14 Moyle, Henry 17 Munck, Levinus, Cecil’s secretary 221 Munster, Ireland 11 Myrtle Grove,Youghal 37 Nashe, Thomas, writer 91–2 Nassau, Lodowick of 8 Naunton, Robert, politician 7, 10, 24, 72, 305, 342 Neile, Richard, Bishop of Lincoln 276 Neville, Sir Henry, courtier and diplomat 168 Newport, Christopher, Admiral 66 Nicholl, Charles, historian 108 North Carolina 336 North, Roger, on second Guiana voyage 302 Northumberland, Earl of see Percy, Henry O’Donnell, Hugh, Lord of Tyrconnell 85 O’Keefe,Tadhg 37 O’Neill, Hugh, Earl of Tyrone 85, 132–4, 184 Oakeshott, Walter, historian 151 Oldys, William, biographer 335 Orenoqueponi, Native American tribe 105–6

INDEX

Oriel College, Oxford 9 Orinoco, River 99–118 Ormond, Earl of 14, 17–20 Osborne, Francis, writer 320 Ottery St Mary, Devon 7 Overbury, Thomas, poet 206, 239 Oxford, Earl of 25 Panama, expedition to 76, 154 Parliament 48, 51, 161, 177–8, 275–90 Parsons, Robert, Catholic propagandist 89 Paulet, George, son of Sir Anthony 136 Paulet, Sir Anthony, Governor of Jersey 135 Peckham, Sir George, explorer 46 Pelham, Sir William 14 Penington, John, vice-admiral of expedition 290 Penzance, Cornwall 119 Percy, Henry, ninth Earl of Northumberland 30, 42, 50, 79, 90, 93, 167, 169, 172, 185, 190 194, 202, 228, 234–6, 306, 329–30 Percy, Sir Josceline, brother of Earl of Northumberland 172 Percy, Thomas 94, 185, 234 Perrot, Thomas 13 Pett, Phineas, shipwright 249, 290 Pewe, Hugh 30–1 Peyton, Sir John, Lieutenant of the Tower 197, 199 Phelippes, Thomas, government spy 74 Philip III of Spain 285 piracy see privateering Pizarro, Ferdinando, conqueror of Peru 99 Plasden, Oliver 95–6 Plunket, Oliver, priest 15 Plymouth, Devon 12, 53 Popham, George, sea captain 101 Popham, Sir John, Lord Chief Justice 213–14 Pory, John, correspondent of Chamberlain 326, 328

373

potatoes 37, 68–9 Powhatan, Native American Chief 64 Powle, Sir Stephen 10 Prest, Agnes 6 privateering 60–8, 136–7, 185, 288–9 Privy Council 189 Puckering, Sir John, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal 86 Putijma, Native American chief 108 Puttenham, George, on Ralegh’s poems 139–40 Pyne, Henry 38 Quinn, D. B., historian 38, 66 Radford, Lawrence 4 Ralegh, Carew, elder brother to Sir Walter 4, 12, 26, 343–4 Ralegh, Carew, third son of Sir Walter and Bess 229, 286, 332, 344–7 Ralegh, Damerei, eldest son of Sir Walter and Bess 77, 82 Ralegh, Elizabeth (Bess) anxiety for Sir Walter 129 courtship, marriage and pregnancy 74–7 freed from house arrest 309 friendship with Robert Cecil 169 imprisoned 78 life at Sherborne 89, 120 in Ralegh’s will 126–7 receives letters from Ralegh on Wat’s death 297 receives Ralegh’s ‘suicide note’ 198 relations with Ralegh in Tower 230–1 her view of Ralegh 330 widowhood 343 Ralegh, George, nephew of Sir Walter 290, 293 Ralegh, Grenville, the last of the line (died 1717) 347 Ralegh, Philip, son of Carew Ralegh 347 Ralegh, Sir John de 77

374

INDEX

Ralegh, Sir Walter (1554?-1618) career and personal life acquired Sherborne Castle 38 appointed Governor of Jersey 135–7 appointed Rear Admiral 119, 135 attacked by Henry Howard as part of ‘diabolical triplicity’ 183 attends funeral of Queen Elizabeth 191 birth 2, 7, 31 building Sherborne Lodge 82, 175 at Cadiz 122 drafts his will 126–7 Durham House, fire and theft at 168 fathered a child 39–40 finances 41, 136–7, 231 granted licence for pipe-staves 38–9 Hayes Barton 2, 7, 31 High Steward of the Duchy of Cornwall 26 imports sassafras and cedar 184 imprisoned 77–8 interrogated over Bye Plot 194 involved in preparations for Cadiz campaign 119–21 Islands Voyage 127–9 kin 7 knight of the shire, Cornwall 87 knight of the shire, Dorset 87 knighted (6.01. 1585) 32 landed estates 36–9, 126, 132–3, 173–4, 176, 223, 232–3 letter to Robert Cecil 186 Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall 32 Lord Warden of the Stanneries 26, 32, 86 M.P. Devonshire 33 M.P. for Mitchell, Cornwall 87 meeting with James VI and I 190–1 miniature by Hilliard 32 his mode of speech 31 Munster, province of 36

opens correspondence with James VI of Scotland 181 placed tenants in Ireland 39 portrait of 40 posthumous reputation 329–42 religious beliefs 89–97 service in France 8–9 service in Ireland 13–21 speech on taxation 87–8 speeches in Parliament 84, 177–9 Vice-Admiral of the West 32 views on taxation 178–9 visits to Cornwall 168 visits to Jersey 168, 184 Youghal, nr Cork 36 court life Captain of the Guard 35 dangers at Court (1600–03) 165–9 Esquire of the Body 13 go-between for Cecil and Essex 125–6 made Lord Warden of the Stanneries 32, 120, receives grant of Durham House 29 receives grants of leases 29, 31 receives lands of rebels 173 receives patents for wine 29 relations with Queen 71–7 reputed womanizer 27 returned to Court 123–4 royal favourite 23 stripped of captaincy of guard 191–2 ‘tour guide’ for ambassadors 177 at trial of Essex 170–2 warning to Cecil 134 watches football match 177 overseas projects Atlantic exploration 12, 41 attitude to Indian women 112–13 belief in Amazons and headless men 111–12 Cayenne River 292 costs of voyage 288 departure of Guiana fleet 290

INDEX

Diego Palomeque de Acuña, Spanish Governor 294 financing of 41 Francisco de Avila, kinsman of above 294 incompetence of crew 292 Irish lands of 84–6, 132–5 landing at Kinsale and Plymouth 297–8 Panama expedition 77 projects for Guiana 109–11, 114–15, 240 Ralegh’s ‘Apologie’ 294 Ralegh’s commission as commander 287 Roanoke expedition 45–70 San Thomé 285, 293–5, second voyage to Guiana 285–97 see also Guiana view of Guiana 111–13 voyage to Guiana 100–18 poems 139–64 ‘As you came from the land of Walsingham’ 144–47 epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney 144 ‘Even such is Time’ 164, 31 ‘Farewell to the Court’ 142 first poem 10 ‘The Lie’ 147–9 ‘Had Lucan had the truth’ 162 ‘My boddy in the walls captived’ 152–3 ‘The Ocean to Cynthia’ 80, 143, 151–60 ‘On the State of France’ 162–3 ‘The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage’ 149–50 petition to Queen Anne 163–4, 238, 305 poem to Spenser 72 poems to Queen 25, 141–3, 151–60 ‘Praysed be Diana’s faire and harmlesse light’ 141–2 ‘What is our Life’ 161–2

375

problems of authorship and dating of poems 139–40 verse translations 160–1 prose writings Alexander the Great 267–8 Apologie for the ill success of his enterprise to Guiana 300–1 on civil war 280–2 A Dialogue between a Jesuit and a Recusant 252, 287 A Discourse of the Original . . . Cause of War 280–2 Discoverie of Guiana 100, 111–13 Eden, Garden of 262 Epaminondas 267 Fenton, Henry, appreciation by 273 frontispiece 257 governments, origin of 263 Hannibal 268–9 History of the World 8, 129, 241–2, 255–73, 331–2 hostility towards Spain 249 human destiny 259–60 Instructions to his Son 247–8, 252–4 kings and princes, wickedness of 258–9 Pererius, Benedictus 261 praised by Lord Chief Justice Montagu 314 preface to 257–60 The Prerogative of Parliaments 276–80, 331 publication of 256 Relation of the Action at Cadiz 122 Report of the Truth of the Fight about the . . . Azores 245–6 role of God in history 260–1 tracts on foreign affairs and marriages 248–9 tracts on naval affairs 249–52 tyrants 264 trial and imprisonment address to the jury 211–12 attempted suicide 198

376

INDEX

Ralegh, Sir Walter (continued) commissioners’ report to King (1618) 309–13 conditions of imprisonment 227–43 contemplates flight to France 303 contemplates suicide 308 creditors 199 his elixir and medicines 235–7, 242–3, 308 execution and speech on scaffold 316–22 farewell letter to Bess 223 his head and burial 321–22 imprisoned again 303 his last letter 323 letter to Privy Councillors, 216 his library 227–9, 255 pleads for life 224 public attitude to Ralegh 236 release from Tower 288 reprieved from death 225 sent to Tower 196 treason trial at Winchester 201–14 Ralegh, Walter (Wat), second son of Sir Walter 82, 238–9, 294–6 Ralegh, Walter, senior 2–5 Vice-Admiral in Devon 5 Ralegh, Walter, son of Sir Walter’s brother Carew 344 Ralegh, Walter, son of Sir Walter’s son Carew 346 Ralegh, Sir Wymund (d. 1258) 2 Raleigh, Sir Walter see Ralegh, Sir Walter Ramsay, John,Viscount Haddington 240 Ramsey, John, bookseller 257 Randall, John 67 Roche, Lord, of Bally 17–18 Rogers, Thomas, balladeer 171–2, 213 Rosny, Marquis de, envoy of French King 177, 193 Rowse, A.L., historian 28, 95, 179, 325 Rudick, Michael, historian 140, 331 Rushworth, John, historian 219

Russell, Francis, Earl of Bedford 32–3 Rysbrack, J. M., sculptor 335 St Germain, peace of 9 St Leger, Sir Warham, soldier 13, 293 St Mary Major, church of 6 St Sidwell’s Church, Devon 4 Salisbury, Bishop of 165 Samarès, Seigneur de 40 San Giuseeppi, Sebastiano di, Colonel 15–16 San Jose de Oruña 103 Sanders, Dr Nicholas, priest and scholar 14 Sanderson, Margaret, née Snedall 41 Sanderson, William, merchant 41, 47, 62, 66, 101, 236, 346 Sanderson, William, son of above 332, 346 Santa Margarita, Island 109 Sarmiento, Diego de, later Count Gondomar 276, 283–4, 286, 288–9, 299, 302 Scott, Thomas, preacher 283–4, 331 Vox Populi 283 Secoton, Native American village 53 Sewell, George, playwright 334 Shakespeare, William 133 Sharpe, Leonell, Devonshire rector 304 Shelbury, John, lawyer 233 Sherborne Castle and Lodge 38, 82–3, 89, 173–5, 223, 232 ships Alcedo 68 Bark Randall 67 Barke Bonner 54–5 Barke Ralegh 45 Brave 61, 67 Buen Jesus 63, 67 Darling 116 Delight 45 Destiny 290 Discoverer 116 Dorothy 51, 67 Elizabeth 51–2

INDEX

Falcon 12 Galliant Rawlighe 68 Golden Hind 45 Hopewell 62–3, 67 John Evangelist 62 John of London 117 Lion (Red Lion) 51, 59–61,67 Lion’s Whelp 102 Little John 62 Madre de Dios 68, 80 Margaret and John 68 Mary Spark 67 Moonlight 62–3, 67 Primrose 54 Raleigh 336 Revenge, 246 Roe 61, 67 Roebuck 51, 68 Santa Clara of Biscay 68 Santa Cruz 68 Santa Maria de San Vicente 67 Serpent 67 Swallow 45 Tiger 51–2 Warspite 121 Watte 117 Shirley, John, biographer 338 Sidney, Sir Philip, poet and courtier 46 Ralegh’s epitaph on 144 Sidney, Sir Robert, soldier 43, 125–6, 135, 166 Sir Walter Raleigh Commission 336 Sleidan, Johann, historian 255 Smerwick, nr Dingle 12, 14, 19, 61 Smith, Captain John, Governor 64 Snagge, Robert, lawyer 210 Society of Jesus 90 Somerset, William, Earl of Worcester 72 South American Indians in London 228, 243 Southwell, Sir Richard 69 Southwell, Thomas 132 Sparrey, Francis, left behind in ‘Guiana’ 108

377

Spenser, Edmund 1, 16, 21, 37, 69 Colin Clouts Come Home Againe 1, 37, 73 The Faerie Queene 141 letter to Ralegh 151 Stanhope, Sir John, bureaucrat 179 Stanley, Henry, Earl of Derby, 73 Stanneries, the 33 Stawell, Sir John 38 Stourton, family of 95 Stowe, Buckinghamshire, Temple of Worthies at 334 Strachey, William, author 64 Strathmann, Ernest, historian 91 Strode, William of Newnham 127 Stuart, Arbella (Arabella), claimant to the throne 73, 189, 195, 204, 215 Stucley, Sir Lewis,Vice-Admiral of Devonshire 299, 303–5, 322, 328 Talbot, Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, (Bess of Hardwick) 84, 286 Talbot, Gilbert, seventh Earl of Shrewsbury 84 Talbot, John, scholar and friend to Ralegh 291 Talbot, Mary, Countess of Shrewsbury 286 Tarleton, Ned, actor 69 Thevet, André, cosmographer 69 Thornhurst, Thomas, naval captain 291, 295 Throckmorton conspiracy 33, 42 Throckmorton, Anne, mother of Bess 75 Throckmorton, Arthur, brother to Bess 76, 82, 119–23, 126–7, 135 Throckmorton, Elizabeth see Ralegh, Bess Throckmorton, Francis 75 Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, father of Bess 74–5 Thynne family 25–6 Thynne, Captain Henry 106, 109

378

INDEX

Thynne, Charles, cousin to Ralegh 316 Tivitiva, tribe on Orinoco delta 104–5 tobacco 37, 68–9, 318 Tooker, William 124 Toparimaca, Native American chief 105 Topiawari, Native American chief 105–6, 115 Torbay, Devon 13 Townson, Robert, Dean of Westminster 315–16 Trenchard, Sir George 94 Trevelyan, G. M., historian 331 Trevelyan, Raleigh, biographer 5 Trinidad 99–103, 292–3 Udall, John, Puritan 74, 88 Vaux, Sir Nicholas 2 Vavasour, Anne 27 Vere, Sir Francis, general 121 Vervins, Treaty of 131 Vides, Francisco de, Governor of New Andalucia 100 Villandrando, Juan, Governor of Margarita 100 Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham 282, 287, 305 ‘Virginia’ 56–8 Von Wedel, Leopold, Pomeranian traveller 28 Waad, Sir William, Lieutenant of the Tower, 203, 234–5 Walsingham, Sir Francis, Secretary of State 11, 18–20, 47 Wanchese, Native American 48 Wanoretona, Native American chief 106 Wareo, Native American chief 116

Watson, William, Bye Plotter 194, 219, 224 Watts, John, merchant and privateer 47, 62–3, 66 Wentworth, Peter M.P. 83–4 Westminster 11 Whiddon, Jacob, sea-captain 68, 101–2, 106–7 White, John, painter, explorer and governor 47–50, 58–64 Whitelock, Captain Edmund 234–7 Whyte, Rowland, Court Postmaster 43, 132, 135 William of Orange 32 Williams, Sir Roger, soldier 29 Willoughby, Lord 35 Wilson, Sir Thomas, Keeper of State Papers 306–9 Winchester, site of Ralegh’s trial 200, 203 Wingfield, Edward 13 Wingina, King of Wingandacoa (aka Pemisapan) 48, 54, 57 Winicapora, River 108 Winter, Sir William. Admiral 14 Winthrop, Adam 190 Winwood, Ralph, Secretary of State 168, 299 Wriothesley, Henry, third Earl of Southampton 169 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, poet and courtier 1 Yates, Frances, historian 91 Yellow Ford, Blackwater River, Ireland 132 Yelverton, Sir Henry, Attorney-General 312–14, 325 Youings, Joyce, historian 3, 223–4 Zouche, Edward, Lord 168, 226

1. Sir Walter Ralegh painted by Nicholas Hilliard about 1585 as his rise to favour at Court was getting under way.

2. Sir Walter and his son Walter (Wat), aged about eight. Painter unknown, c. 1602. Both are dressed for Court.

3. Sir Walter, c. 1598, showing the battle of Cadiz in the background. He carries a cane, sign of his war-wound. Attrib. Willliam Segar.

4. Lady Ralegh (Bess).

5. Queen Elizabeth, probably painted by George Gower to commemorate the defeat of the Armada, 1588. This version has been cut down. Scenes of English fire-ships are visible in other versions.

6. Sir Robert Cecil, painted by John de Critz, 1602.

7. Ralegh’s Chart of Guiana, drawn 1595/6, shortly after his return. The Chart is south-facing, with the coast of Guiana at the bottom. The object like a centipede in the centre is the imagined lake-city of ‘Manoa’, lying between the Orinoco and the snake-like Amazon above it.

8. John White’s map of the East coast of America, 1585/6. It has been shown to be remarkably accurate.

9. John White’s water-colour of the village of Secoton on the mainland. Corn has been sown; all looks peaceful and orderly.

10. White’s water-colour of the wife of the chief of Pomeioc with her daughter.

11. Ralegh’s meeting on the Orinoco with Topiawari, pictured with some licence in de Bry’s America. Ralegh looks remarkably composed for a man who has spent a month in an open boat.

12. Sherborne Castle: a water-colour reconstruction by J. H. P. Gibb, 1988. The towers were added after Ralegh’s time.

13. The Tower of London, engraved by Haiwarde and Gascoyne, 1597. The Bloody Tower is denoted by the figure ‘T’ to the left of the Inner Gate.

14. J. E. Millais, ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’, 1870. A visible testament to the myth of Ralegh the Discoverer.

15. The Frontispiece to Ralegh’s History of the World, rich in symbolism.

16. A page from The Ocean to Scinthia in Ralegh’s hand.

17. Sir Walter as Captain of the Guard at Elizabeth’s funeral procession, a post he was shortly to lose.