CH. XXI. having proclaimed James on the first news of the death of Elizabeth, before the Council had declared him her successor. For his deserts both now and then the custody of the Castle soon afterwards was bestowed upon him and his heirs. He said to Markham, 'You say you are ill-prepared to die; you shall have two hours' respite.' Then he led him away, and locked him in Scenes on the Arthur's Hall. Next Grey was brought on the scaffold. He Scaffold.

asserted that his fault against the King was 'far from the
greatest, yet he knew his heart to be faulty.' He too was
ready for the axe, when the Sheriff led him away to Arthur's
Hall, saying the order of the execution was changed by the
King's command, and Cobham was to precede Grey. Cobham
came, with so bold an air as to suggest he had heard; but he
prayed so lengthily that a bystander ejaculated he had 'a good
mouth in a cry, but was nothing single.' He expressed
repentance for his offence against the King. He corroborated
all he had said against Sir Walter Ralegh as true 'upon the
hope of his soul's resurrection.' The extortion of that con-
firmation of his calumnies had been a main object of the
whole disgraceful farce. When he had thus bought his worth-
less life, the Sheriff brought back upon the scaffold Grey and
Markham to stand beside him.
offences were not heinous, and
tried and lawfully condemned.
Then said the Sheriff: 'See the
himself hath sent hither a countermand, and hath given you
your lives.' At this the crowd burst into such hues and cries
that they went from the Castle into the town, and there began
afresh. Grey said, 'Since the King has given me my life with-
out my begging, I will deserve life.' Henry IV was sceptical
as to the magnanimity of James. He wrote to Beaumont to
discover if 'Spanish gold' were concerned in the reprieves; if
Don Juan de Taxis and Cecil had used influence for them; 'for
it is rumoured that these persons, backed by money expended
by Ralegh, brought the thing about.' The faith in Ralegh's
endless resources and skill prevailed in France as in England.

All three were asked if their if they had not been justly Each answered affirmatively. mercy of your Prince, who of

CHAPTER XXII.

A PRISONER (1604-1612).

ON December 16, returned to London.

ordinary man's career.

1603, Ralegh, with his fellow convicts, CH. XXII.
That would have been the close of an

To him alone it did not seem the
He had his life.

end, and he resolved it should not be.
Liberty and fortune were still to be regained. He looked
around him, and endeavoured to retrieve the scattered frag-
ments of his wealth. Like all his peers in arms and politics he
had ever believed in the importance of riches. But now he
was grasping at the possibility of continuing by money in lieu
of his imprisoned self his schemes of a Guiana sovereignty.
He was striving to construct out of the wreck of his grandeur
a refuge for his wife and his boy from the anguish and de-
pendence of penury. 'Poverty,' he preached to his son, 'is
a shame, an imprisonment of the mind. Poverty provokes
a man to do infamous and detested deeds.'

He was civilly dead. The division of his spoils had com- Civilly dead. menced before the trial. He had, as has been mentioned, been dismissed in July from his island government. In September Godolphin, High Sheriff of Cornwall, had been. directed to take the musters, 'the commission of Lieutenancy granted to Sir Walter Ralegh being become void and determined.' Early in 1604 he formally returned the seal of the Duchy of Cornwall to Cecil. His successor was his connexion, Lord Pembroke. He was stripped of the Rangership of Gillingham Forest, and of the Lieutenancy of Port

R

1441

Lord Not

tingham's Rapacity.

CH. XXII. land, though he would regret the loss of those offices the less that they remained in the hands of their joint tenant, his brother, Sir Carew. His enjoyment of his patent as wine licenser had been suspended, that it might be considered if the post were a monopoly. The Council came to the conclusion that it was not. But before Ralegh could collect the arrears from the vintners he was arraigned. Thereupon, not waiting for the result of the trial, the King revoked the patent, and granted it to the Lord Admiral. Nottingham, not content with the profit from new licenses, claimed the arrears. Lady Ralegh remonstrated. She indignantly computed to Cecil in 1604 that the Admiral 'hath £6000, and £3000 a year, by my husband's fall. And since it pleaseth God that his Lordship shall build upon our ruins, which we never suspected, yet the portion is great and, I trust, sufficient, out of one poor gentleman's fortune to take all that remains, and not to look back before his Majesty's grant, and take from us the debts past, which your Lordship knows were stayed from us by a proclamation before my husband was suspected of any offence.' Sherborne was attached. Commissioners for it had been appointed, Serjeant Phillips and Meere. They had pounced upon the domain, and were selling stock, felling timber, and dismantling the castle. Cecil interfered peremptorily by letter, and for a time stayed all proceedings. He is likely to have 'spoken the one word' about the wine licence arrears which Lady Ralegh implored. No more is heard of the Lord Admiral's demand. A more important favour was obtained. In February, 1604, all Ralegh's goods, chattels, and money due to him, though forfeited for treason, were granted by the Crown to trustees for payment of debts owing before his attainder, and for the maintenance of his wife and child. The trustees named were Robert Smith and John Shelbury. Shelbury was Ralegh's steward,' a man I can better entreat than know how to reward.'

The grant included, beside the wine arrearages, money in the hands of the wine licenser's deputy, William Sanderson.

Sanderson was husband to Ralegh's niece, Margaret Snedale. CH. XXII. He was father of Sir William Sanderson, writer in 1656 of.

sons.

a History of Queen Mary and King James, full of calumnies The Sander upon Ralegh. He denied the debt, and claimed £2000 from his principal. Thereupon Ralegh, ‘in great anger,' sued him, apparently with success. It is unnecessary to credit the further allegation by the author, supposed to have been Ralegh's son Carew, though more probably somebody inspired by him, of the Observations, already cited, upon Sanderson's History, that the deputy was for the debt cast into prison, where he died a beggar. On the contrary, slender as is the authority of the historian, as of his critic, it is easier, as well as preferable, to accept Sir William Sanderson's statement, in answer to the Observations, that his father and his family continued to be prosperous, and, having resumed amicable relations with Ralegh, remained kind and faithful kinsfolk to the last. It is pleasant to be able to believe that Ralegh disappointed a relative's temporary calculations upon his incapacity of resistance, without acting the part of the insolvent steward of the Parable.

The mercy of the Crown extended for the present to the maintenance even of his rights over the estate of Sherborne itself. A dozen suitors had applied for it, Cecil told a Scotch courtier in October, 1603. But on July 30, 1604, in place of Ralegh's life interest, which was forfeited by the attainder, a sixty years' term of Sherborne and ten other Dorset and Somerset manors, with all other lands escheated, was conveyed by the Crown to trustees for Lady Ralegh and young Walter, should Ralegh so long live. This boon, following the rest, went far towards remedying the overwhelming pecuniary consequences of a judicial crime. The King is entitled to share the credit with Cecil. He was not incapable of caprices of beneficence. Pity, rather than a sense of justice, moved him. He loved to be magnanimous at small cost. He chose to regard Ralegh as a traitor when he was innocent. He reaped from the injustice the additional satisfaction of

The Wreck

of his Estate.

CH. XXII. being exalted by his flatterers into a paragon of generosity for waiving part of the penalties for offences which had not been committed. Ralegh's estate was, however, indebted yet more to Cecil. If he would not, or could not, secure justice for his old ally, Cecil had no desire to see him reduced to beggary. Whatever the cause, Ralegh undoubtedly suffered in purse less than his condemned fellows. Cobham's and Grey's vast patrimonies were wholly confiscated. They subsisted on the charity of the Crown. Markham was sent into exile so bare of means that he had to barter his inlaid sword hilt for a meal. Ralegh was not thus stripped. Only, being guiltless, as they were not, and did not pretend to be, he was not always gratefully content with the morsels tossed back to him. Soon after his removal from Winchester he wrote to Cecil that £3000 a year, from Jersey, the Wine Office, the Stannaries, Gillingham, and Portland, was gone; there remained but £300 from Sherborne, with a debt upon it of £3000. His tenants refused to pay Lady Ralegh her rents. His woods were cut down, his grounds wasted, and his stock sold. Meanwhile he was charged at the Tower, at first, £4, and later, £5, a week for the diet of himself, his wife, child, and two servants. He had to urge the Council to stay the Commissioners at Sherborne, whose rapacious activity had again awoke. He told the Council that the estate, with the park and a stock of £400 in sheep, whatever its valuation by others, brought in but £666 13s. 4d. This has been estimated, perhaps somewhat excessively, as equivalent to an income now of £3333. Out of it he had to pay the Bishop of Salisbury £260. Fees and rates took another £50 a year. His personal property he reckoned at not worth a thousand marks, or £666 13s. 4d. His rich hangings were sold to my Lord Admiral for £500. He had but one rich bed, which he had sold to Lord Cobham before his misfortunes. His plate, which he describes as very fair, was all 'lost, or eaten out with interest at one Chenes',' or Cheynes', the goldsmith, in Lombard-street. He thought it hard to be robbed of his revenues.

He