CH. XXVIII. Countenanced the doctrine. Any Englishman who had devastated Spanish commerce in the West Indies, would, during a large part of Elizabeth's reign, have been amenable to criminal. justice, if the State had prosecuted. But the State then was not inclined to prosecute for such acts. During the next reign some statesmen continued to hold, like the people, that there was no peace beyond the Line. If there were peace, the State could not have proceeded against Ralegh for the thought of breaking it. The single criminal act proved was his attempt at escape. For it he might have been tried and punished. But the most triumphant prosecution on such a charge would not have given the Government the pound of flesh it owed to Spain. Nothing less was of use.

Ralegh's real Motive.

The administration floundered about in futile efforts. Perpetually it was deluded by a sensation of solid ground which immediately slipped from under its feet. It was the more enraged with Ralegh that he seemed to be ever offering clues, which only led astray. It imputed its embarrassment to his cunning. He had no intention to deceive, or even to abstain from promoting a revelation of the truth, which he did not fear. Simply he and it were radically at cross purposes. They were mutually unintelligible. The sincerity of his ardour for the attainment of a footing in Guiana is unquestionable. He was honestly eager for it in the Tower, in Trinidad after the return from San Thome, at Plymouth, when he was grovelling in counterfeit madness at Salisbury, and when he was a fugitive on the Thames. But Guiana was not his real end. Guiana was the means he had finally and deliberately chosen to inflame the English people and Crown with an inextinguishable ambition for the creation of an American empire. He did not much mind how the national imagination was kindled, provided that it caught fire. His motive was patriotic and vast, and his judges and accusers, conscientious men like Cæsar and Abbot, as well as others, had not the faintest understanding of it. All except the motive was talk, much of it reprehensible talk, but much not truly reported; and his censors

Talk.

let their prejudices seduce them into treating the entire mass CH. XXVIII. as evidence of facts and acts. If he ever instructed his officers to commence the expedition to the Mine by taking the initiative in an attack on San Thome, the direction was confined to talk. If, whether before or after the San Thome incident, he spoke of the capture of the plate fleet, that was nothing but talk. Captain Parker's report of the project of The Rest Ralegh and St. Leger for lying in wait for homeward bound ships referred, if not wholly untrue, to talk, like his own and Whitney's similar plans. When Ralegh told his wife he hoped for something ere his return, that was talk. If he ever said he should not come back, that was talk. If he boasted of a French commission, and affirmed his preference for France, that was talk. The entire pile of charges against him, proved, unproved, or disproved, was talk. All began and ended in talk, unless that Bayley captured French boats, and Ralegh redeemed them; that the Lancerota islanders murdered English sailors, and he did not retaliate; that the San Giuseppe Spaniards were aggressors, and he bore it; and that the garrison of San Thome laid an ambush for his men, to hinder their access to a district which his Sovereign had commissioned him to enter, and were soundly beaten for their hostility.

The Government was in a dilemma. It meant to put Ralegh to death, and the process was as behindhand as at Ralegh's return to Plymouth, or more so. Spain had the promise of his blood, as soon as it should decide whether itself or England were to provide the scaffold. On October 15 the Spanish Legation in London received the answer of the Escurial. Philip III had no mind to accept the odium before Europe of murdering a redoubtable foe. He expressed his preference for an execution in England, and at once. Only in one way could the object be effected. Ralegh must be put to death, not ostensibly for San Thome, but for the Main Plot. Both for Ralegh and his heroic wife the immediate results were solacing. There was no need for tormenting either further for the concoction of a fresh indictment, if the original indictment retained strength to

CH. XXVIII. do the work. A warrant was addressed to Wilson for Lady Ralegh's release from his supervision. By another he was discharged from attendance upon her husband. Ten days earlier he had pretended to pray the King's leave to give up his trust at the Tower. He said he was anxious to resume the arrangement of the State papers of the previous six or seven years. For Ralegh at all events it was a happy respite to be restored, for the last dozen days of his Tower life, to the honest keeping of Sir Allen, and the charitable offices of Lady Apsley.

CHAPTER XXIX.

A SUBSTITUTE FOR A TRIAL (October 22, 1618).

Courses.

BACON, his fellow Commissioners, and the Law Officers CH. XXIX. were consulted by the Crown on the fitting procedure for the setting up of the old conviction. Coke seems to have been deputed by the other Commissioners to embody in legal form their unanimous opinion, which Bacon, as Lord Chancellor, delivered to James on October 18. The only copy in existence is in Coke's handwriting. It was to the purport that Ralegh, being attainted already of high treason, could not be drawn in question judicially for any crime since committed. The Commissioners recommended one of two Two courses. The first was for the King to issue his warrant for execution upon the conviction of 1603. At the same time, as Ralegh's 'late crimes and offences were not yet publicly known,' a printed narrative of them might be published. The Commissioners agreed that such a course could legally be pursued. Some among them would see as clearly, though they might not feel as indignantly, as the modern Whig historian, that no technical reasoning could overcome the moral sense which revolted at carrying the original sentence into execution.' Consequently, an alternative method, to which the Commissioners rather inclined,' was suggested in Coke's paper; one 'nearest to a legal procedure.' There was a precedent in certain proceedings against Lady Shrewsbury. According to it, Ralegh might be called before the whole body of the Council of State, with the addition of the principal Judges, some noblemen and gentlemen of quality being invited to act

CH. XXIX. as audience.

Objections to

an open Inquiry.

He should be told he was brought before the Council rather than a Court of Justice, because he was already civilly dead. Then he should be charged in regular form by counsel with his acts of hostility, depredation and abuse. He should be heard in his defence; and adverse witnesses should be confronted with him, as Cobham had not been. With that which concerned the Frenchmen the Commissioners thought he should not be charged. Therein he had been passive rather than active; and without it the case appeared to the Commissioners to be complete. Moreover, they doubtless suspected Ralegh could show that in the French negotiations he had not acted alone. Finally, said the memorial, the Council and the Judges assisting would advise whether his Majesty might not with justice and honour give warrant for Ralegh's execution upon his attainder, in respect of his subsequent offences.

James dictated a reply to the Commissioners, which is extant in the writing of the secretary of Villiers. He objected to the second proposal in its original form for two main reasons. The procedure, though proper against a Countess, would be too great honour against one of Ralegh's state. It would not be 'fit, because it would make him too popular, as was found by experiment at the arraignment at Winchester, where by his wit he turned the hatred of men into compassion.' Consequently, the King modified the arrangement by an omission of the Judges, and of the element of partial publicity through the presence of a selected audience. The members of the Council who had conducted the previous examinations were directed to sit as a quasi-criminal Court. But they sat with closed doors, and their sitting was kept strictly private. From a letter at Simancas, written on November 6 by a Spanish Agent in London, Julian Sanchez de Ulloa, to his Government from hearsay, it may be gathered that the inquiry was held on October 22, and lasted for four hours. No complete account has been discovered of the course it took, in consequence, Mr. Spedding, in his Life of Bacon, supposes, of the destruction