Cobham.

CH. XVI. He was wealthy, and Cecil valued wealth in his domestic circle. Houses and lands brought him in £7000 a year; and he had woods and goods worth a capital sum of £30,000 besides. His furniture was as rich as any man's of his rank. One piece of plate was priced at £3500, and a ring at £500. Character of He spent £150 at a time upon books. He was not devoid of good instincts; for he could repent of a misdeed or unkindness, and, after repeating it, repent again. But he was garrulous, puffed up with a sense of his own importance, full of levity and passion, and morally, if not physically, a coward. Ralegh, whom some social brilliancy in the man, as well as his rank and fortune, may have dazzled, can at no time have been wholly unconscious of the defects which later he resentfully characterized of the dispositions of such violence, which his best friends cannot temper'; 'his known fashion to do any friend he hath wrong, and then repent it'; and 'his fashion to utter things easily.' Cecil regarded a nature like this scornfully. Infirmities might be tolerated in a brother-in-law who was a trusty ally. They could not be endured in a competitor.

Neither Ralegh nor Cobham appears to have detected the growth of rancour in Cecil. Ralegh maintained confidential intercourse with him on affairs of state. Together they were, as has been seen, conferring privately with Elizabeth on the policy to be adopted towards Munster rebels a few months before her death. Ralegh's correspondence with him betrays no suspicion of estrangement. It keeps throughout the old amiable style. There is talk of the price of timber at Rushmore. Salutations were sent so late as July 20, 1602, to 'my Lord Cobham and you, both in one letter,' with vows to 'do you both service with all I have, and my life to boot.' weeks before Elizabeth's death Cecil was writing to Ralegh about partnership in a privateer. Ralegh in a memorable letter to his wife in July, 1603, spoke of the business association as still subsisting. It is difficult to believe that Cecil reciprocated, unless from complaisance and policy, the ferocity against Ralegh and Cobham, or either, which inspired Henry Howard's

Ten

But, sir, for the better
and to what passion
lady, I leave to your

venomous canting mystifications, and was echoed by James. CH. XVI. His correspondence with Ralegh's cousin, George Carew, Cecil's countenances the view that his hostility had something in it of Jealousy. hurt affection. He was capable of tenderness for men who were willing to be his auxiliaries, who at all events would not be, and could not be, his rivals. But he was mistrustful. He readily confused any increased intimacy between friends of his with enmity to himself. He wrote to Carew in Ireland in June, 1601, to excuse himself, in his enigmatical manner, for an appearance of unkindness: 'If I did not know that you do measure me by your own heart towards me, it might be a doubtfulness in me that the mutinies of those I do love and will-howsoever they do me-might incite in you some belief that I was ungrateful towards them. man, the second always sways him, he is subject who is subject to his judgment and experience.' Later, in 1602, he complained to Carew: Our two old friends do use me unkindly. But I have covenanted with my heart not to know it. In show we are great. All my revenge shall be to heap coals of fire on their heads.’ He carried out his promise, and his coals scorched. Yet it may be questioned if he were conscious of a virulent humour towards his friend and his brother-in-law. Merely they were in his way, and threatened to embarrass the career which was his life. They were presuming to act independently. They pursued schemes which, if successful, would disturb his monopoly of power. If unsuccessful, they might, through his connexion with them, compromise him. He would not be sorry if circumstances combined against them, and brushed them as politicians from his path.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FALL (April-June, 1603).

ELIZABETH died on March 24, 1603. In the previous September Howard had reported her 'never so gallant many years, nor so set upon jollity.' James set out from Scotland on April 5. Ralegh at the Queen's death was in the West. He returned hastily to London. There is a legend, countenanced by Sir John Hawles, that, with Sir John Fortescue and Cobham, he tried a movement for 'articling' with James before proclaiming him. Unsuspicious Aubrey narrates that at a consultation at Whitehall he went to the length of recommending the establishment of a 'commonwealth.' His object, he is said to have explained, was to save Englishmen from being subject to a needy, beggarly nation like the Scotch. Neither story rests on any foundation, except some possible light taunt of his. His name was not appended to the Proclamation, as he was not a Privy Councillor; but he was present at a meeting in the evening, when a loyal letter of welcome to the King was drawn up, and he signed it. Immediately afterwards he started, like many others, northwards, and met the King at Burleigh House. Cecil had taken credit for having stayed, he said, the journey of the Captain of the Guard, who was conducting many suitors to James. Ralegh did not suffer himself to be stopped either by Cecil's advice or by a Proclamation against the resort to the King of persons holding public offices, to the injury of public business. He assigned as the cause of his arrival the need of a royal letter to authorize the continuance of legal

Successor.

process in the Duchy of Cornwall, and to check the waste of CH. XVII. royal woods and parks within it. Unmannerly James is said Introduction by Aubrey to have received him with a poor rude pun on his to the name: 'Rawly! Rawly! true enough, for I think of thee very rawly, mon.' Isaac D'Israeli credits the story. He superfluously thinks it settles, as without better authority than the King's broad Scotch it certainly could not, the proper pronunciation of the name. In itself it may be rather more plausible than Aubrey's tale of Ralegh's reply to the King's boast that he could have won the succession by force: Would God,' cried Ralegh, 'that had been put to the trial!' 'Why?' asked James. 'Because,' was the oracular answer-' never,' says Aubrey, 'forgotten or forgiven '-'your Majesty would then have known your friends from your foes.' It is much easier to agree with the apparent meaning of Aubrey's interrupted general reflection on the first meeting of King and subject: 'Sir Walter Ralegh had that awfulness and ascendency in his aspect over other mortals that the K-At all events, the King ordered the speedy delivery of the authorization, that Ralegh might have no excuse for delay. The unwelcome guest took the hint. Acting-Secretary Sir Thomas Lake reported to Cecil that he was gone, having 'to my seeming taken no great root here.'

At a council held by James at Cecil's seat of Theobald's, monopolies granted by Elizabeth were called in. The measure was based by its authors upon the need of popularity for the new reign. They were not sorry to hit Ralegh with the same stone. A question was raised at the Board whether the office of wine licenser were not a monopoly. Until the Council should have decided, the levy of all dues was suspended. A large part of Ralegh's income was at once cut off. He was summoned a few days later to the Council Chamber at Whitehall, to be informed that the King had appointed Sir Thomas Erskine, afterwards Earl of Kellie, Captain of the Guard. To this he is related to have in very humble manner submitted himself. His enemies knew they could in this as in other ways wound him with a certainty of applause for the gratification of their

CH. XVII. spite. Within a month of the Queen's decease a prayer of 'poor men' had been addressed to James against monopolies. The manifesto contained an especial allusion to Ralegh, of whom it wildly spoke as about to be created Earl of Pembroke. So, on the occasion of the dismissal from the command of the Guard, Beaumont, the French Ambassador, informed his Court that Cecil had induced the King to make the change on the ground of Ralegh's unpopularity, which would render his removal highly acceptable to the country. Henry Howard, before the demise of the Crown, when the effect of Ralegh's blandishments upon James was feared, had preached to the King on the same text. He reported a refusal by Elizabeth of the command of a regiment to Northumberland, for the reason that 'Ralegh had made the Earl as odious as himself, because he would not be singular, and such were not to be employed by princes of sound policy.'

Odium.

For the present a semblance of consideration was preserved. The loss of the Captaincy was apparently sweetened by the elimination from his patent for the Governorship of Jersey of the reservation of £300 a year to the Crown or Seymour, and by the condonation of some arrears due from him. His fall elicited from him no symptom of anger against the King. If a letter purporting to be addressed by him to James be genuine, though the evidence for it is not strong, he was not as placid with respect to others. There the loss of his captaincy is angrily imputed to Cecil, who is accused of having brought about the deaths both of Essex and Queen Mary. Chronology must have forbidden James to attach weight to the latter allegation, if he had cared for it. On the former he would be better inclined to credit Howard, who asserted that Cecil had worked for Essex's deliverance. Cecil himself could produce the letter of 1600-1, signed 'W. R.' Soon Ralegh experienced a fresh proof of his helplessness, in a notice of ejectment from Durham House. Bishop Tobias Matthew of Durham met James at Berwick, and gained his ear. He used his influence and Ralegh's odium to procure an order for the restoration of the