CHAPTER XXVIII. A MORAL RACK (August 10-October 15). ON the morning of Monday, August 10, Ralegh finally CH. XXVIII. entered the Tower. This time he was made to feel that he was a prisoner indeed. They were on him, Trinkets. He had meant to transport to France charts of Guiana, the Orinoko, Nuova Regina, and Panama, with five assays of the ore of the Mine. and they were taken from him. He was trinkets, except a spleen stone. This and an ounce of amber- Ralegh's gris were left with him for his personal use. A gold picture-case set with diamonds was, by his wish, consigned to the Lieutenant of the Tower. There were other ornaments. Among them was a diamond ring, supposed by Naunton to have been a present from Queen Elizabeth, though Ralegh told Sir Thomas Wilson he had never any such of the Queen's giving. There were a Guiana idol of gold and copper, and sixty-three gold buttons with sparks of diamonds. All these were entrusted to Stukely by the Lieutenant of the Tower. It would be strange if some did not stay with their custodian. It may have been with reference to them that Ralegh admitted the traitor to a last interview in the Lieutenant's lodgings on the Wednesday after his committal. We may be sure it was not to affirm, as Stukely declared, that he 'loved him as well as any friend he had in the world.' More exalted persecutors than Stukely were now let loose upon him. The old game of 1603 was resumed. Lords of the Council and the Law Officers of the Crown worked their CH. XXVIII. hardest to discover that he was a criminal. 144 First on August 17, and twice afterwards, he was examined upon interrogatories by a committee of the Privy Council, consisting of Lord Chancellor Bacon, Archbishop Abbot, Lord Worcester, Coke, since November, 1616, no longer Chief Justice, Cæsar, and Examinations Naunton. The examinations were not directed in a way either by Privy Councillors. to do justice to the prisoner, or to elicit the truth, so far as can be discovered from the records of them. Those among the Lords Commissioners who desired something more than merely to extricate their master from a diplomatic difficulty, were incapacitated by an invincible prejudice. All started by taking for granted that the prisoner never intended to search for the Mine, that none existed, and that his single purpose since he prepared for his expedition was to attack piratically the Spanish colonies and commerce. Mr. Gardiner, who is one of his severest critics, acknowledges that they blundered and failed, because they were not content to convict him of having cared simply to find the Mine, and been reckless of the means. James and his Ministers could convince themselves of the expediency and moral propriety of slaying a man capable, as they believed, of schemes, however qualified, for the capture of the Spanish treasure ships. They saw the difficulty of proving to the country the capital criminality of the avowal of a project never acted upon. They had hoped they might fabricate supplementary treasonable matter out of the communications between Ralegh and the French Agency. After a long competition between a French and a Spanish family compact, the Spanish faction at Court, which was James's own, was absolutely predominant. The Government did not shrink from offending French susceptibilities. In September it arrested and repeatedly examined de Novion, whose diplomatic character was not very definitive. Le Clerc, the resident Agent, was himself summoned before the Council at Hampton Court, and confronted with de Novion. He stood upon his privilege, and refused to answer. The Council solemnly rebuked him for his secret conferences with, and offers of means of escape to, an CH. XXVIII. English subject attainted of high treason, and since 'detected in other heinous crimes.' He was informed he had forfeited, by the law of nations, his immunities, and was required to confine himself to his house. The French Government was wrathful; but it had a weak case. Its conduct, though its original advances to Ralegh had the sanction of the English Ministers, was clearly a breach of diplomatic propriety. The proof against the Frenchmen was of no use towards the end for which the Council laid stress on it. Ralegh, it was seen, could not be accounted liable for overtures he had rejected. The Crown still was thrown back on the chance of confessions by himself for a provision of assignable pretexts for his destruction. In some way or other reasons had to be discovered. James saw the Infanta's dower of two million crowns and jewels within his grasp. The Spanish Court showed the friendliest disposition. It had expressed its delight at the welcome news of its enemy's capture in the act of flight, and his committal again to the Tower. Nothing was wanting, James imagined, to crown the negotiations, but an English head which he was very willing to sacrifice. He had given the Spanish Govern- Pledges to Spain. ment the option of a public execution either at Madrid or in London. It was impossible that he should disappoint the agreeable expectation. At Court the will to put Ralegh to death was matter of notoriety. The Queen's was the only voice raised loudly against it. They who were ignorant how faded was her influence imagined her protest might still be of avail. On September 23, Sir Edward Harwood wrote to Carleton, that Ralegh was struggling hard for life, and that, as the King was now with the Queen, it was believed he might live. Courtiers in general knew better. On August 29, Tyringham, another of Carleton's purveyors of news, wrote to him: 'It is said that death will conclude Sir Walter Ralegh's troubles. The Queen's intercession will rather defer than prevent his punishment.' Yet ways and means had to be provided, and the difficulty grew rather than diminished, until it was decided to cut the knot. Harwood CH. XXVIII. reported to Carleton on October 3, that 'the King is much inclined to hang Ralegh; but it cannot handsomely be done; and he is likely to live out his days.' As time went on, and the climax was not reached, the gossip of the town, perhaps of the Court itself, spread a rumour that the delay was intentional. Ralegh was said to have been promised his life if he would help towards revelations of the misappropriation of crown jewels or lands at the King's accession, with the connivance of the late Treasurers, Salisbury and Suffolk. The tale may have had some sort of basis in Ralegh's habit of charging Cecil with an abuse of his position to his personal enrichment at the expense of the Crown, from which he was alleged to have taken Hatfield by a profitable exchange, and Cobham's escheated estates. No evidence exists that the question was ever seriously raised, or had any connexion with the delay. Of that the one real cause was the inability of the Court to elicit damning testimony against himself. Wilson. To patch up the gaps in the inquiry before the Lords Commissioners, the same system was tried as in the preliminary investigations of 1603. Ralegh was placed, from September 11 till October 15, under a special keeper. The keeper's business, like that of a Juge d'Instruction, was to ransack him, and worry him into supplying a case against himself. For the office Sir Thomas Wilson, Keeper of the Sir Thomas State Paper Office, was chosen. As Wilson himself confessed, his arrival produced an impression on the officers of the Tower as well as Ralegh, that 'a messenger of death had been sent.' He had entered the public service as a spy of Cecil's. He was now enjoying a pension for the intelligence he had collected in Spain concerning the Main and Bye Plots. His defect in his new office was an excess of zeal in suspiciousness. He began by regarding Ralegh as an arch hypocrite, and a lying impudent impostor, from whom the truth could be extracted only by 'a rack, or a halter.' Though otherwise a man of some learning, and a diligent guardian of the public records, he seems to have been very ignorant of --- physics. He thought Ralegh was an empty boaster for his CH. XXVIII. statement that he could distil salt-water into fresh by means of copper furnaces. He treated his ailments, which Ralegh's somewhat hypochondriacal temperament may have a little exaggerated, as wholly feigned, 'that he might not be thought in his health to enterprise any such matter as perhaps he designeth.' Their symptoms, the swollen left side and liver, the painful sores over his body, the ague-fits, his lameness from the Cadiz wound, he conjectured were caused by the patient's own applications. With his wife to share his watch, he was given absolute control. No person was to have speech with Ralegh, unless in his hearing. The Council was to be told all he observed. He was cunning, though he was fond of enlarging on his simple honesty. He had a high sense of his own importance, and magnified his very extensive powers. He was furious with the door-keeper of the Council for delaying one day to carry in a message from him while the Council was deliberating. He quarrelled with Sir Allen Apsley, now Lieutenant of the Tower, for withholding the keys of Ralegh's apartment at night. Apsley, a near connexion by his third wife of Villiers, through whom he had been enabled to buy his office, must have been an acquaintance of Ralegh's. He had served in the commissariat department in the Cadiz expedition, and in Ireland. His second wife was niece, and The Apsleys. almost adopted daughter, of George Carew. On Ralegh's return to the Tower, his old lodgings in the Bloody tower being tenanted by Lord and Lady Somerset, he was quartered in the Lieutenant's own house. There he was sure of hospitable treatment, both on account of the past, and as one of the persons eminent in learning and in arms, for whom, we are told, Sir Allen had a singular kindness. He had the especial happiness of association there with the third Lady Apsley, the mother of Lucy, afterwards the noble wife of Colonel Hutchinson. Lady Apsley was interested in physical science. Mrs. Hutchinson has recorded how her mother, as well from curiosity as from her abounding benignity, which made her |