W. Stebbing

“ Had he retained the Queen's favour uninterrupted, had she not been capricious, had there been no Essex, had there been no Elizabeth Throckmorton, he might have died at sixty, at seventy, or at eighty, and a verdict hardly less severe been pronounced. It is not certain. Possibly in any event, the vigour inherent in the man, his curiosity, his instinct for stamping his will on the world outside, his eagerness to impel his nation to empire westwards, might have had their way. They might have mastered the contradictory ambition to be victorious in a contest of factions. ”

“ A nation, like the English under Elizabeth, facing the dawn of a new age, does not pause to mark degrees of individual brightness. All eyes are dazzled with the radiance of the era itself. The few rare and peculiar stars are not discriminated as shining with a lustre of their own. The Queen would not be better able than her subjects to measure the particular mode in which Ralegh overtopped his neighbours. ”

“ While explanations of obscurities must necessarily be offered, readers should be put into a position to judge for themselves of their sufficiency, and to substitute, if they will, others of their own. Commonly they want not so much arguments, however unegotistical and dispassionate, as a narrative. They wish to view and hear Ralegh himself; to attend him on his quick course from one field of fruitful energy to another; to see him as his age saw him, in his exuberant vitality; not among the few greatest, but of all great, Englishmen the most universally capable. ”

“ The trial, and all its circumstances, brought into conspicuous relief the diversity which is no less the wonder of the character than it is of the career. The Ralegh who has stamped himself upon English history, who has fascinated English imagination, is not so much the favourite of Elizabeth, the soldier and sailor; it is the baited prey of Coke and Popham, the browbeaten convict of Winchester, the attainted prisoner of the Tower. Against the Court of James and its obsequious lawyers he was struggling for bare life, for no sublime cause, for no impersonal ideal. ”

“ For the crowd Essex may have had the merit of being of an ancient nobility, which needed no intricate demonstration by antiquaries and genealogists. He had enough patrimonial wealth to justify the Sovereign in showering largess upon him. He was not one of the irrepressible west countrymen who brought their nimble wits, comeliness, and courage to the market of the Court. He was more bright than stately. His petulance did not produce an impression of haughtiness. For the courtier class he possessed the yet higher virtue of willingness to be at once a centre and watchword and an instrument. ”

“ I am more weary of life than they are desirous I should perish; which, if it had been for her, as it is by her, I had been too happily born.' Did ever tailor's bill, though for the most resplendent scarlet liveries bespangled with golden roses, inspire a like rhapsody! By one writer on Ralegh it has been characterized, so various are tastes, as 'tawdry and fulsome.' To most it will seem a delightful extravagance. To contemporaries the extravagance itself would appear not very glaring. Elizabeth aroused both fascination and awe in her own period which justified high flights. ”

“ He promised to accompany Ralegh into France. Ralegh, with all his wit and experience of men, his wife, with her love and her clearness of vision, the shrewd French diplomatists, and honest King, were dupes of a mere cormorant, like Stukely, and of vulgar knaves, like Cottrell and Hart. Without the least suspicion of foul play Ralegh on that Sunday night, after le Clerc and de Novion had left, went down to the river side.
It was a foolish business. Nothing, except success, could have been more woful than all its features and its failure. ”

“ For his career's sake, he condescended to plead with and beseech them through whom alone he could emerge into the daylight. They who have idealized him as a downtrodden martyr will find the Ralegh portrayed by his own pen in scores of letters to princes, statesmen, and nobles, little to their taste. The real Ralegh will not cease to be honoured by all whom the sight of indomitable courage and doggedness in the accomplishment of a purpose moves. ”

“ For the man to be properly visible, he should be shown flashing from more facets than a brilliant. Few are the pens which can vividly reflect versatility like his. The temptation to diffuseness and irrelevancy is as embarrassing and dangerous. At every turn Ralegh's restless vitality involved him in a web of other men's fortunes, and in national crises. A biographer is constantly being beguiled into describing an era as well as its representative, into writing history instead of a life. ”

“ A multitude of eye-witnesses spread through the kingdom their own 'great admiration.' 'Never man,' writes Sir Toby Matthew, 'spoke better for himself. So worthily, so wisely, so temperately he behaved himself that in half a day the mind of all the company was changed from the extremest hate to the extremest pity.' His demeanour was extolled as perfect; to the Lords humble, yet not prostrate, to the jury affable, not fawning, rather showing love of life than fear of death, to the King's counsel patient, but not insensibly neglecting, not yielding to imputations laid against him in words. ”

“ I assure you, Sir, his poor servants, to the number of 140 goodly men, and all the mariners, came to him with shouts of joy; I never saw a man more troubled to quiet them. But his heart is broken, as he is extremely pensive, unless he is busied, in which he can toil terribly. The meeting between him and Sir John Gilbert was with tears on Sir John's part. But he, finding it is known that he has a keeper, whenever he is saluted with congratulations for liberty, doth answer, "No, I am still the Queen of England's poor captive." ”

“ All that the Judges declared was that the Crown need not, not that it must not. Still more heinous was the verdict based upon evidence which, if enough in quantity, was manifestly worthless in quality. Twelve worthy gentlemen awarded a horrible death to a man guilty of no other offence, as they knew, than that he had been offered a sum of Spanish money, which he denied he would have accepted, and certainly never received. Most shameful of all was the conduct of the Government which knew the emptiness of the entire case, yet strained every nerve to extort a conviction. ”

“ If Lord Cobham's accusation be true, he is guilty. If not, he is clear. Ralegh hath no answer. Of as much wit as the wit of man can devise, he useth his bare denial. A denial by the defendant must not move the jury.' Nothing could be more crushing than the calm rejoinder: 'You have not proved any one thing by direct proofs, but all by circumstances. I appeal to God and the King on this point whether Cobham's accusation be sufficient to condemn me.'
So weak was the case for the prosecution that to this stage, by the admission of a reporter of the trial, the result was very doubtful. ”

“ After the Winchester conviction had been read, Yelverton, as Attorney-General, briefly demanded execution. He was more courteous than Coke had been in his place, and more dignified. 'Sir Walter Ralegh,' he said, 'hath been a statesman, and a man who, in regard to 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. ”

“ He showed Ralegh a scratch on the cheek he had received in pulling away the sword. Ralegh did not persist in his version. As soon as his friend was gone, he cast his manuscript into the fire. If he could not properly estimate an event under his own eyes, he despaired of appreciating human acts done thousands of years before he was born. 'Truth!' he cried, 'I sacrifice to thee.' Pinkerton, whose judgment and veracity were not equal to his learning, led astray both Guizot and Carlyle. ”

“ A defendant had a right to evade the penalties of the most manifest guilt by any loopholes and gaps he could discover in the works. It had the right to pursue him to the death, whether innocent or criminal, so long as the rules of the art were observed. Its point of honour was not to let the accused escape. Ralegh was penetrated with an acute and indignant consciousness of the iniquity of the Court intrigue from which he suffered. He despaired of correcting the wrong by the help of the law which had lent itself to be the agent. ”

“ She bade Walsingham declare to Leicester, upon her honour, that the gentleman had done good offices for him in the time of her displeasure.
He could be useful to the greatest; whether only great, or great and deserving too. He had been always solicitous of Burleigh's goodwill. As a rival at Court of Leicester, he had it. Burleigh loved no Court favourites. 'Seek not to be Essex; shun to be Ralegh,' was his warning to his son. Robert Cecil, awkward and deformed, was in no danger. Favourites represented a side of the Queen's nature which continually troubled the wise Minister. ”

“ Every day, said the old man, had death called for him; but he was animated by a sagacious anxiety for his country, which the Spaniards threatened. Ralegh's noble courtesy was as unstinted to the patriarchal savage as to the Queen of England. He had infused the like temper into his officers, and Topiowari's confidence was won. Already they had talked freely on the politics and nature of Guiana, and how to obtain access to its heart. Now the chief definitely offered to join in a march upon golden Manoa if Ralegh would leave fifty Englishmen to defend him from the vengeance of the Inca and Spain. ”

“ Few writers of authority have ventured to applaud the treatise. An exception is Mr. Spedding, who could not well let judgment pass against his idol without a word of defence for one of the worst blemishes in a pitiful official career. He shows here as elsewhere his admirable diligence in the collection of evidence; but he cannot be said to have shed any new light either on Ralegh's character, or on the part Bacon played in his slaughter, and in the endeavour to blacken his memory. For him both the King and the keeper of the King's conscience had no option but to put Ralegh to death. ”

“ No higher criminality has been discovered in him than that he may have been aware of the project of an acquaintance to influence by means of Spanish gold the King's policy. If he were guilty of worse than this, it is a solecism in the history of treasons that in the course of three centuries not a tittle of evidence of it should have been unearthed.
Ralegh, to the last, clung to the chance of rehabilitation through Cobham. Cobham's Trial. He should have understood the man too well by this time to repose the most slender trust in his truthfulness, generosity, or courage. ”

“ He told Sir Thomas Wilson his intention was to seek an asylum in France from Spanish vengeance, until 'the Queen should have made means for his pardon and recalling.' In England he was doomed, he foresaw, to death or to perpetual confinement; and he believed he had work in life still to do. He feared neither death nor prison for itself. In a paroxysm of despair he clutched the only chance he perceived of reserving his powers for the enterprise he had set them, the overthrow of the colonial monopoly of Spain. ”

“ He should collect, and weigh, and have the courage to refuse to use, piles of matter which do not enlighten. He should be prepared to devote years to the search for a clue to a career with a bewildering capacity for sudden transformation scenes. He should have the courage, when he has lost the trace, to acknowledge that he has wandered. He should feel an interest so supreme in his subject, in its shadows as in its lights, as neither to count the cost of labour in its service, nor to find affection for the man incompatible with the condemnation of his errors. ”

“ Let not any devil,' or, according to the Harleian MSS. version, 'Hariot nor any such doctor, persuade you there is no eternity in Heaven; if you think thus, you shall find eternity in Hell fire.' Ralegh had warned Cobham against confessions. Let him not apply the advice to himself. 'Your conceit of not confessing anything is very inhuman and wicked. In this world is the time of confessing, that we may be absolved at the Day of Judgment.' By way of peroration he added: 'It now comes into my mind why you may not have your accuser face to face. ”