Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (39 page)

The Jacobean Court was perturbed but not entirely surprised by this sympathy for a condemned traitor. Philip Ayres has argued that Ben Jonson's new play Sejanus, grounded in impeccable and remote Roman history as the author was quick to point out, nevertheless fell foul of a Privy Council incensed by apparent parallels between the trial of Caius Silius in Act III and too recent events at Winchester. This may be. The parallels run only so far, and the evidence, based on a cryptic remark of William Drummond, is ambigious.
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 Indeed, there is some reason to believe that members of the Council shared the widespread belief that justice had not quite been done. In his journal of important events, Cecil's secretary Levinus Munck was ambivalent. 'Sir Walter Ralegh', he wrote,

Was...found guilty of high Treason for practising with the Lord Cobham to disturb his Majestys possession of this Crown, by invasion from abroad, and Sedition both here at home and in Scotland; notwithstanding that Sir Walter, to all mens admiration dyd as much, as the witt of man could devise, to clear an offender.

Here Munck expressed the views of his master.
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 Cecil called the whole sorry saga of the Bye and Main a 'tragedy', and his demeanour through the trials suggests a man increasingly convinced that there was no other appropriate word.
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 The protracted crisis, and the disgrace of his brother-in-law Cobham, had made his own position far more difficult. Among those who take refuge from the complexity of history in the simplistic fashioning of all-powerful, Machiavellian statesmen, there has always been a tendency to suppose that Cecil might, possibly, have had a guiding hand in these treasons, but, as with the Gunpowder Plot two years later, no credible contemporary evidence supports such views. In 1603, Cecil's future looked distinctly shaky. The most trusted servant of a dead monarch cannot always count on the favour of that monarch's successor, and while James appreciated Cecil's good offices and loyalty at the succession, he was also deeply indebted to those like Henry Howard and the Earl of Southampton, who had lost out under Elizabeth, and who had only qualified respect and less affection for the Secretary. In such circumstances, it would have been the height of daring, or folly, to have manufactured complex conspiracies, even had time, imagination and resources permitted such creativity.

The precarious nature of Cecil's position in 1603 was not lost on the man in the street. In this new political world, little would have surprised the pragmatic Londoner. Thomas Gayton, writing from Gray's Inn to his wife Margaret on 15 July, told her that he had bought the cloth that she wanted, adding by way of the latest news that Anthony Copley, racked for his part in the Bye Plot, had implicated Lord Grey. Rumour, he added, suggested that Copley had also confessed to Sir Robert Cecil's involvement in the conspiracy.
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 All sorts of wild stories reached English merchants overseas during that nervous, plague-ridden summer: King James was dead, three or four great noblemen were in revolt.
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 On 27 July, the bailiffs of Colchester wrote to Cecil telling him that when they had announced and celebrated the King's coronation, word had suddenly spread through the crowd that Cecil had fled from Court, and that the King had promised a reward for his arrest.
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 Five hundred 'soldiers' were levied in London for the coronation day, 'to withstand any tumults and disorders'.
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 Preparations on this scale, of course, disclose the fears of the time.

The death sentences passed on Ralegh and his fellow prisoners left their lives in the King's hands. If he had wished to do so, James could have chosen to pardon any of them, conditionally or unconditionally, or he could simply have suspended execution of sentence. For the moment, however, he did nothing, and courtiers found it hard to guess the intentions of a new monarch. While hoping for the best, the condemned men could only prepare for the worst, and Ralegh wrote another farewell letter to his wife. Predictably, this letter is similar to the lines penned just before Ralegh's suicide attempt the previous summer. Sentiment mingles characteristically with sententious advice, pragmatic arrangements and a measure of common sense. Here he tells Bess that the Sherborne estate is safe - 'honest cosen Brett can testifie soe much'- and thatBaylie oweth mee 20011...Adrian Gilbert 60011'. There he urges her to dwell on the eternal: 'teache your sonne alsoe to love and feare God whilst hee is yett younge';'Lett my good God hold you both in his armes'.'Doe not hide your selfe', he tells Bess,'many dayes after my death but by your travailes seeke to help your miserable fortunes and the right of your poore child. Thy mourninge cannot availe mee: I am but dust.' 'God is my wittnesse I meant you all my office of wynes', he insists. 'But if you can live free from want, care for noe more: the rest is but vanities While we should read this as a public letter - there is no reference to an illegitimate daughter here - it never strays too far from personal affection. No one who glances at these lines can doubt that Ralegh loved his wife, in his own, particular fashion. One of the final paragraphs directs our thoughts to the land and the people who made the man:

I cannot write much. God hee knowes how hardly I steale this tyme while others sleepe, and itt is alsoe high tyme that I should separate my thoughts from the world. Begg my dead body which liveinge was denyed thee and either laye itt att Shirbourne (if the land continue) or in Excester church by my father and mother. I can say noe more, tyme and death call mee away.

As Joyce Youings notes, this is the only reference to his parents in Ralegh's surviving letters. He was seldom inclined to look back along the road travelled.
1

>In the many copies that come down to us, this interesting letter is undated. Latham andYouings suggest that it was written after 4 December; the Bishop of Winchester, reporting to the Privy Council that day, thought that Ralegh yet displayed 'a lingering expectation of life', even though the Bishop's very presence seemed to confirm the prisoners in their collective belief that execution was imminent.
 Ralegh's scorn for 'death, and all his mishapen and ouglye shapes' is sometimes taken to refer to the traditional punishment meted out on those condemned for high treason, and some speculate, accordingly, that his words might have been prompted by the bungled, bloody executions of Watson and Clark, the Bye plotters, on 29 November.
3
 Death by hanging, drawing and quartering was fashioned by symbolism, and it was certainly not pretty. However, his phrase might just as easily have been elegant form; the ugliness of death was a commonplace in contemporary writing, this ugliness and the darkness of transition softened alike through penitence, patience and reconciliation to God's will.

There is less resignation in other letters. Ralegh wrote frantically to his friends, and to the King, pleading for his life, and a chance to make amends. In one letter sprinkled with scriptural references he begged, not for a pardon, but simply for 'tyme att the kings mercifull hands', for just a year's respite from execution. He sought that year 'to geve to God in a prison and to serve hyme'.
4
 The piety is touching, if not entirely convincing. Perhaps it was prompted by Popham's pointed reference to atheism when passing sentence. Self abasement did not come easily; in writing to Bess Ralegh asked her to recover the many grovelling letters to monarch, statesmen and friends. I sought life on any terms only for you and for our son, he says, but now 'I disdaine my selfe for begging itt'.
5

The King and his Council soon decided to limit the number of executions. Dudley Carleton told John Chamberlain that counsellors had already joyned most in opinion and advise to the king now in the beginning of his reigne to shew as well examples of mercy and severity, and to gayne the title of Clemens as well as justus'.
6
 Interestingly, too, an influential Scots lobby pressed for mercy; their support was never forgotten by a grateful Ralegh.
7
 James, of course, noted the views of those around him. New monarchs usually tread carefully We know that the King read a letter from Ralegh before 4 December, forwarded, apparently, by the Sheriff of Hampshire, Benjamin Tichborne.
8
 We know too that while James signed the death warrants for Markham, Grey and Cobham, he delayed doing so in Ralegh's case 'until the Lord Cobham's death had given some light how far he would make good his accusation', as Cecil described the thought processes soon afterwards.
9
 According to the Earl of Worcester, writing on 6 December, Ralegh was also given time to speak to Thomas Harriot, at his own request.
10
 Reading between many lines, it is likely that he had all along been marked out for clemency.

James, however, did not wish to cut short the suspense. He sanctioned the execution of a penitent Brooke, arguably the most guilty of all the gentlemen involved, authorized Tichborne to prepare a scaffold - twelve feet square and railed about - and put Cobham, Grey and Markham, in turn, through a particularly grim charade.
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 Each man was led to the block, believing that all hope had gone. In a final flourish, all three were obliged to stand on the scaffold and confess the justice of their fate; only then were they reprieved on the King's command.
12
 James's theatrical gesture at Winchester has about it something of the Duke's justice, meted out at the end of Measure For Measure, first performed in 1604; it demonstrates a capriciousness which might be well-intentioned, but which harbours a sliver of malice and revenge. Ralegh is said to have watched in bemusement from his prison window, but he soon discovered that he would share in this strange act of mercy. James allowed him his life on 9 December.

Thereafter, the tension eased swiftly. The guilty men were returned to their London gaols on 15 December.
13
 Just before Christmas, Dudley Carleton wrote to John Chamberlain, promising news of 'our doings' in and after the trials, and adding with some understatement that the principal prisoners, now 'safe in the Tower', were 'more at harts ease' than they had been at Winchester.
14

Ralegh dutifully thanked both King and Cecil, and hoped for liberty. Initially, the signs were encouraging. Sir Griffin Markham, despite his central role in the Bye Plot, was soon released from the Tower and sent into exile, and both Anthony Copley and Bartholomew Brookesby, also convicted of treason in November, were freed and pardoned in 1604. Lord Zouche, a member of the Privy Council, wrote from Ludlow on 23 December 1603, expressing his delight at the King's decision to avoid a series of executions, and hoping that James would now test the prisoners' protestations of loyalty, something that could, of course, only be done by granting them their freedom.
15
 However, it gradually became clear that royal mercy had limits. Sparing the prisoners' lives was one thing; setting them loose in the world once again was quite another. Grey remained incarcerated in the Tower until his death in 1614. Cobham, growing old, lonely and increasingly senile, surrounded by his excellent library in the Beauchamp Tower, was permitted a measure of freedom only in 1617, two years before his death. When the library was taken away from him, at the end of his life, it was said to contain '1000 good bookes of all learning and languages'.
16
 History has never quite judged him fairly.

Things were no different with Ralegh. Initially he believed that, through Cecil's good offices, he might yet be pardoned, or at least, like Markham, that freedom might lie in exile. He saw himself for what he truly was, a knight and gentleman, prudently drawing apart from the peers who shared his imprisonment. James would no doubt find it easier to spare the 'small fry'. Perhaps he might one day permit Ralegh to build a new life 'in Holland wher I shall perchance get sume imployment uppon the Indies'.
17
 There was no restraining his imagination. Eventually, though, even Ralegh began to realize that he was destined 'to dy in perpetuall prison', though he still could not bring himself to understand why. Surely, he wrote to the Secretary, surely Cecil would not wish to punish him in this way? But the decision did not lie with Cecil; every day of imprisonment made that more obvious.
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