Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (45 page)

Turning to the question of human destiny, Ralegh asked what power the stars have over us? Do they determine our destinies? They were not, he wrote,'created to beautify the earth alone, and to shadow and cover her dusty face'; but are instruments of divine providence. We may be inclined to many things by the stars at our birth, but there are forces which work against their influence, like parental upbringing or the company of dissolute men: 'Vessels will ever retain a flavour of their first liquor.' He does not agree with those who would deny all power to the stars, but neither would he ascribe to the view that they have 'the same dominion over our immortal souls, which they have over all bodily substances, and perishable natures'.
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Ralegh then considered the concepts of prescience, providence, predestination and fortune, all four of them often mistakenly confounded with one another. Prescience is God's infallible foreknowledge of all things, but this foreknowledge is not a cause of anything in the future. Providence, by contrast, is not only the knowledge of all things but is also 'the cause of their so being', as the scriptures teach us. Predestination concerns only men, not animals, and is used only of their salvation. The idea of Fortune came relatively late onto the literary scene. Hesiod had no word for her, but from Horner onwards she ordered everything. When men could not find a manifest cause for anything, it was attributed to Fortune, but 'whom the poets call fortune, we know to be God'.

God, indeed, is the dominant force in Ralegh's History, especially in the first two books. Everything that happens is brought about by God: 'there is not therefore the smallest accident, which may seem unto men as falling out by chance, and of no consequence: but that the same is caused by God to effect somewhat else by; yea, and oftentimes to effect things of the greatest worldly importance'. In the biblical world, God appointed leaders, guided His people to the promised land, smote (a favourite word) the enemies of Israel, issued precise and detailed instructions for the building of Noah's Ark, and punished the Israelites when they worshipped false gods. He worked through men, and sometimes women, to achieve His ends. For instance, when Pharaoh, frightened by the increase in the population of the Hebrews, ordered all male Hebrew children to be killed, God'moved compassion in the heart of Pharaoh's own daughter, to preserve that child [Moses]', who later became the wisest of men and the deliverer of his own people.
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Writing of the various times when Jerusalem was destroyed, Ralegh commented that, all the great ages of the world have with their inhabitants...suffered the same shipwreck. And it hath been God's just will, to the end others might take warning, if they would...not only to punish the impiety of men...but He bath revenged himself of the very places they possess'd.'
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In biblical times it was plain why God punished wicked or dissolute rulers, because the Prophets delivered His messages eloquently. Now, 'the same just God, who liveth and governeth all things for ever, doth in these our times give victory, courage, and discourage, raise, and throw down kings...and nations for the same offences which were committed of old'; but we no longer have the Prophets to explain His doings to us.
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Today, he wrote, 'the wise men of the world' see only the 'second causes' and neglect the higher.

Ralegh's own story of events in the classical, as distinct from the biblical world took little account of higher causes, perhaps because he lacked the guidance of the prophets to explain them. He illustrated the distinction between second causes and higher by considering the civil wars between Israel and Judah after the reign of Solomon. Attempting to explain why the two kingdoms failed to reunite, Ralegh insisted that 'to say that God was pleased to have it so, were a true, but an idle answer (for His secret will is the cause of all things)...Wherefore we may boldly look into the second causes.' He attributed the continuing division of these kingdoms to the weight of taxation imposed by Solomon and his successors in Judah. Their doings 'prove them to have used a more absolute manner of command, than the kings of the ten tribes [i.e. of Israel]'. It may be significant that he was writing when complaints were mounting against James I's levy of impositions.
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In the early chapters of his History, until the time of Moses, Ralegh made no attempt at continuous narrative. There is, for instance, virtually nothing said of Abraham's immediate successors - Isaac, Jacob, Esau or Joseph - since ,it is not our purpose, neither to stand upon things generally known to all christians, nor to repeat what hath been elsewhere already spoken'.
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Rather than do this, he examined specific problems of biblical interpretation: on, for instance, chronology, topography, the nature of government and the use of historical evidence. A suffocating body of reference to biblical debates supports (and obfuscates) his arguments on these subjects. He was helped in this by the huge Latin compendium of commentaries on Genesis assembled by Benedictus Pererius, published in Rome a few years earlier. This work devotes 166 folio pages to the first chapter of Genesis alone, the phrases 'in the beginning' and 'heaven and earth' from verse one naturally providing major topics for discussion. Pererius allowed Ralegh to appear even more learned than he really was; and sadly some of the most beautiful passages in Genesis were buried under these mountains of commentary.
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One such topic of debate, more entertaining for modern readers than most, arose from Ralegh's fascination with geography. He was determined to locate the Garden of Eden, rejecting the view that Moses' descriptions of Eden were 'mythical and allegorical', in spite of the insistence of Origen, Ambrose and others on that view Eden, he wrote, was 'the proper name of a region' which contained Paradise and lay east of Judaea. He identified it finally, after a great deal of wandering over the Middle East, with the neighbourhood of the city of Mosul on the River Tigris.
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Throughout the History, Ralegh tried to relate the origins and events of other civilizations to the story of the Jews. He argued that Egypt was peopled before the Flood, two or three hundred years after the time of Adam; that writing and astronomy were known in Babylon 3634 years before Alexander's conquests; that Enoch was born 1034 years before the Flood; and so on. The task was not easy since the use of BC dates was not general until the eighteenth century. Greek years were numbered according to the sequence of Olympic games, Roman by the holders of consular office. At the end of the History Ralegh provided a chronological table, which he admitted was not perfect; neither is it easily understood by modern readers unfamiliar with such tabulations.
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Ralegh's earlier books were principally based upon scripture, whose evidence he accepted implicitly. Problems arose when the sources, whether biblical, Greek or Roman, were incomplete or ambiguous. Conjecture was then permitted to supply lacunae and the careful use of fables and myths became legitimate. In telling the story of Theseus, he recalled Plutarch's comment that Greek historians and poets were like cosmographers who find many empty places of which they know nothing and 'fill the same with strange beasts, birds, and fishes...Soe do the Grecian historians and poets imbroider and intermix the tales of ancient times with a world of fictions and fabulous discourses.'
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Writing of the early settlements in Italy he said that 'much fabulous matter hath been mixed with the truth of those elder plantations' and that 'most fables and poetical fictions were occasioned by some ancient truth'.
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For example, considering the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts, he compared various theories about their objective, concluding that they sought 'steep falling torrents' in the region of the Caucasus, 'which wash down many grains of gold...and the people there inhabiting use to set many fleeces of wool in those descents of waters, in which the grains of gold remain'.
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Ralegh's analysis of the origins and development of government owed much to Aristotle, without a great deal of acknowledgement. To begin with, he described how God ordered Moses to summon seventy elders, probably the fathers of families, who became the first governors, with their eldest sons under them. As populations grew and vice multiplied, it became clear that 'the soft weapons of paternal persuasions...became in all over-weak'. 'Licentious disorder (which seemed to promise a liberty upon the first acquaintance) proved upon a better trial, no less perilous than an unendurable bondage.' Gradually kings were created by God, and later, in order to restrain them, laws. Following Aristotle, Ralegh divided the true forms of government into three: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. Each had its own perverted form: tyranny, oligarchy and ochlochratia ('the turbulent, unjust ruling of the confused multitude').
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All subjects must obey their king implicitly, asserted Ralegh, for God would punish any people who resisted their ruler by sending a tyrant to rule them. 'The examples are not to be numbred of God's punishments upon those that have resisted authority ordained and established by God. Neither ought any subject to resist the power of kings, because they may be taxed with injustice or cruelty for it pleaseth God sometimes to punish his people by a tyrannous hand.' Men must rely on God to help them and remember that tyrants are sometimes sent by God himself to punish them. Furthermore, the king, and only the king, is above the law and has power to exempt himself from the constraints of law. Ralegh challenged the thirteenth-century lawyer, Bracton, for claiming that kings are subject to human law: they are not, for they are created by divine laws and only declared by human law to be kings. 'Therefore the prince cannot be said to be subject to the law.'
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Men must remember that God himself will punish kings who act tyrannically: 'Oh, by what plots, by what forswearings, betrayings, oppressions, imprisonments...and under what reasons of state and politic subtilty, have these fore-named kings...pulled the vengeance of God upon themselves, upon theirs, and their prudent ministers!'
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Rehoboam, son and successor to Solomon, supplied Ralegh with an example of God's intervention. Petitioned by his people to reduce the heavy taxes levied by Solomon, Rehoboam responded by increasing them. Ignoring the 'grave and advised men that served his father', Rehoboam relied for advice on 'his familiars and favourites', probably a slightly concealed reference to James's Scottish courtiers. After the arrival on the scene of Jeroboam, a rival son of Solomon, the people revolted, murdering a tax-collector and forcing their king to flee in alarm. Rehoboam then surrendered the kingdom of Israel to his rival. To add to his problems his own kingdom, Judea, was invaded by Egypt and placed under Egyptian tutelage. Thus Rehoboam was punished by God for burdening his people and for setting up false gods. But the people were also censured for forgetting 'the bonds of nature and their duty to God'.
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However, it was not always so simple. Although men were ordered by God to obey lawful authority, the Bible gave several warnings about the dangers of rule by a single person. For example, after the death of Gideon, his bastard son,Abimelech, murdered his brothers and seized the throne. The one survivor of this massacre, Jotham, then warned the people against tyrants with a parable. The trees went out to anoint a king, asking various candidates in turn to rule them. The olive said it was contented with its fatness, the fig with its sweetness, and the vine with its juice. Only the bramble accepted the crown, with disastrous results. Jotham prophesied that a fire would cone out of the bramble, and in the end the principal city, Sechem, was fired and Abimelech killed.
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Ralegh gave another example of the problem: in the time of Samuel the elders of Israel asked to be given a king who would rule them more effectively than the ageing Samuel and his sons were doing. The prophet, not surprisingly disliking this request, consulted God, who told the elders of ,the inconveniences and miseries which should befal them' under a king. At first, said God, speaking through Samuel, this would not be intolerable; but after a time the subjects would be threatened: the king 'will use their sons in his own service to make them his horsemen, charioteers, and footmen'. While none of these things would really be grievous to the best subjects, for it would be agreeable to them to serve the king as his commanders, more serious threats might arise. The tyrant 'will take up your fields, and your vineyards, and your best olive trees, and give them to his servants, with other oppressions'. There were, said Ralegh, different interpretations of this passage. One group of scholars said that Samuel was describing here a king that did not fear God. The arguments on the other side, Ralegh said, were given in James I's The tree law free monarchies, 'which treatise I may not presume to abridge, much less here to insert'. This was not particularly helpful. In commenting upon this text Ralegh was at his most obscure and ambiguous. He appeared to be saying that one group was teaching that men should obey in patience whatever the provocation, and the other that kings should keep to the law. His problem was to reconcile the doctrine of absolute obedience with the actual conduct of kings in the world. His resolution of the contradiction was, first, that since kings and princes do often behave unjustly, particularly in seizing other men's property, subjects should beware and undergo tribulations with patience. Secondly, kings themselves should be warned by history that, for their own survival and that of their descendants, they should rule in such a way as to preserve the love and respect of their subjects. In other words, Ralegh was concerned as much with giving cautionary advice as with laying down absolute principles.
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Ralegh's vision of history was increasingly military. While in the first two books most attention is given to religion, above all to God's judgements upon the Israelites for their backsliding and to the smiting of their enemies in battle, the stress shifts as we move from biblical to classical times. Secular causes come to dominate the story. At the same time a stronger narrative line appears with increasing amounts of detail: the Peloponnesian war is covered in eleven pages, the second Punic war in ninety. Battles on land and sea are the arbiters of national destiny. Apart from chapters on the origins of government and on the nature of law, Ralegh neglected civil affairs.
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Sometimes, running ahead of himself, he reflected on the general nature of wars. Branching out from a discussion of the Cimmerian invasion of Lydia, he considered the effects of different kinds of war upon the inhabitants. The miseries of war, he said, were worst when a whole nation or part of it left its homeland and displaced an existing population. The invaders brought so little with them that they needed to take all the possessions of the defenders: 'their lands and cattel, their houses and their goods, even to the cradles of the sucking infants'. The example of British history showed the effects. The Saxon invasions sought the 'entire possession of the country' and managed to eradicate most of the British race; the Danes, by contrast, were not strong enough to become 'absolute conquerors' but were too powerful for the Saxons to drive them out. In time some of them became acquainted with one another and were able to live peaceably together. However, while he was aware that war could result in terrible hardship and suffering, Ralegh mostly accepted it as part of the natural order of things.
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