Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (66 page)

70 Harlow, Ralegh's Last Voyage, p. 312.

71 On the theatre of the scaffold see J. A. Sharpe,'Last dying speeches: religion, ideology and public execution in seventeenth-century England', Past and Present 107 (1985),144-67; R. Wunderh and G. Broce, 'The final moment before death in early modern England', Sixteenth Century Journal 20 (1989), 259-75; Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, ch. 4.

72 Vaughan, 'Ralegh's Indian interpreters', p. 371. The celebrations in the City perhaps explain why the execution did not take place on Tower Hill.

73 [OverburyI TheArraigumcut of Rawleigh, p. 31; Beer, Sir Walter RaleQ'h and his Readers, p. 88; Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 176.

74 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 179.

75 Of the various versions of this long speech, the most complete and reliable is perhaps that printed by R. H. Bowers, 'Raleigh's last speech: the "Elms" document', Review of English Studies NS 2 (1951), 209-16.

76 BL, Harley MS 7056, fo. 50r.

77 BL, Add. MS 6789, reproduced in J. W. Shirley, Thomas Harriot: a bioN'raphy (Oxford, 1983), p. 447.

78 See the excellent analysis of the scaffold speech in Beer, Sir Walter Ralech and his Readers, pp. 82-108.

79 Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 830, fo. 102v.

80 May, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 122.

81 See Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 93.

82 Harlow, Ralcgh's Last Voyage, pp. 309-10; Queen's College Oxford, MS 121, to. 517r; Bowers, 'Raleigh's last speech', p. 215.

83 Bowers, 'Raleigh's last speech', p. 213.

84 1Overbury] TheArraignnnent of Rawleigh, p. 29. Beer, Sir Walter Rah,gh and his Readers, highlights the irony in his words here - the state had given him a final stage and the freedom to say whatever he wanted: 'I am now the subject of Death' (pp. 92, 104).

85 Harlow, Ralcvth's Last Voyage, p. 308.

86 Bowers, 'Raleigh's last speech', p. 213.

87 Harlow, Ralc,~h's Last Voyage, p. 310.

88 Ibid., p. 310. In another version, Ralegh says 'this is that that will cure all sorrows' (p.313).

89 Harlow, Rale~h'c Last Voyage, p. 310; O. L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey's Brief Lives (London, 1949), p. 254.

90 Levers of Clhmnberlain, ii, p. 177.

91 F. Osbourne, Historical Mernoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth, and King]ames (London, 1673), ii, p. 477.

92 Dick, Aubreys Brief Lives, p. 259.

93 [Overburyl The Arraignment of Rawleigh, p. 34.

94 BL, Harley MS 6353, to. 85v.

95 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 88.

96 Rudick, Poems, p. 193.

97 Harlow, Ralegh's Last Voyage, p. 310. Greenblatt points out the coincidence in wording with Ralegh's discussion of the custom of praying to the east in his The History of the World (Sir Walter Ralegh: the renaissance man and his roles [London, 1973]), p. 21.

98 Harlow, Ralegh'c Last Voyage, p. 313.

99 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 91.

100 Bowers, 'Ralegh's Last Speech', p. 215.

101 Or so says Oldys, who has it that the head was 'long preserved in a case'. It was, it seems, eventually buried with Carew Ralegh (see below, p. 346). See Brushfield, Raleghana, viii, pp. 126-31. Chamberlain records soon after the execution, and almost certainly erroneously, that head and body had been buried together (Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 180).

102 Harlow, Ralc,~h'.c Last Voyage, p. 310; Quoted in Beer, Sir Walter Ralcgh and his Readers, p. 96.

103 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, p. 177; Hyland, Ralegh's Last Journey, p. 214.

104 May, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 122.

105 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 95-6; Fleck, 'Ralegh's performance on the scaffold', p. 7.

106 Fleck, 'Ralegh's performance on the scaffold', pp. 23, 28.

107 Quoted in Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 92.

108 Harlow, Rate, Ch's Last Voyage, p. 315.

109 Ibid., p. 310.

110 Dick, Aubrey's Brief Lives, p. 259.

111 Brushfield, Raleghana, viii, pp. 125-6.

112 Letters of Ralegh, pp. 376-7.

113 HMC, Tenth Report: appendix, vi, p. 85; C. Hill, Intellectual origins of the En,Elish Revolution (Oxford, 1965), pp. 208-11; Stebbing, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 397.

CHAPTER 14

1 V. T. Harlow, Ralegh's Last Voyage (London, 1932), p. 310.

2 Quoted in R. Lawson-Peebles,'The many faces of Sir Walter Ralegh', History Today 48:3 (March 1998), 17-24, at p. 23.

3 O. L. Dick (ed.), Aubrey's Brief Lives (London, 1949), p. 257.

4 A. L. Rowse, Ralegh and the Throckmortons (London, 1962), p. v.

5 TNA, SP 14/103/55.

6 Though King Janes quickly dismissed it as 'butVenus with a firebrand in her arse', his considered response to the phenomenon was more complex, and the 'herauld start', which was visible in England from 18 November to 16 December, lingered long in the collective memory, its significance redefined with the passing years U. Doelman, 'The comet of 1618 and the British royal family', Notes and Queries 54 (2007), 30-5).

7 Letters of Chamberlain, ii, pp. 179, 185. A. Fleck, "'At the time of his death": manuscript instability and Walter Ralegh's performance on the scaffold',Journal of British Studies 48 (2009), 4-28, at p. 15.

8 TNA, SP 14/103/61.

9 H. R. Woudhuysen, Sir Philip Sidney and the Circulation of Manuscripts 1558-1640 (Oxford, 1996),p. 158; A. Beer, 'Sir Walter Ralegh's Dialogue betweene a counsellor of state and a justice of the peace', in Clucas and Davies, The Crisis of 1614, p. 138, n. 16.

10 A. R. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers in the Seventeenth Century, Speaking to the People (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 104. Even for later commentators willing to give James some benefit of the doubt, the execution of Ralegh was a thing apart. It may have been the King's only tyrannical gesture, but, as gestures of tyranny go, it was bad enough. See R. Houlbrooke, James's reputation, 1625-2005', in Houlbrooke (ed.), James VI and I, Ideas, Authority, and Government (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 169-90 at 171.

11 A. R. Beer, My just Desire: the life of Bess Ralegh, wife to Sir Walter (New York, 2003), pp. 231-4;A. Clifford, The Memoir of 1603 and the Diary of 1616-1619, ed. K. O. Acheson (Peterborough, 2007), p. 171.

12 I. H. [John Heath?], The House of Correction (London, 1619), sigs C2v, C3v. M. Rudick (ed.), The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh: a historical edition (Tempe, AZ, 1999), pp. 190-1. We are grateful to DrWill Poole for drawing our attention to these epigrams.

13 The memorial poem 'Upon Sir Walter Rawleigh', in Rudick, Poems, pp. 196-7.

14 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 96-104; Rudick, Poems, pp. 191-205.

15 The 'Declaration of the demeanor and cariage of Sir Walter Raleigh' was published, hastily, late in November (T. N. Brushfield, Raleghana ([Plymouth], 1896-1907), published as a series in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, vii: 2, 44-7). Long attributed to Bacon, it was in fact the work of several counsellors and officials, Bacon among them. James contributed some finishing touches. It is most easily accessed in Harlow, Ralegh's Last Voyage, pp. 335-56. On responses see the letter from 'A. Throckmorton' - perhaps Sir Arthur - written on 31 October 1618 and preserved with a copy of the 'Apologie' in St John's College Cambridge, MS 1.4. Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 103-4.

16 SP 14/103/74, John Pory to Carleton, 7 November 1618. Pory confirmed that Ralegh's mathematical instruments had, in accordance with a royal warrant, been seized for the Lord Admiral's use (cf. 14/103/7 1).

17 HMC, Supplementary Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Mar & Kellie (London, 1930), p. 100.

18 Rowse, Rah'~h and the Throckrnortons, p. 186.

19 From an anonymous contemporary poem commemorating his death. See J. T. Shawcross, 'A contemporary view of Sir Walter Ralegh', ANQ 5 (1992), 131-3.

20 SP 14/103/74. Pory cites here a 'great Lord in the Tower who knew Ralegh well', clearly Northumberland.

21 Oakeshott, 'Carew Ralegh's copy of Spenser', pp. 1-21. Oakeshott suggests that the volume belonged to Ralegh, and that it carries his annotations.

22 G. Goodman, The Court of King James I, ed. J. S. Brewer (London, 1839), i, p. 69.

23 C. Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford, 1965), p. 211; L. Ginz, 'Representing the "Phoenix Queen": Elizabeth I in writings by Anna Maria van Schurman and Anne Bradstreet', in E. H. Hageman and K. Conway (eds), Resurrecting Elizabeth I in Seventeenth-century England (Madison, NJ, 2007), pp. 168-84 at 174.

24 A Mr Pym, probably John Pym, is identified by Bess as one of only two neighbours destined to share her venison at Christmas, when living as a widow in Boswell Court in 1623 (BL, Add. MS 72709, fo. 3).

25 [Eliot] The Monarchic (?f Man, by SirJohn Eliot, ed. A. B. Grosart (London, 1879), i, 158-9.

26 P. Hyland, Ralegh's Last Journey: a tale of madness, vanity and treachery (London, 2003), pp. 216-17.

27 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 113.

28 Ibid., pp. 119-20. See Chapter Eleven (iii) above, p. 283.

29 D. Colclough, Freedom of Speech in Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 108-9.

30 C. M. Trevelyan, History of England (London, 1926),p.388.

31 Rudick, Poems, p. xxviii.

32 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 66.

33 Ibid., pp. 139-75.

34 Cromwell to his son, 2 April 1650, in W. C. Abbott (ed.), The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (Cambridge, MA, 1937-47), ii, p. 236; Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, p. 173, n.12.

35 S. W. May, Sir Walter Ralegh (Boston, 1989), p. 124.

36 Beer, Sir Walter Ralegh and his Readers, pp. 169-71; below, p. 346.

37 May, Sir Walter Ralegh, p. 131.

38 P. Misopappas, Raudeigh Redevivus; or the life & death of the right honourable Anthony late Earl of Shaftsbury (London, 1683).

39 J. M. Levine, 'Sir Walter Ralegh and the ancient wisdom', in B. Y Kunze and 1). D. Brautigam (eds), Court, Country and Culture: essays on early modern British history in honor of Perez Zagorin (Rochester, NY, 1992), pp. 89-108, at 92, 102-3. On other receptions of Ralegh's great work see N. S. Popper, 'Walter Ralegh's History of the World and the historical culture of the late Renaissance' (Princeton, PhD dissertation, 2007), pp. 417-30.

40 R. Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia, or, observations on the late Queen Elizabeth (London, 1641), p.31.

41 These paragraphs owe a great deal to the work of Lawson-Peebles and Vivienne Westbrook. See particularly Dr Westbrook's 'What remains of Rawleigh/Raleigh/ Ralegh (1554-1618)', EnterText 6:3 (Winter 2006-7), 67-90. For Stowe School, see pp. 78-9.

42 HMC, Egmont, ii, p. 383.

43 See ODNB under Lyttelton.

44 The process is recorded in his diary. Gibbon's own library copy of The History of the World is held in the fine Ralegh Collection at Chapel Hill. J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: the enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737-1764 (Cambridge, 1999).

45 R. B. Davis, Intellectual life in the Colonial South 1585-1763 (Knoxville, 1977). We are grateful to Professor Larry Tise and Dr Michael Hill for sharing their investigations into the currency of Ralegh's work in late eighteenth-century America.

46 Lawson-Peebles, 'The many faces of Sir Walter Ralegh', p. 21.

47 H. G. Jones, 'The Americanization of Raleigh', in J. Youings (ed.), Raleikth ill Exeter, 1985: privateerh and colonization in the reign of Elizabeth I (Exeter, 1985), pp. 73-89, at 76. Subsequent Raleighs, of course, reflect the US Navy's custom of naming ships for cities.

48 Jones, 'The Americanization of Raleigh', pp. 77-8.

49 See E. R. Murray, Wake: capital county of North Carolina (1983), i, pp. 85-6.

50 Jones, 'The Americanization of Raleigh', pp. 78-9.

51 Ibid., p. 87; NC Dept of Public Instruction, Sir Walter Raleigh Day, December 3, 1954 (Raleigh, 1954), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNCCH), CSWR T5.

52 Lawson-Peebles, 'The many faces of Sir Walter Ralegh', pp. 23-4.

53 See, for example, the biography of Ralegh in the Family Magazine; or monthly abstract of general knowledge (New York, Boston, Cincinnati, 1837), UNCCH, CSWR B42. A short factual biography at pp. 6-12, included as 'a name dear to Americans' on account of his efforts at colonization.

54 Now in the Tate, The Boyhood of Raleigh was painted in a house near the beach at Budleigh Salterton and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1870 (Brushfield, Raleghana i, pp. 28-9; viii, p. 139). Appropriately, a local resident and native of Jersey sat for Millais' sunburnt sailor relating his tale to the young Ralegh. For Regenia Gagnier, the painting explores boundaries, between sailor and boys, between social strata, between nature and culture, between representation and real. Perhaps, she suggests, it touches on emigration too ('Boundaries in theory and history', Victorian Literature and Culture 32 (2004), 397-406, at 402-4). Theed's 1853 bas-relief in the Prince's Chamber of the Palace of Westminster is titled Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak as a carpet for Queen Elizabeth.

55 See ODNB.

56 T. Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England (London, 1662), p. 262.

57 D. Lloyd, State-worthies, or, the States-men and Favourites of England since the Reformation (London, 1670), p. 672.

58 J. Shirley, The Life (?f the Valiant & Learned Sir Walter Rawleigh (London, 1677), p. 242.

59 On the pride in Ralegh as a founding father in the early twentieth century see, for example, the programme for F. H. Koch, The Shepherd of the Ocean, October 1920, performed in Raleigh Athletic Park, NC. Koch was professor of dramatic literature at the University of North Carolina. The pageant/play is a triumphal piece. It includes 'Raleigh's vision of the New World' in the first part, and 'the lure of the Orinoco' in the second. The performance ends with 'the Sacrifice, October 29 1618', set at 'Midnight, the Tower of London'. The Epilogue, spoken by 'the spirit of Youth', details 'the Triumph of Raleigh's Vision'.

60 'I'm so Tired' from the White Album (1968); S. Heaney, North (London, 1975), see Lawson-Peebles, 'The many faces of Sir Walter Ralegh', p. 24.