as that he should have escaped in a French bark [without drawing them into the crime.] And then after the sentence for his execution which hath been thus long suspended, a declaration be presently put forth in print, a warrant being sent down for us to sign for his execution."

It is a letter very characteristic of the King, and it was quite true that Ralegh's wit was a formidable weapon to encounter in the court of popular opinion; especially where so many were disposed not only to excuse but to applaud the very offence which was to be laid to his charge. But it was a danger which could only be overcome by being met. On the former occasion it was really his own wit that won his triumph; for the popular feeling was against him; and if the trial could on any plausible pretext have been conducted with closed doors, no voice would have been heard on his behalf. But now very little wit was wanted to make his cause gracious; and whether his defence was conducted by himself or by others for him, the closing of the doors was enough in itself to make it triumphant with the people outside. Surely James was never worse advised than when he rejected that part of the advice of his commissioners. A formal proceeding like that which they recommended did take place before themselves. The charges were opened and explained by the Attorney and Solicitor General; the depositions of the witnesses that had been examined were (I presume) read: Sir Walter was heard in his own defence: and some of his fellow-voyagers were produced in person to confront him. But there was no audience, no judges, no declaration of the reasons which made this unusual form of proceeding necessary, no application to the Council for advice, no public record of the proceeding. So that for explaining and justifying to the people an act which at the best must be unpopular, it was absolutely of no use. So useless indeed it was that I do not find it so much as alluded to afterwards; and if it had not been for the accidental preservation and discovery of Sir Julius Cæsar's notes of the day's work, we should not have known that any such thing had been. It informed the commissioners of what they knew already. It may possibly have brought to their knowledge some things which had escaped them. But it added no grain of weight to the value of their report in the eyes of the people, to whom the true grounds of the proceeding the "late crimes and offences "-were (as the commissioners

1 The words within brackets are struck out in MS.

2 On the other side of the leaf is written, "Wherein we hold the French Physician's confession very material, as also his own and his consorts' confession, that before they were at the Islands he told them his aim was at the Fleet, with his son's oration when they came to the town, and some touch of his hateful speeches of our person."

took care to remind the King) as yet unknown. To us who know a great deal more than the people then knew, and yet not nearly so much as we could wish, Sir Julius's notes are of considerable value and would be of very great value if they were a little fuller and did not break off at the most interesting part. But they give merely the heads, nakedly set down for the assistance of his own memory; and all we can learn from them is the order of the proceeding and the principal topics, up to a certain point. For though the thing has not been noticed (so far as I know) by any one else, it is evident to me that what we have is only the first sheet, and that the rest has been lost. And I think this would have been evident to anybody, if he had examined the manuscript carefully, and observed how the paper had been folded, and in what order the pages presented themselves to the writer. Take a sheet of letter-paper; double it crosswise; double that again lengthwise; and begin your notes upon the column which then lies uppermost. When that is full, take the next which meets you as you turn the leaves without cutting them; and then the next; and so on, till on coming to the seventh you find it already written on. If you want more, open the sheet into its original state-the folio of four pages-and you will find two columns left blank in the middle. When these are filled, one side of the paper will be full. It appears to have been Sir Julius's ordinary practice to take his notes in this way; and when he had used up that side of his first sheet to take a second. In the bound volume the order of the columns (which are not numbered) is not at first obvious, because each sheet is spread out into a single leaf. But it will be found on examination that in this case the last sentence is at the end of the last column.

From what remains of these notes we learn that the charge was distributed into three general heads: "Faults committed before his going this last voyage. Faults committed in his voyage. Faults committed since:"-that of these the two first were set forth by the Attorney-General, and the third by the Solicitor:-and that then Ralegh gave his answers upon all the points in succession.

Of the speeches of the two lawyers it is not necessary to say anything here. They represent the case as understood by the commissioners, and of this we shall have, in the official “Declaration” which was put forth a few weeks later, a perfect exposition. But the note of Ralegh's answers, though very meagre, tells us something which we do not otherwise know, and is worth printing entire : the rather because those who have undertaken to give the effect of his reply have seen more in it than I can find.1

1 "To these frivolous charges Sir W. Ralegh calmly answered, etc. He appears

"SIR WALTER'S ANSWER.

1. That he verily thinketh that his Majesty doth in his conscience clear him of all guiltiness for his fact of an. 1. And that he hath heard that the King said that he would not be tried by a Jury of Middlesex. Archelaus' in the 2 book of Maccabees his speech-“That [if] he had been amongst Scythians he had not been condemned."

That Dr. Turner told him that Justice Gawdy upon his death-bed said that the justice of England was never so depraved and injured as in the condemnation of Sir Walter Ralegh.

ANSWER TO MR. ATTORNEY'S 4 OBJECTIONS.

1. He intended a mine, carried refiners and tools to his charge of 20007. with him, and trusted Captain Kemish, in whom also they confided, to find the mine, and the force he sent was not to invade them of St. Thomas, but to keep between them and the mine, lest the Spaniards should interrupt them in their search and work.

3.3 He abandoned not his men, as is reported by Sir John Ferne, nor to have gone away and left them in the Indies.

2. He denieth it.

4.5 He denieth it.

HIS ANSWER TO MR. SOLLICITOR'S OBJECTIONS.

1, 2.6 He sought not to escape till his arrest by Sir Lewis Stukeley, and afterwards he confesseth to have endeavoured to escape.

to have evinced in these examinations the same spirit and eloquence and the same remarkable moderation and temper which he had displayed in his trial at Winchester." (Jardine, p. 488.) "He was never at a loss, and he threw the main force of his address upon the weak points in the prosecution. He indignantly repudiated the supposition that the mine had no real existence," etc. Gardiner, ii. p. 142.

Menelaus. See II. Maccabees, chap. iv. v. 47. But the note seems to be otherwise incorrect; for Menelaus was not unjustly condemned, but unjustly acquitted. "Of these matters therefore there was an accusation laid against Menelaus. Now when the King came to Tyrus three men that were sent from the Senate pleaded before him: but Menelaus, being now convicted, promised Ptolemee the son of Dorymenes to give him much money if he would pacify the King toward him. Whereupon Ptolemee taking the King aside unto a certain gallery, as it were to take the air, brought him to be of another mind: insomuch that he discharged Menelaus from the accusations, who notwithstanding was cause of all the mischief, and those poor men who, if they had told their cause, yea, before the Scythians should have been judged innocent, them he condemned to death. Thus they that followed the matter for the city and for the people and for the holy vessels did soon suffer unjust punishment. And so through the covetousness of them that were of power Menelaus remained still in authority, increasing in malice and being a great traitor to the citizens." It is difficult to guess from the form of the note how Ralegh applied the passage. It seems to be a precedent of a King persuaded by a corrupted councillor to condemn an innocent man to death. 2 "That he never intended a mine."

...

3" He abandoned and put in danger all his company."

"He purposed to set war between the 2 Kings of England and Spain."

5 "His unfaithful carriage to the King and his company."

"1. His purpose of flight before commandment laid upon him.

2. His endeavouring to fly after the arrest upon him."

3. Fatetur facinus qui judicium fugit, vel simulat se fatuum vel insanum, cum non sit, ad fugiendum judicium. Sir Walter did confess it, excusing himself therein by the example of David being with King Achis and feigning himself mad.

4.2 Confesseth that he said that his confidence in the King deceived him, but denieth that he used any other ill speeches about the King.

And being confronted with Captains St. Leger and Pennington confessed that he proposed the taking of the Mexico fleet if the mine failed. See the letter dated 12 July 1611 in the counsel book.”3

This brings us to the end of the sheet: but it can hardly have been the end of the proceeding. That there is no mention anywhere of the reading of examinations, which was certainly intended to follow the charge, may perhaps be explained by supposing that Sir Julius did not want any note of them, seeing that he had access to the originals. But this abrupt transition, after the Solicitor's objections had been all answered, to the production of Captains St. Leger and Pennington upon a point touched in the Attorney's speech and near the beginning of it, would be best accounted for by supposing that after they had heard his answers to all the charges, they proceeded to reply to them again by producing and re-examining the witnesses. The Attorney's second objection-that Ralegh "purposed to set war between England and Spain "-supported by the fact that when the pillage of the town yielded little he resolved "to make his voyage upon the Mexico fleet"-he had met by a general denial. When, in answer to that, the two captains on whose authority the statement had been made were produced in person to confirm it, he (according to the "Declaration ")"confessed the words, but saith that, in time, they were spoken after the action of the mine was defeated:" and so far Sir Julius's notes and the official Declaration agree. But then follows a material difference. If the notes are to be taken as complete, that was all he had to say: whereas the Declaration makes him add, that "it was propounded by him to the end to keep his men together; and if he spake it before it was but discourse at large." Now such a qualification of his confession seems to me too important to have been overlooked or omitted even in the most cursory note; and I have little doubt that it would have been found in the beginning of the next sheet, followed by other evidence. and answers of the same kind :4 and lastly by the sentence (for it is

"His impostures to deceive the King and State."

2 "His vile and dishonourable speeches, full of contumely to the King." 3 Lansd. MSS. 142. f. 396.

4 Among which I should expect to find something about the mining tools, of which Napier makes a point of some importance. "It was distinctly asserted," he

evident that the King meant the proceeding to end with a sentence) -that is, by a declaration of the Commissioners that in their opinion the former sentence might under the circumstances be justly carried into execution.' But if my speculation be correct, the conclusion must remain a matter of conjecture until the lost sheet or sheets of Sir Julius's notes shall be found. In the mean time it will be seen that, though we have here evidence of one important admission, there is little else in these notes which throws any fresh light on the case; and that as to the character of Ralegh's defence, —whether it was strong or weak, plausible or unplausible—they give us no means whatever of judging. The proceeding was meant to be private, and its privacy was strictly and successfully preserved. But it took away all its value.

Nor was the King much more fortunate with the alternative proposal of the Commissioners. They recommended, if there might

says, by Ralegh in reply to Yelverton that he incurred an expense of 20007. in providing both "miners and instruments of mining; an averment which, if not substantially true would assuredly have been rebutted by those of the expedition with whom he appears to have been then confronted." (Edin. Rev. April, 1840, p. 20.) Now the Declaration states, with regard to the Pioneers, that "it is testified of all parts, and by himself confessed, that he carried none at all;" and as to instruments for mining, that "it is true he carried some small quantity for a show, but by the judgment of all that were in his company nothing near sufficient for that which had been requisite for the working of the mine which he excused only by saying that his men never saw them unpacked, and that the mine was not past a foot and a half underground." No doubt therefore he was confronted, and thereby driven upon that excuse.

1 The letter in the Council Book,-if it was, as Mr. Gardiner suspects, the proposal made to the Lords in 1611 (see above p. 343), may have been appealed to on either side: by Ralegh, as proving that the use of force against the Spaniards was known to be intended, "if they began the war;"-by the prosecution, as showing that a proposal implying the probability of a collision with Spaniards had been made and rejected. It may therefore have come in in the course of Ralegh's answer to this charge, and the important qualification mentioned in the Declaration may have followed.

2 Mr. St. John in his Life of Ralegh refers to a letter from Julian Sanchez de Ulloa, dated 16 November 1618 (which would be 6 November according to English reckoning)—addressed to his own government and preserved at Simancas, -in which he seems to have given from hearsay some particulars of this proceeding. From this it would appear that it took place on the 22d of October. Whether we may also infer that Ralegh's defence lasted four hours, or only that the case occupied the Commissioners so long, I am doubtful. It may be only Mr. St. John's way of writing. But I will give it in his own words. “As far back as the 22d the die was cast, though the public knew it not, for on that day Raleigh having been taken from the Tower to Whitehall, was told what had been resolved respecting him. For some particulars of what took place in the four hours during which Ralegh pleaded for his life, we are indebted to a foreign witness, who however has omitted others which we should have been glad to learn. 'I have been told,' says Ulloa, 'that the Lord Chancellor of England censured him greatly for the injuries he had done to the vassals and territories of your Majesty, and dwelt on the manner in which he had abused the permission to put to sea granted him by this King, when his professed object was to discover a gold mine, which he had affirmed he knew where to find. In conclusion, he informed him that he must die.'" Vol. ii. p. 338.