not be a regular trial before a public audience, that the warrant for carrying the sentence into execution should be accompanied with "a narrative in print of his late crimes and offences." And to this the King seems in his answer to assent. But unfortunately the essential part of the recommendation-the point of time-was not attended to. Ralegh received notice to prepare for death on the 23d of October. About the same time (I presume, for the exact date is not stated) the Judges of the King's Bench were directed to order the immediate execution of the old sentence.2 On the 28th he was brought to the bar, and called upon to show cause why execution should not be awarded. No cause being shown which the Court held to be sufficient, execution was granted; and the next day he was brought into old Palace Yard to be beheaded. By some unaccountable mismanagement, the narrative which was to contain the justification of his execution was not forthcoming. All that was publicly known was the Proclamation, the general result of the voyage, and the proceeding of the previous day before the King's Bench; where "the new crimes and offences" were not allowed to be brought under discussion, and the only point argued was the validity of the old attainder. What wonder that people thought he was punished for the old offence, and were driven to strange conjectures to account for it? The just and rational course of open accusation, evidence, and defence had been declined for fear of the effect on a popular audience of Ralegh's eloquence. And yet he was left to make his last speech, under circumstances which would have ensured an indulgent hearing for the most unpopular criminal, before an audience deeply prejudiced in his favour, and utterly in the dark not only as to the evidence against him but as to the very nature of the accusation; and this too when he had the whole stage to himself; there being nobody to represent the other side; no possibility of explanation, confutation, or counteraction; and when the only way to prevent him from making himself as innocent as he pleased and working upon his hearers what impression he would, was that which would have spoken for him more eloquently stillnamely to interrupt and silence him.

Perhaps it was thought that after he had spoken his last words, and it had been seen what impression they made upon the people, it would be easier to judge what kind of declaration was needed for public satisfaction. But if so, the enormous advantage which belongs to the first impression-when made upon minds predisposed to receive it favourably and unprovided with any counter-impression to

VOL. VI.

1 Camden.

2 Jardine, p. 498.

2 B

meet it with, and then left at leisure to settle and fix itself,-must have been quite overlooked. That this state of things should have been permitted for a single day is strange. That it should have been allowed to remain undisturbed for more than three weeks, is to me one of the most unaccountable facts in history. When the Declaration came at last, it appeared that the case was at any rate quite different from what people had supposed; but it addressed itself to minds made up; and though justly described as "a declaration of the demeanour and carriage of Sir Walter Ralegh . . . and of the true motives and inducements which occasioned his Majesty to proceed in doing justice upon him as hath been done," it was received as a mere official apology, and had the usual fate of such compositions in being generally discredited. How far it deserved this fate is a question upon which I hope to throw some new light, when it comes before me in its place. But for the present Ralegh had the stage to himself, and he made the most of his opportunity. No tragic scene in real life was ever so finely acted. Judged by its effect upon the audience, which is the true test of speech,-and not only upon the audience then assembled in old Palace Yard, but (through them) upon all succeeding generations, up to the present day-his speech from the scaffold was a triumph of eloquence. "Though he spoke not much," says Sir E. Harwood writing to Dudley Carleton, "yet that he did was with so much assurance, so Christianly and so like truth, as all his beholders were possessed he died innocent, not only of the treason but of late new practices, and of ill speeches of his Majesty, and of justly1 injuring the King of Spain." And yet when the fullest reports of his speech are examined, it is strange to find how little there is in it, tending to alter the aspect of his case to any impartial eye. The charges from which he laboured to defend himself were in fact of so little importance that in the preceding narrative (from which I wished to exclude everything disputable) I have scarcely thought it necessary to mention any one of them. Those which constitute his real offence, he scarcely touches. The two imputations from which he seems to have been most anxious to free himself were, first, that of having some plot or intelligence with the French King," and secondly, that of having 1 So in MS. I suppose it should be "unjustly."

2 S. P. Dom. 30 Oct. 1618. Sir E. Harwood reports the general impression. He was not present himself.

3 From what he is reported to have said on this point, Mr. St. John thinks himself justified in rejecting the report of the whole speech, as a misrepresentation of his words. "What we possess under that name "[the speech on the scaffold] "it is impossible he should have uttered, unless we assume the letter to James of the 5th of October, together with his examination, and those of La Chêne, and all his communications with the French authorities, to be forgeries." (Vol. ii. p. 347.) This being Mr. St. John's way of dealing with his evidence, I have not thought it necessary to examine his conclusions.

"spoken dishonourably and disloyally" of King James. Both of which he met with a denial so solemn, and enforced with such awful imprecations, that I am glad I have no occasion to question it in either case. That he had attempted to escape, and to that end feigned sickness, and that he had promised Stucley that if he would go with him, his debts should be paid-all this he confessed to be true. But these were acts for which, though in a harsh construction they might be called breaches of parole, one can hardly blame him as his case was; and perhaps it would have been well if they had been more successful. Upon the charges which came nearer to the real question--as that he did not know of any mine, and did not mean to go to Guiana at all; that he meant to escape with the money he took out, and not to return to England; and that he had proposed to quit the place of rendezvous without waiting for the river party, and so leave them to their fate-his denial was distinct enough; but it implied nothing incompatible with the main charge. That "it was his full intention to search for gold,-for gold for the benefit of his Majesty and himself and of those that ventured with him, with the rest of his countrymen ;" and that he believed that Captain Keymis "knew the head of a mine" where gold was to be found;-all this may have been quite true, without implying any justification whatever of the means he took to get at it. That he had given his promise to Lord Arundel, immediately before he sailed, "not to turn pirate when he got abroad, and whether he made a good voyage or a bad not to fail to return again to England," was avouched by Lord Arundel himself, who was present. That he had kept his promise, was an apparent fact which could not be disputed. But it did not follow that he would have kept it if he had found he could do better. That it was never his intention "to go away from his company and leave them at Guiana," is an assertion which I am quite willing to accept on his own authority, being a thing which he only could know, and upon which he appeals to several witnesses whose evidence we have not the means of examining. And these (with exception of a disavowal of all concern in the death of the Earl of Essex-which had nothing to do with the present case) were all "the material points which he thought good to speak of."2

What was it then in this speech, if there was so little to alter the appearance of the case, which so enchanted and still continues to enchant the world, that the charge of burning and pillaging a town containing 140 houses, a church, and two convents, with a governor

and garrison,'-belonging to another and a friendly nation, and having offered no provocation whatever except an attitude of selfdefence,―appears to an English gentleman and lawyer in the year 1832 vague, senseless and frivolous? I believe it was merely the manner of delivery. Ralegh was a man without fear, and with an understanding perfectly clear and serene. As long as he saw a chance of a life worth living, he had played boldly for it: and the devices to which he resorted (though to some of his admirers they have seemed so unworthy of him as to suggest a suspicion that his mind had for the time given way) were conceived and conducted with a ready wit, an activity, an ingenuity, an audacity and gay contempt for his enemies, characteristic of his best time. When he found that the chance was gone, and that his fate was to be death, he had the same faculties and the same spirit at command to meet it with. He was 66 years old. He knew of how little value to him any life was that he could expect in the course of nature. He knew that death was as easy at one time as another, and that the violent death was the easiest. The fear of it, he said, was but an opinion and imagination," and for the manner, "though to others it might seem grievous, yet he had rather die so than of a burning fever." He had no troubles of conscience; for he had done his best to do the King a piece of good service against his will, and he had hurt nobody except Spaniards in the Indies. And the publicity and solemnity and tragical apparatus seems to have had the effect on his nerves of an agreeable excitement. Everything that he said and did was done in the best possible taste-without any touch of passion or bitterness or bravado-but with the most unaffected and cheerful composure, the finest humanity, the most courtly grace and good humour; and yet no unseemly levity, but a full recognition of the solemnity of the occasion, and the presence in which he was about to appear. If it was acting and the effect of his behaviour upon the audience had a place no doubt in his thoughts-it was the very finest acting conceivable. Shakespeare died two years before, or one might have thought that the famous description of the death of the Thane of Cawdor was suggested by that of Ralegh.

He died

As one who had been studied in his death

To throw away the dearest thing he owed
As 'twere a careless trifle.2

1 Ralegh's Discovery of Guiana. Ed. Schomburg. p. 210.

2 Dudley Carleton, a contemporary observer whom nobody has a right to treat with contempt, would have completed the quotation

He had formerly boasted that he despised death. But his meditations in the Tower had raised his mind to a still higher elevation; for his entertainment of it on the scaffold was not with contempt, but rather with polite and courtly welcome. Never was death by the public executioner so completely cheated of its victory.

There is something so imposing to ordinary minds in this easy superiority to things which seem to them so terrible, that it is not strange if among the mass of the audience all other thoughts were lost in admiring contemplation, and all oppugnant criticism silenced for the time; and if it be true that the King had postponed his own declaration till now, that he might first hear what Ralegh would say and how it would be received, it may be that when he knew what he did say, and with what effect, he thought it better to postpone it awhile longer, that the first impression might subside. But this again was doubtful policy: for the impression showed no symptom of subsiding. "We are still so full of Sir Walter Ralegh," writes Chamberlain in forwarding some papers to Carleton three weeks after, "that almost every day brings forth somewhat in this kind; besides divers ballets; whereof some are called in, and the rest such poor stuff as are not worthy the overlooking. But when the heat is somewhat allayed we shall have a declaration touching him that shall contradict much of that which he protested with so great asseveration. But the proofs had need be very pregnant and demonstrative, or else they will hardly prevail."

The proofs, in order to prevail, had need not only to be pregnant and demonstrative, but to be presented to minds equally excited, and with surrounding circumstances as picturesque, impressive, and pathetic. And this was manifestly impossible. The most conclusive answer could be no better than an argument in a book; and what book could make an impression on the popular imagination lively enough to counteract the image of the living man speaking for himself on the scaffold, in the minds of those who saw and heard him? Even now the difficulty is not removed. That image still lives and holds possession of men's minds, and an impartial judgment is not to be expected. But it is fit that those who desire to judge the case fairly should have both sides fairly presented: and we shall see presently in what light it appeared to the King. We must first

"Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it."

"It seems," he says, (replying to Chamberlain's report of the execution) "that he knew better how to die than to live; and his happiest hours were those of his arraignment and execution." Court and Times of James I. vol. ii. p. 106. 1 Chamberlain to Carleton, 24 Nov. 1618.