Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

hearing of my cause would not have changed enemies into friends, malice into compassion, and the minds of the greater number then present into the commiseration of mine estate. It is not the nature of foul treason to beget such fair passions. Neither could it agree with the duty and love of faithful subjects, especially of your nation, to bewail his overthrow who had conspired against their most natural and liberal lord. I therefore trust, sir, that you will not be the first that shall kill us outright, cut down the tree with the fruit, and undergo the curse of them that enter the fields of the fatherless. Which, if it please you to know the truth, is far less in value than in fame. But that so worthy a gentleman as yourself will rather bind us to you, (being, sir, gentlemen not base in birth and alliance that have interest therein,) and myself, with my uttermost thankfulness will ever remain ready to obey your commands.

"WALTER RALEIGH."

It will readily be conceived, that to him who could need such a remonstrance it would be addressed in vain: Carr persevered in his suit, and obtained it at the hands of a prince regardless alike of justice and of mercy when compliance with his favorites was in question. Lady Raleigh, who kneeled with her children at the king's feet to deprecate the meditated injury, received no other answer from this vicegerent of the deity, as he was pleased to style himself, than the following words, "I mun ha' the land, I mun ha' it for Carr;" and the spoliation was completed; the king granting to lady Raleigh and her

son

son a miserable sum of 8,000l. under the name of compensation. Prince Henry, the warmest admirer and best friend of Raleigh in his adversity, seems to have witnessed with violent indignation this new act of iniquity, perpetrated by a man whom he hated; and some time after he begged, or rather demanded, that Sherborne should be bestowed on himself. The king, who disliked, and perhaps dreaded, to oppose him in wishes thus expressed, at length consented; and bought back his grant to Carr for 25,000l. It is not doubted that it was the purpose of Henry to restore his acquisition to the rightful owner; but his lamented death almost immediately afterwards, precluded the performance of this act of justice, and Sherborne was again bestowed by the monarch on his rapacious favorite.

The loss of his princely patron almost overwhelmed the long tried fortitude of Raleigh. To cultivate the esteem and conciliate the affections of Henry had been for some years the principal object of his solicitude, as it was to the coming reign alone that he could look forward with the hope of restoration to liberty, to favor, and to active life. Among the writings of Raleigh there are several which prove this, particularly two discourses written in 1611, partly by command of the prince, in which he discusses and opposes the marriages with Savoy then proposed for Henry and for his sister; and a letter on ship-building addressed to him. The "History of the world" was also, as he states, "directed" to the prince; whose death he mentions

as

as one of several discouragements which had induced him to lay aside the second and third volumes of the work which he had projected and "hewn out." In the same history the following affecting passage also

occurs:

"Of the art of war by sea I had written a treatise for the lord Henry prince of Wales; a subject, to my knowledge, never handled by any man ancient or modern. But God hath spared me the labor of finishing it by his loss; by the loss of that brave prince, of which, like an eclipse of the sun, we shall find the effects hereafter. Impossible it is to equal words and sorrows; I will therefore leave him in the hands of God that hath him-cura leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent"."

A famous confection, compounded by Raleigh of a vast multitude of ingredients, according to the pharmaceutics of that age, and called his cordial, was administered to the prince in his last illness. When applied to for this medicine, Raleigh had sent it with the message, that "It would certainly cure him or any other of a fever except in case of poison." The queen dwelt much on this expression when the remedy proved unavailing, and it is said to have been the principal ground of her conviction that her son met his death by foul means. This princess entertained a particular esteem for Raleigh, and exerted herself with great zeal for his relief;

a

History of the World, lib. v. c. i. sec. 6.

b Welwood's notes on Wilson, in Complete history of England, ii. 714.

but

but no one was more entirely void of interest at the court of her husband; and her efforts only served to prove her wishes. Two events however,-the death of Salisbury shortly before that of the prince, and the disgrace of Somerset some time after,partly compensated to Raleigh his loss by that event, and revived his hopes of deliverance. Somerset could never be brought to consent to the release of a man whom he had so deeply injured; but his suc-. cessor in the king's affections had no such motive to be inexorable; and a bribe of 1500l. to two courtiers, one of whom was the uncle of Buckingham, served to procure the mediation of this favorite, and the consequent liberation of Raleigh in March 1616.

Sir Walter Raleigh, in the year 1595, had undertaken, with the approbation of queen Elizabeth, a voyage for the purpose of exploring those vast regions of the interior of South America known by the general name of the empire of Guiana. He had sailed far up the great river Oronoko, and having entered into correspondence with some of the native chiefs, and promised in the queen's name to protect them against the cruelties of the Spaniards, who had made some abortive attempts at conquest and settlement in that quarter, had taken formal possession of the country in behalf of his sovereign ;-a species. of title which may at least be accounted a valid plea against the Spanish claim to the whole western hemisphere by papal donation. No relinquishment of the English right, such as it was, had

been

been exacted by the king of Spain in the subsequent treaty between the countries; English navigators had afterwards made several voyages to the coast without calling forth any remonstrances on the part of Philip III.; and Raleigh himself, notwithstanding his captivity, had several times contrived to send vessels thither for the purpose of keeping up his own interest there, and that of his country. He had once offered to go thither in person, if he could obtain his liberty and the king's permission; and this proposition, which had been negatived by Salisbury, he now renewed, as he fondly imagined, under happier auspices. Sir Ralph Winwood was disposed by the general complexion of his politics to encourage a design unpleasing to the court of Spain; the earl of Pembroke patronised it, perhaps for a similar reason; and the earl of Arundel, either from personal friendship to Raleigh, or from the enlightened curiosity by which he was distinguished.

The king listened coldly to the petitions addressed to him on the subject, partly from the dislike and suspicion with which he regarded the original projector, and partly because he was anxious that nothing should interrupt his harmony with that court whence he again indulged the hope of receiving a bride for his son. But Raleigh's confident assertion of the existence of a rich gold mine in Guiana, which he proposed to explore, seems to have proved too tempting a bait to be declined by the necessitous monarch; and Winwood had the satisfaction of procuring his signature to a commission for Raleigh to

proceed

« AnteriorContinuar »