No. 80 Sir Walter Raleigh
BORN 1552, EXECUTED 1618.
Full length. White and scarlet dress. Scarlet garters and rosettes. Brown trunk hose. White hat. Ruff and sash.
He was the younger son of Walter Raleigh, Esq. of Cornwood, near Plymouth, by his third wife, daughter of Sir Philip Champernon, and widow of Otho Gilbert.
At sixteen Walter went to Oriel College for a year, and left it with a good character for study. In 1569 he became a volunteer in a troop raised by a relative, Henry Champernon, attached to the expedition which Elizabeth was sending out to the relief of the Huguenots in France. He was engaged in this campaign five years, and in 1577 he served in the Low Countries; in the following year he embarked with his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who had obtained a patent from the Queen, to colonise North America. This expedition failed. The English were attacked, and defeated on the high seas by a superior force of Spaniards.
On Raleigh’s return to England he found that an insurrection had just broken out in Ireland; thither he proceeded, and soon gave token not only of his courage, but of his capacity for military command.
He was shortly afterwards appointed to the joint government of Munster, and to that of Cork. In 1581, there being a lull in Ireland, he returned to England. It would appear that he was bent on making his way at Court, and we all know, and most of us believe, the story of his flinging down his velvet cloak before his royal mistress, that she might step across the mire, likewise his writing with a diamond on a window-pane, which would necessarily attract Elizabeth’s attention:—
‘Fain would I climb, but fear to fall.’
The tale goes on to say that the Queen wrote underneath,
‘If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all.’
We hope to be excused for alluding to stories which, if ‘fables,’ are at least characteristic of the times.
In 1583 he appeared before the Privy Council to plead his cause in the matter of a difference that had occurred between him and Lord (Deputy) Grey de Wilton, when they were together in Ireland.
On this occasion, says Sir Robert Naunton, ‘what advantage Raleigh had in the controversy I know not; but he had much the better in the telling of his tale, inasmuch as the Queen and the Lords took no slight mark of the man, for from thenceforth he came to be known, and have access to the Lords,’ etc. etc. Naunton goes on to say, ‘that he does not know if Lord Leicester had recommended him to her Majesty, but true it is, Raleigh had gotten the Queen’s ear at a trice, and she began to be taken with his eloquence, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands, and in truth, she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all.’
Raleigh, whose whole soul was bent on enterprise, made use of his favour at Court to enable him to prosecute his maritime discoveries. In 1583—in a ship he had, however, manned and victualled at his own expense, and named after himself—in company with his brother, he sailed for Newfoundland. But they were again unfortunate; as Gilbert was returning to England he was lost, with two of his ships.
Yet Raleigh’s heart never ‘did fail him,’ and the following year he obtained a grant from Queen and Council, ‘free liberty to discover remote and barbarous lands.’
He proceeded to Florida, discovered and colonised Virginia, and for several years prosecuted his voyages, discoveries, and colonisations, all of which belong to the record of naval history.
In 1584 he was knighted, and honours and dignities of all kinds bestowed on him, together with good estates from the Queen.
At Sherborne, county Dorset, he built ‘a fine house, with gardens and groves of much variety and delight.’ Notwithstanding all the favours he received at her hands, Raleigh never truckled to Elizabeth, and although she often fell out with him, she invariably in the end listened to her loyal but independent subject.
He was always ready to intercede for others, and one day, when asking a service for a friend, the Queen said, ‘When, Sir Walter, will you cease to be a beggar?’
‘When your Majesty ceases to be beneficent,’ was the reply. But he fell into disgrace at Court when Elizabeth found out that he was too high in the good graces of one of her own maids of honour, and although he married the lady, (Mistress Elizabeth Throckmorton, daughter of Sir Nicholas of Beddington, county Surrey,) yet the lovers were imprisoned for some months in the Tower.
Voyages innumerable, fresh projects of colonisation followed, but unfortunately in two expeditions the Earl of Essex had the chief command, and he and Raleigh had a deadly quarrel. On their return it was continued, and there can be little doubt Raleigh hated and worked against Essex, at a time when there were many intrigues going on, to get rid of the Queen’s unfortunate favourite. More honours, more places of trust, were bestowed on Raleigh. In 1600 he went Ambassador to France, and soon after was named Governor of Jersey; in fact, while Elizabeth lived, she never swerved in her friendship, but on her death, Cecil, who was Raleigh’s enemy, undermined his favour with James, who received him ungraciously, and dismissed him from the offices he held.
Sir Walter, on discovering his secret foe, tried to impress on the King’s mind that Cecil had been instrumental in the execution of his mother, but this made no difference in his Majesty’s demeanour, and only insured the minister’s bitter hatred. So commenced Raleigh’s downfall. He was accused, with several other noblemen, of a plot to place Arabella Stuart on the throne, tried for high treason, and in spite of deficiency of evidence, in spite of his gallant defence, he was found guilty by a shameful jury, for even Coke, the Attorney-General, who, we are told, made ‘brutal speeches,’ on the trial, exclaimed, when informed of the verdict, (not being in Court at the time,) ‘Surely thou art mistaken, for I only accused him of misprision of treason.’
Sir Walter remained at Winchester under sentence of death for a month, during which time he appealed to the justice and mercy, of a King who was devoid of both. He was reprieved, and sent to the Tower, where they held that noble spirit captive for twelve years. He occupied his melancholy hours with works which would have sufficed to make his name immortal, had it not already become so by ‘his hairbreadth ‘scapes, and moving accidents by flood and field.’
It having been made worth his while, Villiers Duke of Buckingham interceded for Raleigh’s release, and he was accordingly liberated in 1616.
Stripped of all his possessions, and cast entirely on his own resources, the gallant knight once more embarked for Guiana, James, in the hope of wealth accruing to himself, granted him a commission, as Admiral.
But on his arrival he found he had been betrayed to the Spaniards, who were drawn up against him in great numbers. ‘Never,’ he says himself, ‘was poor man more exposed to the slaughter as I was.’ Information was sent to the King of Spain; the cowardly and cruel James, terrified at the prospect of a rupture with that monarch, issued a proclamation setting forth that he had forbid Raleigh to enter on any hostilities, and threatening severe punishment.
The brave, enterprising, noble-minded sailor returned to England, his heart bowed down with sorrow, for the loss of his first-born, who had died on the field of battle.
He was arrested on his road to London, made two ineffectual attempts to escape, and was once more closely imprisoned in the Tower; he was brought to the bar of the King’s Bench, and demanded why the former sentence should not be held good against him. His defence was a model of manly eloquence, but it did not avail him, and he was beheaded in Old Palace Yard, Westminster, the 29th of October 1618.
By Elizabeth his wife he had two sons—one killed in South America, and the other, Carew, who bought an estate called West Horsley, in Surrey, where, as tradition goes, he kept his father’s head, and in consequence gained for the quaint old house the reputation of being haunted.
Sir Walter Raleigh, according to his portraits, merits Sir Robert Naunton’s description of him: ‘He was of a good presence and well-compacted person. He had a strong natural wit, and was an indefatigable reader both when at sea and on land.’
He was also remarkable for great magnificence in dress, he tilted in silver armour, with a belt of diamonds, pearls, and rubies, and his retinue was most costly. In the portrait before us his costume is certainly elaborate.