could not be brought to a new trial for any other crime. To satisfy, therefore, the court of Spain, which raised the loudest complaints against him, the king made use of that power which he had purposely reserved in his own hands, and signed the warrant for his execution upon his former sentence.* *Some of the facts in this narrative, which seem to condemn Raleigh, are taken from the king's declaration, which being published by authority, when the facts were recent, being extracted from examinations before the privy-council, and subscribed by six privy-counsellors, among whom was Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, a prelate nowise complaisant to the court, must be allowed to have great weight, or rather to be of undoubted credit. Yet the most material facts are confirmed either by the nature and reason of the thing, by sir Walter's own apology and his letters. The king's declaration is in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. 3. no. 2. 1. There seems to be an improbability that the Spaniards, who knew nothing of Raleigh's pretended mine, should have built a town in so wide a coast, within three miles of it. The chances are extremely against such a supposition; and it is more natural to think, that the view of plundering the town led him thither, than that of working a mine. 2. No such mine is there found to this day. 3. Raleigh in fact found no mine, and in fact, he plundered and burnt a Spanish town. Is it not more probable, therefore, that the latter was his intention? How can the secrets of his breast be rendered so visible as to counterpoise certain facts? 4. He confesses, in his letter to lord Carew, that though he knew it, yet he concealed from the king the settlement of the Spaniards on that coast. Does not this fact alone render him sufficiently criminal? 5. His commission empowers him only to settle on a coast possessed by savage and barbarous inhabitants. Was it not the most evident breach of orders to disembark on a coast possessed by Spaniards? 6. His orders to Keymis, when he sent him up the river, are contained in his own apology, and from them it appears, that he knew (what was unavoidable) that the Spaniards would resist, and would oppose the English landing and taking possession of the country. His intentions, therefore, were hostile from the beginning. 7. Without provocation, and even when at a distance, he gave Keymis orders to dislodge the Spaniards from their own town. Could any enterprise be more hostile? And considering the Spaniards as allies to the nation, could any enterprise be more criminal? Was he not the aggressor, even though it should be true that the Spaniards fired upon his men at landing? It is said, he killed three or four hundred of them. Is that so light a matter? 8. In his letter to the king, and in his apology, he grounds his defence on former hostilities exercised by the Spaniards against other companies of Englishmen. These are accounted for by the ambiguity of the treaty between the nations. And it is plain, that though these might possibly be reasons for the king's declaring war against that nation, they could never entitle Raleigh to declare war, and without any commission, or contrary to his commission, to invade the Spanish settlements. He pretends indeed that peace was never made with Spain in the Indies; a most absurd notion! The chief hurt which the Spaniards could receive from England was in the Indies; and they never would have made peace at all, if hostilities had been still to be continued on these settlements. By secret agreement, the English were still allowed to support the Dutch, even after the treaty of peace. If they had also been allowed to invade the Spanish settlements, the treaty had been a full peace to England, while the Spaniards were still exposed to the full effects of war. 9. If the claim to the property of that country, as first discoverers, was good, in opposition to present settlement, as Raleigh pretends; why was it not laid before the king with all its circumstances, and submitted to his judgment? 10. Raleigh's force is acknowledged by himself to have been insufficient to support him in the possession of St. Thomas, against the power of which Spain was master on that coast; yet it was sufficient, as he owns, to take by surprise, and plunder twenty towns. It was not therefore his design to settle, but to plunder. By these confessions, which I have here brought together, he plainly betrays himself. 11. Why did he not stay and work Raleigh's Raleigh, finding his fate inevitable, collected execution. all his courage, and though he had formerly his mine, as at first he projected? He apprehended that the Spaniards would be upon him with a greater force. But before he left England, he knew that this must be the case, if he invaded any part of the Spanish colonies. His intention therefore never was to settle, but only to plunder. 12. He acknowledges that he knew neither the depth nor riches of the mine, but only that there was some ore there. Would he have ventured, all his fortune and credit on so precarious a foundation? 13. Would the other adventurers, if made acquainted with this, have risked every thing to attend him? Ought a fleet to have been equipped for an experiment? Was there not plainly an imposture in the management of this affair? 14. He says to Keymis, in his orders, Bring but a basketful of ore, and it will satisfy the king that my project was not imaginary. This was easily done from the Spanish mines; and he seems to have been chiefly displeased at Keymis for not attempting it. Such a view was a premeditated apology to cover his cheat. 15. The king in his declaration imputes it to Raleigh, that as soon as he was at sea, he immediately fell into such uncertain and doubtful talk of his mine, and said, that it would be sufficient if he brought home a basketful of ore. From the circumstances last mentioned, it appears that this imputation was not without reason. 16. There are many other circumstances of great weight in the king's declaration; that Raleigh, when he fell down to Plymouth, took no pioneers with him, which he always declared to be his intention; that he was nowise provided with instruments for working a mine, but had a sufficient stock of warlike stores; that young Raleigh, in attacking the Spaniards, employed the words which, in the narration, I have put in his mouth; that the mine was moveable, and shifted as he saw convenient: not to mention many other public facts which prove him to have been highly criminal against his companions as well as his country. Howel, in his letters, says, that there lived in London, in 1645, an officer, a man of honour, who asserted, that he heard young Raleigh speak these words, vol. 2.letter 63. That was a time when there was no interest in maintaining such a fact. 17. Raleigh's account of his first voyage to Guiana proves him to have been a man capable of the most extravagant credulity or most impudent imposture. So ridiculous are the stories which he tells of the inca's chimerical empire in the midst of Guiana; the rich city of El Dorado, or Manao, two days' journey in length, and shining with gold and silver; the old Peruvian prophecies in favour of the English, who, he says, were expressly named as the deliverers of that country, long before any European had ever touched there; the Amazons, or republic of women; and in general, the vast and incredible riches which he saw on that continent, where nobody has yet found any treasures! This whole narrative is a proof that he was extremely defective either in solid understanding, or morals, or both. No man's character indeed seems ever to have been carried to such extremes as Raleigh's, by the opposite passions of envy and pity. In the former part of his life, when he was active, and lived in the world, and was probably best known, he was the object of universal hatred and detestation throughout England; and the latter part, when shut up in prison, he became, much more unreasonably, the object of great love and admiration. As to the circumstances of the narrative, that Raleigh's pardon was refused him, that his former sentence was purposely kept in force against him, that he went out under these express conditions, they may be supported by the following authorities: 1. The king's word and that of six privy-counsellors, who affirm it for fact. 2. The nature of the thing. If no suspicion had been entertained of his intentions, a pardon would never have been refused to a man to whom authority was intrusted. 3. The words of the commission itself, where he is simply styled sir Walter Raleigh, and not faithful and well-beloved, according to the usual and never-failing style on such occasions. 4. In all the letters which he wrote home to sir Ralph Winwood and to his own wife, he always considers himself as a person unpardoned and liable to the law. He seems indeed, immediately upon the failure of his enterprise, to have become desperate, and to have expected the fate which he met with. It is pretended, that the king gave intelligence to the Spaniards of Raleigh's project; as if he had needed to lay a plot for destroying a man, whose life had been fourteen years, and still was, in his power. The Spaniards wanted no other intelligence to be on their guard, than the known and public fact of Raleigh's made use of many mean artifices, such as feigning madness, sickness, and a variety of diseases, in order to protract his examination and procure his escape, he now resolved to act his part with bravery and resolution. 'Tis a sharp remedy, he said, but a sure one for all ills, when he felt the edge of the axe by which he was to be beheaded.' His harangue to the people was calm and eloquent; and he endeavoured to revenge himself, and to load his enemies with the public hatred, by strong asseverations of facts, which, to say the least, may be esteemed very doubtful." With the utmost indifference he laid his head upon the block, and received the fatal blow (Oct. 29); and in his death there appeared the same great, but ill-regulated mind, which during his life, had displayed itself in all his conduct and behaviour. No measure of James's reign was attended with more public dissatisfaction than the punishment of sir Walter Raleigh. To execute a sentence which was originally so hard, which had been so long suspended, and which seemed to have been tacitly pardoned, by conferring on him a new trust and commission, was deemed an inarmament. And there was no reason why the king should conceal from them the project of a settlement, which Raleigh pretended, and the king believed, to be entirely innocent. The king's chief blame seems to have lain in his negligence, in allowing Raleigh to depart without a more exact scrutiny: but for this he apologizes by saying, that sureties were required for the good behaviour of Raleigh and all his associates in the enterprise, but that they gave in bonds for each other; a cheat which was not perceived till they had sailed, and which increased the suspicion of bad intentions. Perhaps the king ought also to have granted Raleigh a pardon for his old treason, and to have tried him anew for his new offences. His punishment in that case would not only have been just, but conducted in a just and unexceptionable manner. But we are told that a ridiculous opinion at that time prevailed in the nation (and it is plainly supposed by sir Walter in his apology), that, by treaty, war was allowed with the Spaniards in the Indies, though peace was made in Europe; and while that notion took place, no jury would have found Raleigh guilty. So that had not the king punished him upon the old sentence, the Spaniards would have had a just cause of complaint against the king sufficient to have produced a war, at least to have destroyed all cordiality between the nations. This explication I thought necessary, in order to clear up the story of Raleigh; which, though very obvious, is generally mistaken in so gross a manner, that I scarcely know its parallel in the English history. 1 Franklyn, p. 32. m He asserted, in the most solemn manner, that he had nowise contributed to Essex's death: but the last letter in Murden's Collection contains the strongest proof of the contrary. stance of cruelty and injustice. To sacrifice, to a concealed enemy of England, the life of the only man in the nation who had a high reputation for valour and military experience, was regarded as meanness and indiscretion and the intimate connexions which the king was now entering into with Spain, being universally distasteful, rendered this proof of his complaisance still more invidious and unpopular. James had entertained an opinion, which was peculiar to himself, and which had been adopted by none of his predecessors, that any alliance, below that of a great king, was unworthy of a prince of Wales; and he never would allow any princess but a daughter of France or Spain to be mentioned as a match for his son." This instance of pride, which really implies meanness, as if he could receive honour from any alliance, was so well known, that Spain had founded on it the hopes of governing, in the most important transactions, this monarch, so little celebrated for politics or prudence. During the life of Henry, the king of Spain had dropped some hints of bestowing on that prince his eldest daughter, whom he afterward disposed of in marriage to the young king of France, Lewis XIII. At that time the views of the Spaniards were to engage James into a neutrality with regard to the succession of Cleves, which was disputed between the Protestant and Popish line: but the bait did not then take; and James, in consequence of his alliance with the Dutch, and with Henry IV. of France, marched four thousand men, under the command of sir Edward Cecil, who joined these two powers, and put the marquis of Brandenburgh and the palatine of Newbourg in possession of that dutchy. Gondomar was, at this time, the Spanish ambassador in England; a man whose flattery was the more artful, because covered with the appearance of frankness and n Kennet, p. 703. 748. • Rushworth, vol. 1. p. 2. P 1610. sincerity; whose politics were the more dangerous, because disguised under the mask of mirth and pleasantry. He now made offer of the second daughter of Spain to prince Charles; and, that he might render the temptation irresistible to the necessitous monarch, he gave hopes of an immense fortune, which should attend the princess. The court of Spain, though determined to contract no alliance with a heretic, entered into negotiation with James, which they artfully protracted, and, amidst every disappointment, they still redoubled his hopes of success. The transactions in Germany, so important to the Austrian greatness, became every day a new motive for this duplicity of conduct. Insurrec Bohemia. In that great revolution of manners which tions in happened during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the only nations who had the honourable though often melancholy advantage, of making an effort for their expiring privileges were such as, together with the principles of civil liberty, were animated with a zeal for religious parties and opinions. Besides the irresistible force of standing armies, the European princes possessed this advantage, that they were descended from the ancient royal families; that they continued the same appellations of magistrates, the same appearance of civil government; and, restraining themselves by all the forms of legal administration, could insensibly impose the yoke on their unguarded subjects. Even the German nations, who formerly broke the Roman chains, and restored liberty to mankind, now lost their own liberty, and saw with grief the absolute authority of their princes firmly established among them. In their circumstances, nothing but a pious zeal, which disregards all motives of human prudence, could have made them entertain hopes of preserving any longer |