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  SIR WALTER RALEGH

  _STEBBING_




  HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

  PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

  [Illustration]

  LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK




  [Illustration: SIR WALTER RALEGH
    _From the Duke of Rutland's Miniature_]




  SIR WALTER RALEGH

  A Biography

  By

  WILLIAM STEBBING, M.A.

  FORMERLY FELLOW OF WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD
  AUTHOR OF
  'SOME VERDICTS OF HISTORY REVIEWED'


  _REISSUE_

  _WITH A FRONTISPIECE AND A LIST OF AUTHORITIES_


  Oxford
  AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
  1899




  Oxford

  PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

  BY HORACE HART, M.A.
  PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY




  CONTENTS

                                                      PAGE

           PREFACE                                     vii

           LIST OF AUTHORITIES                        xiii

           CORRIGENDA                                xxvii

     CHAP.

        I. GENEALOGY                                     1

       II. IN SEARCH OF A CAREER (1552-1581)             6

      III. ROYAL FAVOUR (1581-1582)                     22

       IV. OFFICES AND ENDOWMENTS (1582-1587)           32

        V. VIRGINIA (1583-1587)                         42

       VI. PATRON AND COURTIER (1583-1590)              53

      VII. ESSEX. THE ARMADA (1587-1589)                60

     VIII. THE POET (1589-1593)                         69

       IX. THE REVENGE (September, 1591)                82

        X. IN THE TOWER. THE GREAT CARACK (1592)        88

       XI. AT HOME; AND IN PARLIAMENT (1592-1594)      100

      XII. GUIANA (1594-1595)                          108

     XIII. CADIZ. THE ISLANDS VOYAGE (1596-1597)       125

      XIV. FINAL FEUD WITH ESSEX (1597-1601)           141

       XV. THE ZENITH (1601-1603)                      155

      XVI. COBHAM AND CECIL (1601-1603)                168

     XVII. THE FALL (April-June, 1603)                 180

    XVIII. AWAITING TRIAL (July-November, 1603)        186

      XIX. THE TRIAL (November 17)                     207

       XX. ITS JUSTICE AND EQUITY                      222

      XXI. REPRIEVE (December 10, 1603)                232

     XXII. A PRISONER (1604-1612)                      241

    XXIII. SCIENCE AND LITERATURE (1604-1615)          265

     XXIV. THE RELEASE (March, 1616)                   287

      XXV. PREPARING FOR GUIANA (1616-1617)            298

     XXVI. THE EXPEDITION (May, 1617-June, 1618)       313

    XXVII. RETURN TO THE TOWER (June-August, 1618)     331

   XXVIII. A MORAL RACK (August 10-October 15)         343

     XXIX. A SUBSTITUTE FOR A TRIAL (October 22, 1618) 359

      XXX. RALEGH'S TRIUMPH (October 28-29, 1618)      371

     XXXI. SPOILS AND PENALTIES                        380

    XXXII. CONTEMPORARY AND FINAL JUDGMENTS            394

           INDEX                                       401




PREFACE


Students of Ralegh's career cannot complain of a dearth of materials.
For thirty-seven years he lived in the full glare of publicity. The
social and political literature of more than a generation abounds in
allusions to him. He appears and reappears continually in the
correspondence of Burleigh, Robert Cecil, Christopher Hatton, Essex,
Anthony Bacon, Henry Sidney, Richard Boyle, Ralph Winwood, Dudley
Carleton, George Carew, Henry Howard, and King James. His is a very
familiar name in the Calendars of Domestic State Papers. It holds its
place in the archives of Venice and Simancas. No family muniment room
can be explored without traces of him. Successive reports of the
Historical Manuscripts Commission testify to the vigilance with which
his doings were noted. No personage in two reigns was more a centre for
anecdotes and fables. They were eagerly imbibed, treasured, and
circulated alike by contemporary, or all but contemporary, statesmen and
wits, and by the feeblest scandal-mongers. A list comprising the names
of Francis Bacon, Sir John Harington, Sir Robert Naunton, Drummond of
Hawthornden, Thomas Fuller, Sir Anthony Welldon, Bishop Goodman, Francis
Osborn, Sir Edward Peyton, Sir Henry Wotton, John Aubrey, Sir William
Sanderson, David Lloyd, and James Howell, is far from exhausting the
number of the very miscellaneous purveyors and chroniclers.

Antiquaries, from the days of John Hooker of Exeter, the continuer of
Holinshed, Sir William Pole, Anthony a Wood, and John Prince, to those
of Lysons, Polwhele, Isaac D'Israeli, Payne Collier, and Dr. Brushfield,
have found boundless hunting-ground in his habits, acts, and motives.
Sir John Hawles, Mr. Justice Foster, David Jardine, Lord Campbell, and
Spedding have discussed the technical justice of his trials and
sentences. No historian, from Camden and de Thou, to Hume, Lingard,
Hallam, and Gardiner, has been able to abstain from debating his merits
and demerits. From his own age to the present the fascination of his
career, and at once the copiousness of information on it, and its
mysteries, have attracted a multitude of commentators. His character has
been repeatedly analysed by essayists, subtle as Macvey Napier, eloquent
as Charles Kingsley. There has been no more favourite theme for
biographers. Since the earliest and trivial account compiled by William
Winstanley in 1660, followed by the anonymous and tolerably industrious
narrative attributed variously to John, Benjamin, and James, Shirley in
1677, and Lewis Theobald's meagre sketch in 1719, a dozen or more lives
with larger pretensions to critical research have been printed, by
William Oldys in 1736, Thomas Birch in 1751, Arthur Cayley in 1805, Sir
Samuel Egerton Brydges in 1813, Mrs. A.T. Thomson in 1830, Patrick
Fraser Tytler in 1833, Robert Southey in 1837, Sir Robert Hermann
Schomburgk in 1848, C. Whitehead in 1854, S.G. Drake, of Boston, U.S.,
in 1862, J.A. St. John in 1868, Edward Edwards in the same year, Mrs.
Creighton in 1877, and Edmund Gosse in 1886.

Almost every one of this numerous company, down even to bookmaking
Winstanley the barber, has shed light, much or little, upon dark
recesses. By four, Oldys, Cayley, Tytler, and Edwards, the whole
learning of the subject, so far as it was for their respective periods
available, must be admitted to have been most diligently accumulated.
Yet it will scarcely be denied that there has always been room for a new
presentment of Ralegh's personality. That the want has remained
unsatisfied after all the efforts made to supply it is to be imputed
less to defects in the writers, than to the intrinsic difficulties of
the subject. Ralegh's multifarious activity, with the width of the area
in which it operated, is itself a disturbing element. It is confusing
for a biographer to be required to keep at once independent and in
unison the poet, statesman, courtier, schemer, patriot, soldier, sailor,
freebooter, discoverer, colonist, castle-builder, historian,
philosopher, chemist, prisoner, and visionary. The variety of Ralegh's
powers and tendencies, and of their exercise, is the distinctive note of
him, and of the epoch which needed, fashioned, and used him. A whole
band of faculties stood ready in him at any moment for action. Several
generally were at work simultaneously. For the man to be properly
visible, he should be shown flashing from more facets than a brilliant.
Few are the pens which can vividly reflect versatility like his. The
temptation to diffuseness and irrelevancy is as embarrassing and
dangerous. At every turn Ralegh's restless vitality involved him in a
web of other men's fortunes, and in national crises. A biographer is
constantly being beguiled into describing an era as well as its
representative, into writing history instead of a life. Within an
author's legitimate province the perplexities are numberless and
distracting. Never surely was there a career more beset with insoluble
riddles and unmanageable dilemmas. At each step, in the relation of the
most ordinary incidents, exactness of dates, or precision of events,
appears unattainable. Fiction is ever elbowing fact, so that it might be
supposed contemporaries had with one accord been conspiring to disguise
the truth from posterity. The uncertainty is deepened tenfold when
motives have to be measured and appraised. Ralegh was the best hated
personage in the kingdom. On a conscientious biographer is laid the
burden of allowing just enough, and not too much, for the gall of
private, political, and popular enmity. He is equally bound to remember
and account, often on the adverse side, for inherent contradictions in
his hero's own moral nature. While he knows it would be absurdly unjust
to accept the verdict of Ralegh's jealous and envious world on his
intentions, he has to beware of construing malicious persecution as
equivalent to proof of angelic innocence.

One main duty of a biographer of Ralegh is to be strenuously on the
guard against degenerating into an apologist. But, above all, he ought
to be versed in the art of standing aside. While explanations of
obscurities must necessarily be offered, readers should be put into a
position to judge for themselves of their sufficiency, and to
substitute, if they will, others of their own. Commonly they want not so
much arguments, however unegotistical and dispassionate, as a narrative.
They wish to view and hear Ralegh himself; to attend him on his quick
course from one field of fruitful energy to another; to see him as his
age saw him, in his exuberant vitality; not among the few greatest, but
of all great, Englishmen the most universally capable. They desire
facts, stated as such, simply, in chronological sequence, and, when it
is at all practicable, in the actor's own words, not artificially
carved,, digested, and classified. As for failings and
infirmities, they are more equitable and less liable to unreasonable
disgusts than a biographer is inclined to fancy. They are content that a
great man's faults, real or apparent, should be left to be justified,
excused, or at all events harmonized, in the mass of good and ill.

No biographer of Ralegh need for lack of occupation stray from the
direct path of telling his readers the plain story of an eventful life.
The rightful demands on his resources are enough to absorb the most
plentiful stores of leisure, patience, and self-denial. He should be
willing to spend weeks or months on loosing a knot visible to students
alone, which others have not noticed, and, if they had, would think
might as profitably have been left tied. He should collect, and weigh,
and have the courage to refuse to use, piles of matter which do not
enlighten. He should be prepared to devote years to the search for a
clue to a career with a bewildering capacity for sudden transformation
scenes. He should have the courage, when he has lost the trace, to
acknowledge that he has wandered. He should feel an interest so supreme
in his subject, in its shadows as in its lights, as neither to count the
cost of labour in its service, nor to find affection for the man
incompatible with the condemnation of his errors. Finally, after having
arrived at a clear perception of the true method to be pursued, and ends
to be aimed at, he should be able to recognize how very imperfectly he
has succeeded in acting up to his theory.

                                     W.S.

    LONDON:
  _September_, 1891.




AUTHORITIES


Not a few readers and critics, who have been so kind as to speak
otherwise only too favourably of the book, have intimated that its value
would be increased by references to the authorities.

In compliance with the suggestion, the author now prints the list--a
formidable one. He has drawn it up in a form which, he hopes, may enable
students without much difficulty to trace the sources of the statements
in the text.

The figures in the parentheses () after the title of each authority are
the date of the original edition, where that is not the one cited. The
figures which follow give the date of the edition actually referred to.
The brackets [] after the pages of the _Life_ contain the pages, or
volumes and pages, of the cited works.

  Example--

    D'ISRAELI, ISAAC, _Cur. Lit._
    (1791-1834), date of original edition.
    ed. B. Disraeli, 1849, date of edition referred to.
    79, page of _Life_.
    [iii. 140], volume and page of _Cur. Lit._


  A.

  ARBER, EDWARD, _English Reprints_: p. 83 [No. 29, xiv. 13-22].

  _Archaeologia_ (Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries): pp. 130
    [xxii. 175], 299 [xii. 271], 368 [xliv. 394]. See also Collier, Monson.

  _Ashmolean MSS._ (Bodleian Library): pp. 368 [DCCLXXXVI, fol. 101], 386.

  AUBREY, JOHN, _Letters by Eminent Persons and Lives of Eminent Men_,
    1813: pp. 8, 13, 25, 28, 35, 49, 57, 58, 100, 104, 105, 164, 180, 181,
    192, 209, 249, 273, 282, 283, 300 [ii. 416 and 494, and 509-21].

  _Aulicus Coquinarius_ (published in _Secret History of James I_,
    1811)--'supposed to have been compiled from Bishop Goodman's materials
    by William Sanderson': p. 210 [173].


  B.

  BACON, ANTHONY, Correspondence (_MSS. Tenison_, at Lambeth, and
    Catalogue, _Lambeth Palace MSS._): pp. 89 [Cat. 162], 108 [Cat. 166].

  BACON, FRANCIS, LORD, _Works, Letters, and Life_, ed. James Spedding,
    R.E. Ellis, and D.D. Heath, 1858-1874.

  -- _Apophthegms_: pp. 8 [ii. 163], 89 [ii. 129], 155 [ii. 124], 302
    [ii. 168].

  -- _Life_: pp. 359 [vi. 360-2], 361 [vi. 356, 364-5].

  BAYLEY, JOHN, _History and Antiquities of the Tower of London_, 1821:
    p. 250 [Appendix, vol. ii. ch. x].

  BEATSON, ROBERT, _Political Index to the Histories of Great Britain and
    Ireland_ (1786), 3rd ed. 1806: pp. 35 [i. 448], 108 [i. 448].

  BEAUMONT, CHRISTOPHER DE HARLAY DE, _Lettres a Henri IV_ (transcripts
    by E. Edwards from MSS. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris):
    pp. 182, 195, 201, 227, 237, 239, 240.

  _Biographia Britannica_, 1747-1766 (Art. W. Ralegh): pp. 39, 49.

  BIRCH, REV. THOMAS, D.D., _Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth_, 1754: pp. 89
    [i. 79], 147 [ii. 418].

  -- _Life of Sir Walter Ralegh_ (Oxford ed. of Ralegh's Works): pp. 89
    [i. 593], 300 [i. 613].

  BLACKSTONE, MR. JUSTICE SIR WILLIAM, _Commentaries on the Laws of
    England_ (1765-1769). Revised by Serjeant Henry John Stephen, 3rd
    ed. 1853: p. 285 [ii. 475].

  BOLINGBROKE, HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT ('_The Craftsman_, by Caleb
    D'Anvers, Esq.' 1731-1737. Nos. 160, 163, 164, 175, 274): p. 269.

  BRAY. See Manning.

  BRAYLEY, EDWARD WEDLAKE, and JOHN BRITTON, _History of Surrey_,
    1850: p. 380 [ii. 93-4].

  BRUCE, REV. JOHN, _Correspondence of King James VI of Scotland with
    Sir R. Cecil and others in England_ (Camden Society), 1861: pp. 58
    [67], 148 [Appendix 82-3, 90], 172 [15], 173 [67], 175 [43], 176
    [18-9], 177 [ibid.], 254 [140-60, 219].

  BRUSHFIELD, THOMAS NADAULD, M.D., _Raleghana_ (_Burial-place of
    Walter and Katherine Ralegh_), 1896: p. 5 (Devon Assoc. Trans.
    xxviii. 291-4).

  -- -- (_Birthplace of Sir Walter Ralegh_), 1889: pp. 6, 101 (Devon Assoc.
    Trans. xxi. 319-21).

  -- -- (_Children of_), 1896: p. 197 (Devon Assoc. Trans. xxviii. 310-12).

  -- _London and Suburban Residences of Sir Walter Ralegh:_ pp. 103-5
    (_Western Antiquary_, iv. 82-7, 109-12).

  -- _Bibliography of Sir Walter Ralegh_ (reprinted from _Western
    Antiquary_), 1886: pp. 265-76.

  -- (_Tobacco and Potatoes_): p. 49 (Devon Assoc. Trans. xxx. 158-97).
    _Builder, The_, Sept. 17, 1864: p. 105.

  BULLEN, A.H. (_Poetical Rhapsody_, ed. Francis Davison, 1602), 1890:
    pp. 78 [i. 116, and Introd. 83, 84], 79 [i. 28, and Introd. 86].

  BULLEN, A.H. (_England's Helicon_, 1600), 1887: p. 80 [Introd. 22, 23].

  BURGHLEY, WILLIAM CECIL, LORD, _State Papers at Hatfield House_,
    Vol. ii, 1571-1596, ed. Rev. Wm. Murdin: pp. 93 [ii. 657], 95 [ii.
    658], 102 [ii. 675], 152 [ii. 811].


  C.

  _Calendar, Carew MSS._ 1515-1624, Lambeth Palace Library, ed. Rev.
    John S. Brewer and William Bullen, 1868: pp. 38, 49, 71, 91, 126,
    148, 149, 156, 158, 162, 169, 330.

  -- _State Papers_, Domestic Series, Elizabeth and James I, 1585-1618:
    pp. 34, 35, 36, 37, 43, 45, 51, 54, 55, 58, 59, 64, 69, 82, 84, 87, 89,
    96, 98, 101, 102, 117, 125, 134, 135, 142, 146, 147, 164, 169, 180,
    182, 201, 208, 241, 242, 243, 247, 249, 252, 254, 257, 260, 262, 263,
    264, 266, 288, 297, 298, 300, 301, 302, 307, 313, 316, 332, 333, 337,
    346, 347, 348, 349, 352, 358, 366, 369, 372, 375, 381, 384, 385, 386,
    387, 393, 394, 396.

  -- _Venetian State Papers_, 1581-1591: pp. 50, 64.

  CAMDEN, WILLIAM, _Annales, etc. regnante Elizabetha_ (Part I, to 1589,
    1615; Part II, 1627), ed. Thomas Hearne, 1717: pp. 9 [i. 198], 66
    [ii. 574-5], 89 [iii. 697], 109 [iii. 697], 137 [iii. 741-2].

  -- _Annales Regni Jacobi I_: p. 275 [9].

  -- _Epistolae_ (containing in appendix the _Annales Jacobi I_), ed.
    Thomas Smith, 1691: pp. 325 [256], 333 [243].

  CAMPBELL, JOHN, LORD, _Lives of the Chief Justices of England_,
    1849-1857: p. 209 [i. 210-11].

  CAREW, RICHARD, _Survey of Cornwall_ (1602), ed. Lord de Dunstanville,
    1811: p. 168 [xxv-xxvi].

  CARLYLE, THOMAS: p. 279 (see Cromwell).

  CARTE, THOMAS, _General History of England_, 1747-1755: p. 205 [iii.
    719].

  CLARENDON, EDWARD HYDE, FIRST EARL of, _The Difference and
    Disparity between the Estates and Conditions of George, Duke of
    Buckingham, and Robert, Earl of Essex_, 'written by the Earl of
    Clarendon in his younger Dayes' (in _Reliquiae Wottonianae_, 4th ed.
    1685, 185-202): p. 145 [190].

  COKE, SIR EDWARD, _Third Institute_ (1644), 1797: p. 214 [24-5].

  COLLIER, JOHN PAYNE (_Notes and Queries_, 3rd Series, vol. v): pp. 244
    [7], 246 [7].

  -- _Archaeologia_ (Society of Antiquaries) 1852-1853: pp. 11 [xxxiv.
    139], 15 [xxxiv. 139], 21 [xxxiv. 141], 36 [xxxv. 368-71], 42 [xxxiii.
    199, and xxxiv. 151], 89 [xxxiv. 160], 90 [xxxiv. 161], 91 [xxxiv.
    165], 133 [xxxiv. 168], 164 [xxxiv. 163-4], 165 [xxxv. 214], 244
    [xxxv. 217-8], 252 [xxxv. 219-20].

  CORNEY, BOLTON, '_Curiosities of Literature_, by I. D'Israeli, Esq.,
    Illustrated by Bolton Corney, Esq.,' 1837: p. 274.

  COSTELLO, LOUISA STUART, _Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen_, 1844:
    p. 63 [i. 209-10].

  _Cotton. Library MSS._, British Museum: pp. 57 [Galba, C. 9, fol. 157],
    132 [Vespas. C. 13, fol. 290], 149 [Julius, F. 6, p. 433], 272 [Julius,
    C. 3, fol. 311], 316 [Titus, B. 8, fol. 155], 351 [Vitell. C. 17, foll.
    439-40], 373 [Titus, C. 6, fol. 93].

  _Craftsman._ See Bolingbroke.

  CROMWELL, OLIVER, _Letters and Speeches_, ed. Thomas Carlyle, 1870:
    p. 279 [ii. 293].

  -- _Memoirs of the Protector Oliver Cromwell, and of his sons, Richard
    and Henry_, by Oliver Cromwell, Esq. (1820), 3rd ed. 1822: p. 279
    [i. 369-70].


  D.

  _Declaration of the Demeanour and Carriage of Sir Walter Raleigh, as well
    in his Voyage, as in and since his Return_, printed by the King's
    Printers, 1618; reprinted _Harleian Miscellany_, iii, 1809; _Somers
   