In Nichols’s “Progresses,” that mine of information regarding James I., his court and times, it is related that James paid his first visit to the Tower on 3rd May 1603, “when His Majesty set forward from the Charter House and went quietly on horseback to Whitehall where he took barge. Having shot the bridge, his present landing was expected at the Tower stayres, but it pleased His Highness to passe the Towre stairs toward St Katherines, and there stayed on the water to see the ordinance on the White Tower (commonly called Julius Cæsar’s Tower) being in number twenty pieces, with the great ordinance on the Towre wharfe, being in number 100, and chalmers to the number of 130, discharged and shot off. Of which, all services were sufficiently performed by the gunners, that a peale of so good order was never heard before; which was most commendable to all sorts, and very acceptable to the King.”[1]

Owing to the plague then raging in London, the customary procession at the coronation was omitted, although the King rode in state from the Tower to Westminster, preparatory to the opening of his first Parliament on 15th of March 1605, as the Londoners had made their welcome for him ready. In Mr Sidney Lee’s “Life of Shakespeare,” he states that Shakespeare, with eight other players of the King’s company of actors, “walked from the Tower of London to Westminster in the procession which accompanied the King in his formal entry into London. Each actor received four and a half yards of scarlet cloth to wear as a cloak on the occasion, and in the document authorising the grant, Shakespeare’s name stands first on the list.” This is the only time that we can positively know that Shakespeare was ever at the Tower; but his frequent introduction of the fortress into his historical dramas makes it certain that he must often have visited a place so full of dramatic episodes and historical memories.[2]

Four months earlier, while staying at Wilton, news had reached James of a plot to place the crown upon the head of Lady Arabella Stuart, and a large batch of alleged conspirators were taken to the Tower in consequence. Among them was Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Cobham, and his brother, George Brooke, Thomas Lord Grey de Wilton, Sir Griffin Maskham, Sir Edward Parham, Bartholomew Brookesby, Anthony Copley, and two priests named Weston and Clarke. This conspiracy, if it deserves the name, and for which Raleigh was for the second time sent to the Tower, owed its existence to the unlucky Arabella, daughter of Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox, younger brother of Darnley, and consequently James’s first cousin on the mother’s side.

Arabella Stuart was also related to the Tudors, and this double relationship to the reigning sovereign and to the late Queen was her greatest misfortune, and the cause of her untimely death. She appears to have been amiable, refined, virtuous, and good-looking, but of a somewhat frail physique and countenance, to judge by the excellent miniature which Oliver painted of her. That her mind was not a strong one is very evident, and one cannot be surprised that she became insane under the burden of her misfortunes.

Lady Arabella was made use of as a tool by James’s enemies, and at Lord Cobham’s trial it was conclusively proved that she had no share in any of the schemes which had the placing of herself on the throne for their object. Had it not been for her unfortunate marriage she would probably have ended her life in peaceful obscurity. This unhappy lady disliked the life of a court, and had lived principally with her grandmother, old Lady Shrewsbury, “Bess of Hardwicke,” as that much-married and firm-minded dame was nicknamed, in her beautiful homes of Chatsworth and Hardwicke Hall, in Derbyshire. In the last year of Elizabeth’s reign, Arabella, whose hand had been asked in marriage by many suitors, and amongst them by Henry IV. of France, and the Archduke Mathias, met, and fell in love with William Seymour, grandson of the Earl of Hertford, and had been kept in close confinement by the Queen in consequence.

The plot to place Lady Arabella on the throne was regarded as dangerous by the court, owing to James’s unpopularity, which was not surprising, for at that time everything Scottish was cordially detested by the English. The Scotch had been as inimical to us as either the French or the Spaniards, and for a far longer period, whilst the Scottish alliance with France had added still more to the national dislike. Neither was the new King’s appearance one to win the admiration of his new subjects, for a more ungainly individual had surely never appeared out of a booth at a fair. The English were as susceptible then, as they are now, to the outward appearance of their rulers, and even Henry VIII., for all his tyranny and cruelty, was popular among the people on account of his fine presence; and when Elizabeth appeared in public, all aglow with splendour, her lieges shouted themselves hoarse with delight, and worshipped that “bright occidental effulgence.” What a contrast to these was James Stuart. With his huge head, and padded shanks, his great tongue lolling from out his mouth, his goggle eyes, and rolling gait, and the incomprehensible, to English ears, jargon of Lowland Scotch which he spoke, his was not a very kingly figure, and he made anything but a favourable impression upon his new subjects. It appears that Raleigh, at the time of James’s arrival, let fall some remarks which were repeated to the King, to the effect that it would be well not to allow the Scottish locusts to eat too much of the Southern pastures. It has been supposed that Raleigh, at a meeting at Whitehall, proposed to found a republic, and Aubrey, a contemporary writer, even gives his words, “Let us keep the staff in our own hands, and set up a commonwealth, and not remain subject to a needy beggarly nation.” Raleigh met the King for the first time at Burleigh, when James, who prided himself on his wit, said to Sir Walter, that he thought but “rawly” of him; it is a vile pun, but is interesting as showing the way in which his contemporaries pronounced Raleigh’s name.

Cecil, who had brought Essex to the scaffold, now lost no time in bringing Raleigh, Essex’s rival, to the Tower, and on the 20th of July 1603, the prison gates of that fortress once again closed upon the founder of Virginia, on a charge of treason, based on the Arabella Stuart conspiracy, nor did they open for him until twelve years had passed. On the following day Raleigh attempted to stab himself with a table-knife, for he seems to have been maddened by his treatment by James and Cecil. In November the plague was so violent in London, that the Law Courts were transferred to Winchester, and it was to that city that Sir Walter and his fellow-prisoners were taken and tried on a charge of “attempting to deprive the King of his crown and dignity; to molest the Government, and alter the true religion established in England, and to levy war against the King.”

George Brooke, a brother of Lord Cobham’s, and two priests were found guilty and executed, Lords Grey de Wilton, Cobham, and Raleigh were respited, and were taken back to their prison in the Tower. Cobham never regained his liberty, he was a ruined man, and died probably in the Tower. The place of his burial is unknown.

The de Cobhams were an early family of importance in the twelfth century, and from the thirteenth to the sixteenth one of the most powerful in the south of England. Henry de Cobham was summoned to Parliament in 1313. The direct line ended in Joan de Cobham, who married five times; her third husband was Sir John Oldcastle, commonly called Lord Cobham, jure uxoris, but inaccurately, for he was summoned to Parliament under his own name, Oldcastle.

In descent from Joan was Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, attainted first of James the First. He was born 1564, and succeeded to the title 1596–7, and shortly after installed Knight of the Garter. He married Francis Howard, daughter of the Earl of Nottingham, and widow of the Earl of Kildare. He was committed to the Tower December 16th, 1603, tried, and condemned to death, and actually brought out to be executed, but had been privately reprieved beforehand by James the First, who played with Cobham and Gray, and their companions, as a cat would with mice. After fifteen years’ rigorous confinement in the Tower, his health failed, and he was allowed out, attended by his gaolers, to visit Bath. This was in 1617, and was taken so ill on his way back he had to stay at Odiham, Hants, at the house of his brother-in-law, Sir Edward Moore. He died, with very little doubt, in the Tower, January 24th, 1619, but the place of his burial has been undiscovered. He had been well supplied with books, for the Lieutenant of the Tower seized a thousand volumes at the time of his death of “all learning and languages.” In a letter from Sir Thomas Wynne to Sir Dudley Carlton (State Papers, Dom Jac, 1st vol., 105), 28th of January 1619, occurs this passage: “My Lord Cobham is dead, and lyeth unburied as yet for want of money; he died a papist.” This probably was only gossip. While in the Tower he was allowed eight pounds a week for maintenance, but very little of this ever reached him, it probably was absorbed by his keepers and the Lieutenant. During his long imprisonment Lady Kildare never troubled herself further about him. She lived comfortably, first at Cobham, and afterwards at Copthall, Essex.

By the will of George, Lord Cobham, 1552, the Cobham estates, by an elaborate settlement, were strictly entailed, so that Henry, Lord Cobham, only had a life interest, and the King could not seize them; and probably it was to that fact he owed his life, for the King could possess them during his life, but not alienate them.

Unfortunately, the next heir was the son of George Brooke, executed for treason at Winchester, Lord Cobham’s brother, who, at the time of his uncle’s death, was an infant of tender age, and without friends, so negotiations were carried on with the next in succession, Duke Brooke, a cousin of Lord Cobham’s, and this man parted with his prospective rights to the King for about £10,000, which enabled this “specimen of King craft” to enter into possession. Duke Brooke, dying soon after, Charles Brooke, his brother, parted with several other manors to Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. None of these transactions were legal; Henry, Lord Cobham, was not dead, nor the children of George Brooke, William, and his two sisters, Frances and Elizabeth. For some reason they were “restored in blood,” but with the express proviso they should not inherit any of the property of their fathers or their uncles; nor was William to take the title of Lord Cobham. And this was all done with the connivance of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, brother-in-law to Henry, Lord Cobham. No wonder William Brooke became a devoted Parliamentarian in the next reign, and died fighting against the King at Newbury, 1643. Many letters of Henry Brooke have been preserved while in the Tower: “To my very good Lord and Brother-in-law, Lord Burleigh.” He must both have been clever and learned, for during his captivity he translated Seneca’s treatises, De Providentia, De Ira, De Tranquilitate, De Vita Beata, and De Paupertate: the original manuscript of one, De Providentia, is in the library at Ufford Place, Suffolk, the seat of his representative, Edward Brooke, Esq., written in a beautifully fine hand. Raleigh and Cobham’s “treason” was that known as the Main or Spanish Treason, one of the supposed objects of which was to place the Lady Arabella Stuart on the throne.

Lord Grey de Wilton, a young man of great promise, died in St Thomas’s Tower in 1617, after passing nine years in the Brick Tower. Lord Grey had made an eloquent defence during his trial, which lasted from eight in the morning until eight at night, during which, according to the Hardwicke State Papers, many “subtle traverses and escapes,” took place. When Grey was asked why judgment of death should not be passed against him, he replied, “I have nothing to say.” Then he paused a little, and added, “And yet a word of Tacitus comes into my mind, ‘non eadem omnibus decora,’ the house of the Wiltons have spent many lives in their Princes’ service and Grey cannot beg his.”

For the next twelve years the Tower was Raleigh’s home, and not till he had succeeded in bribing King James’s favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, by the payment of a large sum of money, did he again obtain his liberty. Before settling down in the Tower, and while the plague was still raging, Raleigh, with his wife and son, were taken to the Fleet Prison on several occasions. At length they were placed in the not uncomfortable rooms in the Bloody Tower, which he, with his family and servants, must have quite filled, for besides Lady Raleigh and her son Carew, there were two servants named Dean and Talbot, and a boy, who was probably a son of Talbot’s. Their imprisonment was not absolutely rigid, for they were allowed the visits of a clergyman named Hawthorne, a doctor, Turner, and a surgeon, Dr John, as well as those of Sir Walter’s agent, who came up from Raleigh’s place, Sherborn, so that he was kept in touch with his affairs; one or two other friends were also admitted. In addition to these privileges Sir Walter was allowed the run—the liberty as it would be called then—of the Lieutenant of the Tower’s garden, which lay at the foot of the Bloody Tower, as has already been mentioned in the description of that place.

In 1604 the penal laws against the Roman Catholics were re-enacted by Parliament, and in the following year the famous Gunpowder Plot was discovered, with the consequence that in the month of November of that year the Tower received many of the principal conspirators, and still more of those individuals who were in some way or other concerned in it. Foremost amongst the latter were the aged Earl of Northumberland, Henry Percy, and with him were Henry, Lord Mordaunt, Lord Stourton, and three Jesuit priests, Fathers Garnet, Oldcorn, and Gerrard. Northumberland, besides having to pay an enormous fine, was kept a prisoner in the Tower for sixteen years; Mordaunt and Stourton were also heavily fined and remanded to the fortress during the King’s pleasure; Fathers Garnet and Oldcorn were hanged—the former at St Paul’s, in the usual manner, after being cruelly tortured, the latter at Worcester. As for the third priest, Gerrard, I have in another part of this work described the treatment he endured and his escape from the Tower.

Of the active conspirators, besides Guy Fawkes—who was executed with Thomas Winter, Rookwood, and Keyes in Old Palace Yard—Sir Everard Digby, the father of the accomplished Sir Kenelm, Robert Winter, Grant, and Bates, were drawn on hurdles to the west end of St Paul’s Churchyard, where they were done to death in the approved fashion of execution for high treason.

Guy Fawkes and most of his fellow-prisoners while in the Tower had been placed in the subterranean dungeons beneath the White Tower. Fawkes, besides being tortured by the rack, was placed in “Little Ease,” in which horrible hole he is supposed to have been kept for fifty days. Father Oldcorn was imprisoned in the lower room of the Bloody Tower, whilst Father Fisher was in the White Tower; Northumberland, the “Wizard Earl,” as he was called on account of his leaning towards chemical experiments, was lodged in the Martin Tower.

Until the month of August in that year (1605), Sir Walter Raleigh’s imprisonment in the Bloody Tower had not been very stringent. Sir George Harvey had filled the position of Lieutenant of the Tower, and Sir George and Sir Walter were on friendly terms. His lodging, for a prison, was comfortable enough; his wife and son were still with him, Lady Raleigh having been confined of a second son about this time. In addition to the attendance of his servants and the visits of his friends, as I have mentioned before, he was allowed to have all the books he required for the great literary labour that now began to occupy much of his time. When not working in his little garden by the Tower, or experimenting with his chemicals and decoctions in a small outbuilding which he had built in the garden, or taking exercise on the wall terrace which overlooked the wharf and the river beyond, he would be writing at his “History of the World,” that wonderful fragment which is one of the marvels of our literature.

Unfortunately for Sir Walter, his friend Sir George Harvey, with whom he often dined and passed the evening, ceased being Lieutenant at this time, being succeeded by Sir William Waad. Raleigh’s feelings towards the new Lieutenant appear to have resembled those of Napoleon to Sir Hudson Lowe. Waad, who had been Clerk of the Council, on his side seems to have had a personal dislike to the great captive over whom he was placed in charge, and to have done all he could—and he had the power of doing a great deal—to render Raleigh’s life as unpleasant and galling as possible. For instance, Waad ordered a brick wall to be built in front of the terrace where Raleigh walked, so that the captive could no longer watch the passing life beneath him on the wharf or river. Then Waad complained to Cecil of Raleigh making himself too conspicuous to the people who passed beneath the Bloody Tower, and, not content with annoying Sir Walter, pestered Lady Raleigh, and deprived her of the poor satisfaction of driving her coach into the courtyard of the fortress, a privilege that had hitherto been allowed her. In these and many other petty ways the new Lieutenant contrived to make himself as unpleasant as he possibly could to Raleigh and his wife.

During the alarm consequent upon the Gunpowder Plot, Raleigh was examined by the Council, probably in the Lieutenant’s, now the King’s House, but naturally nothing could be found to implicate him with the conspiracy, and the King had to bide his time before he could bring his great subject to the block. In 1610, for some unknown reason, Sir Walter was kept a close prisoner in his tower for three months, and Lady Raleigh was taken from him.

In Disraeli’s “Amenities of Literature” is the following interesting description of those friends of Sir Walter who shared his pursuits and studies in the Tower:—

“A circumstance as remarkable as the work itself” (“History of the World”) “occurred in the author’s long imprisonment. By one of the strange coincidences in human affairs, it happened that in the Tower Raleigh was surrounded by the highest literary and scientific circle in the nation. Henry, the ninth Earl of Northumberland, on the suspicion of having favoured his relation Piercy, the Gunpowder Plot conspirator, was cast into this State prison, and confined during many years. This Earl delighted in what Anthony Wood describes as ‘the obscure parts of learning.’ He was a magnificent Mecaenas, and not only pensioned scientific men, but daily assembled them at his table, and in these intellectual communions, participating in their pursuits, he passed his life. His learned society was designated as ‘the Atlantis of the Northumberland world’! But that world had other inhabitants, antiquaries and astrologers, chemists and naturalists. There was seen Thomas Allen, another Roger Bacon, ‘terrible and tho’ vulgar,’ famed for his ‘Bibliotheca Alleniana,’ a rich collection of manuscripts, most of which have been preserved in the Bodleian; the name of Allen survives in the ardent commemorations of Camden, of Spelman, and of Selden. He was accompanied by his friend Doctor Dee, but whether Dee ever tried their patience or their wonder by his ‘Diary of Conferences with Spirits’ we find no record, and by the astronomical Torporley, a disciple of Lucretius, for his philosophy consisted of stones; several of his manuscripts remain in Sion College. The muster-roll is too long to run over. In this galaxy of the learned the brightest star was Thomas Hariot, who merited the distinction of being ‘the Universal Philosopher’; his inventions in algebra Descarte, when in England, silently adopted, but which Dr Wallis afterwards indignantly reclaimed; his skill in interpreting the text of Homer excited the grateful admiration of Chalman when occupied by his version. Bishop Corbet has described

‘Deep Hariot’s mine

In which there is no dross.’

“Two other men, Walter Warner, who is said to have suggested to Harvey the great discovery of the circulation of the blood, and Robert Huer, famed for his ‘Treatise on the Globes’—these, with Hariot, were the Earl’s constant companions; and at a period when science seemed connected with necromancy, the world distinguished the Earl and his three friends as ‘Henry the Wizard and his three Magi.’... Such were the men of science, daily guests in the Tower during the imprisonment of Raleigh; and when he had constructed his laboratory to pursue his chemical experiments, he must have multiplied their wonders. With one he had been intimately connected early in life, Hariot had been his mathematical tutor, was domesticated in his house, and became his confidential agent in the expedition to Virginia. Raleigh had warmly recommended his friend to the Earl of Northumberland, and Sion House became Hariot’s home and observatory.”

The elder Disraeli has argued that Raleigh could not possibly have written the whole of that large tome, “The History of the World,” himself, for want of books of reference whilst in the Tower. But as his friends supplied him with books, and he himself had probably taken copious notes for the work while living in the old home of the Desmonds at Youghal, in Ireland, where a remnant of the old Desmond library is still existing, the argument can scarcely be considered proved. The late Sir John Pope Hennessy has pointed out in his work on “Raleigh in Ireland,” that, by an odd coincidence, the son of the sixteenth Earl of Desmond, whose lands Raleigh held in Ireland, was a fellow-prisoner of Sir Walter’s in the Tower during his first imprisonment in the fortress during Elizabeth’s reign. Desmond died in prison in 1608, and was buried in St Peter’s Chapel. Raleigh had this youth’s sad fate in his mind, it seems, when he wrote from the Tower, “Wee shall be judged as we judge—and be dealt withal as wee deal with others in this life, if wee believe God Himself.”

An almost contemporary historian, Sir Richard Baker, refers to Raleigh’s imprisonment in the following quaint manner:—“He was kept in the Tower, where he had great honour; he spent his time in writing, and had been a happy man if he had never been released.” A strange description, surely, of what is generally understood by the term, “happy man.”

Henry, Prince of Wales, seems to have been the only member of his family who appreciated Sir Walter, frequently visiting him at the Tower. On one of the occasions when he had left him, the young prince remarked to one of his following that no king except his father could keep such a bird in such a cage. The Prince’s mother, Queen Anne, seems also to have shown some interest in Raleigh’s fate, and to have tried to induce her miserable husband to set him free.

In 1611 Arabella Stuart was brought a prisoner into the Tower, and with her, Lady Shrewsbury. When the news of Arabella’s marriage with young William Seymour reached the King, her fate was sealed, for by this marriage the half-captivity in which she had lived was changed into captivity for life; and few of James the First’s evil actions, and they were not a few, were more mean or cowardly than his treatment of his poor kinswoman, Arabella Hertford.

She had never been known to mix in politics, and if she had any ambition, it was the noble ambition of wishing to lead a pure life away from an infamous court. Poor Arabella used to declare that although she was often asked to marry some foreign prince, nothing on earth would induce her to marry any man whom she did not know, or for whom she had no liking.

At Christmastide of 1609, James, hearing a rumour that seemed to point to Arabella being married to some foreign prince, had sent her to the Tower, releasing her when he discovered that his fears were groundless, and giving his consent to her marrying one of his subjects should she wish to do so. Unfortunately, Arabella took advantage of the King’s consent, trusting to his word, but she found to her bitter cost how hollow and false that promise was. In the following February (1610) she plighted her troth to William Seymour, both probably relying upon the Royal word. Whether James had forgotten that Seymour was a probable suitor for Arabella’s hand when he gave his promise cannot be known, but Arabella could not have made a more unlucky choice, as far as she herself was concerned, for the Suffolk claims had been recognised by Act of Parliament; and the same Parliament which had acknowledged James the First could not alter the order of succession, and, consequently, William Seymour being the grandson of Lord Hertford, by his wife, Catharine Grey, was in what was called the “Suffolk Succession.” His marriage to Arabella brought her still nearer to the Crown, and any children born of the marriage would have had a good chance of succeeding to the throne.

The young couple were summoned to appear before the Council, and were charged to give up all thoughts of marriage. But, in spite of King and Council, they were secretly married in the month of May 1611—a month said to be unlucky for marriages. Two months afterwards the news reached the King, and the storm burst over the unlucky lovers. Arabella was sent a prisoner to Lambeth Palace, and her husband to the Tower. From Lambeth Arabella was first removed to the house of Mr Conyers at Highgate, and thence she was to be sent to Durham Castle in charge of the Bishop. At Highgate, however, she fell ill, or pretended to fall ill, and the famous attempt made to escape by herself and her husband took place.

By some means she procured a disguise in the shape of a wig and male attire, with long, yellow riding-boots and a rapier, and thus accoutred, on the 4th of June she rode to Blackwall, where she had hoped to find her husband, but, failing in this, she rowed with a female attendant and a Mr Markham, who had accompanied her from Highgate, to a French vessel lying near Leigh, which took them on board. Seymour, also disguised, escaped from the Tower by following a cart laden with wooden billets. He got away unperceived, and managed to reach a boat waiting for him by the wharf at the Iron Gate, but, on arriving at Leigh, they found the French ship, with Arabella on board, had put out to sea. The weather was against the ship in which Seymour was sailing making Calais, and he had to go on to Ostend, where he disembarked.

Meanwhile, a hue and cry rang out from London. King’s messengers galloped in hot haste from Whitehall to Deptford, and orders arrived at all the southern ports to search all ships and barks that might contain the runaways; a proclamation was issued to arrest the principals and the abettors of their flight. A ship of war was sent over to Calais, and others were despatched along the French coast as far as Flanders to intercept the fugitives. When half-way across the Channel, one of these vessels, named the Adventurer, came in sight of a ship crowding on all sail in order to reach Calais; the wind, meanwhile, had dropped, and further flight was impossible. A boat was lowered from the Adventurer, the crew who manned it being armed to the teeth. A few shots were exchanged, and the flying vessel, which proved to be French, was boarded, and the poor runaway was taken back to the English man-of-war; on board of her Arabella was made a prisoner, and as a prisoner was landed at the Tower, never to leave it again until her luckless body was taken from it for burial at Westminster.

James made as much ado about this attempted escape of the Hertfords as if he had discovered a second Gunpowder Plot. And not only did he have all those who had been concerned in Arabella’s flight seized and imprisoned in the Tower, but kept the Countess of Shrewsbury and the Earl strict prisoners in their house, and ordered the old Earl of Hertford to appear before him.

From all appearances William Seymour showed a lack of courage at this time, not unlike the husband of Lady Catherine Seymour in the last reign, for he remained abroad while the storm with all its fury fell and crushed his young wife. Poor Arabella lingered on in her prison till death released her from her troubles on the 25th of September 1615. She had been kept both in the Belfry Tower and in the Lieutenant’s House, but had lost her reason some time previous to her final release both from durance and the world. Her body was taken in the dead of night to Westminster Abbey, and placed below the coffin of Mary Queen of Scots. Mickle, the author of “Cumnor Hall,” and “There’s nae luck about the house,” is credited with having written the touching ballad on Arabella Stuart, which is included in Evans’s “Old Ballads.”

William Seymour survived Arabella for nearly half-a-century; he married again, his second wife being a sister of the Parliamentary general, the Earl of Essex, the son of Elizabeth’s favourite and victim. In 1660 Seymour became Duke of Somerset, and lived just long enough to welcome Charles II. He had shown far more loyalty to Charles I. than he had done to poor Arabella Stuart.

In 1613, Sir William Waad, to the great delight of Raleigh, as well as of the other prisoners in the Tower, vacated his post as Lieutenant. He had been charged with the theft of the unfortunate Arabella’s jewels, but his dismissal was also connected with a still more tragic story—the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury—a murder which throws a very lurid light upon the doings of James the First’s court and courtiers. Two years before Arabella’s death, the Tower had been the scene of a most foul murder. Scandalous as was the court of James, murder had not yet been associated with it, but in the year 1613 the fate of Sir Thomas Overbury added that dark crime to its other villainies.

Macaulay has compared the court of James the First to that of Nero; it would have been more correct to have likened it to that of the Valois, Henry III. Although it was never proved, there were strong suspicions that the somewhat sudden death of Henry, Prince of Wales, was brought about by poison, and there is no doubt that poison was made use of by James’s courtiers, as the death of Overbury proves. Sir Thomas Overbury was the confidant of the King’s worthless favourite, Robert Carr, a handsome youth who had been brought by James from Scotland in his train, and whom he had knighted in 1607. James had also given Raleigh’s confiscated estates to his favourite two years after making him a knight, and in 1614 created him Lord Rochester and Earl of Somerset, as well as Lord Chamberlain. Overbury belonged to a Gloucestershire family, and had travelled on the Continent, whence he returned what was then called “a finished gentleman.” Overbury and Carr were firm friends, and it was probably on the recommendation of the latter that James knighted Overbury in 1608. When, however, Somerset determined to marry the notoriously improper Lady Frances Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, and the girl-wife of Lord Essex, from whom she was separated, Overbury most strongly persuaded his friend from committing such a rash action. His attitude coming to the knowledge of Lady Frances, she vowed to avenge herself upon Sir Thomas, and carried her threat to its bitter execution. On some frivolous pretext Overbury was sent to the Tower; Lady Somerset, as Lady Frances had become, notwithstanding Overbury’s advice, now determined to rid herself of the man she mostly feared. With the help of a notorious quack, and of a procuress, Mrs Turner, with whom she had been brought up, she set about the task of consummating her revenge. Poison was supplied by Mrs Turner, with which the unfortunate Overbury was slowly killed; but as the drug—it is believed to have been corrosive sublimate—did not act sufficiently quickly, two hired assassins, named Franklin and Lobell, were called in, and stifled the victim with a pillow. Sir William Waad at this time had ceased to be the Lieutenant, through Lady Essex’s influence, and had been succeeded by Sir Gervase Elwes, a creature of Somerset’s, who was not only cognisant of Overbury’s death in the Bloody Tower, where he was confined, but even aided Lady Somerset in her crime. Mrs Turner was the inventor of a peculiar yellow starch which was used for stiffening the ruffs worn at that time; she wore one of these ruffs when she was sentenced to die for her participation in this murder by the Chief-Justice, Sir Edward Coke, and was also hanged in it at Tyburn in March 1615, with the natural consequence that yellow starched ruffs suddenly ceased to be the fashion. Lady Somerset was also tried, and although found guilty of Overbury’s murder, received a pardon from the King, but she and her husband, Somerset, spent six years as prisoners in the Tower, where they occupied the same rooms in the Bloody Tower which shortly before had been tenanted by the wife’s victim. Sir Thomas Overbury was buried in St Peter’s Chapel, his grave lying next to that of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.

Prince Henry’s death in 1612 was a terrible loss to Raleigh. The Queen had already tasted Sir Walter’s famous cordial or elixir, and when her son was given up by the physicians, Anne implored them to try Raleigh’s specific medicine, which, according to its inventor, was safe to cure all diseases save those produced by poison. Henry was already speechless when the elixir was administered to him, but after he had swallowed one or two drops he was able to utter a few words before he expired. What was the nature of this wonderful mixture of Raleigh’s cannot now be ascertained, although Charles II.’s French physician, Le Febre, prepared what was believed to be the actual concoction and wrote a treatise upon it. Some of its ingredients were indeed awful, the flesh of vipers forming one of them, and it speaks much for the strength of James’s Queen that she survived the taking of this terrible physic.

Raleigh had intended dedicating his history to Prince Henry, but after that young Prince’s death he seems to have lost his former zest in the work. There is a story told that he threw part of the manuscript into the fire on hearing that Walter Burr, the publisher of the first edition in 1614, had been a loser by bringing it out. Of that first part Mr Hume, in his “Life of Raleigh,” writes, “The history, as it exists, is probably the greatest work ever produced in captivity, except Don Quixote. The learning contained in it is perfectly encyclopædic. Raleigh had always been a lover and a collector of books, and had doubtless laid out the plan of the work in his mind before his fall. He had near him in the Tower his learned Hariot, who was indefatigable in helping his master. Ben Jonson boasted that he had contributed to the work, and such books or knowledge as could not be obtained or consulted by a prisoner, were made available by scholars like Robert Burhill, by Hughes, Warner, or Hariot. Sir John Hoskyns, a great stylist in his day, would advise with regard to construction, and from many other quarters aid of various sorts was obtained. But, withal, the work is purely Raleigh’s. No student of his fine, flowing, majestic style will admit that any other pen but his can have produced it. The vast learning employed in it is now, for the most part, obsolete, but the human asides where Raleigh’s personality reveals itself, the little bits of incidental autobiography, the witty, apt illustrations, will prevent the work itself from dying. To judge from a remark in the preface, the author intended at a later stage to concentrate his history with that mainly of his own country, and it would seem that the portion of the book published was to a great extent introductory. Great as were his powers and self-confidence, it must have been obvious to him that it would have been impossible for a man of his age (he was in his sixtieth year when he began the work) to complete a history of the whole world on the same scale, the first six books published reaching from the beginning of the world to the end of the second Macedonian war. In any case,” adds Mr Hume, “the book will ever remain a noble fragment of a design, which could only have been conceived by a master-mind.” And who, recalling those mighty lines on death with which Raleigh bids farewell to his great work, but will agree with the above admirable criticism of the work?

“O Eloquent, just and mighty Death! whom none could advise thou hast persuaded: what now none hath dared thou hast done; and whom the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, ambition of man, and covered it over with these two narrow words: ‘Hic Jacet.’” How noble, too, are the introductory lines to Ben Jonson, wherein he commends the serious study of history:

No wonder that James disapproved of such sentiments and said of the “History,” “it is too saucy in censuring the acts of princes.”

To Raleigh, more than to any other of the great Elizabethan heroes, does England owe her mighty earth-embracing dominion. Sir Walter never ceased to urge the expansion of the empire, nor wearied in his efforts to make the English fleet the foremost in all the seas, not only as a check to Spain, but in order that the colonial possessions of the kingdom might be increased; and he, more than any of our great soldier-statesmen deserved those noble lines of Milton: “Those who of thy free Grace didst build up this Brittanick Empire to a glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter islands about her, stay us in this felicitie.”

In 1616 Raleigh was allowed to leave the fortress, but, as I have said before, in order to obtain his liberty he had been obliged to bribe George Villiers and his brother, who had roused James’s cupidity by persuading him that if Raleigh were allowed to lead a fresh expedition to the West Indies, he might return with a great treasure of which James would take the lion’s share. A warrant, dated the 19th of March of this year, was drawn up, giving Raleigh permission to go abroad in order that he might make the necessary arrangements for his voyage. The twelve years of imprisonment had sadly marred and aged the gallant knight, but his spirit was as bold and courageous as ever, and he employed the first days of his liberty in revisiting his old London haunts; many changes must have struck him in the city. In Visscher’s panoramic view of London, taken from Southwark nearly opposite to St Paul’s, a very clear general impression may be gained of the appearance of the English capital in that year of sixteen hundred and sixteen, the year when Shakespeare was dying at Stratford-on-Avon, when Raleigh was on his way to his last journey across the Atlantic, and when Francis Bacon was writing his famous essays in Gray’s Inn. Those quaint, circular, Martello-like buildings in the foreground are the Globe and Swan theatres, with the Bear Garden close by; but the former theatre, in Visscher’s view, is not the one so intimately connected with Shakespeare, for that was burned down in 1613, and the building represented here is the new one erected upon its site. Opposite to the Swan Theatre, on the Surrey side of the river, are Paris Garden Stairs, where was a much frequented ferry, Blackfriars Bridge now spanning the river where this ferry once used to ply. There was also a theatre at Blackfriars, and Shakespeare and his players must often have used the ferry on their way from the Globe Theatre across the river from Blackfriars, where the poet lived. In front is old St Paul’s, towering over all the surrounding buildings and dwarfing the highest; scores of spires and towers break the skyline as the eye follows the panorama towards the west, where stands the former old London Bridge, covered along its sides with picturesque houses. So large and massive are the great blocks of gabled buildings that span the bridge, that it presents the appearance of a little town crossing the river, such as is the Ponte Vecchio at Florence in little. The gates at its ends are covered with men’s heads, stuck all over their roofs like pins upon a pincushion. More steeples and towers crown the opposite bank, and as the eye travels farther eastward it is arrested by the Tower, with its encircling wall, and its river wharf all covered with cannon. The river is alive with vessels of every shape and size, State barges and little pinnaces, great galleons and small craft, appear in all directions, some with, some without sails. Beyond, the distant hills of Middlesex and Essex are dotted with villages and hamlets, whilst on the heights of Highgate cluster a group of windmills. It is a wonderful panorama that the old Dutch artist has handed down to us. Looking at it we see the same scene, the same picture of time-honoured churches and palaces, the noblest river in the world flowing beneath them, and bearing on its shining surface all the pleasure, commerce, industry, and travail of old London, that Shakespeare did, when, standing near his theatre at Bankside, he gazed upon that shifting scene. All is changed now, except the Tower. The great Gothic cathedral of St Paul’s and most of its surrounding churches, whose towers and spires helped to make old London an object of beauty, perished in the great fire which swept over the city fifty years after Visscher drew his panorama. Old London Bridge escaped the fire, and indeed remained until 1834, although the houses clustering over it had been removed at the close of the reign of George II., and the only prominent building in the panorama which Shakespeare or Raleigh would now be able to recognise, could they look across the rivers Styx and Thames, would be the great White Tower with its surrounding lesser towers and battlements. All the rest, like “the baseless fabric of a vision,” has passed away for ever.

But to return to Sir Walter Raleigh. He invested all that remained of his own and his wife’s fortunes in furnishing the expedition to Guiana, which proved so disastrous, on which he now embarked. On his return, a ruined man and a prisoner, he expressed his amazement at having thus in one desperate bid placed his life and all that he possessed in that unlucky venture. But before Raleigh had left England, Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, had told his master, the King of Spain, that Raleigh was a pre-doomed man. For James had not only revealed every detail relating to the Guiana expedition to Gondomar, but on condition that if any subject or property belonging to Spain were touched he had promised to hand over Raleigh to the Spanish Government in order that he might be hanged at Seville. To assure Gondomar of his good faith, James actually showed the ambassador a private letter written him by Raleigh, in which the exact number of his ships, men, and the place where the great silver mine was said to be located on the Orinoco, were all set forth. As the Spaniards claimed the whole of Guiana, it was evident that if Raleigh landed there he must infringe upon the Spanish possessions, and thus place himself, according to James’s promise to Gondomar, in the power of his enemies.

The expedition sailed from England at the end of March 1617, from Plymouth, and consisted of fourteen ships and nine hundred men. But its story was one of continued disaster, and on the 21st of June 1618, writing to his friend Lord Carew, Raleigh gives a detailed account of all his misfortunes. In the postscript he adds: “I beg you will excuse me to my Lords for not writing to them, because want of sleep for fear of being surprised in my cabin at night” (even on his own ship he was a prisoner, the crew having mutinied) “has almost deprived me of sight, and some return of the pleurisy which I had in the Tower has so weakened my hand that I cannot hold the pen.” Sir Walter’s eldest son was killed gallantly fighting in Guiana.

Then followed a miserable time, and on his road to London the hope of life at times impelled him to attempt escape, but he was doomed to drink the bitter cup of his King’s ingratitude to the dregs. On the 10th of August he again entered the Tower where so much of his life had been spent, and which was now to be his last abode on earth.

The next day the Council of State met to decide upon Sir Walter’s fate, and incredible as it seems, it was actually debated whether Raleigh should be handed over to the tender mercies of the Spaniards or executed in London. Surely if what passed on this earth could have been known to Elizabeth, she would have burst her tomb at Westminster to protest against this abomination, this unspeakable shame and disgrace to the name of England.

James was now all impatience to get rid of Raleigh as quickly as possible; he trembled at the threats of Gondomar, and had the sapient monarch not given his word that Raleigh should die? The great difficulty before the Council, however, was to find a pretext for condemning Raleigh to death. Bacon and his colleagues racked their wise brains to invent a cause by which he could be found guilty of high treason. At length the Lord Chief-Justice, Montagu, with a committee of the Council decided that the King should issue a warrant for the re-affirmation of the death sentence given at Winchester in 1603, by which it might be made valid and carried out. Sir Walter pleaded that the King’s commission appointing him head of the Guiana expedition with powers of life and death, invalidated the former sentence and its punishment, both in the eyes of justice and of reason. But Sir Walter was overruled. On the 24th of October the warrant for the execution was signed and sealed by the King, and four days later Sir Walter was taken from the Tower to the King’s Bench. He was then suffering from ague, and having been roused from his sleep very early had not had time to have his now snow-white hair dressed with his usual care. One of his servants noticed this as he was being taken away, and telling him of it, Raleigh answered, smiling, “Let them kem (comb) it that have it,” then he added, “Peter, dost thou know of any plaister to set a man’s head on again when it is cut off?”