pun, gave Ralegh an idea of what was to
come. “On my soul, mon,” the monarch
said, “I have heard rawly of thee.” After
being stripped of all his offices and ‘perks’,
Ralegh was accused of plotting with Lord
Cobham to bring about a Spanish invasion
and of conspiring to murder the “king and
his cubs”. Though evidence was thin, it is
clear that Ralegh had expressed his anger
and discussed dangerous topics. He was
tried at Winchester in November 1603, and
sentenced to death.
Sympathy for the underdog won Ralegh
new friends. Henceforth he was regarded by
many as a victim of arbitrary royal rule and
court intrigues. Technically, as the law then
stood, there is little doubt that he was guilty
of treason. Ralegh had “compassed and
imagined” the death of his king, even if
compassing and imagining had merely
taken the form of grumbling among
friends. In the uncertainty of a new reign,
few courtiers were willing to risk their own
careers to speak up for him.
But, though the verdict might have been
correct, the carefully prepared prosecution
was bungled. Riled by Ralegh’s courageous
defence and perfect behaviour in the dock,
the attorney general Sir Edward Coke lost
his temper along with the thread of his
argument. Confused eyewitness accounts
of the trial circulating afterwards only
emphasise the fact that Ralegh’s conviction
depended on testimony given and since
retracted by Cobham, who refused to put
his name to damning accusations blurted
out in anger soon after his arrest. As Ralegh
himself reminded the jury, if convictions
were to be sustained on such evidence, if
people were “judged upon suspicions and
inferences”, then no one would be safe.
Ralegh was not, of course, executed in- Early in his reign, James wished to
earn the title of “clemens as well as Justus”,
as the diplomat Dudley Carleton put it,
and most of those accused in these plots
were spared. But though James was pre-
pared to let Ralegh live as a prisoner, he
would not set him free. The years passed,
and Ralegh understood that the king
intended to let him die in prison. For an
active man who still believed that James
would one day appreciate his loyalty, this
was a desperate thought.
Ralegh turned to scholarship. He took
up pharmacy, concocting a ‘cordial’ that
was used for more than a century as a
medicine of last resort, with conspicuous
lack of success. He sought solace in
writing, assembling a library of more than
500 books in his rooms within the Bloody
Tower and giving his opinions on political
developments at home and abroad.
Much of what he wrote was barbed,
his criticism of the monarch only lightly
concealed. Ralegh’s History of the World,
which tells the story of mankind from the
creation to the second century BC, was
suppressed on first publication in 1614
because, as the London newsmonger
John Chamberlain put it, the prisoner
had been “too saucy in censuring
princes”. Chamberlain made a good
point, because Ralegh dwelt time and
again on the corruption that accompanies
power. If he was careful to emphasise the
need for obedience to a monarch, in
accordance with God’s will, he was under
no illusions as to human weakness.
Monarchs may be anointed by God, but
God – for reasons known only to Himself- anointed fallible creatures.
Buying support
James could do little to stifle these
comments. Ralegh had friends at court,
including the secretary of state Sir Ralph
Winwood and the favourite George
Villiers, later Duke of Buckingham. He
had to buy Buckingham’s support, but it
was worth having. Desperate for freedom,
Ralegh became obsessed by the possibility
of finding gold and silver in Guiana.
Inflating some discoveries made on his
1595 expedition, he was convinced he
knew where to look, and sought permis-
sion to lead an expedition that would
exploit lucrative mines. England was
now at peace with Spain, and Spain had
developed its settlements in Guiana since
the 1590s. But James needed cash for his
treasury. In 1616, Ralegh was given his
freedom, and a commission to search
for treasure.
He understood the dangers. Succeed,
and he would make his king, his supporters
and himself immeasurably wealthy. Fail,
and he would face an uncertain future.
Ever the optimist, he brushed aside fears,
reminding Francis Bacon that men were
never called pirates if they were wealthyRalegh’s History
of the World was
suppressed on first
publication in 1614
because it was
“too saucy in
censuring princes”
Elder statesman
William Segar’s oil on panel portrait
of Sir Walter Ralegh in 1598. By that
time Ralegh was back in Queen
Elizabeth’s favour after serving her
gallantly in Cádiz and the Americas