Who Killed Sir Walter Ralegh? E-Book

Richard Dale

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

For 400 years, the true story behind Sir Walter Ralegh's downfall, his conviction for high treason and his eventual beheading has been shrouded in mystery. Was he deliberately set up by the brilliant but untrustworthy Sir Robert Cecil? Why did his friend Lord Cobham denounce him at his trial? And how could this towering figure of the Elizabethan age be accused of conspiring with his old enemy Spain to overthrow the king? In Who Killed Sir Walter Ralegh? Richard Dale draws on his legal background to unravel the extraordinary plots and intrigues that marked the last months of Elizabeth's reign and the first weeks of James' succession. In the bitter struggle for position, wealth and royal favour, only the most ruthless and devious could hope to win, but would the dwarfish, hunchbacked Cecil eventually prevail over the swashbuckling Ralegh? And in the eyes of posterity, who was the real victor?

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Brought to Bay

1Sir Walter Ralegh

2Sir Robert Cecil

3Shifting Alliances

4Preparing for the Great Day of Mart

5The Death of a Queen

6The Lion Provoked

7Treason: The Raptor Strikes

8Holding the Line

9Preparing for the Trial

10The Trial

11Was he Guilty?

12The Aftermath

13The Tower

14The Final Gamble

15The Last Act: Old Palace Yard, 29 October 1618

Epilogue

Appendices

AThe Prisoner’s Dilemma

BExtract from letter of Robert Cecil to Sir Thomas Parry, 4 August 1603

CExtract from letter of Robert Cecil to Sir Thomas Parry, 1 December 1603

DExtract from Sir Edward Coke’s Prosecution Document

Bibliography

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the staff of the National Archives at Kew, the British Library, Exeter Cathedral Library, the Cornish Studies Library at Redruth and, not least, Looe Library whose inter-library loan service is second to none. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Marquess of Salisbury and the Institute of Historical Research for making freely available the treasure trove of Cecil’s State Papers at Hatfield House. I have had to do battle with the almost impenetrable ‘secretarial’ script of the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period and in some cases I have been able to decipher this for myself. But elsewhere I have relied on the sterling efforts of others, notably the archival work of the historian Francis Edwards. Finally, I must thank Dr Mark Nicholls of Cambridge University who provided useful guidance on sources and whose carefully researched articles on the Winchester trials of 1603 first stirred my interest in Ralegh’s conviction for treason.

The biography of Ralegh by Mark Nicholls and Penry Williams, Sir Walter Raleigh in Life and Legend, which was not yet published at the time of writing this book, takes a very different view of the role of Sir Robert Cecil in Ralegh’s downfall from that presented here. It is therefore for readers to make their own judgement on the motivation and conduct of this brilliant but calculating politician.

INTRODUCTION

Brought to Bay

On 10 November 1603, the prisoner was taken from his lodging in the Tower of London to begin a 75-mile coach journey to Winchester. Ahead of him was a cavalcade of his co-accused, consisting of seven commoners travelling on horseback, two peers of the realm in their coaches and a cavalry escort of fifty men. There had been a severe outbreak of the plague in London: it was reported that 2,000 a week were dying and the streets were littered with infected bedding and straw, while ‘carcass carriers’ were out collecting bodies. Fear of infection had driven the royal court first to Hampton Court, then to Woodstock and finally to Wilton, while the Courts of Justice were now relocated to Winchester where preparations for a great trial were under way.

The coach journey from London to Winchester was slowed by muddy roads, the need for tight security and, above all, hostile crowds who gathered to jeer and throw tobacco pipes, sticks, stones, and mud. Sir William Waad, who travelled with the prisoner and was charged with his custody, later reported that it was ‘hob or nob’ whether he ‘should have been brought out alive through such multitudes of unruly people as did exclaim at him’.1

The prisoner himself remained composed and contemptuous of the rabble, commenting only that ‘dogs do always bark at those they know not’. At Wimbledon there was support from a small group of the prisoner’s friends who had gathered to cheer him as he passed by. Thereafter, the country roads were quieter and it was possible for him to write some letters in relative peace.

It took three days to complete the coach journey to Winchester where the prisoner was given a cell behind the walls of Winchester Castle. This was the ancient stronghold originally built by William the Conqueror but then rebuilt and extended by Henry III in the thirteenth century. The city was crowded with visitors, so much so that, at the king’s command, clerics and scholars of the cathedral and Winchester College had to vacate their lodgings in favour of the distinguished new arrivals. On 4 November Dr Harmer, warden of Winchester College, had acknowledged a letter from the king requiring him ‘to remove myself, the fellows and scholars from the College … and forthwith to yield our house and lodgings to his Majesty’s judges and serjeants …’2 There being no alternative housing available he decided, reluctantly, to send the boys home.

The eminent visitors to the town included seven lord commissioners who were to try the case, together with their retinue of servants; four judges with their attendants; the Attorney General and his staff; and the twelve knights of the jury who had been brought down from Middlesex. There were also numerous courtiers and dignitaries who had come to witness the drama that was about to unfold, among them Lord Admiral Nottingham, who accompanied Lady Arabella Stuart, once a possible claimant to the crown of England.

The prisoner, whose health had already suffered from spending too many cold autumn nights in the damp confines of the Tower of London, had to endure a further four days of discomfort and anxiety before facing his accusers on the morning of 17 November. The trial was to be held in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle, an impressive early English Gothic structure, with Purbeck stone columns, pointed arches and plate-tracery windows, which survives to this day. The internal walls were at that time plastered and decorated with the most brilliant colours, there was a stairway at the east end leading to a gallery and at the west end there was a dais. King Arthur’s round table hung on the wall then as it does now, reminding those present that the forensic combat that was about to begin was an echo of jousting of a different kind from a distant and more chivalrous past.

On the morning of 17 November the prisoner was taken from his cell by his guard to the Great Hall which was packed with spectators. Some had queued all night to get a place and now they thronged the aisles and filled the minstrels’ gallery above.

The special commission which had been appointed for the trial included seven laymen and four judges. The laymen were Lord Mountjoy, Sir William Waad, the Earl of Suffolk, Lord Wotton, Sir John Stanhope, Lord Henry Howard and Sir Robert Cecil (recently made Baron of Essendon). The judges were Lord Chief Justice Sir John Popham, Chief Justice Anderson, and the justices Gawdy and Warburton.

Once silence had been called for and the crowded hall was hushed, the clerk read out the indictment. The general points of treason cited were ‘that Sir Walter Ralegh, with other persons, had conspired to kill the King, to raise a rebellion with intent to change religion and subvert the government, and, for that purpose, to encourage and incite the King’s enemies to invade the realm’.3 The overt acts charged included conferring with Lord Cobham in order to support Lady Arabella Stuart’s title to the throne and soliciting money from Spain in furtherance of this end.

Ralegh pleaded not guilty to the indictment and the Middlesex jury was duly sworn. The stage was now set for one of the most controversial state trials in English history which pitted a towering figure of the Elizabethan era against the closed ranks of the political and legal establishment appointed by the new Stuart monarchy.

Even before the trial Ralegh’s sentence had been officially pronounced. In August he had been replaced as Governor of Jersey, the royal command citing as grounds for the forfeiture his ‘grievous treason against us’. And a month later a council decree removed Ralegh from the lieutenancy of Cornwall, the original commission ‘being void and determined’.

As he heard the indictment against him Ralegh must have realised that his chances of escaping the full horrors of a traitor’s death were slim. Acquittal on charges of treason were rare and he would have known that of the seven alleged conspirators tried just two days before, all but one had been condemned to death. His turn had now come.

How did Sir Walter Ralegh come to this? How had a man renowned for his wit and political guile, a brilliant courtier who had espoused with patriotic fervour the English cause against Spain, who had seen heroic military action in the service of his country both on land and sea, now face charges of high treason against his sovereign and the realm? This is a 400-year-old mystery and it is the purpose of the chapters that follow to find an answer.

1Edward Edwards, The Life of Sir Walter Ralegh, (MacMillan, London, 1868), Vol. I, p.386

24 July, Institute of Historical Research, Hatfield State Papers,

3D. Jardine, Criminal Trials (1832–5), Vol. I, p.401

1

SIR WALTER RALEGH

Ralegh doth time bestride

He sits twixt wind and tide

Yet uphill he cannot ride

For all his bloody pride.

London Ballad, 1601

As he contemplated his fate in his Winchester prison, Ralegh must have reflected that he had fallen from a very great height. For nearly twenty years up to the death of Queen Elizabeth in March 1603 he had enjoyed the life of a renaissance prince. As Captain of the Guard he was a familiar figure at court, always dressed exquisitely, renowned for his poetry and pithy sayings, and attracting around him a group of brilliant men who helped to plan his great voyages of discovery. When in London he lived a few minutes’ horse ride from Whitehall Palace at one of the most desirable residences in London. This was Durham House, a great palace on the south side of the Strand where he had accommodation for forty servants and stabling for twenty horses. His country estate was at Sherborne where he had built a fine mansion which was conveniently located for his frequent trips into the West Country.

All this was far removed from the modest Devonshire farmhouse, Hayes Barton, where he been born in 1554. The Raleghs were a respectable family that had fallen on hard times after their involvement in the Cornish uprising of 1497. Squire Ralegh was a tenant farmer while his third wife, Katherine Champernowne – Walter’s mother – had born three sons by her first husband, Otho Gilbert of Compton near Torquay. These three seafaring older half-brothers – John, Humphrey and Adrian – were to be an important influence on Walter in his early years.

So how had Ralegh emerged from his rural West Country origins to become one of the greatest figures of Elizabeth’s court, enjoying a lifestyle and status surpassing that of the landed nobility? His early career had certainly been colourful.1 At the age of 15 or thereabouts he fought in France with the Huguenots in a volunteer group led by his cousin, Henry Champernowne. By his own account, he was present at two great Huguenot defeats in 1569: the Battle of Jarnac and the retreat at Moncontour. As a boy soldier he was therefore exposed to the massacres, pillaging and merciless brutality of the continental religious wars.

Little is known about Ralegh’s formal education. He appears to have attended Oriel College, Oxford, in 1572 after his continental adventures. He left without a degree and although in 1575 he was registered as a member of the Middle Temple, he later claimed that he never studied law.

A contemporary room-mate later referred to his ‘riotous’ and ‘lascivious’ companion, and there were other indications that Ralegh was enjoying a boisterous life in his early twenties. In 1577, when two of his servants were brought before magistrates on a charge of riotous behaviour, Ralegh described himself in the bail sheet as ‘de Curia’ or ‘of the Court’ suggesting that he was already on the fringes of the royal entourage. Two years later he would be committed to the Fleet Prison for a ‘fray’ with another courtier, Sir Thomas Perott, and in the same year he was sent to the Marshalsea Prison after coming to blows with a man named Wingfield beside the tennis court at Whitehall.

Ralegh’s first big break came in 1578 when Queen Elizabeth granted to his half-brother and mentor, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a six-year licence ‘to discover, find, search out, … such remote, heathen and barbarous lands, countries and territories not actually possessed by any Christian prince or people.’ Any land discovered could be disposed of according to the laws of England and settlers in the colonies would enjoy their full rights and privileges as subjects of the queen. This was an open-ended authorisation to colonise unclaimed territories in the New World and Ralegh, aged only 24, was chosen by Gilbert to be his partner in this great enterprise. The adventurers had plans for a little privateering on the side to help fund the expedition, but this was not publicised.

The would-be colonists set sail from Dartmouth in September 1578 with 365 men in ten ships. Ralegh was given command of the Falcon, a 100-ton vessel belonging to the queen, with seventy men on board. However, expectations of fame and fortune were to be disappointed: twice the fleet was driven back by autumn storms and after being forced to seek shelter, first in Plymouth and then in Dartmouth, those ships that had not already departed abandoned the cause. Only Ralegh in the Falcon continued on course for the West Indies. Yet after reaching the Cape Verde islands he was worsted in an encounter with the Spanish and was forced to return to Plymouth in May 1579, his ship severely damaged and many of his men killed. Ralegh had demonstrated his determination and courage but nothing had been gained and he would have to account for the near-loss of a royal vessel.

It was shortly after his return to London, following this naval setback, that Ralegh suffered his successive spells behind bars for breaching the peace. It may be thought that at such a juncture Ralegh would be the last person to deserve royal favours. Yet it was in 1580 that he now secured his first position at court, as an esquire of the Body Extraordinary – a group of young gentlemen required to wait upon the queen, particularly when she appeared in public. There is more than a suspicion that this was a reward for some political skulduggery at the behest of Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, in which Ralegh had befriended the Earl of Oxford and his pro-Catholic set in order to report on their activities (two of the Oxford group, Charles Arundell and Lord Henry Howard, were later sent to the Tower for conspiring on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots.) In any event Ralegh was sufficiently in favour to be appointed in July 1580 to serve under Lord Grey in Ireland, in command of 100 foot soldiers.

It was in Ireland that Ralegh established a reputation for military daring. He escaped an ambush and rescued a colleague when outnumbered twenty to one, he outmanoeuvred and defeated the rebel Lord Barry and, by a brilliant deception, infiltrated the castle of another Anglo-Irish rebel, Lord Roche, whom he humiliatingly brought to Cork in a perilous journey through enemy territory.

But the Irish episode also revealed the brutal side to Ralegh’s soldiering. A party of Spanish and Italian mercenaries under the papal flag had landed on the west coast of Munster and Smerwick to support the Catholic cause against the English Crown. Holed up in their fort on this isolated peninsula, the invaders were overwhelmed by the forces of the puritan, Lord Grey. They capitulated following a bombardment of four days. As one of the two duty officers of the day, Ralegh received Grey’s order to enter ‘and full straight to execution’. Some pregnant women who attended the invading force were hanged and the soldiers, numbering around 600 and including some Irish, were systematically slaughtered using a technique known as ‘hewing and punching’ (slashing the neck, then stabbing the belly) after their armour had been removed and neatly stacked beside their pikes.2 Judging from his later criticism of Lord Grey as being too soft in dealing with the Irish insurrection, it may be taken that Ralegh was in agreement with the massacre he helped to execute.

Another side of Ralegh’s emerging personality to be revealed by the Irish episode was his deviousness and disloyalty to his superiors – at least when they stood in his way. First he wrote to Walsingham as well as to Grey criticising the Earl of Ormond, Governor General of Munster, for his organisational shortcomings: Ormond was recalled and, pending a replacement, Ralegh became part of a triumvirate appointed to discharge Ormond’s duties. Ralegh also appears to have criticised his commanding officer, Grey, behind his back. In August 1581 he wrote to the queen’s favourite, Leicester, to express his discontent: ‘I have spent some time here under the deputy [Grey], in such poor place and charge, as, were it not for that I know him to be one of yours, I would disdain it as much as to keep sheep.’3

In 1582, after Ralegh and Grey had been recalled to London, further tensions between them were reported and it was related by Sir Robert Naunton, (later to become Secretary of State to James I) that, in briefing the Council on Irish affairs, Ralegh had ‘much the better in telling of his tale’.4 It was also on his return to the royal court that Ralegh began to attract the queen’s attention, as Naunton describes:

He had gotten the Queen’s ear at a trice; and she began to be taken with his elocution, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands. And the truth is, she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all; for those that she relied on began to take this sudden favour for an alarm, and to be sensible of their own supplantation.5

Ralegh’s success as a courtier was achieved in the face of fierce rivalry for the queen’s favour from men of higher birth and fortune. Yet he proved to be a master of the game of courtly love which Elizabeth played with her pretended suitors. The extremes to which these pseudo-romantic rituals could be taken is demonstrated by Sir Christopher Hatton, who, as a close confidante of the queen (he was later to become Lord Chancellor), wrote to her in language more appropriate to a lovesick sweetheart than a government official: ‘Would God I were with you but for one hour. My wits are overwrought with thoughts. I find myself amazed. Bear with me, my most dear sweet Lady. Passion overcomes me. I can write no more. Love me, for I love you.’6

Ralegh’s particular appeal to the queen lay in his physical allure and, above all, his ‘wit’. Tall, with dark ‘Spanish’ looks, he was a flamboyant dresser who later set new standards for sartorial extravagance at court: he wore pearls in his hair, pearl studded clothes, jewels on his shoes and, by his own account, spent one hour each morning on his grooming. But it was above all his way with words that appealed to Elizabeth’s sharp intellect: in his soft voice and rich Devonshire accent he wooed the queen with his quick repartee, forceful argument and colourful language. Whether or not Ralegh, when attending the court at Greenwich, really laid down his cloak so the queen could walk dry shod over a puddle, the legend still serves to portray the man: he knew how to employ chivalry to please his sovereign and did so at every opportunity. And when he was away from court he could, as an accomplished poet, continue to charm his middle-aged mistress with lines that expressed his love and idolatry.

Those eyes which set my fancy on a fire,

Those crispe’d hairs which hold my heart in chains

Those dainty hands which conquered my desire,

That wit which of my thought does hold the reins.7

Royal favours began to flow. In April 1582 he was given the command of a company of footmen in Ireland as a form of pension, since he was allowed to discharge his office by deputy and to remain at court. In February 1583 he was included in the prestigious escort sent to accompany the Duke of Anjou from England to the Netherlands. Two months later he was given the leases of two small estates belonging to All Souls’ College, Oxford, and in March 1584 he began to make serious money when he was granted the licence to export woollen broadcloths in return for a fixed rent payable to the queen. Under this licence he received not only the duty payable on exports, but also a specified penalty due on all ‘over-lengths’ – that is, pieces which exceeded the maximum permissible length of 24 yards. When Lord Treasurer Burghley was later reviewing the tax system he calculated that Raleigh, in the first year of his grant, had received the staggering sum of £3,950 from a privilege for which he paid the state a rent of only £700.

But more was to come. In May 1584 Ralegh was given one of the great monopolies of state: the farm of wines. This enabled the holder to charge vintners £1 a year for the right to retail wine and Ralegh immediately sub-contracted the licence to his agent, Richard Browne, for seven years in exchange for a fixed payment of £700 per annum. Ralegh later discovered that Browne was making very substantial profits on the arrangement so he tried to renegotiate the deal. When Browne refused Ralegh persuaded the queen to call in his licence and reissue it to him so that he could sub-contract on much more favourable terms – thereby doubling his income from the monopoly.8

One may well ask at this point what was going on here? A young man from the West Country had arrived at court as something of a parvenu, he had performed some useful but relatively minor service in Ireland, and now he was being rewarded with great riches by his sovereign – putting him in income terms amongst the very wealthiest in the land, even though he had few assets to call his own.

The extent of royal patronage seemed limitless. In September 1583 Ralegh’s half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had drowned when his ship went down in a failed attempt to colonise North America. Ralegh had invested in this expedition by fitting out, at his own expense, a 200-ton ship of advanced design which he named Ark Ralegh. Now, in the spring of 1584, Elizabeth agreed to renew Gilbert’s colonising charter in Ralegh’s name but with expanded powers to ‘inhabit or retain, build or fortify, at the discretion of the said W. Ralegh’, any territory that he might find hitherto unoccupied by a Christian prince.9 This was to become the basis of Ralegh’s great colonising ventures, although for the time being, as favourite, he was not permitted to leave court.

The favours continued to be heaped on Ralegh. In January 1585 the queen bestowed on him a knighthood. In the same year he was appointed Lord Warden of the Stannaries (a position of profit), Lord Lieutenant of the county of Cornwall and Vice Admiral of the counties of Cornwall and Devon. At this time, too, he entered parliament as one of the two county members for Devonshire.

Meanwhile, Ralegh had moved into Durham House, a vast turreted palace overlooking the Thames. It was conveniently located off the Strand with its own waterfront, although he preferred to travel by coach rather than river boat or ‘wherry’. Durham House was the fourteenth-century palace of the Bishops of Durham which had come into the possession of the Crown in the reign of Henry VIII and was now in the gift of Elizabeth. She granted it to her favourite to enjoy at the royal pleasure, although Ralegh did not have use of the ground floor which was occupied by Sir Edward Darcy. This stately pile became Ralegh’s town house where he lived from 1584 to 1603. Here he was able to maintain a score of horses in the stables along the Strand, and up to forty servants in the outbuildings. He also had a study in the turret, as described by John Aubrey, the antiquarian: ‘Durham House was a noble palace. I well remember [Ralegh’s] study, which was a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the prospect which is [as] pleasant, perhaps, as any in the world …’10

Ralegh was now able to live a life of extraordinary privilege. However, he lacked one thing; nearly everything he possessed – Durham House, the farm of the wines and the licence for wool exports – was enjoyed at the royal pleasure and he had no extensive landed estates of his own.

This deficiency was, however, made good in 1586 when he became the beneficiary of confiscated property in both Ireland and England. Following the execution of the Earl of Desmond, whose rebellion Ralegh had helped to put down, the royal favourite was rewarded with 42,000 acres of the earl’s forfeited lands in the southern Irish counties of Cork and Waterford. These Irish estates were the basis for Ralegh’s first colonial settlement: West Country families were persuaded to become his tenant farmers and he cultivated his woodlands with a view to exporting hogsheads to wine merchants in France and Spain. Reflecting his enduring taste for grandeur and show Ralegh also acquired the lease of Lismore Castle, which was to be the jewel in the crown of his new little kingdom. The scale of the royal grant of Irish lands to Ralegh drew adverse comment from the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Sir John Perrot. Perrot was subsequently warned by Burghley that Ralegh ‘is able to do you more harm in one hour than we are all able to do you good in a year’.11 Such was the favourite’s influence with the queen that a word in her ear could make or break a man.

In 1587 Ralegh enjoyed another windfall gain when he became the main beneficiary of the so-called Babington plot. This was a Catholic conspiracy, led by the wealthy young Anthony Babington, to put Mary Queen of Scots on the English throne with the help of troops brought over from the Netherlands. Ralegh appears to have played some minor role in the discovery of the plot but he was rewarded quite disproportionately with nearly all the estates forfeited by the Babington family. In this way he acquired extensive landholdings in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. He was now wealthy in his own right.

In the same year, when Sir Christopher Hatton was promoted to the office of Lord Chancellor, Ralegh was asked by Elizabeth to fill Hatton’s vacated position as Captain of the Guard. This post carried no salary, but it involved close physical proximity to the queen at all times since the holder was entrusted with the safety and protection of her person. As Captain of the Guard, Ralegh also commanded the Yeomen of the Guard and the gentlemen pensioners – well-born young men who served the queen at meals and acted as royal messengers. As if this prestigious position was not enough, Elizabeth also appointed Ralegh to the court office of Master of the Horse.

Despite Ralegh’s pre-eminence at court, and his special place in the queen’s affections, he never achieved high political office nor was he appointed to the Privy Council. Part of the explanation is that Elizabeth drew a distinction between court favourites and government officials, the former seldom trespassing on the role of the latter – though Hatton was a notable exception. But a more persuasive reason for Ralegh’s political exclusion lay in his personality: he was ‘damnable proud’ according to Aubrey and ‘had that awfulness and ascendancy in his aspect over other mortals’.12 Again ‘He was such a person that … a Prince would rather be afraid of than ashamed of’.13 The Earl of Northumberland, in much the same vein, remarked that he ‘desired to seem to be able to sway all men’s fancies, all men’s courses’.14 It appears that Ralegh was not a team player, or someone who was prepared to defer to the majority view and no doubt there would have been considerable opposition from other privy councillors to this haughty and overbearing man becoming a member of Elizabeth’s key governing body.

Yet Ralegh was keenly interested in policy making, as his parliamentary career testifies, and he advised the queen on political issues, ranging from Irish affairs to her own succession. It was a continuing source of frustration to him that he was excluded from government.

During the 1580s Ralegh established his interest in maritime expeditions. As a business sideline he built up a small fleet of privateering vessels, led by the 200-ton Ark Ralegh, which prayed on Spanish shipping and brought back valuable plunder in the form of spices, ivory, precious stones and hides. These activities were highly profitable but Ralegh’s ambitions began to focus on much more grandiose projects involving the colonisation of North America.

Following the dispatch of two ships in 1584 to reconnoitre the inlet we now know as Chesapeake Bay, a much larger expedition, consisting of seven ships and nearly 600 men set sail from Plymouth in April 1585 with the aim of settling territory which Ralegh now named Virginia in honour of his sovereign. The queen herself had provided one of her prime ships, the Tyger, as a demonstration of her support and private backing was arranged through city financiers. Because Ralegh could not himself lead the expedition as, no doubt, he would have wished – his continued presence at court being required by Elizabeth – he placed his cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, in command. The expedition succeeded in settling the first group of colonists on Roanoke Island and, having plundered Spanish shipping on both the outward and return journeys, was able to distribute some £10,000 to investors.

In 1587 Ralegh sent out another expedition, this time under John White, with a view to establishing a new city of Ralegh in Chesapeake Bay. However, there was no follow-up because the Armada crisis intervened, the dispatch of further ships was forbidden and by the time a relief ship arrived in 1590 the colony was deserted and the settlers had mysteriously disappeared without trace.

Ralegh, as royal favourite, still not permitted to go to sea himself, continued to employ highly experienced seafarers to lead his expeditions. Durham House became a venue for learned discourses on maritime affairs and a training establishment for ship captains and navigators. Among those whose specialist services Ralegh acquired were Richard Hakluyt, clergyman turned geographer, and the brilliant young mathematician Thomas Hariot, who became his patron’s close personal assistant and friend. Hariot gave a series of lectures at Durham House in 1583–84 on the application of mathematics to navigation, installed his optical instruments on the roof and prepared charts and maps for the use of Ralegh’s sailing masters.

Ralegh arranged large-scale financial backing for his colonising expeditions through one of London’s leading financiers, William Sanderson, who had married Ralegh’s niece. Through Sanderson’s city network Ralegh could raise what we today would call equity finance (effectively shares in profits from the expeditions) as well as straight loans. The scale of the financing needed for fitting out ships and paying crews is suggested by the claim that Sanderson, at one or more times, stood bound for Ralegh (was his guarantor) for over £100,000.15 Certainly he was a key figure in Ralegh’s maritime operations, guaranteeing his client’s borrowings, borrowing money in his own name for Ralegh’s use and investing his own funds directly in expeditions.

Despite his maritime interests and soldiering background Ralegh did not take part in the action against the Armada. However, as a member of the council of war he was heavily involved in defence strategy and took charge of coastal defences against a possible Spanish landing not only in the West Country but also in Kent and East Anglia. As a contribution to the naval effort he made available his own formidable warship, Ark Ralegh, which now became the naval flagship Ark Royal.

From the mid-1580s until 1591 Ralegh continued to enjoy the queen’s favour, although he faced increasing competition from a younger rival in the form of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, the stepson of the Earl of Leicester. Then came an event which played into the hands of Ralegh’s enemies at court; he had an affair with one of the queen’s maids of honour, Elizabeth ‘Bess’ Throckmorton, daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. Ralegh secretly married the pregnant Bess towards the end of 1591 and a son was born in March the following year. The union was a double affront to the queen because Ralegh had failed to seek her permission to marry, and her maids of honour were supposed to be untouchable.

Bess was to become Ralegh’s life-long partner, sharing his love of stately living as well as his political and financial ambitions and, ultimately, his tribulations.16 But the couple were first brought together by physical passion which Ralegh captured in verse:

Her eyes he would should be of light,

A violet breath and lips of jelly

Her hair not black, nor over-bright,

And of the softest down her belly;

As for her inside, he’d have it

Only of wantonness and wit.17

Ralegh hoped to get away with his indiscretion by keeping his marriage secret. In the spring of 1592 he prepared to embark on an ambitious privateering expedition to the Azores in which he had invested everything he had, while Bess returned to court at the end of April to resume her duties as a maid of honour. Rumours began to circulate and Ralegh felt obliged to write to Sir Robert Cecil, soon to become the queen’s Principal Secretary, denying the reports of his marriage and assuring him that ‘if any such thing were I would have imparted it unto yourself before any man living’.18

Ralegh had hoped to lead this great privateering expedition himself but he was peremptorily recalled to court by Elizabeth. In his own words he had set out ‘to seek new worlds, for gold, for praise, for glory’, but his hopes had been dashed:

When I was gone she sent her memory [reminder]

More strong than were ten thousand ships of war

To call me back, to leave honours thought,

To leave my friends, my fortune, my attempt

To leave the purpose I so long had sought

And hold both cares and comforts in contempt.19

When the truth about Ralegh’s marriage came out the queen’s fury erupted. The favourite was put under house arrest while Bess was placed in the custody of the Vice Chamberlain, Sir Thomas Heneage. After some prevarication both husband and wife were sent to the Tower of London on 7 August. There is no further mention of Ralegh’s baby son who presumably did not survive.

Ralegh remained in the Tower for only five weeks and on 15 September he was given a temporary release. This was to enable him to sort out the near-anarchy that had broken out in the West Country when the largest ever privateering prize, the Portuguese carrack Madre de Dios, was brought into Dartmouth. The vessel had been captured by the Azores fleet which had been fitted out, financed and manned under Ralegh’s direction. The carrack, carrying a cargo valued at some £150,000, was being systematically pillaged by the returning sailors and since these were Ralegh’s men, they responded to his command. Under his supervision order was restored and the distribution of the spoils could proceed.

The queen in effect struck a deal: Ralegh was allowed to get back what he and his partners had invested in the project, while she took the lion’s share of the profits, some £80,000. Ralegh had committed £6,000 of his own money and borrowed a further £11,000 to finance an expedition which had cost around £40,000 to prepare and whose joint stock or equity capital amounted to £18,000. If he had remained in command of the fleet he might have expected to receive up to one third of the spoils. The queen, on the other hand, was rewarded with an extraordinary gain on her outlay of only £1,800.20 On his return to London Ralegh was liberated, but he had paid dearly for his freedom while Elizabeth had exacted heavy tribute from his disgrace.

Just before Christmas Bess was also released from the Tower and husband and wife were reunited – though banished indefinitely from court. It was fortunate for Ralegh that shortly before his disgrace he had been given a country estate in Dorset through yet another act of royal generosity. This was the old castle of Sherborne and its associated manors which belonged to the Bishops of Salisbury. Ralegh had long coveted this property which he passed on his journeys into the West Country and, in January 1592, the queen had acquired a ninety-nine-year lease on Sherborne which she immediately sublet to her favourite for the remainder of her term. Ralegh and Bess now restored the castle, cultivated the gardens, stocked the pastures and began to build an ambitious new ‘lodge’ – in fact a splendid country house of innovative design with plastered exterior walls and hexagonal towers at each corner. Towards the end of 1593 Ralegh’s second child, Walter, was born at Sherborne and baptised nearby at Lillington.

Ralegh’s sudden expulsion from court and the royal presence prompted an outpouring of verse – possibly written while in the Tower and in the weeks during which he was separated from Bess. Ralegh was not a compulsive poet nor did he seek to publish his work, though copies of his manuscripts were circulated at court. He did, however, write for a purpose which was to promote himself as a courtier and, above all, to ingratiate himself with the queen. When he fell out of favour he embarked on an epic poem, the Book of the Ocean to Cynthia. Cynthia (Elizabeth) was a name for the cold, chaste moon which held sway over the movements of the ocean (Ralegh). Ralegh implied that he intended to write twelve books of verse to cover each of the twelve years he had been at court and had attended the queen:

Twelve years entire I wasted in this war

twelve years of my most happy younger days,

but I in them, and they now wasted are

of all which past the sorrow only stays.21

Ralegh wrote the last book first – a poem of over 500 lines – but then discontinued the project. What remains is a powerful expression of the joy he experienced when in favour with Elizabeth and the torment in which he found himself when she cast him aside. The purpose, no doubt, was to stir the queen to have compassion on him and to recall him to court. But he made the mistake of entrusting his work to Sir Robert Cecil, who declined to present the manuscript to Elizabeth as was presumably intended. Instead, Cecil filed the poem among his papers where it remained, unread, until its discovery nearly 400 years later.22

The self-pity displayed in the Book of the Ocean to Cynthia was, perhaps, a little contrived, for Ralegh had not been stripped of his offices, his perquisites or his property. He had fallen from the summit of royal favour onto a very comfortable lower slope where he could continue to enjoy the income from his wine licence, his various appointments in the West Country, his London palace and, of course, his newly acquired estate at Sherborne. The royal bounty had not been cut off as it well might have been if Elizabeth had been truly outraged by his behaviour.

At this juncture Ralegh could have settled down to a life of domestic pleasures amid the beautiful surroundings of Sherborne. However, for a man of such restless spirit and soaring ambition, this was not enough. He had obtained letters patent to explore and commercially exploit unclaimed territories in the New World, and he now became preoccupied with a vision of untapped riches in South America that was to become an obsession.

From travellers’ reports he had become convinced that the fabled empire of El Dorado was to be found in Guiana (Venezuela today), and that un-mined gold and the treasures of lost cities were waiting to be discovered along the upper reaches of the Orinoco. Outside investors were persuaded to participate and with the help of financier Sanderson, who appears to have raised over £30,000 for this voyage alone, four ships were fitted out which set sail under Ralegh’s command in February 1595.23

Ralegh was embarking on an expedition into the wild interior of South America in his early 40s – late middle-age for those times. His motivation was to rebuild his fortune which had been depleted by previous loss-making voyages as well as his lavish lifestyle and his building projects at Sherborne. Always the gambler, he was doubling his stakes in order to recoup his losses. As he himself put it:

The fruit … was long before fallen from the tree and the dead stock only remained. I did therefore even in the winter of my life, undertake these travels, fitter for bodies less blasted with misfortunes, for men of greater ability, and for minds of better encouragement, that thereby, if it were possible, I might recover but … the least taste of the greatest plenty formerly possessed.24

Ralegh’s South American expedition, described graphically in his best-selling tract The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana, failed to yield the promised gold and his little flotilla returned to Plymouth eight months later empty-handed except for some dubious ore samples. Ralegh and his co-adventurers faced heavy financial losses but his faith in Guiana’s untold riches remained undiminished.

It was around this time that Ralegh was forced to liquidate much of his landed wealth in order to meet the cost of his grandiose maritime projects. A will dated July 1597 shows that his only major remaining assets consisted of his Irish lands (shortly to be much reduced in value due to the Irish uprising of 1598), his Sherborne estate and a single privateering vessel, Roebuck. His extensive Babington estates, the lands he had acquired from All Souls’ College and the bulk of his privateering fleet had all been disposed of to pay his debts.

Shortly after his return from Guiana, Ralegh’s maritime skills were however given recognition when he was recalled to the queen’s service to take command of a naval squadron in the planned assault on Cadiz harbour. The attack was a military success, but the opportunity for plunder was missed because the Spanish merchantmen in port carrying a cargo valued at some 12 million ducats, were scuttled before they could be seized. Ralegh’s quick thinking and leadership qualities had played a major role in the success of the naval operation but he suffered a serious leg wound and was once again denied the chance to enrich himself. He complained that although he had received much acclaim he had ‘possession of nought but poverty and pain’.25

The queen’s fallen idol had, however, done enough to be restored to royal favour and reinstated at court. In 1597, as a follow up to Cadiz, Ralegh was again called upon to command a naval squadron in an attack on Spanish shipping in the Azores. Once more there were opportunities for plunder but a combination of bad weather and poor co-ordination between the commanders meant that the expedition was a costly failure.

Ralegh enjoyed some consolation when he managed to obtain the freehold on his Sherborne estate in 1599. But as Elizabeth’s reign drew to a close he was under considerable financial pressure. He later commented that ‘I found my fortune at court towards the end of her Majesty’s reign to be at a stand …’26 He owed the Crown money and there were unresolved financial issues arising out of his Guiana voyage which were later to resurface in a fiercely contested court case between Ralegh and his financial agent, Sanderson.27 It was a bitter disappointment to Ralegh that as an absentee landlord he had failed to turn his huge Irish estates to advantage, despite heavy expenditure on his part, and in 1602 he was obliged to sell out to Richard Boyle, the future Earl of Cork, at a knock-down price of £1,500.

Through the profligate generosity of his queen Ralegh had acquired in the 1580s a great fortune in the form of landed wealth and an income from perquisites to match. But he had then dissipated most of this wealth in fruitless but epic endeavours to acquire vast riches from the New World. He himself calculated the cumulative losses on his maritime ventures at £40,000, a sum equivalent to over twelve times his estimated annual income. The net result was that on the death of his great benefactress, Ralegh was financially vulnerable.

He was also politically exposed, and outside the West Country he was a much-hated figure. This was attributable to his reputation for arrogance, his opulent lifestyle and his farm of the wines which, along with other great monopolies of state, was viewed as an imposition on the public. It did not help that he was widely regarded as an atheist at a time when atheism was a more odious sin than heresy and when a man’s character was judged by his piety. Robert Parsons, a Jesuit, further promoted this popular perception of Ralegh and his Durham House set when, in 1592, he wrote a tract denouncing ‘Sir Walter Ralegh’s School of Atheism … and … the conjuror that is Master thereof’ (a reference to Thomas Hariot).28 Finally, Ralegh was widely believed to have played a role in the downfall and execution of his court rival, the Earl of Essex, who had a loyal following among Londoners.