ther examined by the Lords of the Council, and in that examination, which is extant at the State-Paper Office, he persisted in his charge against Raleigh: at his own trial he repeated the same story, and resolutely adhered to it on the scaffold at Winchester, when he must have entertained the full persuasion that both Raleigh and himself were about to undergo immediate death. The charge has, therefore, all the weight of the asseveration of a dying man; and though daily experience teaches us that such asseverations are not to be implicitly taken as true, it can hardly be denied that where the motive to falsehood arising from the hope of pardon is gone, the probability of the truth of a statement is considerably increased. On a careful consideration of the circumstances, and laying aside all prejudice arising either from the injustice of his fate, or the glory which surrounds his character, a strong impression arises in the mind that Raleigh was a principal mover in the conspiracy which was denominated the "Spanish Treason."

With respect to the justice of proceeding to execute Sir Walter Raleigh under his old sentence, on his return from Guiana, there can scarcely be any difference of opinion, though, according to the strict letter of the law, the course adopted was certainly justifiable. That the commission granted to Raleigh, cautiously and cunningly worded as it was, did not amount to a pardon of the offence for which he had been tried, is a proposition too clear to the apprehension of a lawyer to admit of argument. It is, indeed, related by his son, in a letter written many years after his father's death, that previously to the voyage to Guiana, Lord Bacon, on hearing that Raleigh had been advised to purchase a pardon from the King for a large sum of money, told him to spare his purse in that particular; "For upon my life," said he, "you have a sufficient pardon for all

that has passed already, the King having under his broad seal made you Admiral of your fleet, and given you the power of martial law over your officers and soldiers." It is impossible that any lawyer, much less one so profound as Bacon, should sincerely entertain such an opinion; if, therefore, it was ever in fact delivered by Lord Bacon, it must have been for the purpose of deceiving Raleigh. But the story does not rest upon sufficient authority to entitle it to credit; it is not once alluded to by Sir Walter Raleigh himself, either in his examinations before the Commissioners, or in his conversations with Sir Thomas Wilson; neither is it mentioned in his letters, or in showing cause in the Court of King's Bench against the order for his execution. In the story itself too an inaccuracy occurs, which seems to mark its apocryphal character. Bacon is made to talk of Raleigh's commission being under the broad or great seal; whereas the commission, which is printed in Rymer's Fœdera,' is stated upon the face of the instrument, under the privy seal. This mistake, though it may appear immaterial in itself, is not likely to have been committed by Bacon, and certainly tends to throw doubt upon the whole story.

But though, according to technical rules of law, the proceeding might be justifiable, the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh must ever be considered as swelling the long catalogue of weak and wicked actions which stamp indelible disgrace on the character of James the First, and render the annals of his reign perhaps the most odious page in the history of England. It is proved to demonstration by the circumstances above detailed, that Raleigh's life was taken, not for the imputed treason in 1603, nor for the vague and senseless charges made against him on his return from Guiana, but because he was hated and feared by the King of Spain. It was

"

indeed admitted* by one of James's ministers, and urged as a favour conferred upon the Spanish King which had not been properly requited, that in order to give him content, the King of England had not spared a man whose preservation would have given great satisfaction to his subjects, and have kept at his command upon all occasions as useful a man as served any Prince in Christendom." In fact, Raleigh's original offence was so utterly lost sight of, that though he was in 1603 indicted, tried, and sentenced to death for a conspiracy with Spain against the King of England, the execution of the sentence was granted in 1618, at the suggestion of that very power with whom the record charged him to have conspired. The abominable injustice of executing a man for political purposes, was not without many parallels in the reigns of his predecessors; but the singular and peculiar baseness of prostrating the law of England to the will of a foreign power, of delivering the sword of English Justice into the hand of the King of Spain, to enable him to wreak his vengeance on an English subject, and destroy one of the most distinguished men of the age, was reserved for a monarch so mean and pusillanimous as James the First. With reference to this part of the proceedings, our readers will probably feel no hesitation in adopting the language of Mr. Justice Gawdy respecting the trial, namely, that "the justice of England has never been so degraded and injured as by the condemnation of Sir Walter Raleigh."

Rushworth's Collections, vol. i. p. 9.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Stamford Street.