 Chapter 8, Part 2 of Rally. This is all LibriWalks recording. All LibriWalks recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriWalks.org. Rally by Edmund Goss. Chapter 8, Part 2. In September 1612, Rally was writing the second of his marriage discourses, that dealing with the prospects of his best and youngest friend. A month later, that friend fell a victim to his extreme rashness in the neglect of his health. The illness of the Prince of Wales filled the whole of England with dismay, and when on November 6th he sank under the attack of Typhoid fever, it was felt to be a national misfortune. On the very morning of his death, the Queen sent to Rally for his famous cordial, and it was forwarded with the message that if it was not poisoned, that the Prince was dying of, it must save him. The Queen herself believed that Rally's cordial had once saved her life. On the other hand, in the preceding August, his medicines were vulgarly supposed to have hassled the death of Sir Philip Sidney's daughter, the Countess of Rootland. The cordial soaked the Prince's last agony, and that was all. Henry had with great difficulty obtained from his father the promise that, as a personal favor to himself, Rally should be set at liberty at Christmas 1612. He died six weeks too soon, and the King contrived to forget his promise. The feeling of the Prince of Wales toward Rally was expressed in a phrase that was often repeated. No man but my father would keep such a bird in a cage. We learn for Isaac Walton that Ben Johnson was recommended to Rally while he was in the Tower by Camden, that he helped him in obtaining and arranging material for the history of the world is certain. In 1613, young Walter Rally, having returned to London and having in the month of April killed his man in a duel, went abroad under the charge of Johnson. They took letters for Prince Maurice of Nassau, and they proceeded to Paris, but we now know more. It was probably before they started that young Walter wheeled the corpulent poet of the alchemist into his father's presence in a barrel, Ben Johnson being utterly overwhelmed with the beaker of that famed cannery that he loved too well. Johnson, on his return from abroad, seems to have superintended the publication of the history of the world in 1614. A fine copy of verses printed opposite the frontispice of that volume was reprinted among the pieces called Underwoods in the 1641 folio of Ben Johnson's works. These lines have therefore ever since been attributed to that poet, but as it appears to me rashly. In the first place, this volume was posthumous. In the second, for no less than 23 years, Ben Johnson allowed the verses to appear as rallies without protest. In the third, where they differ from the earlier version, it is always to their poetical disadvantage. They were found, as the editor of 1641 says, amongst Johnson's papers, and I would suggest as a new hypothesis that the less polished draft in the Underwoods is entirely rallies, having been copied by Johnson verbatim when he was preparing the history of the world for the press, and that the improved expressions of the latter were adopted by Rayleigh on suggestion from the superior judgment of Johnson. The character of the verse is peculiarly that of Rayleigh. It was 1607, as I have conjectured, that Rayleigh first began seriously to collect and arrange materials for the history of the world. In 1614 he presented the first and only volume of this gigantic enterprise to the public. It was a folio of 1354 pages, printed very closely, and if reprinted now would fill about 35 such volumes as are devised for an ordinary modern novel. Yet it brought the history of the world no lower down than the conquest of Macedon by Rome, and it is hard to conceive how soon at this rate of production Rayleigh would have reached his own generation. He is said to have anticipated that his book would need to consist of not less than four such folios. In the opening lines he expresses some consciousness of the fact that it was late in life for him a prisoner of state condemned to death at the king's pleasure to undertake so vast a literary adventure. Had it been begotten, he confesses, with my first dawn of day, when the light of common knowledge began to open itself to my younger years, and before any wound received either from fortune or time, I might yet well have doubted that the darkness of age and death would have covered over both it and me long before the performance. It is greatly to be desired that Rayleigh could have been as well advised as his contemporary and possible friend, the Huguenot poet-soldier, a grippa-dobin, who at the close of a checkered careers also prepared a historic universe, in which he simply told the story of his own political party in France through those stormy years in which he himself had been an actor. We would gladly exchange all these chronicles of Simiramis and Jehoshaphat for a plain statement of what Rayleigh witnessed in the England of Elizabeth. The student of Rayleigh does not therefore arise from an examination of his author's chief contribution to literature without a severe sense of disappointment. The book is brilliant, almost without arrival in its best passages, but these are comparatively few, and they are divided from one another by tracts of pathless desert. The narrative sometimes descends into a mere slew of barbarous names, a marriage of fabulous genealogy, in which the lightest attention must take wings to be supported at all. For instance, the geographical and historical account of the Ten Tribes occupies a space equivalent to a modern octavo volume of at least 400 pages, through which, if the conscientious reader would pass, threading the crude consistency of the matter, behooves him now both sail and over. It is not fair to dwell upon the eminent beauties of the history of the world without at the same time acknowledging that the book almost willfully deprives itself of legitimate value and true human interest by the remoteness of the period which it describes, and by the tiresome pedantry of its method. It's leisurely to the last excess. The first chapter of seven long sections takes us but to the close of the creation. We cannot proceed without knowing what it is that Tostatos affirms of the Empyrean heavens and whether with Strabo we may dare assume that they are filled with angels. To hasten onwards would be impossible, so long as one of the errors of stukeyous eugibnus remains unconfuted, and even then it is well to pause until we know the opinions of Orpheus and Zoroaster on the mattering hand. One whole chapter of four sections is dedicated to the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the arguments of Goropius Bicanus are minutely tested and found wanting. Goropius Bicanus, whom Raleigh is never tired of shaking between his critical teeth, was a learned Jesuit of Antwerp who proved that Adam and Eve spoke Dutch in paradise. It's not until he reaches the patriarchs that it begins to occur to the historian that at his present rate of progress it will need forty folio volumes and not four to complete his labors. From this point he hastens a little as the compilers of Encyclopedias do when they have passed the letter B. With all this the history of the world is a charming and delightful miscellany, if we do not accept it too seriously. Often for a score of pages there will be something brilliant, something memorable on every leaf, and there is not a chapter, however arid, without its fine things somewhere. It is impossible to tell where Raleigh's pen will take fire. He is most exquisite and fanciful where his subject is most unhopeful and, on the other hand, is likely to disappoint us where we take for granted that he will be fine. For example, the series of sections on the terrestrial paradise are singularly corrupt and dusty in their display of rabbinical pedantry, and the little touch in praise of Guyana is almost the only one that redeems the general dryness. It is not mirth or beauty or luxury that fires the historian, but death. Of mortality he has always some rich, sententious thing to say, praising the workmanship of death that finishes the sorrowful business of a wretched life. So the most celebrated passages of the whole book, and perhaps the finest, are the address to God which opens the history and the prose hymn in praise of death which closes it. The entire absence of humor is characteristic and adds to the difficulty of reading the book straight on. The story of Piriander's burning the clothes of the women closes with a jest. There is perhaps no other occasion on which the solemn historian is detected with a smile upon his lips. By far the most interesting and readable part of the history of the world is its preface. This is a book in itself, and one in which the author can descend to a lively human interest. We cheerfully pass from Elihu's debutsite and the conjectures of Adry Commius, respecting the family of Ram, to the actualities of English and continental history in the generation immediately preceding that in which Raleigh was writing. When we consider the position in which the author stood towards James I and turned to the pages of his preface, we refuse to believe that it was without design that he expressed himself in language so extraordinary. It would have been mere levity for a friendless prisoner ready for the block to publish this terrible arraignment of the crimes of tyrant kings unless he had some reason for believing that he could shelter himself successfully under a powerful sympathy. This sympathy in the case of Sir Walter Raleigh could be none other than that of Prince Henry, and it may well have been in the summer of 1612, when, as we know, he was particularly intimate with the prince and busyed in his affairs that he wrote the preface. With long isolation from the world, he had lost touch of public affairs as the prerogative of parliament would alone be sufficient to show. It is probable that he exaggerated the influence of the young prince and estimated too highly the promise of liberty which he had wrung from his father. It took James some time to discover that this grave rabbinical miscellany inspired by Syrosides and Goropius Bicanus was not wholesome reading for his subjects. On January 5th, 1615, after the book had been selling slowly, the king gave an order commanding the suppression of the remainder of the edition, giving as his reason that it is too saucy in censoring the acts of kings. It is said that some favored person at court pushed inquiry further and extracted from James the explanation that the censor of Henry VIII was the real cause of the suppression. Contemporary anecdote, however, has reported that the defamation of the Tudors in the preface to the history of the world might have passed without reproof, if the king had not discovered in the very body of the book several passages so ambiguously worded that he could not but suspect the writer of intentional satire. According to this story, he was startled at Rayleigh's account of Nabathus Vineyard and scandalized at the description of the impeachment of the admiral of France. But what finally drew him up and made him decide that the book must perish was the character of King Nynus, son of Queen Semiramis. This passage then may serve us as an example of the history of the world. Nynus, being the first whom the madness of boundless dominion transported, invaded his neighbor princes and became victorious over them, a man violent, insolent and cruel. Semiramis taking the opportunity and being more proud, adventurous and ambitious than her paramour enlarged the Babylonian Empire and beautified many places therein with buildings unexampled. But her son, having changed nature and condition with his mother, proved no less feminine than she was masculine, and as wounds and wrongs by their continual smart put the patient in mind how to cure the one and revenge the other, so those kings adjoining, whose subjection and calamity's incident were but new and therefore the more grievous, could not sleep when the advantage was offered by such a successor, for in Regno Babylonico, Hicparum resplenduit, this king shined little, Seth Naclarus of Nynus in the Babylonian kingdom. And likely it is that the necks of mortal man having been never before galled with the yoke of foreign dominion, nor having ever had experience of that most miserable and detested condition of living in slavery, no long descent having as yet invested the Assyrian with right, nor any other title being for him pretended than a strong hand, the foolish and the feminine son of a tyrannous and hated mother could very ill hold so many great princes and nations his vassals, with the power less mastering and the mind less industrious than his father and mother had used before him. It is in passages like this where we read the satire between the lines and in those occasional fragments of autobiography to which we have already referred in the course of this narrative that the secondary charm of the history of the world resides. It is to these that we turn when we have exhausted our first surprise and delight at the great bursts of poetic eloquence, the long sonorous sentences which break like waves on the shore when the spirit of the historian is roused by some occasional tempest of reflection. In either case, the book is essentially one to glean from, not to read with consecutive patience. Real historical philosophy is absolutely wanting. The author strives to seem impartial by introducing, in the midst of an account of the slaughter of the Amalekites, a chapter on the installation of civility in Europe and of Prometheus and Atlas, but his general notions of history are found to be as rude as his comparative mythology. His scarcely attempts to sift evidence and next to inspiration he knows no guide more trustworthy than Pintus or Haytonus, a Talmudic rabbi or a Jesuit father. In the midst of his disquisitions, the reward of the continuous reader is to come suddenly upon an unexpected, as I myself have seen in America, or as once befell me also in Ireland. Another historical work, the Brewery of the History of England, has been claimed for Sir Walter Reilly. This book was first published in 1692 from a manuscript in the possession of Archbishop Sankroth, and as it would appear in Reilly's handwriting. Before its publication, however, the Archbishop had noted that Samuel Daniel have inserted into his History of England, 1618, almost word for word both the introduction and the life, once it is that you have sometimes in the margin of my copy a various reading with D after it. Daniel, a gentle and subservient creature, was the friend of Camden and the paid servant of Queen Anne during Reilly's imprisonment. He died a few months after Reilly's execution. It is very likely that he was useful to Reilly in collecting notes and other material. It may even have been his work for the interesting prisoner in the tower that caused Johnson's jealous dislike of Daniel. The younger poet's own account, as Mr. Edwards pointed out, by no means precludes the supposition that he used material put together by another hand. At the same time, Sankroth's authority cannot be considered final as regards Reilly's authorship of the Brewery, for the manuscript did not come into his hands until nineteen years after Reilly's death. No such doubt attaches to the very curious and interesting volume published nominally in Middleburg in 1628 and entitled The Prerogative of Parliament. This takes the form of a dialogue between a counselor of state and a justice of the peace. The dramatic propriety is but poorly sustained and presently the justice becomes Reilly speaking in his own person. The book was written in the summer of 1615, a few months after the suppression of the history of the world, and by a curious misconstruction of motive was intended to remove from the king's mind the unpleasant impression caused by those parables of Ahab and of Ninias. It had however, as we shall see, the very opposite result. The preface to the king expresses an almost servile desire to please. It would be more dog-like than man-like to bite the stone that struck me to wit the borrowed authority of my sovereign misinformed. But Reilly was curiously misinformed himself regarding the ways and wishes of Jinx. His dialogue takes for its starting point the trial of Oliver St. John, who had been Reilly's fellow prisoner in the tower since April, for having with unreasonable brutality protested against the enforced payment of what was called the Benevolence, a supposed free will offering to the purse of the king. So ignorant was Reilly of what was going on in England that he fancied James to be unaware of the tricks of his ministers, and the argument of the prerogative of parliament is to encourage the king to cast aside his evil counselors and come face to face with his loyal people. The student of Mr. Gardner's account of the Benevolence will smile to think of the rage with which the king must have received Reilly's preferred good advice and of Reilly's stupefaction at learning that his well-meant volume was forbidden to be printed. His manuscript, prepared for the press, still remains among the state papers, and it was not until ten years after his death that it was first timidly issued under the imprints of Middelburg and of Hamburg. Not the least of Reilly's chagrinns in the tower must have been the composition of works which he was unable to publish. It is probable that several of these are still unknown to the world, many were certainly destroyed, some may still be in existence. During the thirty years which succeeded his execution, there was a considerable demand for scraps of Reilly's writing on the part of men who were leaning to the liberal side. John Hampton was a collector of Reilly's manuscripts, and he is possibly the friend who bequeathed to Milton the manuscript of the Cabinet Council, an important political work of Reilly's which the great Puritan poet gave to the world in 1658. At that time Milton had had the treatise many years in my hands and finding it lately by chance among other books and papers. Upon reading thereof I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author from the public. The Cabinet Council is a study in the manner of Machiavelli. It treats of the arts of empire and mysteries of statecraft mainly with regard to the duties of monarchy. It is remarkable for the extraordinary richness of elusive extracts from the Roman classics, almost every maxim being immediately followed by an apt Latin example. At the end of the twenty fourth chapter the author wakes up to the tedious character of this manner of instruction and the rest of the book is illustrated by historical instances in the English tongue. The book closes with an exhortation to the reader who could be no other than Prince Henry to emulate the conduct of Amorath, King of Turbay, who abandoned worldly glory to embrace a retired life of contemplation. The Cabinet Council must be regarded as a text book of statecraft intended in Uzum Delphini. Probably earlier in date and certainly more elegant in literary form is the treatise entitled A Discourse of War. This may be recommended to the modern reader as the most generally pleasing of Reilly's prose compositions and the one in which, owing to its modest limits, the peculiarities of his style may be most conveniently studied. The last passage of the little book forms one of the most charming pages in the literature of that time. It closes with a pathetic and dignified statement of Reilly's own attitude towards war. It would be an unspeakable advantage both to the public and private if one would consider that great truth that no man is wise or safe but he that is honest. All I have desired is peace to my country and may England enjoy that blessing when I shall have no more proportion in it than what my ashes make. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of these words, yet we must not forget that this specific light was not that in which Reilly's character had presented itself to Robert Cecil or to Elizabeth. None of Reilly's biographers have suggested any employment for his leisure during the year which followed his release from the tower. Yet the expressions he used in the preface to his observations on trade and commerce show that it must have been prepared during the year 1616 or 1617, about 14 or 15 years past. That is to say in 1602. I presented you, he says to the king, a book of extraordinary importance. He complains that this earlier book was suppressed and hopes for better luck but the same misfortune as usual with Reilly attended the observations. That treatise was an impassioned plea based upon a survey of the commercial condition of the world in favor of free trade. Reilly looked with grave suspicion on the various duties which were levied in increased amount on foreign goods entering this country and he entreated James I to allow him to nominate commissioners to examine into the causes of the depression of trade and to revise the tariffs on a liberal basis. It must have seemed to the king that Reilly willfully opposed every royal scheme which he examined. James had been a protectionist all through his reign and at this very moment was busy in attempting to force the native industries to flourish in spite of foreign competition. Reilly's treatise must have been put into the king's hands much about the time at which his violent protectionism was threatening to draw England into war with Holland. Reilly's advice seems to us wise and pointed but to James it can only have appeared willfully a wrong habit. The observations upon trade disappeared as so many of Reilly's manuscripts had disappeared before it and was only first published in the remains of 1651. Of the last three years of Reilly's imprisonment in the tower we know scarcely anything. On September 27, 1615 a fellow prisoner in whom Reilly could not fail to take an interest, Lady Arabella Stewart, died in the tower. In December Reilly was deprived by an order in council of Arabella's rich collection of pearls but how they had come into his possession we cannot guess. Nor can we date the stroke of apoplexy from which Reilly suffered about this time but relief was now briefly coming. Two of Reilly's worst enemies Northampton and Somerset were removed and in their successors Winwood and Villier Reilly found listeners more favourable to his projects. It has been said that he owed his release to bribery but Mr Gardner thinks it needless to suppose this. Winwood was as cordial a hater of Spain as Reilly himself and Villier in his political animus against the Somerset faction would need no bribery. Sir William St. John was active in bringing Reilly's claims before the court and the Queen as ever used what slender influence she possessed. Urged on so many sides James gave away and on January 30th 1616 signed a warrant for Reilly's release from the tower. He was to live in his own house but with a keeper. He was not to presume to visit the court or the Queen's apartments nor go to any public assemblies whatever and his whole attention was to be given to making due preparations for the intended voyage to Guyana. This warrant although Reilly used it to leave his confinement was only provisional and was confirmed by a minute of the private council on March 19. Reilly took a house in Broad Street where he spent 14 months in discreet retirement and then sailed on his last voyage. This is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Lynn Thompson. Reilly by Edmund Goss. Chapter 9 The Second Voyage to Guyana Reilly had been released from the tower expressly on the understanding that he should make direct preparations for a voyage to Guyana. The object of this voyage was to enrich King James with the produce of a mine close to the banks of the Orinoco. In the reign of Elizabeth Reilly had stately contended that the natives of Guyana had ceded all sovereignty in that country to England in 1595 and that English colonists therefore had no one's leave to ask there. But times had changed and he now no longer pretended that he had a right to the Orinoco. He was careful to insist that his expedition would infringe no privileges of Spain. He was anxious by every diplomatic subtlety to avoid failure and for the first few months he kept extremely quiet. He had called in the £8000 which had been lying at interest ever since he had received it as part of the compensation for the Sherbourne estates. Lady Reilly had raised £2,500 by the sale of some lands at Mitchum. £5,000 more were brought together by various expedients, some being borrowed in Amsterdam through the famous merchant Peter Van Law. And £15,000 were contributed by Reilly's friends who looked upon his enterprise much as men at the present day would regard a promising but rather hazardous investment. His first business was to build one large ship of 440 tonnes in the Thames. This he named the destiny. And he received no check in fitting her up to his desire. The king paid 700 crowns as the usual statutable bounty on shipbuilding without objection. At the same time Reilly built or collected six other smaller vessels and furnished them all with ordnance. The preparation of such a fleet in the Thames could not pass unobserved by the representatives of the Poran courts. And during the last six months of 1616 Reilly's name became the centre of a tangle of diplomatic intrigue and one which frequently occurs in the correspondence of Salmiento, better known afterwards as Gondama, the Spanish ambassador, and in that of de Marais, the French ambassador. Mr Edwards has remarked with complete justice that the last two years of Reilly's life were simply, quote, a protracted death struggle between him and Gondama, end quote. The latter had been in England since 1613 and had acquired a singular art in dealing with the purposes of James I. At the English court during 1616 we find Spain watching France and Venice watching Savoy, all of them intent on Reilly's movements in the river. For the unravelment of these intrigues in detail, the reader must be referred to Mr Gardner's masterly pages. On August 26th a royal commission was issued by which Reilly was made the commander of an expedition to Guiana under express orders, more stringently expressed than usual, not to visit the dominions of any Christian prince. This was to allay the alarm of the Spanish ambassador, who from the first rumour of Reilly's voyage had not ceased to declare that its real object was piracy and probably the capture of the Mexican plate fleet. At the same time James I allowed Gondama to obtain possession of copies of certain documents which Reilly had drawn out at the royal command, describing his intended route, and these were at once forwarded to Madrid, together with such information as Gondama had been able to glean in conversation with Reilly. Spain instantly replied by offering him an escort to his gold mine and back, but of course Reilly declined the proposition. He continued to assert that he had no piratical intention and that any man might peacefully enter Guiana without asking leave of Spain. It is doubtful whether the anecdote is true which records a trial at this time applied to Bacon to know whether the terms of his commission were tantamount to a free pardon, and was told that they were. But it rests on much better testimony that Bacon asked him what he would do if the Guiana mine proved a deception. Reilly admitted that he would then look out for the Mexican plate fleet. But then you will be pirates," said Bacon, and Reilly answered, ah, whoever heard of men being pirates for millions. There was no exaggeration in this. The Mexican fleet of that year was valued at two millions and a half. The astute Gondama was at least half certain that this was Reilly's real intention, and by October 12th he had persuaded James to give him still more full security that no injury should be done at the peril of Reilly's life to any subject or property of the King of Spain. The building of the destiny, meanwhile, proceeded, and Reilly received many important visitors on board her. He was protected by the cordial favour of the Secretary, Sir Ralph Winwood, and if the King disliked him as much as ever, no animosity was shown. In the first days of 1617 Reilly ventured upon a daring act of intrigue. He determined to work upon the growing sympathy of the English court with Savoy and its tension with Spain to strike a blow against the rich enemy of the one and ally of the other, Genoa. He proposed to Skanefisi, the Savoyard envoy in London, that James I should be induced to allow the Guyana expedition to steal into the Mediterranean, and seize Genoa for Savoy. Skanefisi laid the proposal before James, and on January 12th it was discussed in the presence of Winwood. There was talk of increasing Reilly's fleet for this purpose by the addition of a squadron of sixteen ships from the Royal Navy. For a fortnight the idea was discussed in secret, but on the 26th Skanefisi was told that the King had determined not to adopt it. Four days later Reilly was released from the personal attendance of the Keeper, and though still not pardoned, was pronounced free. On February 10th the Venetian envoy, who had been taken into Skanefisi's council, announced to his government that the King had finally determined to keep Reilly to his original intention. Reilly was next assailed by secret propositions from France. Through the month of February various Frenchmen visited him on the destiny, besides the Ambassador de Marais. He was nearly persuaded, in defiance of James, to support the projected Huguenot Rebellion by capturing San Vellerie. To find out the truth regarding his intention, de Marais paid at least one visit to the destiny, and on March 7th gave his government an account of a conversation, with Reilly, in which the latter had spoken bitterly of James, and had asserted his affection for France and desire to serve her. It is in the correspondence of de Marais that the names of Reilly and Richier become for a moment connected. It was in February 1617 that the future cardinal described his English contemporary as Huastra Reilly, Cromes Marine, a mauve capitaine. It marched the English government to allay fresh apprehensions on the part of Spain, forwarded by Gondama, most implicit assertions at Reilly's expedition should be in no way injurious to Spain. And so it finally started, after all, not bound for Mexico or Genoa, or San Vellerie, but for the Orinoco. Up to the last, Gondama protested, and his protestations were only put aside after a special council of March 28. Next day Reilly rode down to Dover, to go on board the destiny which had left the Thames on the 26th. His fleet of seven vessels was not well manned. His own account of the cruise is thus worded in the Apology. A company of volunteers, who for the most part had neither seen the sea nor the wars, who some forty gentlemen accepted were the very scum of the world, drunkards, blasphemers, and such others as their fathers, brothers and friends thought it an exceedingly good gain to be discharged of, with the hazard of some thirty, forty or fifty pounds. He was himself admiral, with his son Walter, as captain of the destiny, so William St. Liga was on the Thunder, a certain John Bailey commanded the husband. The remaining vessels were the Jason, the Encounter, the Flying Joan, and the Page. The master of the destiny was John Burwick, a hypocritical thief. Various tiresome delays occurred. They waited for the thunder at the Isle of Wight, and when the rest went on to Plymouth the Jason stayed behind, ignominiously, in Portsmouth, because her captain had no ready money to pay a discerning baker. The husband was in the same plight for twelve days more. The squadron was, however, increased by seven additional vessels, one of them commanded by chemists, through the Enforced Waiting at Plymouth, where, on May the Third, Riley issued his famous, Orders of the Fleet. On June the Twelfth the Fleet sailed at last out of Plymouth Sound. West of Silly they fell in with a terrific storm which scattered the ships in various directions. Some put back to Falmers, but the Flying Jones sank altogether, and the fly boat was driven up the Bristol Channel. After nearly a fortnight of anxiety and distress, the Fleet collected again in Court Carver, where they lay repairing and waiting for a favourable wind for more than six weeks. From the Lismore papers just published, January 1886, we learn that Riley occupied this Enforced Leisure in getting rid of his remaining Irish leases, and in collecting as much money as he could. Sir Richard Boyle records that on July the First, Riley came to his house and borrowed one hundred pounds. On August the Nineteenth the last journal begins, and on the Twentieth the Fleet left Cork. Riley having taken a share in a mine at Baligara on the morning of the same day. Nothing happened until the Thirty-First, when, being of Cape St Vincent, the English Fleet fell in with four French vessels laden with fish and train-oil for Seville. In order that they might not give notice that Riley was in those waters, where he certainly had no business to be, he took these vessels with him, a thousand leagues to the southward, and then dismissed them with payment. His conduct towards these French boats was suspicious, and he afterwards tried to prove that they were pirates who had harried the Grand Canary. It was also Riley's contention that the enmity presently shown him by Captain Bailey of the husband arose from Riley's refusal to let him make one of these French ships his prize. On Sunday morning, September the Seventh, the English Fleet anchored off the shore of Lanzarote, the most easterly of the Canaries, having hitherto crept down the coast of Africa. These Atlantic islands were particularly open to the attacks of Algerian corsairs, and a fleet of Turks had just ravaged the towns of the Madeiras. The people of Lanzarote, waking up one morning to find their roadstead full of strange vessels, took for granted that these were pirates from Algiers. One English merchant vessel was lying there at anchor, and by no means of this interpreter, Riley endeavored to explain his peaceful intention, but without success. He had a meeting on shore with the governor of the island. Our troops staying at equal distance with us, and was asked the pertinent question, quote, what I sought from the miserable and barren island, peopled in effect all with mariscos, end quote. Riley asserted that all he wanted was fresh meat and wine for his cruise, and these he offered to pay for. On the eleventh finding that no provisions came, and that the inhabitants were carrying their goods up into the hills, the captain specked Riley to march inland and take the town. But, he says, besides that I knew it would offend his majesty, I am sure the poor English merchant should have been ruined, whose goods he had in his hands, and the way being mountainous and most extreme stony, I knew that I must have lost twenty good men in taking a town not worth two grotes. The governor of Lanzarote continued to be in a craven state of anxiety, and would not hear of trading. We cannot blame him, especially when we find that less than eight months later, his island was invaded by genuine Algerine bandits, his town utterly sacked, and nine hundred Christians taken off into Muslim slavery. After three Englishmen had been killed by the islanders, yet without taking any reprisals, Riley sailed away from these sandy and inhospitable shores. But in the night before he left one of his ships, the husband had disappeared. Captain Bailey, who is believed to have been in the pair of Gondama, had hurried back to England to give report of Riley's piratical attack on the island belonging to the Dominion of Spain. As the great Englishman went sailing westward through the lustrous waters of the Canary archipelago, his doom was sealed, and he would have felt his execution to be a certainty, had he but known what was happening in England. He called at Grand Canary to complain of the Lanzarote people to the Governor-General of the islands, but for some reason which he does not state, did not land at the town of Parmas, but at a desert part, far from any village, probably west of the northern extremity of the island. The Governor-General gave him no answer, but the men found a little water, and they sailed away, leaving Tenerife to the north. On September 18th they put into the excellent port of the island of Gomera the best, he says, quote, in all the Canaries, the town and castle standing on the very breach of the sea, but the billows do so tumble and overfall that it is impossible to land upon any part of the strand, but by swimming, saving in a cove under steep rocks, where they can pass towards the town, but one after the other, end quote. Here, as at Lanzarote, they were taken for Algerines, and the guns on the rocks began to fire at them. Raleigh, however, immediately sent a messenger on shore to explain that they would not come to sack their town and burn their churches, as the Dutch had done in 1599, but that they were in great need of water. They presently came to an agreement that the islanders should quit their trenches round the landing-place, and that Raleigh should promise, on the faith of a Christian, not to land more than 30 unarmed sailors to fill their casks at springs within pistol-shot of the wash of the sea, none of these sailors being permitted to enter any house or garden. Raleigh, therefore, sent six of his seamen, and turned his ships broadside to the town, ready to batter it with culverine if he saw one sign of treachery. It turned out that when the Governor of Gomera knew who his visitors were, he was as pleased as possible to see them. His wife's mother had been a stafford, and when Raleigh knew that, he sent his countrywoman a presence of six embroidered handkerchiefs and six pairs of gloves, with a very handsome message. To this the lady rejoined that she regretted that her barren island contained nothing worth Raleigh's acceptance, yet sent him four very great loaves of sugar, with baskets of lemons, oranges, pomegranates, figs, and most delicate grapes. During the three days that they rode off Gomera, the Governor and his English lady wrote daily to Sir Walter. In return for the fruit, deeming himself much in her debt, he sent on shore a very courteous letter, and with it two ounces of ambergris, an ounce in the essence of amber, a great glass of fine rose water, an excellent picture of Mary Magdalene, and a cutwork rough. Here he expected courtesies to stay, but the lady must positively have the last word, and at the English ships were starting, her servants came on board with yet a letter, accompanying a basket of delicate white manchit bread, more clusters of fruit, and twenty-four fat hens. Meanwhile in the friendliest way the sailors had been going to and fro, and had drawn two hundred and forty pipes of water. So cordial indeed was their reception, that as a last favour Riley asked the Governor for a letter to San Miento, Gondemar, which he got, setting forth how nobly we have behaved ourselves, and how justly we have dealt with the inhabitants of the islands. Before leaving Gomera Riley discharged a native bark, which one of his penises had captured, and paid at the valuation of the Master for any prejudice that had been done him. On September the twenty-first they sailed away from the Canaries, having much sickness on board, and that very day their first important loss occurred, in the death of the perverse marshal of the fleet, a man called Stead. On the twenty-sixth they reached Cent Antonio, the outermost of the Cape Verde Islands, but did not land there. For eight wretched days they wandered aimlessly about this unfriendly archipelago, trying to make up their minds to land now on Brava, now on St. Jago. Some of the ships grated on the rocks, all lost anchors and cables. One pinnace, her crew being asleep, and no one on the watch, drove under the bowsprit of the destiny, struck her, and sank. When they did effect of landing on Brava, they were soaked by the tropical autumnal rains of early October. Men were dying fast in all the ships, in deep dejection Riley gave the order to steer away for Guyana. Meanwhile Bailey had arrived in England, had seen Gondema, and had openly given out that he left Riley because the Admiral had been guilty of piratical acts against Spain. It does not seem that Wynwood or the King took any notice of these declarations until the end of the year. The ocean voyage was marked by an extraordinary number of deaths, among others that of Mr. Fowler, the principal refiner, whose presence at the gold mine would have been of the greatest importance. On October 13th John Tolbert, who had been for eleven years Riley's secretary in the tower, passed away. The log preserved in the second voyage is of great interest, but we dare not allow its observations to detain us. On the last of October Riley was struck down by fever himself, and for twenty days lay unable to eat anything more solid than a stewed prune. He was in bed on November 11th when they sighted Cape Orange, now the most northerly point belonging to the Empire of Brazil. On the 14th they anchored at the mouth of the Cayenne River, and Riley was carried from his noisome cabin into his barge. The destiny got across the bar, which was lower then than it is now, on the 17th. At Cayenne, after a day or two, Riley's old servant Harry turned up. He had almost forgotten his English in twenty-two years. Riley began to pick up strength a little on pineapples and plantains, and presently he began to venture even upon roast peccary. He proceeded to spend the next fortnight on the Cayenne River, refreshing his weary crews and repairing his vessels. An interesting letter to his wife that he sent home from this place, which he called Calliana, confirms the second voyage, and adds some details. He says to Lady Riley, to tell you I might be here king of the Indians were a vanity, but my name had still lived among them. Here they feed me with fresh meat, and all that the country yields, all offer to obey me. Commend me to poor Karoo, my son. His eldest son, Walter, it will be remembered, was with him. In December the fleet coasted along South America westward, till on the 15th they stood under Trinidad. Meanwhile Riley had sent forward by way of Suriname and Ezequivo, the expedition which was to search for the goldmine on the Orinoco. His own health prevented his attempting this journey, but he sent Captain Chemus as commander in his stead, and with him was George Riley, the Admiral's nephew. Young Walter also accompanied the party. On New Year's Eve Riley landed at a village in Trinidad, close to Port of Spain, and there he waited on the borders of the land of Pitch, all through January 1618. On the last of that month he returned to Punto Gallo, on the mainland, being very anxious for news from the Orinoco. The log of the second voyage closes on February the 13th, and it is supposed that it was on the evening of that day that Captain Chemus' disastrous letter written on January the 8th, reached Riley and informed him of the death of his son Walter. Quote, to a broken mind, a sick body, and weak eyes, it is a torment to write letters. End quote, and we know how he felt, as he also said that now, quote, all the respects of this world had taken end in him. End quote. Chemus had acted in keeping with what he must have supposed to be Riley's private wish. He had attacked the new Spanish settlement of Santome. In the fight, young Walter Riley had been struck down as he was shouting, quote, come on, my men, this is the only mind you will ever find. End quote. Chemus had to announce his fact to the father, and a few days afterwards, with only a remnant of his troop, he himself fled in panic to the sea, believing that a Spanish army was upon him. The whole adventure was a miserable and ignominious failure. The meeting between Riley and Chemus could not fail to be an embarrassing one. Riley could not but feel that all his own mistakes and faults might have been condoned if Chemus had brought one basket of ore from the fabulous mine, and he could not refrain from reproaching him. He told him, he, quote, should be forced to leave him to his arguments with the witch. If he could satisfy his majesty and the state, I should be glad of it, though for my part he must excuse me to justify it. End quote. After this first interview, Chemus left him in great dejection, and a day or two later appeared in the Admiral's cabin with a letter which he had written to the Earl of Arendall, excusing himself. He begged Riley to forgive him and to read this letter. What followed, Sir Walter must tell in his own grave words. Quote, I told him he had undone me by his obscenity and that I would not favour or colour in any sort his former folly. He then asked me whether that were my resolution. I answered that it was. He then replied in these words, I know then, sir, what course to take, and went out of my cabin into his own, in which he was no sooner entered than I heard a pistol go off. I sent up, not suspecting any such thing as the killing of himself, to know who shot a pistol. Chemus himself made answer, lying on his bed, that he had shot it off because it had long been charged, with which I was satisfied. Some half-hour after this, his boy, going into the cabin, found him dead, having a long knife thrust under his left pap, into his heart, and a pistol lying by him, with which he had appeared he had shot himself, but the bullet, lighting upon a rib, had but broken the rib and went no further. End quote. Such was the wretched manner in which Riley and his old faithful servant parted. In his despair the Admiral's first notion was to plunge himself into the mazes of the Orinoco and to find the goldmine or die in the search for it. But his men were mutinous. They only declared that in their belief no such mine existed, and that the Spaniards were bearing down on them by land and sea. They would not go, and Riley, strangely weakened and humbled, asked them if they wished him to lead them against the Mexican plate fleet. He told them that he had a commission from France, and that they would be pardoned in England if they came home laden with treasure. What exactly happened, no one knows. It all grew worse and worse, and on March the 21st when Riley wrote a long letter to prepare the mind of Winwood, he was lying off St Christopher's on his homeward voyage, not knowing, of course, that his best English friend had already been dead five months. Next day he made up his mind that he dared not return to England to face his enemies, and he wrote to tell his wife that he was off to Newfoundland, quote, where I mean to make clean my ships and revital, and back o'ing up to pay for it, end quote. But he was powerless, as he confesses, to govern his crew, and no one knows how the heartbroken old man spent the next two dreadful months. His ships slunk back piecemeal to English havens, and on May the 23rd, Captain North, who had commanded the Chudley, had audience of the King, and told him the whole miserable story. On May the 26th, Riley made his appearance with the destiny in the harbor of Kinsale, and on June the 21st he arrived in Plymouth, penniless and dejected for the first time in his life utterly unnerved and irresolute. On June the 16th he had written an apologetic letter to the King. By some curious slip Mr. Edwards stated this letter three months too late, and its significance has therefore been overlooked. It is important, as showing that Riley was eager to conciliate James. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 The End Gondama had not been idle during Riley's absence, but so long as Winwood was alive he had not been able to attack the absent admiral with much success. As soon as Bailey brought him the news of the supposed attack on Lanzarote, he communicated with his government, and urged that an embargo should be laid on the goods of the English merchant colony at Seville. This angry dispatch, the result of a vain attempt to reach James, is dated October the 22nd. And on October the 27th the sudden death of Winwood removed Gondama's principal obstacle to the ruin of Riley. At first, however, Bailey's story received no credence, and if, as Howell somewhat apocryphally relates, Gondama had been forbidden to say two words about Riley and the king's presence, and therefore entered with uplifted hands, shouting, Pirates! till James was weary. He did not seem to gain much ground. Moreover, while Bailey's story was being discussed, the little English merchant vessel which had been lying in Lanzarote during Riley's visit returned to London and gave evidence which brought Bailey to jail in the gatehouse. On January the 11th, 1618, before any news had been received from Guyana, a large gathering was held in the council chamber at Westminster to try Bailey for false accusation. The council contained many men favourable to Riley, but the Spanish ambassador brought influence to bear on the king, and late in February Bailey was released with a reprimand, although he had accused Riley not of piracy only, but of high treason. The news of this ill-starred attack on Santa May reached Madrid on May the 3rd and London on the 8th. This must have given exquisite pleasure to the baffled gondama, and he lost no time in pressing James for revenge. He gave the king the alternative of punishing Riley in England or sending him as a prisoner to Spain. The king wavered for a month. Meanwhile, vessel after vessel brought more conclusive news of the piratical expedition in which chemists had failed, and gondama became daily more impotent. It began to be thought that Riley had taken flight for Paris. At last on June the 11th, James I issued a proclamation inviting all who had a claim against Riley to present it to the council. Lord Nottingham at the same time outlawed the destiny of whatever English port she might appear. It does not seem that the king was unduly hasty in condemning Riley. He had given Spain every solemn pledge that Riley should not injure Spain, and yet the admiral's only act had been to fall on an unsuspecting Spanish settlement. Notwithstanding this, James argued as long as he could that Santa May lay outside the agreement. The arrival of the destiny, however, seems to have clinched gondamas' arguments. Three days after Riley arrived in Plymouth, the king assured Spain that not all those who have given security for Riley can save him from the gallows. For the particulars of the curious intrigues of these summer months the reader must be referred once more to Mr. Gardiner's dispassionate pages. On June the 21st Riley moored the destiny in Plymouth Harbour and sent her sails ashore. Lady Riley hastened down to meet him, and they stayed in Plymouth before to-night. His wife and he, with Samuel King, one of his captains, then set out for London, but were met just outside Ashburton by Sir Louis Stutley, a cousin of Riley's now vice admiral of Davenger. This man announced that he had the king's orders to arrest Sir Walter Riley, but these were only verbal orders, and he took his prisoner back to Plymouth to await the council warrant. Riley was lodged for nine or ten days in the house of Sir Christopher Harris, Stutley being mainly occupied in securing the destiny and her contents. Riley pretended to be ill, all was really in disposed with anxiety and weariness. While Stutley was thinking of other things, Riley commissioned Captain King to hire a bark to slip over to La Rochelle, and one night Riley and King made their escape towards this vessel in a little boat. But Riley probably reflected that without money or influence he would be no safer in France than in England, and before the boat reached the vessel he turned back and went home. He ordered the bark to be in readiness the next night, but although no one watched him, he made no second effort to escape. On July 23rd the Privy Council ordered Stutley, all delays set apart, to bring the body of Sir Walter Riley speedily to London. Two days later Stutley and his prisoner started from Plymouth. A French quack called Manorie, in whose chemical pretensions Riley had chained some interest, was encouraged by Stutley to attend him and to worm himself into his confidence. As Walter and Elizabeth Riley passed the beautiful Sherbin, which had once been theirs, the former could not refrain from saying, all this was mine, and it was taken from me unjustly. They travelled quickly, leaving at Sherbin on the 26th and the next night at Salisbury. Riley lost all confidence as he found himself so hastily being taken up to London. As they went from Wilton into Salisbury Riley asked Manorie to give him a vomit. By its means I shall gain time to work my friends and order my affairs, perhaps even to pacify his majesty. Otherwise as soon as ever I come to London they will have me to the tower and cut off my head. That same evening while being conducted to his rooms Riley struck his head against a post. It was supposed to show that he was dizzy, and next morning he sent Lady Riley and her retinue on to London saying that he himself was not well enough to move. At the same time King went on to prepare a ship to be ready in the Thames in case of another emergency. When they had started Riley was discovered in his bedroom on all fours in his shirt, gnawing the rushes on the floor. Stucley was completely taken in. The French quack had given Riley not an emetic only, but some ointment which caused his skin to break out in dark purple pastules. Stucley rushed off to the Bishop of Ely who happened to be in Salisbury and acted on his advice to wait for Riley's recovery. Unless Stucley also was month banking the spy Manorie for the present kept Riley's counsel. Riley was treated as an invalid and during the four days' retirement contrived to write his apology for the voyage to Guyana. On August 1st James I and all his court entered Salisbury and on the morning of the same day Stucley hurried his prisoner away lest he should meet the King. Some pity, however, was shown to Riley's supposed dying state and permission was granted him to go straight to his own London house. His hopes revived and he very rashly bribed both Manorie and Stucley to let him escape. So confident was he that he refused the offers of a French envoy who met him at Brentford with proposals of a secret passage over to France and a welcome in Paris. He was broken altogether. He had no dignity, no judgment left. Riley arrived at his house in Broad Street on August 7th. On the 9th the French repeated their invitation. Again it was refused for King had seen Riley and told him that a vessel was lying at Tilbury ready to carry him over to France. Her captain, Hart, was an old boson of kings. Before Riley received the information this man had already reported the whole scheme to the government. The poor adventurer was surrounded by spies from Stucley downwards and the toils were gathering round him on every side. On the evening of the same August 9th Riley, accompanied by Captain King Hart and a page, embarked from the riverside in two werries and was rode down towards Tilbury. Riley presently noticed that a larger boat was following them. At Greenwich Stucley threw off the mask of friendship and arrested King who was thrown then and there into the tower. What became of Riley that night does not appear. He was put into the tower next day. When he was arrested his pockets were found full of jewels and golden pearls, the diamond ring Queen Elizabeth had given him, a lodestone in a scarlet purse, an ounce of ambergris and fifty pines in gold. These fell into the hands of the traitor Sir Judas Stucley. Outside the tower the process of Riley's legal condemnation now pursued its course. A commission was appointed to consider the charges brought against the prisoner and evidence was collected on all sides. He managed to sit with folded hands. He could only hope that the eloquence and patriotism of his apology might possibly appeal to the sympathy of James. As so often before he merely showed that he was ignorant of the King's character, for James read the apology without any other feeling than one of triumph that it amounted to a confession of guilt. The only friend that Riley could now appeal to was Anne of Denmark and to her he forwarded about August the 15th edition in verse. Cold walls, to you I speak but you are senseless. Celestial powers you hear but have determined and shall determine to my greatest happiness. Then unto whom shall I unfold my wrong? Cast down my tears or hold up folded hands. To her to whom remorse doth most belong to her who is the first and may alone be justly called to the heavens? Who should have mercy if a queen have none? Queen Anne responded as she had always done to Riley's appeals if his life had lain in her hands it would have been a long and a happy one. She immediately wrote to Buckingham nearing that his influence was far greater than her own with the King and her letter exists for the wonder of posterity. She writes to her husband's favourite my kind dog and asks him if I have any power or credit with you I pray you let me have trial of it at this time in dealing sincerely and earnestly with the King that Sir Walter Riley's life may not be called into question. Buckingham however was already pledged to aid the Spanish alliance and the Queen's letter was unavailing. On August the 17th and on two subsequent occasions Riley was examined before the commissioners the charge being formally drawn up by Yelverton the Attorney General he was accused of having abused the King's confidence by setting out to find gold in a mine which never existed with instituting a piratical attack on a peaceful Spanish settlement with attempting to capture the Mexican plate fleet although he had been specially warned that he would take his life in his hands if he committed any of these three faults. It is hard to understand Mr. Edwards persuaded himself to brand each of these charges as a distinct falsehood. The sympathy we must feel for Riley's misfortunes and the enthusiasm with which we read the apology should not surely blind us to the fact that in neither of these three matters was his action true or honest. We have no particular account of his examinations but it is almost certain that they rung from him admissions to marriage in character. He had tried to make James a cat's paw in revenging himself on Spain and he had to take the consequences. It was of great importance to the Government to understand why France had meddled in the matter. The Council therefore summoned La Chesnée the envoy who had made propositions to Riley at Brentford and at Broad Street but he denied the whole story and said he never suggested flight to Riley. So little information had been gained by the middle of September that it was determined to employ a professional spy. The person selected for this engaging office was Sir Thomas Wilson one of the band of English pensioners in the pair of Spain. The most favourable thing that has ever been said of Stucley is that he was not quite such a scoundrel as Wilson. On September 9th this person who had known Riley from Elizabeth's days and was now Keeper of the State papers was supplied with convenient lodging within or near unto the chambers of Sir Walter Riley. At the same time Sir Alan Apsley the Lieutenant who had guarded the prisoner hither too was relieved. Wilson's first act was not one of conciliation. He demanded that Riley should be turned out of his comfortable quarters in the wardrobe tower to make room for Wilson who desired that the prisoner should have the smaller rooms above to this and other demands Apsley would not exceed. Wilson then began to do his best to insinuate himself into Riley's confidence and after about four tonight seems to have succeeded. We have a very full report of his conversations with Riley but they add little to our knowledge even if Wilson's evidence could be taken as gospel. Riley admitted Lachesne's offer of a French passage and his own proposal to seize the Mexican fleet but both these points were already known to the Council. Towards the end of September two events occurred which brought matters more to a crisis. On the 24th Riley wrote a confession to the King in which he said that the French government had given him a commission that Lachesne had three times offered him escape and that he himself was in possession of important state secrets of which he would make a clean breast if the King had given him. This important document was found at Siemenkassen first published in 1868 by Mr St John. On the same day Philip III sent a dispatch to James I, desiring him in peremptory terms to save him the trouble of hanging Riley at Madrid by executing him promptly in London. As soon as this ultimatum arrived James applied to the commissioners to know how it would be best to deal with the prisoner judicially. Several lawyers assured him that Riley was under sentence of death and that therefore no trial was necessary, but James shrank from the scandal of apparent murder. The commissioners were so fully satisfied of Riley's guilt that they advised the King to give him a public trial under somewhat unusual forms. He was to be tried before the Council and the judges, a few persons of rank being admitted as spectators, the conduct of the trial to be the same as preceding in Westminster Hall. On receipt of the dispatch from Madrid, that is to say, on October III, Lady Riley, whose presence was no longer required, was released from the TAR. The trial before the commissioners began on October 22. Mr Gardiner has printed in the Camden miscellany such notes of cross examination as were preserved by Sir Julius Caesar, but they are very slight. Riley seems to have denied any intention to stir up war between England and Spain, and declared that he had confidently believed in the existence of the mine, but he made no attempt to deny that in case the mine failed, he had proposed the taking of the Mexican fleet. At the close of the examination, Bacon, in the name of the commissioners, told Riley that he was guilty of abusing the confidence of King James and of injuring the subjects of Spain and that he must prepare to die being already civilly dead. Riley was then taken back to the TAR, where he was left in suspense for ten days. Meanwhile, the justices of the King's bench were desired to award execution upon the old Winchester sentence of 1603. It is thought that James hoped to keep Riley from appearing again in public, but the judges said that he must be brought face to face with them. On October 28, therefore, Riley was roused from his bed, where he was suffering from a severe attack of the aegyo, and was brought out of the TAR, which he never entered again. He was taken so hastily that he had no time for his toilet and his barber called out that his master had not combed his head. "'Let them can that I have it,' was Riley's answer, and he continued, "'Does there no, Peter, any plaster that will set a man's head on again when it is off?' When he came before Yelverton he argued that the Guyana commission had wiped out all the past, including the sentence of 1603. He began to discuss anew his late voyage, but the chief justice interrupting him told him that he was to be executed for the old treason, not for this new one. Riley then threw himself on the King's mercy, being every way trapped and fettered, without referring to this appeal the chief justice proceeded to award execution. Riley was to be beheaded early next morning in Old Palace Yard. He entreated for a few days respite that he might finish some writings, but the King had purposely left town that no petitions for delay might reach him. Bacon produced the warrant which he had drawn up and which bore the King's signature and the great seal. Riley was taken from Westminster Hall to the gate-house. He was in high spirits and meeting his old friend Sir Hugh Beeston for a good place at the show next morning. He himself, he said, was sure of one. He was so gay and chatty that his cousin Francis Thin begged him to be more grave lest his enemies should report his levity. Riley answered, It is my last mirth in this world do not grudge it to me. Dr. Tyneson, Dean of Westminster to whom Riley was a stranger, then attended him and was somewhat scandalised at this flow of mercurial spirits. When I began, says the Dean, to encourage him against the fear of death he seemed to make so light of it that I wondered at him. When I told him that the dear servants of God in better causes than his had shrunk back and trembled a little he denied it not, but yet he gave God thanks that he had never feared death. The good Dean was puzzled but his final reflection was all to Riley's honour. After the execution he reported that he was the most fearless of death that ever was known and the most resolute and confident yet with reverence and conscience. It was late on Thursday evening, the twenty-eighth that Lady Riley learned the position of affairs she had not dreamed that the case was so hopeless. She hastened to the gate-house and until midnight husband and wife were closeted together in conversation she being consoled and strengthened by his calm. Her last word was that she had obtained permission to dispose of his body. It is well best, he said, that thou mayest dispose of that dead which thou hadst not always the disposing of when alive. And so with a smile they parted. When his wife had left him Riley sat down to write his last verses in such his time that takes in trust our youth, our joys, our all we have and pays us but with earth and dust who in the dark and silent grave when we have wandered all our ways shuts up the story of our days but from this earth, this grave, this dust my God shall raise me up I trust. At the same hour Lady Riley was preparing for the horrors of the morrow. She sent off this note to her brother, Sir Nicholas Carew. I desire, good brother, to let me bury the worthy body of my noble husband Sir Walter Riley in your church at Bedington where I desire to be buried. The lords have given me his dead body though they denied me his life. This night he shall be brought you with two or three of my men. Let me hear presently. God hold me in my wits. There was probably some difficulty in the way for Riley's body was not brought that night to Bedington. In the morning the Dean of Westminster entered the gate-house again. Riley, who had perhaps not gone to bed all night had just finished a testamentary paper of defence. Dr. Townsend found him still very cheerful and merry and administered the communion to him. After the Eucharist Riley talked very freely to the Dean defending himself and going back in his reminiscences to the reign of Elizabeth. He declared that the world would yet be persuaded of his innocence and he once more scandalised the Dean by his truculent cheerfulness. He ate a hearty breakfast and smoked a bite of tobacco. It was now time to leave the gate-house but before he did so a cup of sack was brought to him. The servant asked if the wine was to his liking and Riley replied I will answer you as did the fellow who drank of St. Giles's bowl as he went to Tyburn. It is good drink if a man may stay by it. This excitement lasted without reaction until he reached the scaffold wither he was led by the sheriffs still attended by Dr. Townsend. As they passed through the vast throng of persons who had come to see the spectacle Riley observed a very old man bare-headed in the crowd and snatching off the rich nightcap of cut lace which he himself was wearing he threw it to him, saying friend, you need this more than I do. Riley was dressed in a black embroidered velvet night-gown a pair coloured satin doublet and a black embroidered waistcoat he wore a rough band a pair of black cut taffet reaches and ash coloured silk stockings thus combining his taste for magnificence with a decent regard for the occasion. The multitude so pressed upon him and he had walked with such an animated step that when he ascended the scaffold erect and smiling he was observed to be quite out of breath. There are many contemporary reports of Sir Walter Riley's deportment at this final moment of his life. In the place of these hackneyed narratives we may perhaps quote the less-known words of another bystander the Republican Sir John Elliott who was at that time a young man of twenty-eight. In his monarchy of man which remained in manuscripts until 1879 Elliott says Take an example in that else unmatched fortitude of our rally the magnanimity of his sufferings that large chronicle of fortitude all the preparations that are terrible resented to his eye guards and officers about him fetters and chains upon him the scaffold and executioner before him and then the axe and more cruel expectation of his enemies and what did all that work on the resolution of that worthy? Made it an impression of weak fear or a distraction of his reason nothing so little did that great soul suffer but gathered more strength than advantage upon either his mind became the clearer as if already it had been freed from the cloud and oppression of the body and that trial gave an illustration to his courage so that it changed the affection of his enemies and turned their joy into sorrow and all men else it filled with admiration leaving no doubt but this whether death was more acceptable to him or he more welcome unto death at the windows of Sarandolf Caru which were opposite to the scaffold rally observed a cluster of gentlemen and noblemen and in particular several of those who had been adventurers with him for the mine on the Orinoco he perceived amongst others the Earls of Arendl, Oxford and Northampton that these old friends should hear distinctly what he had to say was his main object and therefore addressed them with an apology for the weakness of his voice and asked them to come down to him Arendl at once assented and all the company at Caru's left the balcony and came on to the scaffold where those who had been intimate with rally solemnly embraced him he then began his celebrated speech of which he had left a brief draft signed in the gatehouse there are extant several versions of this address beside the one he signed in the excitement of the scene he seems to have said more and to have put it more ingeniously than in the solitude of the previous night his old love of publicity of the open air appeared in his first sentence I thank God that he has sent me to die in the light not in darkness I likewise thank God that he has suffered me to die before such an assembly of honourable witnesses surely in the tower where for the space of thirteen years together I have been oppressed with many miseries and I return him thanks that my fever, the ague hath not taken me at this time as I prayed to him that it might not that I might clear myself of such accusations unjustly laid to my charge and leave behind me the testimony of a true heart both to my king and country he was justly elated he knew that his resources were exhausted his energies abated and that pardon would now merely mean a relegation to oblivion he took his public execution with delight as if it were a martyrdom and had the greatness of soul to perceive that nothing could possibly commend his career and character to posterity so much as to leave this mortal stage with a telling soliloquy his powers were drawn together to their height his intellect which had lately seemed to be growing dim had never flashed more brilliantly and the biographer can recall but one occasion in Rayleigh's life and that the morning of St Barnaby at Cadiz when his bearing was of quite so gallant a magnificence as he stood on the scaffold in the cold morning air he foiled James and Philip at one thrust and conquered the esteem of all posterity it is only now after two centuries and a half that history is beginning to hint that there was not a little special pleading and some excusable equivocation in this great apology which rang through monarchical England like the blast of a clarion and which echoed in secret places till the oppressed rose up and claimed their liberty he spoke for about five and twenty minutes his speech was excessively ingenious as well as eloquent and directed to move the sympathy of his ear as much as possible without any deviation from literal truth he said that it was true that he had tried to escape to France but that his motive was not reasonable he knew the king to be justly incensed and thought that from La Rochelle he might negotiate his pardon what he said about the commission from France is so ingeniously worded as to leave us absolutely without evidence from this quarter after speaking about La Chesnée's visits he proceeded to denounce the base manory and his miserable masters Sir Louis Stucley yet without a word of unseemly invective he then defended his actions in the Guy Arnavage and turning brusquely to the Earl of Arendl appealed to him for evidence that the last words spoken between them as the destiny left the Thames were of Rally's return to England this was to rebut the accusation that Rally had been overpowered by his mutinous crew and brought his will Arendl answered and so you did the sheriff presently showing some impatience Rally asked pardon and begged to say but a few words more he had been vexed to find that the dean of Westminster believed a story which was in general circulation to the effect that Rally behaved insolently at the execution of Essex puffing out tobacco in disdain of him this he solemnly denied he then closed as follows and now I entreat that you will all join me in prayer to the great God of Heaven whom I have grievously offended being a man full of all vanity who has lived a sinful life in such callings as have been most inducing to it for I have been a soldier a sailor and a courtier which are courses of wickedness and vice that his almighty goodness will forgive me that he will cast away my sins that he will receive me into everlasting life so I take my leave of you all making my peace with God proclamation was then made that all visitors should quit the scaffold in parting with his friends Rally besought them and a errandl in particular to beg the king to guard his memory against scurrilous pamphleteers the nobleman lingered so long that it was Rally himself who gently dismissed them I have a long journey to go therefore I must take my leave of you when the friends had retired he addressed himself to prayer having first announced that he died in the faith of the Church of England when his prayer was done he took off his night-gown and doublet and called to the headsman to show him the axe the man hesitated and Rally cried I privy, let me see it does thou think that I am afraid of it having passed his finger along the edge he gave it back and turning to the sheriff smiled and said it is a sharp medicine but one that will cure me of all my diseases the executioner overcome with emotion kneeled before him for pardon Rally put his two hands upon his shoulders and said he forgave him with all his heart he added when I stretch forth my hands dispatch me he then rose erect and bowed ceremoniously to the spectators and then to the left and said aloud give me heartily your prayers the sheriff then asked him which way he would lay himself on the block Rally answered so the heart be right it matters not which way the head lies but he chose to lie facing the east the headsman hastened to place his own cloak beneath him so displaying the axe Rally then lay down and the company was harshed while he remained a while in silent prayer he was then seen to stretch out his hands but the headsman was absolutely unnerved and could not stir Rally repeated the action but again without result the rich Devonshire voice was then heard again and for the last time what does thou fear strike man strike his body neither twitched nor trembled only his lips were seen still moving in prayer at last the headsman summoned his resolution and though he struck twice the first blow was fatal so older Rally was probably well advanced in his sixty seventh year but grief and travel had made him look much older he was still vigorous however and the effusion from his body was so extraordinary that many of the spectators shared the wonder of Lady Macbeth that the old man had so much blood in him the head was shown to the spectators on both sides of the scaffold and was then dropped into a red bag the body was wrapped in the velvet night-gown and both were carried to Lady Rally by this time perhaps she had heard from her brother that he could not receive the body at Beddington for she presently had it interred in the Chancellor of St. Margaret's Westminster the head she caused to be embalmed and kept with it all her life permitting favoured friends like Bishop Goodman to see and even to kiss it after her death Kerry Rally preserved it with a like piety it is supposed now to rest in West Horsley Church in Surrey Lady Rally lived on until 1647 thus witnessing the ruin of the dynasty which had destroyed her own happiness no success befell the wretches who had enriched themselves by Rally's ruin Sir Judas Stucley for so he was now commonly styled was shunned by all classes of society it was discovered very soon after the execution Stucley had for years passed been a clipper of coin of the realm he did not get his blood money until Christmas 1618 and in January 1619 he was caught with his guilty fingers at work on some of the very gold pieces for which he had sold his master the meaner rascal Manor he fell with him the populace clamoured for Stucley's death on the gallows but the king allowed him to escape wherever he met human beings however they taunted him in the memory of Sir Walter Rally and at last he fled to the desolate island of Lundy where his brain gave way under the weight of remorse and solitude he died there a maniac in 1620 another of Rally's enemies there were less malignant one scarcely survived him Lord Cobham who had been released from the tower while Rally was in the canaries died of lingering paralysis on January 24, 1619 of other persons who were closely associated with Rally Queen Anne died in the same year 1619 Camden in 1623 James I in 1625 Nottingham at the age of 89 in 1624 Bacon in 1629 Ben Johnson in 1637 while the Earl of Arendl lived on until 1646 End of Chapter 10 End of Rally by Edmund Goss