Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (35 page)

On the discovery of treason, all the usual steps were taken. The Council ordered the closure of the Cinque Ports on 15 July, and proclamations were issued the following day for the arrest of conspirators then at large.
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 James, inevitably, fretted; he was anxious to know the extent of this plot, alarmed that discontent should manifest itself so early in his reign. Cobham's friend Arenberg, an experienced ambassador then negotiating a peace treaty between England, Spanish Flanders and Spain, discussed developments with his French opposite number, Beaumont, and wrote to his master Archduke Albert in Brussels on the sixteenth emphasizing both the disquiet of the King and the uncertainties of the time.
22
 Muddle prevailed, as it did so often in the early stages of a treason investigation, but there was no evidence to sustain charges against Northumberland and he was allowed a restricted liberty by 18 July. Ralegh was not so fortunate. In a confession taken on the same day, one of the Bye plotters admitted that he had heard Watson discuss plans 'for the betrayeng a parte of the Navie into Sir Walter Raleigh his handes', and the close friendship with Cobham - who thanks to his brother's complicity was sinking ever further into trouble - had of course to be taken into account.
23
 A dreadful day then got worse. Twenty-four hours after implicating his brother in the Bye, George Brooke confessed under interrogation the existence of a second, linked conspiracy, in which Ralegh was allegedly a prime mover. Details remained unclear. George Brooke had not himself been involved in what eventually became known as the Main Plot; he had only known of its existence through conversations with Cobham. Although condemning his brother, Brooke's allegations amounted to nothing more than hearsay where they touched on Ralegh.
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Nevertheless, no investigator could ignore such information. Ralegh was placed under house arrest in the charge of Sir Thomas Bodley, at Fulham.

It was obvious what the next step should be. The investigators - members of the Privy Council assisted by the industrious Attorney General Sir Edward Coke - turned their attentions on Cobham, who coloured in a lurid picture. As Cobham told it, the Main was less practical than the Bye, but all the more sinister for its lack of substance. It was a plot based on grumbling and vapouring. The conspirators had discussed ways to foment rebellion and bring about a Spanish invasion, aiming at the death of the King and the elevation of Arbella Stuart in his place. Ralegh was now in great danger, and he was forced to manoeuvre. First he denied all knowledge of Cobham's schemes. Shortly afterwards, he informed the Council of some suspicions that had just occurred to him, while at the same time assuring Cobham that he had revealed nothing capable of sinister construction. These shifts served only to increase suspicion. Ralegh was conveyed to the Tower on 19 July, and on the twentieth Cobham, confronted with evidence of Ralegh's double-dealing, did something that he had not done under repeated questioning through the previous four days.
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 He specifically implicated Ralegh in the Main Plot.

Cobham did this in a remarkable way, fashioning Ralegh as the fomenter and instigator of the entire treason. As the Lord Chief Justice later affirmed in a written 'certifficate' presented at Ralegh's trial, anger prompted these new revelations. Upon a 'second vewe of Rawleighes letter [to the Council], Cobham brake owte into theis passions: "0 Wretch, 0 Traitor", iterating the same three or fowre tymes, and then saied: "I will tell yow all trulie", confessing his purpose was to goe into Flaunders and into Spayne, and spake of getting of five or sixe hundered thowsand crownes, and that he and Rawleigh agreed to meete in Gersey uppon his coming owte of Spayne, and then they would take the advauntage of the discontentmentes of the people, and thereuppon resolve what was to be done.
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 A second certificate read at the trial, and attested by every investigating counsellor, elaborates on the same, critical examination. The prisoner had obviously - and understandably - been incensed at his friend's tactics: 'at Cobhams first beginning of his speach he breathed owte mane exclamacions and oathes against Rawleigh, calling him traytor and affirming that he was privie to this purpose, and that he had never entered into this course but by his instigacion, and that he would never lett him alone'.
27

The tale has a further twist. Having calmed down, and having realized that he had walked into a carefully prepared trap, Cobham retracted every word. This evidence born of passion, so crucial to securing Ralegh's conviction at his trial, was presented in court through the curious, roundabout form of certified statements precisely because Cobham thereafter refused, over nearly four months, to confirm what he had said in anger on 20 July. Both affidavits assert that Cobham's outburst came only after a second reading of Ralegh's letter to the Council. In this way, an attempt was made to portray angry words as measured and deliberate. Here, indeed, was a subterfuge, made in the interest of preserving what most counsellors took to be the truth. Cobham and Ralegh, they believed, were both concealing something - precisely what they could not yet be sure - and for one moment their interrogations had breached the prisoners' defence of silence. Cobham's furious outburst would prove crucial in the cases against both men.

All the suspects in custody were overwhelmed with despair at their misfortune. George Brooke declared that he had 'fallen quicke into hell'.
28
 The Lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Peyton, told Cecil on 21 July that Ralegh stood 'styli uppon his inocencye, but with a mynde the most dejected that ever I sawe'.
29
 As the examinations proceeded, the prisoner's mood grew darker, and darker still. Two days later Peyton wrote perceptively, if somewhat uncharitably, to Cecil:

I never sawe so strange a dejected mynde as is in Sir Walter Rawly. I ant exceedingly cumbered with hym, 5 or 6 tymes in a daye he sendeth for me in suche passions as I see his fortytude is competent to supporte his greefe.
30

Observing that words were having little effect, and learning, perhaps, that Peyton was to replace him as Governor of Jersey, Ralegh took matters one stage further.
 After writing a letter of farewell to Bess he attempted suicide on 27 July: snatching up a table knife he tried to stab himself in the heart. According to some reports the result was a mere flesh wound. Others suggested that the knife, used by the prisoner to cut and eat his meat, 'wounded [him] greatly'.
32
 There is, as at many other crisis points of Ralegh's career, an element of dangerous play-acting here. Neither the theatricality of the gesture nor the essentially unchristian nature of the act were lost on observers. Some unfriendly, strained and eccentric anonymous observations on the suicide bid, circulating under the title 'Sir Walter Rauleigh's stabb', linked these events to the execution of Essex (Essex died, and Ralegh might have died, on a Wednesday!), and maintained that Ralegh's secretary Hancock poisoned himself at the same 'despairing and godlesse hower', in a suicide pact of some kind.
33
 When news of this incident was passed to the King,James responded to the commissioners through the Earl of Nottingham, insisting that 'Rawly may now be well examyned and that at the examynasion you wold have some good precher with yow that he may make him know that it is his sole that he must wond and not his boddy'.
34
 Nowhere is there any expression or even a hint of sympathy.

Ralegh had anticipated censure; his mind had been clear enough for that. 'Be not dismaide', he told Bess in his suicide note, 'that I dyed in dispaire of Gods mercies, strive not to dispute it but assure thy selfe that God hath not lefte me nor Sathan tempted me. Hope and dispaire live not together...I am onely tempted with sorrowe, whose sharpe teeth devour my harte.' This letter to Bess shows Ralegh at his melancholy best. He urges his wife, who as he gallantly points out is but 'a yong woman', to marry again. 'It is nowe nothing to me; thowe art noe more mine nor I thine.' The letter mentions, for once, his illegitimate child, 'my poore daughter to whome I have geven nothinge'. His words are a characteristic mix of the pragmatic and the emotional, doused with self pity. 'For my selfe I am left of all men, that have done good to many, all my good turnes forgotten, all my errors revived and expownded to all extremitie of ill. All my services, hazardes and expences for my countrie: plantinges, discoveries, fightes, councells and whatsoever ells, malice hath nowe covered over.' Cobham, of course, is to blame. 'I am nowe made an enimie and traytour by the word of an unworthie man.' No one else will take his part. Henry Howard has always been his enemy, and now even Cecil has forsaken him. Rather curiously, he does not mention Northumberland - perhaps that would be to detract from the argument, or perhaps the worth of true friends needs no expression. Ralegh lists his creditors, a public message which tries to make the (frankly, false) point that he has not grown rich on any royal favours at home, or on pensions from abroad. His estate is small enough, and, mistakenly as it turns out, he considers it safely bound up in trust, beyond the reach of the law. 'My plate is at gage in Lumbard Streete', and around £1,700 is owed to named creditors, £600 to the London financier and King's jeweller PeterVanlore alone. Finally, he spares a thought for Lawrence Keymis - the loyal confidant who is now also a prisoner in the Tower. Keymis had, as he himself told Cecil in August 1603, lost the 100 marks annuity paid out of Jersey revenues, and his plans for a plantation in the Indies, which clearly depended on Ralegh's influential support, had been ruined.
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 That sympathy was merited; guilty only of serving his friend too diligently, Keymis remained in prison until 31 December 1603.
36

As the cynics predicted, Ralegh's wound proved trivial. Peyton reported him substantially recovered within a week, and, subsequently, the prisoner's spirits returned. Ralegh realized that the sole evidence of any substance laid against him was Cobham's statement of 20 July, and he also learnt that Cobham was no longer standing by that statement. It is hard to peer into Cobham's mind at this point - there is already a sense that, for this distracted man, the true details in a disjointed sequence of bitter and unhappy conversations had >given place to a version that preserved his honour in extremity. The most likely explanation is that Cobham took back his outburst on 20 July in order to protect his friend. He could see no other way of deflecting those intent on applying the rigour of the law to events which never quite merited that rigour. The prosecution always insisted that Ralegh was as dear to Cobham as his hand and his harte', indeed, that whatever Ralegh wanted from the association, Ralegh got.
 But that is to disallow Cobham any finer feelings of loyalty. A rather less likely possibility is that Ralegh and Cobham entered into a pact, guaranteeing not to accuse one another since, according to their understanding of the law, a single witness could not bring about the conviction of a suspected traitor. As Cobham later acknowledged, Keymis had advised him 'not to be dismayed, for that he brought word from Sir Walter Rawly that one witness could not hurt him, or to that effect'.
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 In fact the law of necessity allowed conviction with no witness to the treason, although even by early seventeenth-century standards at least one witness was thought to be highly desirable when bringing home a charge.
39
Logic weakens this argument still further: Cobham could never hope to benefit from such a pact. He had admitted his guilt, and George Brooke was ready to testify against him. Either he was shielding Ralegh, a noble gesture but one that somehow sits out of place here, or he was telling the truth.

The course of subsequent investigations into the Main Plot confirms that the confession secured on 20 July represented the high-water mark in attempts to construct a case against Ralegh. Examinations continued, the law term was postponed and removed to Winchester on account of plague in the capital, but all the while the only secure evidence detailing Ralegh's supposed crime remained this curious, retracted, testimony. Though depressed, and suffering from a painful affliction in his leg, Cobham refused to incriminate his fellow prisoner any further.
40
 Ralegh was himself questioned, of course, but the thin, essentially inconsequential record of these examinations suggests that he maintained his innocence against every serious charge. The lack of substance in the case was not lost on observers, and many were simply bewildered by the turn of events. Cecil seems to respond to gossip when he writes to his colleague and friend Michael Hickes in August: 'whatever you heare of inocency know they are all in the King's mercy'. That was the official line, applied to the suspects considered as a group, but Cecil appreciated that there was particular scrutiny of Ralegh's case:'For he continued, 'his contempts are high, howsoever his crimes may fall in foro judicii'.
41
 According to Sir Thomas Edmondes in a letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury, a member of the Council, the judges who met to deliberate upon the case at Maidenhead in September made 'noe question of fynding them all culpable, save onlie Sir Walter Rawleighe against whom it is sayd that the proofes are not so pregnant'.
42
 Edmondes added in a subsequent letter, however, that there was 'a stronge pourpose to proceade severely in the matter, against the pryncipall persons', and Ralegh was duly indicted along with other prominent prisoners, later in the month.
43

When an outline of the prosecution case was prepared for Thomas Egerton, in October 1603, the weight attached to Cobham's outburst was still all too clear.
44
 It is equally clear that privy councillors still regarded the case as persuasive. Writing to the ambassador Ralph Winwood in the Low Countries on 3 October, Cecil briskly sums up the position. Ralegh, he says, denies the accusations against him, aware as he is that Cobham has retracted his first accusation. Nevertheless, that 'first Accusation is so well fortifyed, with other demonstrative Circumstances, and the Retraction so blemished by the Discovery of that Intelligence which they had, as few Men can conceive it comes from a clear Heart'. The rational man draws his own conclusions, but within this presentation of a logical case there are hints - doubtless apparent to the acute Winwood - that point to lingering doubts, doubts better left unwritten in these tense, early months of the reign. By way of further confirmation, the King's Secretary takes refuge in the illusory objectivity of due legal process:'Always', he writes,'[Ralegh] shall be left to the Law, which is the Right all Men are born unto.'
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