condition; a report which he propagated of a wonderfully rich gold mine that he formerly had discovered in Guiana obtained general belief. People of all ranks were impatient to take possession of a country overflowing with the precious metals, and to which the nation was supposed to have a right by priority of discovery.

The king, by his own account, gave little credit to this report, not only because he believed there was no such mine in nature as the one described, but because he considered Raleigh as a man of desperate fortune, whose business it was by any means to procure his freedom, and reinstate himself in credit and authority1. Thinking, however, that he had undergone sufficient punishment, James ordered him to be released from the Tower; and when the hopes held out to the nation had induced multitudes to adopt his views, the king gave him permission to pursue the projected enterprise, and invested him with authority over his fellow-adventurers; but being still diffident of his intentions, he refused to grant him a pardon, that he might have some check upon his future conduct'.

The preparations made, in consequence of this commission, alarmed Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador; and although Raleigh protested the innocence of his intentions, and James declared that he had prohibited all invasion of the settlements of his Catholic majesty, that minister sent to his court intelligence of the expedition, and stated his apprehensions from it. Twelve armed vessels, he justly concluded, could not be fitted out without some purpose of hostility; and as Spain was then the only European power that had possessions in that part of America to which this fleet was destined, orders were given by the court of Madrid for fortifying all its settlements on or near the coast of Guiana.

It soon appeared that this precaution was not unnecessary. Though Raleigh's commission empowered him only to settle on a coast possessed by savage and barbarous inhabitants, he steered his course directly for the river Oronoco, where he knew there was a Spanish town named St. Thomas; and, without any provocation, sent a detachment under his son and his old associate captain Keymis, who had accompanied him on his former voyage, to dislodge the Spaniards, and take possession of that town; while he himself, with the larger vessels, guarded

1 King James's Vindication, in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. iii. No. 2.
2 Id. ibid.

the mouth of the river, and obstructed the relief of the place'. The Spaniards, apprised of this invasion, opposed the landing of the English, as they had foreseen. Young Raleigh was killed by a shot, while animating his followers: Keymis, however, and his surviving companions, not dismayed by the unfortunate accident, took, plundered, and burned St. Thomas; but found in it no booty adequate to their expectations".

It might have been expected that these bold adventurers, having overcome all opposition, would now have gone in quest of their grand object, the gold mine, with which Keymis was said to be as well acquainted as Raleigh. But, although that officer affirmed that he was within a few miles of the place, he refused, under the most absurd pretences, to carry his companions thither, or to take any effectual step for again finding it himself. Struck, as it should seem, with the atrocity of his conduct, and with his embarassing situation, he immediately returned to Raleigh with the sorrowful news of his son's death, and the disappointment of his followers. The interview, it may be conjectured, was not the most agreeable that could have ensued between the parties. Under the strong agitation of mind which it occasioned, Keymis, keenly sensible to reproach, and foreseeing disgrace, if not an ignominious death, as the reward of his violence and imposture, retired into his cabin, and put an end to his life.

The sequel of this delusive and pompous expedition it is still more painful to relate. The adventurers in general now concluded that they were deceived by Raleigh; that the story of the mine had only been invented to afford him a pretext for pillaging St. Thomas, the spoils of which, he hoped, would encourage his followers to proceed to the plunder of other Spanish settlements, that he expected to repair his ruined fortune by such

These particulars may be distinctly collected from the king's Vindication and Raleigh's Apology.

2 In apology for this violence it has been said that the Spaniards had built the town of St. Thomas in a country originally discovered by Raleigh, and therefore he had a right to dispossess them. If we admit that to be the case, Raleigh could never be excusable in making war without any commission empowering him so to do, much less in invading the Spanish settlements contrary to his commission. But the fact is otherwise: the Spaniards had frequently visited the coast of Guiana before Raleigh touched upon it. Even as early as the year 1499, Alonzo de Ojedo and Americus Vespucius had landed on different parts of that coast, and made some excursions up the country (Herrera, dec. i. lib. iv. cap. 1, 2.); and the great Columbus himself had discovered the mouth of the Oronoco some years before. Between three and four hundred Spaniards are said to have been killed by Keymis and his party, at the sacking of St. Thomas. "This is the true mine!" said young Raleigh, as he rushed on to the attack, "and none but fools looked for any other." Howell's Letters, vol. ii.

daring enterprises, trusting to the riches he should acquire for obtaining a pardon from James; or, if that prospect failed, intended to take refuge in some foreign country, where his wealth would secure him an asylum 1. The inconsiderable booty gained in that town, however, discouraged his followers from embracing these splendid projects, though it appears that he had employed many artifices to engage them in his designs. Besides, they saw a palpable absurdity in a fleet, acting under the sanction of royal authority, committing depredations against the allies of the crown; they therefore thought it safest, whatever might be their inclinations, or how great soever their disappointment, to return immediately to England, and carry their leader with them to answer for his conduct.

On the examination of Raleigh and his companions, before the privy council, where the foregoing facts were brought to light, it appeared that the king's suspicions of his intentions had been well-grounded; that, in defiance of his instructions, he had committed hostilities against the subjects of the king of Spain, and had wilfully burned and destroyed a town belonging to that prince; so that he might have been tried either by common law for this act of violence, or by martial law for breach of orders. But it was the opinion of the crown lawyers, as we learn from Bacon, that as Raleigh still lay under an actual attainder for high treason, he could not be brought to a new trial for any other crime. James, therefore, in order to satisfy the court of Madrid, which was very clamorous on this occasion, signed the warrant for his execution under his former sentence.

Raleigh's behaviour, since his return, had hitherto been beneath the dignity of his character. He had counterfeited madness and a variety of disorders, with a view of delaying his examination, and procuring the means of escape. But, finding his fate inevitable, he now collected all his courage, and met death with the most heroic indifference. Feeling the edge of the axe with which he was to be beheaded, "It is a sharp remedy," said he, "but a sure one for all ills!" then calmly laid his head on the block, and received the fatal blow 3.

Of all the transactions of a reign distinguished by public discontent, this was perhaps the most odious. Men of every class were filled with indignation against the court. Even such as acknowledged the justice of Raleigh's punishment, blamed the

VOL. II.

1 See the king's Vindication.

2 See Original Letters, &c. published by Dr. Birch, p. 181.

3 Franklin.

Q

measure. They thought it cruel to execute a sentence, originally severe, and tacitly pardoned, which had been so long suspended; and they considered it as mean and impolitic, even though a new trial had been instituted, to sacrifice to a concealed enemy of England the only man in the kingdom whose reputation was high for valour and military experience.

Unhappily for James, the intimate connexions which he was endeavouring to form with Spain increased the public dissatisfaction. Gondomar, a man capable of the most artful flattery, and no stranger to the king's hereditary pride, had proposed a match between the prince of Wales and the second daughter of his Catholic majesty; and, to render the temptation irresistible to the English monarch, whose necessities were well known, he gave hopes of an immense fortune with the Spanish princess. Allured by the prospect of that alliance, James, it has been affirmed, was not only induced to bring Raleigh to the block, but to abandon his son-in-law the Palatine, and the Protestant interest in Germany, to the ambition of the house of Austria. The latter suspicion completed the odium occasioned by the former, and roused the attention of parliament.

We have formerly had occasion to treat of the conduct and the misfortunes of Frederic, the elector Palatine, who was driven from Bohemia, and dispossessed of his hereditary dominions, by A.D. the power of the emperor, supported by the Spanish 1620. branch of the house of Austria, in spite of all the efforts of the German Protestants and the Dutch'. The news of these disasters no sooner reached England than the voice of the nation was loud against the king's inactivity. People of all ranks were on fire to engage in the defence of the distressed Palatine, and rescue their Protestant brethren from the persecutions of the idolatrous Catholics, their implacable and cruel enemies. In this quarrel they would cheerfully have marched to the extremity of Europe, have inconsiderately plunged themselves into a chaos of German politics, and freely have expended the blood and treasure of the kingdom. They therefore regarded James's neutrality as a base desertion of the cause of God and of his holy religion; without reflecting that their interference in the wars of the continent, however agreeable to pious zeal, could not be justified on any sound maxims of policy.

*

The king's ideas relative to this matter, were not more liberal than those of his subjects; but happily, for once, they were more

1 See Part I. Letter LXXVI.

Shocked at the revolt of a

friendly to the welfare of the nation. people against their prince, he refused, on that account, to patronise the Bohemian Protestants, or to bestow on his son-in-law the title of king'; although he owned that he had not examined their pretensions, privileges, or constitution. To have withdrawn their allegiance from their sovereign, under any circumstances whatever, was, in his eyes, an enormous crime, and a sufficient reason for withholding all support from them; as if subjects must be ever in the wrong, when they act in opposition to those who have acquired or assumed authority over them, how much soever that authority may have been abused!

The Spanish match is likewise allowed to have had some influence upon the political sentiments of James, on this occasion. He flattered himself that, in consequence of his son's marriage with the infanta, and the close connexions it would form between England and Spain, besides other advantages, the restitution of the Palatinate might be procured from motives of mere friendship. The principal members of the house of commons, however, thought very differently: the projected marriage was the great object of their terror. They saw no good that could result from it, but were apprehensive of a multitude of evils, which, as the guardians of public liberty and general happiness, they thought it their duty to prevent. They accordingly framed a re- A.D. monstrance to the king, representing the enormous growth 1621. of the Austrian power as dangerous to the liberties of Europe, and lamenting the rapid progress of the Catholic religion in England; and they entreated his majesty instantly to take arms in defence of the Palatine: to turn his sword against Spain, whose treasures were the chief support of the Catholic interest over Europe; and to exclude all hope of the toleration or reestablishment of popery in the kingdom, by entering into no negotiation for the marriage of his son Charles, but with a Protestant princess. Yet more effectually to extinguish that idolatrous worship, they requested that the fines and confiscations, to which the Catholics were subject by law, should be levied with the utmost rigour; and that the children of such as refused to conform to the established worship should be taken from their parents, and committed to the care of Protestant divines and schoolmasters 2.

Without waiting for the offer of these instructions, which

1 It was a very dangerous precedent, he said, against all Christian kings, to allow the transfer of a crown by the people. Franklin, p. 48.

2 Rushworth, vol. i.