29 October: Boreham on Walter Raleigh

When Chivalry Flowered
In reminding ourselves that today marks the anniversary of the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, we involuntarily conjure up the image of one of the most picturesque personalities in our British annals. Raleigh cuts a striking figure in a stirring period of our history, yet no individual in all our imperial drama is more baffling or enigmatical than he. Estimates of the character of Raleigh jostle each other in rare profusion upon the shelves of all our libraries; contemporary chroniclers and subsequent historians have done their utmost faithfully to present him for our contemplation; yet it must be confessed that a perusal of these equally authoritative but flatly contradictory records only deepens our bewilderment and renders our confusion worse confounded.

We are assured, on the one hand, that Raleigh represented, in his own person, the loftiest expression of English chivalry. Handsome in appearance, courtly in bearing, gentle in manner, and the soul of honour, he is said to have been the very embodiment of knightliness. Sir Walter Scott, Charles Kingsley, and other writers scarcely less eminent, have woven the story of Raleigh into their most stirring romances, his fame has been the burden of many poem and the theme of many a song, whilst a wealthy cluster of golden traditions has encrusted itself about his name.

Only Remembered By What He Has Done
If, however, the entire vocabulary of eulogy has been requisitioned in order that his admirers might fitly chant his praise, it is no less true that his detractors have run the whole gamut of vituperation in their desire to expose and vilify one whose life they abhor and whose death they applaud. Forgetting that, in the spacious days of great Elizabeth, intrigue was the breath of a courtier's nostrils, they charge him with an infinite variety of subterranean enterprises. Forgetting, too, that the ordinate vanity of the Queen exalted the employment of flattery to the level of a fine art, they accuse him of obsequiousness and dissimulation. Fortunately, we are not entirely at the mercy of such conflicting witnesses. Unaffected by the adulation of Raleigh's friends and the malice of his foes, the hard facts of his life are before us and those facts speak for themselves. We have it on the authority of those who cared nothing for the whims and foibles of Elizabeth, that Raleigh carved out for himself a career so useful, so diversified, and in every respect so extraordinary, that it stands without a parallel in the records of any nation.

Macaulay is famous for the pains with which he sifted heaps of documentary evidence before committing himself to a critical opinion as to any historical personage or fact. And, having read all that the chroniclers have to say in praise and in condemnation of Sir Walter, Macaulay expresses his regret that he has not the space in which to do justice to Raleigh, the soldier, the sailor, the scholar, the courtier, the orator, the poet, the historian, the philosopher, whom we picture to ourselves sometimes giving chase to a Spanish galleon, then answering the chiefs of the country party in the House of Commons, then again murmuring one of his sweet love songs too near the ears of Her Majesty's maids of honour, and, shortly after, poring over the Talmud or collating Polybius with Livy. It is difficult to call to mind any other instance of such amazing versatility. And, that being so, it is no wonder that the philosophers who exhaust the resources of the language in his praise, and those who look askance upon his character and conduct, agree in deploring the petty pique, the outrageous injustice and the glaring indiscretion that sent a man of such commanding powers to the executioner's block.

When Justice, Blindfolded, Loses Her Way
The tragedy that we recall today was both a crime and a blunder. There can be no doubt that the King first decided upon Raleigh's destruction and then, in order to compass that end, set his minions to find some offence of which his victim could plausibly be accused. The sentence came first; the trial and the impeachment followed. Unable to find anything that lent itself more readily to their purpose, the Crown prosecutors fell back upon a charge of treason that had been levelled against Raleigh many years before. Whether or not he had ever desired to set Arabella Stuart on the English throne we shall never know. He had, however, already languished for 13 years in a dungeon on account of that accusation, and it was absurd to revive the matter, as a pretext for his execution after so long an interval.

Whatever the authorities thought or said or did, the people felt that the King was himself a traitor. Raleigh was one of the Elizabethan heroes who had spent all their days in fighting Spain. As a result of his own valour, and that of the other admirals, the sovereignty of the seas had passed, once and for all, into the hands of England. But it had suited James to enter into friendly relations with the nation's bitterest foes. The people of England saw, as Hallam points out, that, in Raleigh's execution, the most renowned of Englishmen had been sacrificed to the vengeance of Spain. The blood of Raleigh was, he says, a stain upon the throne. Macaulay bluntly classifies the execution as a dastardly murder. Looking back upon it all, in the cold perspective that we today are able to commend, we recognise in Sir Walter Raleigh a high-minded, chivalrous, but unfortunate Englishman, audacious in exploit, shrewd in council, loving his country above everything beside, and meeting a cruelly unjust death with unaffected dignity and quiet courage. To say that he had his faults is but to say of him what can be said of any man. But it can at least be claimed for him that, while his faults were essentially faults indigenous to his period, he exhibited with them virtues that, distinctively his own, will make a resistless appeal to all subsequent ages.

F W Boreham

Image: Walter Raleigh