—But all of that, even this—the old man sleeping in the upper chamber of Westminster’s gatehouse—is epilogue to a play which ended long ago. Ralegh’s last glory, his final triumph came in the last years of the Queen.
—To speak of the last times of the Queen, I must become a divided man. Half Egyptian upon one bank, the other among the fleeing Jews; the former outraged and dismayed, shaking mailed fists; the latter dancing for joy, biting their thumbs at erstwhile masters. Safely separated by a sea which first miraculously divided for the scampering mob, then closed again to drown Pharaoh’s army.
—This figure applies well to a single man, divided from himself by a sea of time.
—Would the Jews have rejoiced and followed their prophet had they dreamed of the forty years of wandering in wilderness that lay before them?
—And the Egyptians, all worldly power and glory and pure frustration on the shore. Perhaps a vision of the harsh future of the Jews would have offered some solace, but was at that instant supremely irrelevant. I do conceive, however, that they might have sighed in mighty relief if they had known that with those Jews went also all the plagues and troubles they had suffered, that, in truth, their own power and glory would remain untarnished. At the loss of an army, it could have been called a bargain.
—My meaning is contained in that figure. All history is a sort of recollection, but between us and the things remembered flows a division of time, once crossed over blithely, but now unfordable. So it is with the life of a man, his chronicle of recollection. As you imagine me, so I must imagine myself.
—After the death of the Queen, something occurred in this kingdom which now seems final, so absolute it is a sea which divides us forever from ourselves. But then it was a cause for celebration; no ending but a new beginning; a birth, disguised as death, whose name would be hope.
—To speak of the last times now is to be janus-faced. And the truth of it is lost in something deeper than the sea.…
—In those days the problem seemed simple. The Queen had lived and reigned too long.
—After a high tide of glory, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in a year of wonders, all things began a slow changing for the worse.
—In the war with Spain we pressed to no advantage, and the war went on, piecemeal nibbling the wealth, substance, and will of the kingdom. There were small actions of no apparent value or consequence. There were false flares of hope, like the sacking of Cadiz in ’96, great stratagems which failed. Meanwhile there were ceaseless musters and alarms. Englishmen died in France, the Netherlands, Ireland, and at sea. They returned, maimed or whole, to swell the ranks of vagrant, masterless men. Or they deserted in droves at the ports even before they embarked.
—Spain was growing ever more powerful and was on all sides against us: stirring rebels in Ireland; supporting the Catholic League in France, and occupying ports there; in Scotland plotting and conniving; causing disruption of trade with the German cities and even with Poland; working as well within England by secret agents, her Jesuits, to stir up discontents and to keep hope alive among hard-pressed Papists.
—The orderly trade of our merchants was much disturbed. There were crop failures and rising prices, times of near famine; there were outbreaks and riots as grievances grew. And then the Plague came to England.
—The Queen was old and still the question of her succession was unsettled.
—The Queen was harsh in her age, seizing the circumstances of war and troubles at home as occasion for severity. She gave her Whitgift free rein to ride roughshod over opposition to the established church, to the equal injury and dismay of Puritan and Papist alike.
—All the men who had once led and guided were either dead—Leicester, Walsingham, Hatton—or dying, like Burghley. With them went the memory of the times we had come from and come through.
—When Ralegh returned to Court, there were many new men in power. Not only Whitgift and his faction, but Burghley’s secretive son, Robert Cecil, and the Lord Cobham of whom little was known, but enough to be distrustful. The one hope of the Court and Council was young Essex.
—And now he was checked, by the return of that clever schemer, our English Machiavelli, Sir Walter Ralegh.
—True, Essex might be rash, but he was open and wonderfully generous to all who served him. And he courted popularity, which Ralegh, in confident arrogance, disdained.
—From the date of Ralegh’s return the frustrations of Essex began. Those Essex favored and put forward were ignored. And Cecil, Ralegh, and Cobham seemed to have most influence with the Queen.
—Meanwhile the Queen and her counselors were seeking and finding sedition everywhere: in plays, poems, broadsides, and ballads. The more they sought to stamp these out, the more they flourished.
—Sedition is rooted in discontent, but it grows and spreads mighty when pruned by repression.
—Essex led a mighty army into Ireland. Failed there and, his version being popularly taken at full value, the failure was blamed on the Queen and her favorites. When Essex returned, leaving Ireland to plead his case direct to the Queen in ’99, he was disciplined. Shortly he was forbidden the Court, and his lucrative monopoly on sweet wines was taken away, leaving him pressed for money. He became ill. To many at Court and to many of the people who hoped well for him, his troubles were a senseless injustice, not only to him but against all.
—The gaudy Court continued, but never before had the courtiers been so ridiculed in satires. The history of Richard II was revived and applied to the Queen. Richard, too, had permitted himself to be blinded by false favorites. He had been deposed for the good health of the kingdom.
—In whispers some began to think upon Essex as our last hope. Perhaps he could act boldly and save the old Queen from the parasites. Perhaps, it was suggested, Essex might settle the matter of the succession once and for all.
—Meanwhile the Queen pondered what to do about this. Or, true to her habits, she waited for Essex to act and make decision unnecessary.
—Essex House became a headquarters for his friends and for malcontents of all persuasions. If he could bring Papists and Puritans together under one roof in a common cause, perhaps he could do so with this divided kingdom.
—There were all the outward signs of a conspiracy. Even in this Essex was without guile.
—One of the conspirators was Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Ralegh’s kinsman and his subordinate in Devon. A meeting between Ralegh and Gorges was arranged. Ralegh rowed alone out to the middle of the Thames. He ordered Gorges back to his post at Plymouth Castle. Gorges refused and warned Ralegh to get to his post at Court.
“You are likely to have a bloody day of it,” Gorges told him.
—Someone on the bank at Essex House fired a weapon four times at Ralegh, missing every shot.…
—Ralegh broke off the meeting and hurried back to Court.
—Essex’s rising began with those shots.
—Essex and his band rode through the streets of the city, crying a plot against his life and pleading with the citizens to join with him for the sake of the Queen.
—They did not stir.
—There was a brief clash of arms at Ludgate, and he fled back to Essex House.
—He was besieged there. From his high roof he shouted proud defiance against Ralegh and Cobham, that his death would be worthwhile if only he could rid the kingdom of such caterpillars and atheists. But shortly he surrendered.
—He was tried and convicted of treason, proclaiming his innocence and denouncing his enemies. And he bore up proudly as many friends and fellow conspirators, from nobles to the ambitious Francis Bacon, gave evidence against him.
—On February 25, 1601, Essex was beheaded in the Tower Yard.
—Ralegh witnessed the execution from the Armory.
—It was reported he smoked his pipe, contented, as Essex died.
—Ralegh and the others remaining in favor were linked together in many an angry ballad and broadside.
—Ra
legh continued at Court, serving the Queen for the two years she lived, now conniving and scheming openly for a place on the Council, for even more favor. Meanwhile ignoring his chance to ingratiate himself with James of Scotland. Contented, it seemed, to be the favorite of a dying Queen, to play the courtier in her Court, whose gaiety now seemed a coarse parody of itself, until her final silence.
—When Cobham’s plot against James was exposed, there was much rejoicing in that news. At least until Ralegh had his day at Winchester.…
—Plot or no, it seemed justice to wipe the old slate clean.
—But in the passage of time much has changed, and, with the changing of the present, the past has changed as well. There have been discoveries of hidden truths which alter the appearance of that past.
—Of the war with Spain: We know the Queen feared it greatly and avoided it so long as she was able. Then what an irony! When the Armada failed both England and Spain were committed to a war which neither was capable of sustaining. As the new King was to learn, sadly enough, even the little that we did to resolve the war exhausted our treasury and resources, wiped out the Queen’s wealth, and in the end caused the burden of taxes and subsidies to become almost intolerable.
—She permitted the popular notion that her funds were being squandered upon favorites. Allowed that as less dangerous than the harsher truth, that we could do no more than was being done without ending the frail illusions of peace and prosperity at home.
—We know now, too, that the new habit of good times made the signs of poverty more evident.
—We know what our King had to learn for himself—that the power of Spain, also, was taxed to its limits. That the best hope for a true peace lay in the policy of the Queen. Which was, simply, to conserve as much of England’s strength as she could, by any means, while Spain’s wealth and power were dissipated.
—When Philip died at last, she allowed herself to hope that his son would stop the attrition. But the new Philip was frightened and uncertain. He pursued his father’s policies with renewed vigor and at greater expense.
—We see now that the question of the succession, so long as it remained a question—just as the question of her marriage had been in the early years—was a formidable weapon.
—Harrington has described the condition of the last years well enough: “a time when malcontents abound in city and country, when in the Court the common phrase of old servants is that there is no commiseration of any man’s distressed estate, that a few favorites get all, that the Nobility is depressed, the Clergy pilled and condemned, foreign invasions expected, the treasure at home exhausted, the coin of Ireland embased and the gold of England transported, exactions doubled and trebled, and all honest hearts troubled.”
—Yet he soon knew how much the Queen had given, was giving up to preserve this much. Holding out, holding on, maintaining her illusion.
—Harrington served with Essex and came home with him from Ireland, a champion of the Earl. But Harrington was soon after disenchanted. And now we see, his brightness having diminished, some of the truth of Essex. Who failed in everything except in his self-deceptions.
—He squandered his wealth upon friends and servants. Not spending it as Ralegh had done, but in the folly of believing he was purchasing invulnerability.
—Time and again, with all things propitious, he failed at war. And though each time his eager servants rushed into print to justify him at the expense of others and though the populace took him for the hero of England, Queen and Council knew better. Again, there was no harm in permitting the people to have a hero if they wished to. There were few enough. His reputation became part of the illusion.
—But his failure in Ireland was a huge disaster. Not only did he fail to achieve any of his assigned duties, but now, taking advantage of confusion, there was a Spanish army in Ireland for the first time. Mountjoy, coming after him, finally succeeded, and against even greater odds.
—On the Council, it had been hoped that Essex would be strong and forceful. Strong enough to do what his sponsor, Leicester, and others of the old Protestant faction had done, and to check and restrain the excesses of Whitgift; and Essex in turn was to be checked by young Robert Cecil. But he was no match for Cecil.
—The Queen needed Walter Ralegh in between them and to watch over both. Indeed, she used him even in his absence, keeping his old post open at Court, in hope that the possibility of his return might serve to educate Essex and Cecil.
—Cobham was insignificant, a joke, too vain and dense to know it. Not dangerous to anyone but himself.
—Weary as she was, the Queen called upon Ralegh to play bear keeper in her behalf.
—At the end any sane man would have seen that Essex was surrounded not with loyal friends, but with fanatics on the one hand and intelligencers on the other. The Queen cut off his ready money from the monopolies so that he might learn to distinguish between true friends and false. She gave him time and liberty to learn, and at a serious risk to herself.
—But he killed himself as surely as if he were his own executioner. Essex was never wholly sane until he stood on the scaffold. As Harrington has said, “the man’s soul seemed tossed to and fro like the waves of a troubled sea.”
—Sir Walter Ralegh may name himself a courtier and most would agree. Yet I think he was more anti-masquer than courtier. He was ever his own man until the last, when he made the finest courtly gesture of anyone in our time, itself a kind of anti-masque, if you will. On the one hand as noble as any, on the other more rash than even Essex. For by his actions Ralegh sealed his ruin.
—Consider that in those troubled last years it seemed to the Queen that after all things, after outliving all other monarchs—she had seen the passing of many kings and queens and of six Popes as well—steering through troubles and dangers, the tide of time turned against her. She was condemned to taste the ashes of regret. She was forced to entertain the ironic possibility that all of her years had been a long season of self-deception. To free herself from the Tudor curse, she had rejected both past and future, believing in only the present, keeping the faith, and trusting in Providence. But as Providence would have it—or was this only Fortune?—she lived and reigned so long that she had acquired a past, only to lose it.… And because it was ending badly and nothing could be done, she had sad apprehensions for the future.
—Her Court was full of strangers. Her last progresses were thinly manned. The old ceremonies and observances, which once had lifted and lighted the Court so that literal and allegorical were one and the same, were now wearisome at best, at worst a grotesque dance of death, performed not by ghosts or anatomies of bones but by the pale children of the dead.…
—Even youth, Essex, on whom she had so doted and devoted herself, proved false and died.
—She felt the strangeness of her grandfather stirring in her. Thinking on how, at the last, that first Tudor withdrew into a long dream, staring into his magic looking glass. The magic glass broke when he died. Or did the glass break first?
—It was then Ralegh served her best. Bestirred himself with new vigor. Rejecting all occasions to sue for the favor of James or any other possible successor. Reverting to his old ways, scheming for advancement, for place on the Council, for new favors, titles, and honors. It was a wild mad course to take. For all these things would be without significance when she died. If he were cautious, he might have preserved something in the reign to come. If he were subtle or prudent, one half as clever as he was thought to be, he might gain much from a new prince.
—Like a fool, he acted as if his Queen would live forever. As if he would live forever too.
—His enemies laughed to see a man forfeiting the future. Here he was, past his prime, behaving like a young, somewhat clumsy, profoundly ambitious courtier.
—The Queen was annoyed; for she wished no more quarrels and squabbles than she had already known.
—And the old do not take much pleasure in being taught again the lessons of mutabil
ity, finding that those whose enchantment was youth are now old, only a few tottering steps behind them.
—I now conclude that Ralegh was not a fool. He weighed all these things, even the pain it might cause her; and all these were outweighed by his duty.
—He cannot have imagined that she would be deceived, even at the last, when she watched so silently.
—Cannot have been so presumptuous as to believe he could cure her melancholy.
—He was forfeiting his future and she knew it. Which may have pained her, too, the more so because he knew what he was doing. He knew that this compliment to her unfading knowledge of men could not please her. If anything, she could only wish him well disposed in an untroubled twilight of his own. Again, wishing her favorites to live by proxy for her, as she might have lived. Here was Ralegh rejecting her wishes, almost turning against her, chaining himself to a drowning woman.…
—It was more a duel between them than a last dancing.
—With time I conclude it was a mysterious gesture, yet altogether fitting and proper, a new and beautiful and wholly absurd model for the courtier, one that was never imagined by Castiglione or Sidney or Spenser either. For once someone other than the Queen could make a gesture whose meaning, sense, and allegory were one and the same.
—To Ralegh his actions had some secret meaning. Perhaps it was a testing, a self-inquisition to determine if he still possessed the spirit of the man he had been. Seeking to find if anything had been well preserved through the ravages of time, as a wife will keep last summer’s fruit in sugar syrup through a long winter.…
—To the Queen, in her pain and deep discontent, all his last actions simplified into a single gesture, were as words written on a parchment, saying: As I have been beholden to you, madame, for my life and being, so is our entire age. I give you to understand that the age was and is yours. I throw away my present honor and future hope, not as things of no value, but to bear witness to what I believe is truth: that to have lived in the age, your age, madame, is sufficient unto itself. With you the age dies. With you, madame, goes all that was finest in us. Thus, truly, we die with you. In the last moment of your light will be all that matters of past, present, future. Go easy, then, and go with no regrets.
Death of the Fox: a novel about Ralegh Page 31