by Robert Nye
My father Sir Walter Ralegh then said:
‘And now I entreat you all to join with me in prayer to that great God of heaven, whom I have most grievously offended while I lived. For I have been a man full of all vanity, a great sinner of a long time and in many kinds, my whole life’s course a course and curse of pride. I have lived a sinful life in sinful callings. For I have been a soldier, a captain, a seafaring man, and a courtier, which are all places of wickedness and vice. And the temptations of the least of these were able to overthrow a good mind and a good man.
‘I ask you all to join with me in prayer that God, as I trust, will forgive me, and that He will receive me into everlasting life.
‘So I take my leave of you all, making my peace with God.’
My father knelt in prayer, and many knelt with him.
Then proclamation being made by the Sheriffs that all men should depart from the scaffold, my father prepared himself for death, giving away his hat and wrought black night-cap, and some money to such as he knew that stood near him. And then taking his leave of the Lords, knights, and other gentlemen, he turned once more to my Lord of Arundel, thanking him for his company, and entreating him to desire the King that no scandalous writing to defame him might be published after his death, saying further unto him:
‘I have a long journey to go, and therefore will take my leave.’
Then putting off his long gown and his doublet, he called to the headsman to show him the axe.
The headsman was nervous. He hesitated.
‘I pray you,’ said my father, ‘let me see it. Do you think I am afraid of it?’
Then the headsman gave the axe into the hands of Sir Walter Ralegh. And my father ran his thumb down the edge of the blade.
‘This is a sharp medicine,’ he said. ‘But it is a medicine which will cure all diseases.’
Then he went first to the one side of the scaffold and requested them all that they would pray to God to assist him and strengthen him, and then turned to the other side and did likewise.
And the executioner knelt.
He kneeled down and he asked Sir Walter Ralegh for his forgiveness. Which my father freely gave, laying both his hands upon the man’s shoulders.
And the executioner threw down his own cloak because he would not spoil my father’s black gown.
My father stretched himself out along it and laid down his head upon the block.
But Dean Tounson found fault with this.
‘Sir Walter,’ he said, ‘you face westward. It is not the customary position. You should lie facing east, in honour of Our Saviour Jesus Christ.’
My father, rising, said:
It is no great matter which way the head lies, so the heart be right.’
But when he laid down his head upon the block again, his face was towards the east.
The headsman now approached him and offered him a blindfold.
My father said:
‘Do you think I fear the shadow of the axe, when I do not fear the axe itself?’
With which words, Sir Walter Ralegh declined the blindfold, lying there upon the block with his eyes open.
Then:
‘Sir,’ he said to the executioner. ‘Grant me one moment of prayer and meditation. When I am done, I shall stretch forth my hands and you may strike.’
This was granted.
But the executioner was frightened.
And when my father stretched forth his arms nothing happened.
My father saw his executioner trembling.
He gave the man time to recover. Then once more he spread wide his arms.
But still the headsman could not or would not do his office.
Then my father cried out in a great shout of command:
‘Strike, man, strike!’
The axe flashed in the sun.
The axe came down.
The first blow was not good. Yet my father’s body did not flinch a whit. The axe came down again. It struck off his head.
Then the executioner held up my father’s head by his white hair.
The executioner should have called out: ‘This is the head of a traitor!’
But the executioner said nothing. And the crowd was silent.
Then a voice cried out from the crowd, and the voice cried:
‘We have not such another head to be cut off!’
The large effusion of blood which proceeded from my father’s veins amazed the spectators, who conjectured that he had stock enough left of nature to have survived many years, though he had been now near to three score years and ten.
Sir Walter Ralegh behaved himself at his death with so high and so religious a resolution, as if a Christian had acted a Roman, or rather a Roman a Christian. And by the magnanimity, which was then conspicuous in him, he abundantly baffled their calumnies, who had accused him of atheism.
My father’s head was then put into a red leather bag, and his wrought velvet cloak was cast over his body, which was afterwards conveyed away in a black mourning coach of my mother’s.
57
31 October,
Vigil of All Saints 1618
Lady Ralegh: a letter addressed
‘To my best brother, Sur Nicholas Carew, at Beddington’
I desiar, good brother, that you will be pleased to let me berri the worthi boddi of my nobell hosban, Sur Walter Ralegh, in your chorche at Beddington, wher I desiar to be berred. The Lordes have geven me his ded boddi, though they denied me his life. This nite hee shall be brought you with two or three of my men. Let me here presently. God hold me in my wits.
E.R.
58
29 October, 1660
Epilogue by Carew Ralegh
My father’s body was buried in front of the Communion Table at the Church of St Margaret’s, Westminster. My father’s head was embalmed and preserved by my mother until her own death, at the age of 82, in the year of Our Lord 1647. God held her in her wits for the 29 years of her widowhood.
It falls to me now, on this, the 42nd anniversary of the day of Sir Walter Ralegh’s execution, to round out his story with a few words regarding the fates of other persons mentioned in these papers.
First, Sir Lewis Stukeley. And here I must mention something my father got wrong. Namely, that he accepted the common story that this man was the son of Captain Thomas Stukeley, of infamous renown. I have done some research on this subject. Lewis Stukeley appears to have been only the previous traitor’s nephew. It is not very important. But I like to get things right. Whatever Sir Lewis Stukeley pretended to himself and made others believe, the two men were not truly father and son, and that’s a fact. Anyway, the said Sir Lewis, having received his £965 6s 3d from the Exchequer, found himself shunned and reviled by all men of honour. He was scorned as ‘Sir Judas’. When he tried to seize the Destiny itself, and went to my Lord Howard, the Lord Admiral of England, in pursuit of this claim, it is said that the old Admiral addressed him thus: ‘What, thou base fellow! Thou - the scorn and contempt of men! How dare you presume to come into my presence!’ And that the Admiral took his staff to Stukeley’s back, and drove him from his house. Stukeley complained to King James, protesting that all England appeared to condemn him. King James is said to have answered: ‘What would you have me do? I cannot hang every man who speaks ill of you. There are not trees enough in my kingdom!’ Charged and punished for counterfeiting
coin, Stukeley was then imprisoned in the Tower. On his release, not daring to show his face even in his native Devon, he sought shelter on the Isle of Lundy in the English channel. He died there, raving mad, within two years of his betrayal of my father.
Sir Francis Bacon’s fall came six months later. Arraigned on 28 separate charges of bribery and corruption, he confessed them all, was stripped of his seal as the Lord Chancellor, and on 3rd May 1621 was sentenced to be fined £40,000 and imprisoned in the Tower at the King’s pleasure. Bacon was kept in the Tower a mere four days, but his York House was given to Buckingham, and the Parliament p
assed judgement that he was never again to be allowed to hold any office, place, or employment in the kingdom, nor to sit in the Lords, nor to come within the verge of the Court. He died, a broken man, some five years later, of a chill caught when he stuffed a chicken’s corpse with snow to see if the snow would prove an antiseptic. Bacon left more than £20,000 in unpaid debts. He also left a certain work of philosophy called the Novum Organum. I have not read it. But King James, who tried to, is reported to have remarked that it was like the peace of God, i.e. it passeth all understanding.
Count Gondomar, replaced by a new Ambassador, and all hopes of the Spanish Match finally extinguished, found no favour with Spain’s new King, Philip IV. He died, in poverty and disgrace, at Castile, the same year as Bacon.
King James himself died on Sunday, 27 March, 1625, being 59 years old, and in the 23rd year of his reign. He had been taken ill while hunting at Theobalds, and his agony lasted only fourteen days. Some say that Buckingham poisoned him, his ‘sweet Steenie.’
Buckingham was murdered three years later, 36 years old, stabbed with a knife through the heart by a disaffected sailor, John Felton. But Felton’s knife only forestalled the axe of the public executioner. The Commons had already taken the offensive against Buckingham. As an evil counsellor of the King. As an arch-traitor to the country. Even King Charles I could not have saved him.
Of the recent Civil Wars I will say nothing. Only that James’ son King Charles was executed in front of Whitehall about a quarter of a mile from where my father had suffered the same fate some 31 years previous.
Cromwell is said to have considered my father a hero.
Myself, I had no liking for Cromwell.
Nor do I think my father would have liked him.
I, Carew Ralegh, am now 55 years old. My father’s friends and my mother’s relatives provided for my education. I went to Wadham College, Oxford, yet proved no scholar. On coming down from Oxford, I was presented at Court by my kinsman, the Earl of Pembroke. But King James found in me my father’s ghost. I travelled some years abroad, and have passed all of my life seeking to live according to the precepts handed down to me in my father’s Instructions. I had that booklet published in 1632. It ran through six editions within four years. I shall never publish the rest of my father’s papers. I confess I can see no merit in doing so. And I do not think that my father would have wished it.
I married well. My wife is Philippa, the widow of Sir Anthony Ashley. She brought me estates. She was wealthy. Our marriage has been blessed with two sons and three daughters.
Much of my life’s energy has been spent in efforts to get back Sherborne. In this, I have failed. It is the residence of Sir John Digby, Earl of Bristol. But under the Commonwealth I was awarded £500 per annum out of that estate.
Now England has a king again. James’ grandson, King Charles II. In February of this year, 1660, I was appointed by the King to my father’s former office as Governor of the Island of Jersey. I was also offered a knighthood, but I have declined.
On my mother’s death, the head of Sir Walter Ralegh came into my possession. I keep it in the same red velvet bag. Sometimes - not often -I take it out to look at it. I find it harder and harder to recognise.
All the same, I have made provision that when I die this head is to be buried with me. It is, after all, a far better head than my own.
