times. The second was, that of the Lady
Arabella Stuart, who alarmed his Sowship
mightily, by privately marrying WILLIAM
SEYMOUR, son of LORD BEAUCHAMP, who was
a descendant of King Henry the Seventh,
and who, his Sowship thought, might consequently
increase and strengthen any claim
she might one day set up to the throne.
She was separated from her husband (who
was put in the Tower) and crammed into a
boat to be confined at Durham. She escaped
in a man's dress to get away in a French ship
from Gravesend to France, but unhappily
missed her husband, who had escaped too,
and was soon taken. She went raving mad
in the miserable Tower, and died there after
four years. The last, and the most important
of these three deaths, was that of Prince
Henry, the heir to the throne, in the nineteenth
year of his age. He was a promising
young prince, and greatly liked: a quiet,
well-conducted youth, of whom two very
good things are known; first, that his father
was jealous of him; secondly, that he was
the friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, languishing
through all those years in the Tower, and
often said that no man but his father would
keep such a bird in such a cage. On the occasion
of the preparations for the marriage of
his sister the Princess Elizabeth with a
foreign prince (and an unhappy marriage it
turned out) he came from Richmond, where
he had been very ill, to greet his new brother-in-law,
at the palace at Whitehall. There he
played a great game at tennis, in his shirt,
though it was very cold weather, and was
seized with an alarming illness and died
within a fortnight of a putrid fever. For
this young prince Sir Walter Raleigh wrote,
in his prison in the Tower, the beginning of
a History of the World: a wonderful instance
how little his Sowship could do to
confine a great man's mind, however long he
might imprison his body.

And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh,
who had many faults, but who never showed
so many merits as in trouble and adversity,
may bring me at once to the end of his sad
story. After an imprisonment in the Tower
of twelve long years, he proposed to resume
those old sea voyages of his, and go to South
America in search of gold. His Sowship,
divided between his wish to be on good terms
with the Spaniards through whose territory
Sir Walter must pass—he had long had an
idea of marrying Prince Henry to a Spanish
Princess—and his avaricious eagerness to get
hold of the gold, did not know what to do.
But, in the end, he set Sir Walter free,
taking securities for his return; and Sir
Walter fitted out an expedition at his own
cost, and, on the twenty-eighth of March,
one thousand six hundred and seventeen,
sailed away in command of one of its ships,
which he ominously called the Destiny. The
expedition failed; the common men, not
finding the gold they had expected. mutinied;
a quarrel broke out between Sir Walter
and the Spaniards, who hated him for old
successes of his against them; and he took
and burnt a little town called SAINT THOMAS.
For this he was denounced to his Sowship by
the Spanish Ambassador as a pirate, and
returning almost broken-hearted, with his
hopes and fortunes shattered, his company of
friends dispersed, and his brave son (who had
been one of them) killed, he was taken
through the treachery of SIR LEWIS STUKELY,
his near relation, a scoundrel and a Vice-Admiral;
and was once again immured in
his prison-home of so many years.

His Sowship being mightily disappointed
in not getting any gold, Sir Walter Raleigh
was tried as unfairly, and with as many
lies and evasions as the judges and law
officers and every other authority in Church
and State habitually practised under such a
King. After a great deal of prevarication
on all parts but his own, it was declared that
he must die under his former sentence, now
fifteen years old. So, on the twenty-eighth
of October, one thousand six hundred and
eighteen, he was shut up in the Gate House
at Westminster to pass his last night on
earth, and there he took leave of his good
and faithful lady, who was worthy to have
lived in better days. At eight o'clock next
morning, after a cheerful breakfast, and a
pipe, and a cup of good wine, he was taken
to Old Palace Yard in Westminster, where
the scaffold was set up, and where so many
people of high degree were assembled to see
him die, that it was a matter of some difficulty
to get him through the crowd. He
behaved most nobly; but, if anything lay
heavy on his mind, it was that Earl of Essex,
whose head he had seen roll off; and he
solemnly said that he had had no hand in
bringing him to the block, and that he had
shed tears for him when he died. As the
morning was very cold, the Sheriff said,
would he come down to a fire for a little
space and warm himself? But Sir Walter
thanked him, and said no, he would rather
it were done at once: for he was ill of fever
and ague, and in another quarter of an hour
his shaking fit would come upon him if he
were still alive, and his enemies might then
suppose that he trembled for fear. With
that, he kneeled and made a very beautiful
and Christian prayer. Before he laid his
head upon the block, he felt the edge of the
axe, and said, with a smile upon his face, that
it was a sharp medicine, but would cure the
worst disease. When he was bent down ready
for death, he said to the executioner, finding
that he hesitated, "What dost thou fear?
Strike, man!" So, the axe came down and
struck his head off, in the sixty-sixth year
of his age.

The new favourite got on fast. He was
made a viscount, he was made Duke or
Buckingham, he was made a marquis, he
was made Master of the Horse, he was