Great Britain -- History; Raleigh, Walter, Sir, 1552?-1618
And it is brought right. The wound is not mortal. He comes slowly to a
better mind, and takes his doom like a man. That first farewell to his
wife was written out of hell. The second rather out of heaven. Read it,
too, and compare; and then see how the Lord has been working upon this
great soul: infinite sadness, infinite tenderness and patience, and trust
in God for himself and his poor wife: ‘God is my witness, it was for you
and yours that I desired life; but it is true that I disdain myself for
begging it. For know, dear wife, that your son is the son of a true man,
and one who, in his own respect, despiseth death and all his ugly and
misshapen forms . . . The everlasting, powerful, infinite, and omnipotent
God, who is goodness itself, the true life and light, keep thee and
thine, have mercy upon me, and teach me to forgive my persecutors and
accusers, and send us to meet in His glorious kingdom.’
Is it come to this then? Is he fit to die at last? Then he is fit to
live; and live he shall. The tyrants have not the heart to carry out
their own crime, and Raleigh shall be respited.
But not pardoned. No more return for him into that sinful world, where
he flaunted on the edge of the precipice, and dropped heedless over it.
God will hide him in the secret place of His presence, and keep him in
His tabernacle from the strife of tongues; and a new life shall begin for
him; a wiser, perhaps a happier, than he has known since he was a little
lad in the farmhouse in pleasant Devon far away. On the 15th of December
he enters the Tower. Little dreams he that for more than twelve years
those doleful walls would be his home. Lady Raleigh obtains leave to
share his prison with him, and, after having passed ten years without a
child, brings him a boy to comfort the weary heart. The child of sorrow
is christened Carew. Little think those around him what strange things
that child will see before his hairs be gray. She has her maid, and he
his three servants; some five or six friends are allowed ‘to repair to
him at convenient times.’ He has a chamber-door always open into the
lieutenant’s garden, where he ‘has converted a little hen-house into a
still-room, and spends his time all the day in distillation.’ The next
spring a grant is made of his goods and chattels, forfeited by attainder,
to trustees named by himself, for the benefit of his family. So far, so
well; or, at least, not as ill as it might be: but there are those who
cannot leave the caged lion in peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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