Great Britain -- History; Raleigh, Walter, Sir, 1552?-1618
Yes, God is setting this man’s secret sins in the light of His
countenance. If he has been ambitious, his ambition has punished itself
now. If he has cared more for his own honour than for his wife and
children, that sin too has punished itself. If he has (which I affirm
not) tampered with truth for the sake of what seemed to him noble and
just ends, that too has punished itself; for his men do not trust him.
If he has (which I affirm not) done any wrong in that matter of Cobham,
that too has punished itself: for his men, counting him as _non ens_ in
law, will not respect or obey him. If he has spoken, after his old
fashion, rash and exaggerated words, and goes on speaking them, even
though it be through the pressure of despair, that too shall punish
itself; and for every idle word that he shall say, God will bring him
into judgment. And why, but because he is noble? Why, but because he is
nearer to God by a whole heaven than others whom God lets fatten on their
own sins, having no understanding, because they are in honour, and having
children at their hearts’ desire, and leaving the rest of their substance
to their babes? Not so does God deal with His elect when they will try
to worship at once self and Him; He requires truth in the inward parts,
and will purge them till they are true, and single-eyed, and full of
light.
Keymis returns with the wreck of his party. The scene between him and
Raleigh may be guessed. Keymis has excuse on excuse. He could not get
obeyed after young Raleigh’s death: he expected to find that Sir Walter
was either dead of his sickness or of grief for his son, and had no wish
‘to enrich a company of rascals who made no account of him.’ He dare not
go up to the mine because (and here Raleigh thinks his excuse fair) the
fugitive Spaniards lay in the craggy woods through which he would have to
pass, and that he had not men enough even to hold the town securely. If
he reached the mine and left a company there, he had no provisions for
them; and he dared not send backward and forward to the town while the
Spaniards were in the woods. The warnings sent by Gondomar had undone
all, and James’s treachery had done its work. So Keymis, ‘thinking it a
greater error, so he said, to discover the mine to the Spaniards than to
excuse himself to the Company, said that he could not find it.’ From all
which one thing at least is evident, that Keymis believed in the
existence of the mine.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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