An interview with Mark Nicholls
This interview with Mark Nicholls (MN) was carried out by Yorkshire Television (YTV) for the Channel 4 programme Elizabeth's Piratest. Dr Mark Nicholls is a fellow and librarian of St John's College, Cambridge.
Contents
• Ralegh and Roanoke Island
• The marriage to Bess Throckmorton
• The search for El Dorado
• Ralegh's downfall
• The return to Guiana and execution
YTV: What was Ralegh's interest in the Roanoke Island colony?
MN: Well, clearly he had his eyes open for an opportunity. He was a gambler. The voyages of the 1580s, in particular, which attracted so much attention at the time, were in part a continuation of his half-brother Humphrey Gilbert's own voyages. Gilbert, of course, had died in 1583, and it is then, if you like, that Ralegh takes up the torch and himself sets out to establish settlements, colonies, in the newly discovered lands of America.
These voyages change over time. The earliest is, in part, clearly a privateering adventure but also has an element of establishing a military base in North America. The later voyages are quite clearly an attempt at colonisation. Ralegh hopes for benefits from this, and his settlers hope for benefits from this. Both, unfortunately, are disappointed.
YTV: How big a blow was the failure of Roanoke?
MN: Ralegh was roundly censured with others for his failure to relieve the Roanoke settlement. I don't think it was necessarily his fault, and I suspect he took comfort from that. Both he and the colony had been overtaken by events. The war with Spain had absorbed resources in the Armada year and the following year. By 1590, when the relief ships finally arrived at Roanoke to find the settlement abandoned, I suspect that, while there may have been an element of disappointment, it was resignation as much as disappointment. Ralegh had moved on in a way.
The marriage to Bess Throckmorton
YTV: Why did Ralegh begin a liaison with Bess Throckmorton?
MN: Heaven knows! He was always impetuous. Here again was his capacity to do the wrong thing at the wrong time. It was bad enough to marry without the queen's knowledge, but to marry a maid of honour without the queen's knowledge and consent? Almost suicidal. To marry a maid of honour without the queen's knowledge and consent and then afterwards show a total lack of remorse for your actions – that's suicidal.
It is not so much the fact of the marriage. It's the fact that both Bess and Ralegh show a complete lack of remorse. They marry in secret, the child is born and then both of them do their utmost to carry on as though nothing had happened. Bess returns to court and Ralegh continues with his schemes for another voyage. Of course, a secret like this comes out, it can't be kept, and the queen gets to know about it. So what do they do? Instead of doing the sensible thing and falling prostrate at her feet and begging her forgiveness, they both try and brazen it out.
Bess, in particular, will not apologise. Ralegh apologises in the most theatrical way possible. There is one particular incident where he has been confined to house arrest and he knows that the queen's barges are on the river below his window. So he struggles theatrically with his jailer and shouts loudly that he will get himself a pair of oars and row himself to the queen's boat just to catch a glimpse of her majesty. The queen is totally irritated by this sort of theatricality and it does him no good at all. In fact, it makes the matter far worse. The queen gives them both time, the queen pays out the rope, if you like, but in the end, when they are still not showing any contrition whatsoever, she comes down hard on them: she puts them both in the Tower.
The episode of Ralegh's marriage to Bess Throgmorton illustrates only too well his political naiveté. It was pretty clear what he should have done – he should have begged forgiveness – but he didn't. It was a miscalculation. He clearly thought that these courtly charades of theatrical contrition would suffice, but that's not what the queen wanted. The queen wanted him to grovel, the queen wanted Bess to grovel and they wouldn't.
The other element, of course, is that by 1591-2 there is another star in the firmament. The earl of Essex is very much the rising favourite in court, and Ralegh is approaching his 40th birthday. Perhaps the queen had another shoulder to cry on. But I doubt if she cried.
The search for El Dorado
YTV: Why did Ralegh decide to try to find El Dorado?
MN: He had boxed himself into a corner. I think it is clear that he hoped to be dissuaded from this voyage. His wife, most probably at his instigation, wrote to Cecil hoping that Cecil would pull the plug on the whole enterprise. As she put it: 'Draw him towards the east rather than towards the sunset.' But Cecil chose not to, and Ralegh had to go through with a voyage that, I think, he had hoped never to have to pursue.
He is beginning to recover ground at court, but he needs some sort of large theatrical coup to bring him back into favour, so he comes up with the Guiana scheme. I think there are hopes in his own mind – and in his wife's, probably planted there by Ralegh himself – that he would never actually make the journey, that the thought of losing Ralegh for nigh on a year would be too much for the queen. But again, he miscalculates, and in the end, Ralegh is hoist by his own petard. He has to go through with the journey, and of course, he has to make the best of it. He paints the voyage and the very mediocre benefits from it in the most glowing possible colours.
He finds absolutely nothing, of course. They don't find the silver mine. They navigate several hundred miles of a rising river into the hinterland of South America, into the jungle, and they come back armed with all sorts of fantastic travellers' tales of the golden cities and the silver mines that lie in the interior. But they come back with precious little in the way of substantial return for the voyage. Ralegh has to make the most of what he has gleaned – his supposed knowledge of the interior of the continent – and so he sets about in his own inimitable way to produce his wonderful, highly coloured description of the whole enterprise and of the benefits that England and the queen might gain from exploiting the supposed riches of South America.
But what else would he do? He had gone all that way. He had come all the way back. He couldn't just say, 'There was nothing there. Sorry. I tried.' He had to bring propaganda into play. But, of course, it was propaganda that, over time, he began to believe himself. In fact, he believed it more and more as the years went by. It begins to show how he could be led astray by hopes and dreams and also make the most of those hopes and dreams, publicise them, exploit them, push them for all they were worth.
Ralegh's downfall
YTV: How did Elizabeth's death affect Ralegh's career?
MN: Ralegh's fall in 1603 is indeed a very clear example of the essential political naiveté that plagues him throughout his career. James had his heart set on peace. What did Ralegh do? He came hotfoot to James and advocated a new way of pursuing the war with Spain. It just confirmed James in his suspicions of Ralegh, which had been carefully nurtured by the earl of Northampton in a secret correspondence over the previous two years. It persuaded him that Ralegh wasn't pursuing the policies that were dear to his own heart, that Ralegh was fundamentally set against those policies.
YTV: What was Robert Cecil's role in Ralegh's downfall?
MN: It is a common assumption that Cecil indulged in character assassination against Ralegh, that he deliberately blackened Ralegh's reputation with James VI before he came to the throne of England. But again I see it rather differently. I think it is pretty clear that Ralegh always picks a quarrel with Cecil. Why he does so is one of those imponderable elements in this murky period. It may well be that Ralegh had entertained hopes of finally securing a seat on the Privy Council and that he had counted on Cecil's friendship and influence to twist the queen's arm and make sure that he was appointed to this privileged and very influential post in English administration. But the queen wasn't having it, and Cecil either didn't push the matter or simply wasn't in a position to push the matter. I think it's clear that Ralegh felt let down. He began to alienate, to break with Cecil, and both sides began to feel aggrieved.
YTV: At Ralegh's trial in 1603, was he the victim of a despot?
MN: The idea that Ralegh is a victim of arbitrary Stuart government is somewhat misleading. Technically, he was guilty. The much maligned jury who considered for 15 minutes and then brought back the guilty verdict actually returned the correct verdict in law. It was harsh, but it was just.
The trouble is that no one has been quite clear what he did and that is partly a defect of the evidence, particularly the evidence that was brought forward at his trial. Ralegh was essentially convicted on the testimony of his friend, Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham. Cobham's testimony had been made in a fit of rage and passion on the understanding that Ralegh had betrayed him. Then it was withdrawn, and so it was brought forward in court as affidavits sworn by members of the Privy Council that Cobham had made these statements. Cobham wasn't in court.
The thing is that, after Ralegh was tried and convicted essentially on the basis of these affidavits, Cobham was re-examined and made a new confession in which the accusations are fundamentally different. They are much more specific and focus on words that Ralegh is supposed to have said to Cobham.
What seems to have happened is that Ralegh went to the [royal] court one day in April or May 1603 [one or two months after Elizabeth's death], and something happened there to put him in a towering rage. He came back and discussed his discontent with Cobham, growling away that men had been hanged for words rather than deeds. He suggests that Cobham negotiates with his own friend, the ambassador of the archduke Count Aronberg, for a pension in return for intelligence, in return for information. He also discusses the best place a Spanish army might land in England. These are words spoken in the heat of the moment, characteristic of Ralegh – he wasn't reticent, he didn't keep his counsel when his blood was up – but such words could indeed be construed as treason.
That's not to say that people in his day didn't get off having said such things. It was treason of words rather than deeds, and very often these things were seen in the best possible light and the individuals concerned were given the benefit of the doubt.
In 1603, no one saw it in their interest to give Ralegh that benefit of the doubt. James was new on the throne; he was an unknown quantity. For a courtier to stick his neck out in support of Ralegh at that time would have been risky, and no one was prepared actually to do it. And the fact that no one was prepared to do it was largely Ralegh's own fault because he himself had gone a long way down the line to alienate the one man most likely to sway James from pursuing the issue to its conclusion. That, of course, was Cecil.
One of the most extraordinary aspects of the trial was the way that Ralegh turned almost overnight from villain to hero. On the way to Winchester, he was pretty nearly lynched by an angry mob, but his dignity at the trial, his calm presentation of his defence at a time when the attorney general was losing his temper and denouncing Ralegh in all sorts of intemperate terms, that dignity, that careful bearing, that respectable accord but at the same time determination to conduct his own defence because he believed his defence – that won him huge respect among the audience at court and among the wider population as they got to hear of events at Westminster in November 1603.
YTV: How did Ralegh spend his time in the Tower?
MN: I think he must have run the whole gamut of emotions in those long years in the Tower. He had company in the Tower: his wife was able to visit him there, he had the company of other eminent prisoners, some of them scholars like the 9th earl of Northumberland. He was able to pursue his interests, he was able to pursue his writing, and no years could be considered wasted if they produce something as magnificent as The History of the World.
But for Ralegh, it must have been a trial; confinement must have proved irksome. I think it was clear that it did, and very early on, he was focusing on ways in which he might, by hook or by crook, secure his liberty. I don't think anyone expected his imprisonment to last so long. But the strange thing about James I is that, while he didn't immediately pursue his enemies to the death, he was very slow to release the most prominent ones from confinement. Lord Gray remains in the Tower until his death, Lord Cobham remains in the Tower until pretty nearly his death, and Ralegh, of course, remains there for many, many years, right through to 1616.
The return to Guiana and execution
YTV: Why did Ralegh return to Guiana for a second time?
MN: No one could quite understand why Ralegh set such store by the voyage to Guiana. Some thought he was mad. Some thought that the pursuit of these mirages of gold and silver would, as indeed they did, prove to be his undoing. Some wondered what the sly old fox was up to now: Was he trying to ferment trouble between England and Spain? Was this a way of actually breaking down the friendship with Spain by provoking a conflict in a far off part of the Spanish empire?
But I think it was essentially a last throw of the dice. He desperately needed to come up with some scheme that would earn him a release that wasn't forthcoming in any other way, and he focused on the, by now, 20-year-old vision of Guiana. This was the idea that not only took root with him but took root with others at court – that this was a way of not only getting Ralegh out of the Tower but also producing some advantage to the crown, to England.
It's fantasy. In some ways, it is a replay of the voyage 20 years before in spades. They find nothing. Ralegh's son is killed. It is a dismal tale, a wretched story. Ralegh is seen in the worst light, particularly when his loyal lieutenant commits suicide because of the way that Ralegh treats him over the death of Ralegh's son – he holds this man responsible and the man goes off and commits suicide and Ralegh receives the news with contempt, he has no sympathy whatsoever.
The whole expedition unravels. Ralegh is, in a way, powerless to stop it. His energy has gone, his will has gone. He says afterwards that his brains had broken. He is really a wrecked man, and there is no second chance even to pursue the fantasy of the mine. So the fantasy unravels when he comes home.
YTV: Why did Ralegh come back to England to face certain death?
MN: I suspect he came home because his wife and surviving son were living in England; they were, if you like, hostages at home. And, besides, what else was he to do? I don't think it was in Ralegh's character to take refuge in France and skulk abroad for the rest of his life.
The events of 1603 are replayed with a different ending in 1618. James is set on Ralegh's death, of that there is little doubt. And even though many at court and in positions of high authority may have sympathised in some way with Ralegh, they were not in a position or they were not willing to take the risk of arguing for his release or his return to the Tower.
The lord chief justice, in passing sentence on Ralegh, in confirming the sentence of 15 years earlier, makes in the circumstances a remarkably courageous speech where he says: 'Ralegh, you must imitate, you must take on Roman resolution, you must stand in defiance of death.' What he is really saying, of course, is: 'Look, we know this is harsh, but it is something you have to face. It is going to happen.' But at the same time he takes the opportunity to praise Ralegh, to praise his book, his History of the World, to make a public statement that he believes him to be a good Christian, which I think is significant at such a moment.
And so we come to the tragic theatre of the execution. People set a lot of store by how you met your end, and it was entirely in character that Ralegh made an extremely dignified end – at times, a quite witty end. He spoke for the best part of three-quarters of an hour. He welcomed the fact that he was dying in the light and not in some dark corner. He welcomed the chance, if you like, of saying farewell, departing the stage. It is interesting what still troubled him. He was still troubled 17 years on by rumours that he had behaved poorly at the earl of Essex's execution.
YTV: What kind of a man was he?
MN: An extraordinarily compelling individual, but he had flaws, he was human. I think that the balance sheet of his triumphs and his weaknesses would show a clear advantage on the triumphs. His literary capacity, his abilities as courtier if not as a politician, his behaviour in extremis, which you find over and over again. He is at his best when facing odds, it does bring out the best in him. But, at the same time, he makes gross mistakes as a politician, particularly obviously in 1603 – mistakes that blight his career.
YTV: And did he love Bess?
MN: I think it is clear that he did love Bess. For all the artifice and all the common form in the letters of farewell that he wrote when he thought he was about to die, and indeed before then – I think it is clear that a very clear thread of affection runs right through those letters. I see no reason from the other evidence to doubt that there was a very strong bond between them that endured right to his death. And it was a bond that had had a great deal to endure.
