“Trial” of Sir Walter Raleigh. September, 1603.

“Trial” of Sir Walter Raleigh.
September, 1603.
I
What a dark stain upon the reign of James

Is Raleigh’s so-called “Trial!” On the main,
He oft had proved his prowess against Spain,
And to the court had ever shown the aims
Of that ungodly power should firmly be 5
Withstood by England. He was the last of men
Who’s use for Spain his word, or tongue, or pen;
At his mock “Trial” we can only see
The accused as one to honour. For proof
Of all they charged him with, his enemies 10
Indulged their spleen in gross abuse and lies,
And from all justice strangely stood aloof.*
The shambling pedant king was much mislead
When he could to the block consign brave Raleigh’s head.


II
No fishfag[1] Billingsgate could e’er produce 15
Was more abusive than coarse croaking Coke,
With hate and falsehood in each word he spoke;†
Whilst calmly Raleigh heard the whole abuse,
Demanding with just eloquence that they
Should bring their only witness into court; 20
For Cobham in his meanness first had sought
To couple Raleigh with his lawless fray,
And then confess’d it false. His judges were
All servile tools of tyranny: and one—
Shamed of their conduct when he thought upon 25
The part that they had vilely acted there—
Repented of the evil he had aided,
Own’d that ne’er was English justice so degraded.Δ

George Markham Tweddell

* Theobald not unwisely conjectured that Shakspere had Coke’s scurrility in view when
he made Toby Belch say of the challenge he wished to send to “the Count’s youth,”—
“So, write it in a martial hand: be curt that is ill-natured and brief; it is no matter how
witty, so it be eloquent and full of invention: taunt him with the licence of ink; if thou
thou’st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as well lie in thy sheet of
paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England, set ‘em
down; go about it. Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goosepen.”
Twelfth Night, act iii., scene 2nd. Staunton remarks:— “Theobald’s conjecture that
this passage was levelled at the Attorney-General Coke for his thouing Sir Walter
Raleigh, is at once put out of court, since Twelfth Night is discovered to have been
acted nearly two years before Sir Walter’s trial took place. But if Theobald were
ignorant of the fact, subsequent editors who have adopted his supposition ought to have
known that thou anybody was once thought a direct mark of insult, as might be shown
by a hundred examples.” Perhaps the editors and commentators whose presumed
ignorance Mr. Staunton looks down upon with such supreme contempt, were quite as
well posted up on the subject as himself. True, Payne Collier and Hunter discovered
from the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum that the play had been acted at the feast
at the Middle Temple before Feb. 2nd, 1601, (or 1602 of our reckoning); but does Mr.
Staunton imagine that Shakspere, because he could write, according to Ben Johnson,
without blotting a line, never added to, cut out, or in anyway revised any of his plays,
and that in the first folio we have them as it were stereotyped as when first written-—
perhaps hastily—for production?


“Thou viper; for I thou thee,—
“thou traitor, I will prove thee the rankest traitor in all England”;
“Thou art a monster”;
“thou has an English face, but a Spanish heart.”
was to “thou him thrice” with a vengeance; and well might the brutal conduct of Coke
provoke the thorough disgust of “gentle Shakspere,” as it did many of his
contemporaries.
† “The most notorious traitor that ever came to the bar”—“your jargon was ‘peace’,
which meant Spanish invasion and Scottish subversion”—“the most horrible practices
that ever came out of the bottomless pit of the lowest hell”—“As for your writing
against the Peace with Spain, you sought but to cloak a Spanish traitor’s heart”—“Thou
has a Spanish heart, and thyself art a spider of hell”—“this traitor”—“O damnable
atheist!”—“Raleigh’s devilish and Machiavellian policy”—“this viper in the Tower”
etc.—such are the flowers of rhetoric with which the then crawling creature Coke,
adorned his speeches and against Raleigh: and yet there are writers who would fain
persuade the people that as Attorney-General he never was unjust or cruel to those he
prosecuted!!! Of his after services to constitutional liberty I have not been indifferent:
see as my Sonnets on Coke in prison will show.
Δ Justice Gawdry, (who with Lord Chief Justice Popham, Chief Justice Anderson, and
Justice Warburton, and some of the Nobility at enmity with Raleigh presided over this
sad exhibition),— himself afterwards very clearly observed:—“Never before was
English justice so injured, so degraded!”
pp. 100-104 [in Miscellaneous Sonnets]
[1 fishfag, originally a female worker at the Billingsgate fish market, London became a
general insult during the 19th century.]