is spirit, not
his body. Beaumont, the French Ambassador, observed on the matter to
Henry IV: 'Sir Walter Ralegh is said to have declared that his design
to kill himself arose from no feeling of fear, but was formed in order
that his fate might not serve as a triumph to his enemies, whose power
to put him to death, despite his innocency, he well knows.' Confiscation
was the triumph of which he wished to deprive his persecutors, if he
really contemplated suicide. His motive would be the rescue of Sherborne
for his wife and child from forfeiture through attainder, the sure
result, as he truly foresaw, of a trial for treason.

[Sidenote: _A Disputed Letter._]

'After he had hurt himself,' it is stated on the extant copy of the
letter, though more probably, if at all, on the eve of the attempt, he
is alleged to have written to apprise his wife of his approaching death.
In 1839, in an edition of Bishop Goodman's _Court of King James the
First_, the late Professor John Brewer printed an unsigned paper,
purporting to be such a letter, which had been found in All Souls
College Library. Mr. Brewer describes it as in Sir Henry Yelverton's
Collection, for no other apparent reason than that the document is in a
commonplace book, which includes three speeches by Yelverton. The
contents are miscellaneous, ranging from satirical verses to State
papers, and of dates from 1500 to 1617. Mr. Oman, of All Souls,
considers that the hand, the same throughout, of the copyist is of
ordinary seventeenth century character. The volume came to the college
from the collection of Narcissus Luttrell. The name of the original
owner, for or by whom the matter was compiled and transcribed, is not
known. Consequently, belief in the authenticity of the supposed letter
from Ralegh depends on its own intrinsic probability.

[Sidenote: _An Apocryphal Daughter._]

In the course of it, Ralegh, 'for his sake who was about to be cruel to
himself, to preserve' his wife, begged her to be charitable 'to my poor
daughter, to whom I have given nothing,' and to 'teach my son to love
her for his father's sake.' Nowhere else is an allusion to this daughter
discoverable. Nothing is known of her or her mother. Almost a necessary
presumption is, that, if she existed, she was an illegitimate child. One
benevolent writer has suggested, without a shadow of evidence, a prior
marriage to that with Elizabeth Throckmorton. The manner in which she is
commended to Lady Ralegh's