his wife and daughter. Probably they were entirely
innocent. The real object was that Carr might introduce a more pliant
instrument for foul play against Sir Thomas Overbury. Under pressure of
the accusation based on the missing trinkets, Waad accepted L1400 from
Sir Gervase Elways, with a promise of L600 more, and vacated his office.
Elways became an accomplice in Overbury's murder, and was hanged on his
own Tower Hill. But he was less of a martinet than his predecessor.
Perhaps his patrons were engaged in too serious crimes to waste their
energy in inciting him to petty persecutions of Ralegh. At all events,
Ralegh recovered the liberty of the Tower; and the restrictions on the
presence of his wife were relaxed.

[Sidenote: _Fresh Accusations._]

At no period were his really formidable enemies inside the Tower. Waad
himself would not have dared to harass and worry him, if he had not been
confident that his tyranny would be approved at Court. His foes there
were perpetually on the watch for excuses for tightening and
perpetuating his bonds. He had to defend himself from a suspicion of
complicity with the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. Commissioners, of whom Waad
was one, were appointed to inquire. Lord Northumberland had been sent to
the Tower by the Star Chamber for misprision of treason, on the flimsy
pretext of his intimacy with Thomas Percy. He was questioned on his
communications at the Tower with Ralegh. Ralegh was questioned on his
with the Earl. One day the French ambassador's wife, Madame de Beaumont,
came to visit the lions in company with Lady Howard of Effingham. She
saw Ralegh in his garden. The Tower contained no lion as wonderful. She
asked him for some balsam of Guiana. He forwarded the balsam to the
ambassadress by Captain Whitelocke, a retainer of Northumberland's, who
happened to have been in her train. Several Lords of the Council were
deputed to examine him on his intercourse with Whitelocke, a spy having
deposed that he had noticed Whitelocke in the Archduke's company during
the summer of 1605. Ralegh had difficulty in persuading the Council that
he had seen little either of the Captain, who came only on an ordinary
visit, of Northumberland, since the Earl's confinement, or of the French
ambassador and his wife. He prayed their Lordships in the name of 'my
many sorrows and the causes, my services and love to my country, not to
suspect me to be knowing this unexampled and more than devilish
invention.' S