as to the Prince's immediate influence on his
behalf than as to the benefits to be derived from the youth's eventual
accession to the throne. Henry was said to have extracted a promise from
James of Ralegh's liberation at Christmas, 1612. November came, and the
Prince lay dying of a raging fever. The Queen sent to the Tower for the
medicine which had cured her. Ralegh despatched it with a letter,
asserting that it would certainly heal this or any other case of fever,
unless there were poison. A vehement debate followed among the Lords of
the Council and the doctors, including the Genevese physician, Dr.,
afterwards Sir, Theodore Mayerne. Finally, the potion was administered.
The patient, who had been speechless, revived sufficiently to speak. But
it did not save his life. The populace and the Queen believed that it
had been ineffectual because there had been poison. Forty years later,
Carew Ralegh referred to the rumour as still credited. At the time it
was repeated on the judicial bench. Sir Thomas Monson in 1615 was being
tried for complicity in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Coke, become
Chief Justice, insinuated with his usual discretion and fairness at the
trial that Overbury was poisoned from fear that he might, through
hostility to Carr, divulge his guilty knowledge of a similar crime
against 'a sweet Prince.'

Prince Henry's death blasted the prospect of Ralegh's ultimate
restoration to royal favour, as well as to immediate liberty. It
inflicted a less, but very vexatious, disappointment. After a protracted
struggle he had been stripped of his Dorsetshire estate. Sherborne, he
might have reckoned, was indefeasibly safe. Its enjoyment for his life
was covered by the term for sixty years. The settlement of 1602 seemed
to have set the inheritance out of danger. But in the course, perhaps,
of the legal investigation with a view to the grant of the term for the
benefit of Ralegh's wife and children, a flaw was detected in the
conveyance of the fee. Little cause as Ralegh had to respect the
impartiality of Popham and Coke in criminal procedure, he retained full
confidence in their legal learning. To them in 1604, at his own earnest
request, the deed of 1602 was submitted by Cecil. Their opinion on it
was clear and fatal. They could have given no other. The essential words
of a conveyance in trust, that the trustees shall stand thereof seised
to the uses specified, had, Popham wrote to Cecil on June 7, 1605, been
o