betrayers of the royal trust the
shame of his persecution. He could be excessively deferential and
grateful in words and demeanour. He could not but act and reason with a
mental independence as hateful to James as to Henry Howard, and as
condemnatory. Whether he discoursed on Assyrian or on English politics,
or on his private wrongs, he sat visibly on the seat of judgment.
Nothing but tame silence and spiritual petrifaction could have made his
peace at the Stuart Court. It was the one kind of fealty he was
incapable of rendering.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE RELEASE (March, 1616).

[Sidenote: _How his Fetters fell off._]

No merits of his, and no sense of justice to him, opened, or ever would
have opened, his prison doors. But at length it was become inconvenient
to keep him under duress. The gaolers who cared to detain him were gone.
In their places stood others who had an interest in sending him forth,
though with a chain on his ankle. He could never have been brought to
trial on a fantastic charge, or been convicted without evidence, unless
for the weight of popular odium, which enabled the new Court to trample
upon the favourite of the old. Without that he could not have been kept
for long years in prison. Gradually the nation forgot its habit of
dislike, which never had much foundation. Englishmen remembered his
mighty deeds. They honoured him as the representative of a glorious and
dead past. His fetters were of themselves falling off. Special
circumstances helped to shake him free of them. He had protested
ineffectually in the name of right. He had pleaded to deaf ears for
liberty to serve his country. At length an impression had been produced
that the prosecution of his policy might bring money into other coffers
beside his own.

He had never ceased to plan the establishment of English colonies in
Virginia and Guiana. He regarded both countries as his, and as English
by priority of discovery or occupation. From the fragments of his broken
fortunes the captive of the Tower had managed to fit out or subsidize
expeditions at intervals to both. Every few years the Guiana Indians in
particular were reminded by messages from him that their deliverance
from the Spaniards was at hand. To Englishmen ores and plants from
Guiana recalled the riches of the land, and their title to it. Thus, in
December, 1609, we hear that Sir Walter Ralegh had a ship come from
Guiana laden with gold ore. His chase after freedom was sti