e ranked with Howard as
demoniacally malevolent, had evinced no disposition to release him.
Certainly he would, if only for Ralegh's own sake, not have abetted his
wild quest of Guiana gold. But he too was dead. Robert Carr was worse
than dead. The terrible exposure of his and his wife's crimes had made
James and his counsellors peculiarly sensitive to public opinion. Hallam
thinks it 'more likely than anything else that James had listened to
some criminal suggestion from Overbury and Somerset, and that, through
apprehension of this being disclosed, he had pusillanimously acquiesced
in the scheme of Overbury's murder.' That is Hallam's deliberate view of
the King who claimed the right to sit in judgment on Ralegh. The country
entertained a similar suspicion. It might have been dangerous to hold a
national hero confined under the same prison roof with the principals in
the crime. Moreover, a sympathetic politician, Sir Ralph Winwood, was
Secretary of State. Personally, Winwood was in high favour with the
King, notwithstanding discrepancies in their estimates of the value of a
Spanish alliance. Of that he and Archbishop Abbot both were vehement
opponents. They thought Ralegh a likely instrument for bringing about a
collision with Spain in the most advantageous circumstances. For the
moment Winwood's admiration of Ralegh and dislike of Spain, and the
King's contrary feelings, together with his general disposition to shift
responsibility, worked to the same end. George Villiers was inclined to
befriend Ralegh out of opposition to the Howards, who had been Carr's
supporters. Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, had died in June, 1614.
The credit of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Treasurer, was
waning. The old Lord High Admiral Nottingham's naval administration had
been unsuccessful and wasteful. King Christian, the Queen's brother,
when recently in England, had warmly interceded for Ralegh, whom, if Sir
Thomas Wilson's reports of subsequent conversations with Ralegh are to
be believed, he would gladly have borrowed of James for the Danish navy.
Ralegh believed the King had, on a previous visit, asked for his
liberty. That is not certain. Carleton, writing to Chamberlain in
August, 1606, stated that Christian had declined the office. In any case
he exerted himself on his second visit. The fact must be set off for him
against another, that he was a sot, and, as Harington shows, set an evil
example of drunken bouts to the