creditors, have been conscious of the
risk of sailing without a pardon. Carew Ralegh many years afterwards
asserted, that Sir William St. John agreed to procure one for him for
L1500 beyond the sum paid for his liberty. According to the
_Observations on Sanderson's History_, the benefit was offered by St.
John and Edward Villiers jointly, and for as little as L700. A right to
abandon the voyage if he pleased was to have been added. Bacon's name is
connected with the matter. Incidentally Bacon, who had been appointed
Lord Keeper on March 7, 1617, is known to have met Ralegh after his
release. He himself relates that he kept the Earl of Exeter waiting long
in his upper room as he 'continued upon occasion still walking in Gray's
Inn walks with Sir Walter Ralegh a good while.' On the authority of
Carew Ralegh, as quoted in a letter to the latter from James Howell in
the _Familiar Letters_, he is reported, possibly on this occasion, to
have persuaded Ralegh to save his money, and trust to the implication of
a pardon to be inferred from the royal commission. 'Money,' said the
Lord Keeper, 'is the knee-timber of your voyage. Spare your money in
this particular; for, upon my life, you have a sufficient pardon for all
that is past already, the King having under his Great Seal made you
Admiral, and given you power of martial law. Your commission is as good
a pardon for all former offences as the law of England can afford you.'
That is the view of so sound a constitutional lawyer as Hallam. His
reason for the contention is that a man attainted of treason is
incapable of exercising authority. But it can scarcely be argued as a
point of law, and it is difficult to believe that a Lord Keeper should
have volunteered a dogma of an absolute pardon by implication. Moreover,
though, as will hereafter be seen, Sir Julius Caesar, who was Master of
the Rolls, fell into the same mistake in 1618, the misdescription,
imputed to Bacon, of the Commission as under the Great Seal, of itself
casts doubt upon the anecdote. On the whole, there is no sufficient
cause for disputing the statement in the _Declaration_ of 1618, that
James deliberately, 'the better to contain Sir Walter Ralegh, and to
hold him upon his good behaviour, denied, though much sued unto for the
same, to grant him pardon for his former treasons.'

In the course of this or another conversation, Bacon, according to Sir
Thomas Wilson's note of a statement made to him by Ralegh himsel