had absconded. A servant
confessed his master had followed the practice for the past seven years.
The evidence was overwhelming, and he was convicted. It was a 'just
judgment of God,' men said, 'for Sir Walter Ralegh's blood.' James, Mr.
Gardiner says, 'thought he owed something to his tool, and flung him a
pardon.' According to the popular rumour it was a gift for a tangible
consideration. He had to beggar himself to buy it. His office of
Vice-Admiral of Devon was forfeited, and it was filled by Eliot. He
slunk away first to his home at Afton, where all, gentle and poor,
banned him, and thence to Lundy Isle. There, amid the ruins of Morisco's
Castle, he died mad on August 29, 1620. His treason has conferred on his
obscure name an infamous immortality. He was equally an enemy to himself
and to King James, whom his accommodating perfidy tempted to perpetrate
the final injustice. But it must be remembered that but for him Ralegh
would have lingered for a few years more of weary life on foreign soil,
and dropped into an unhonoured grave. To him English history is indebted
for a heroic scene, and Ralegh for a glorious close to his splendid but
checkered career. The mind shudders at the thought of the bathos into
which a little remorse in that contemptible villain would have plunged
his victim.

[Sidenote: _Manourie's Defence._]

Public vengeance was not satisfied with the self-wrought retribution on
Stukely. It ranged lower, and it ranged higher. It condescended to spurn
the tool of a tool. Manourie, too, had to publish his apology. He called
God to witness that Stukely had bribed him to lay traps for Ralegh, and
to put into his mouth malcontent speeches. All the evil he told of his
ally was believed. His professions that his own admitted baseness had
been provoked by resentment of Ralegh's spontaneous abuse of the King
were received with incredulity or unconcern. On the fact, Captain King's
word in his _Narrative_ in answer to Manourie was accepted in preference
to the Frenchman's. The _Narrative_ was not printed, but circulated
extensively in manuscript. Though it is no longer discoverable, Oldys
seems to have read it, and he has quoted passages in his life of Ralegh.
'Never,' in it asseverated King, 'in all the years I followed Sir
Walter, heard I him name his Majesty but with reverence. I am sorry the
assertion of that man should prevail so much against the dead.' He need
not have feared that it had prevailed, or would