rom all difficulties, whether of war or of intrigue. It
retained the same faith in the indomitable resources of the prisoner of
the Tower, without much active sympathy, though without antipathy. He
died; and the wonder, the observant admiration flamed into a fury of
passionate regret. For six and thirty years Ralegh had been before its
eyes, and in its thoughts, for good or evil. It could not imagine him
not at its service; and he was irreparably gone. A reserve of force,
upon which the nation unconsciously had depended in the event of any
emergency, had been thrown away. A light in England had been
extinguished. The people forgot how it had misconstrued and reviled him.
It forgot how passively it had borne to see him worried by malicious
rivals and upstart strangers. On the instant he became for it the
representative of an era of national glory sacrificed to sordid
machinations. The executioner's axe in Palace Yard scattered a film
which had dimmed the sight of Englishmen for an entire generation. Death
vindicated on Ralegh's own behalf its title to his panegyric: 'O
eloquent, just, and mighty Death!'

[Sidenote: _An Idol of the Constitutional Party._]

The nation persisted in grieving for him. The instruments of his
destruction, courtiers and Ministers, it pursued with a storm of
immediate hatred. Loyalty or awe of the Prerogative secured the
Sovereign's person for the time from open reproaches. The country was
willing to suppose that the King had been misled by evil counsellors,
and had quickly repented of the iniquity. Spain, two years later,
assisted Austria to dethrone the Elector Palatine and his Stuart wife. A
story was invented that James, in anger at the news, exclaimed he would
demand the Spanish general's head. A courtier, it was fabled, dared to
question whether Philip would be as facile and obliging as James had
been. 'Then I wish,' groaned James, 'that Ralegh's head were again on
his shoulders.' Posterity has been less ready to make any excuse for
James, even the excuse of a selfish contrition. His memory has paid with
interest for his escape at first from his rightful share in the obloquy.
His injustice as an individual weakened the national faith in royalty.
The wrongs suffered from the State caused Ralegh to be regarded as a
martyr to freedom, which he was not. The growing party of champions of
constitutional liberties watched over and exalted his fame. Pym, in his
note-book of _Memorable Accidents_,