CHAPTER XVI.

INCIDENTS IN SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S LIFE.

He burns Materials he had prepared for his History of the World—His Confession, etc.

IN the third volume of his " Addresses and Speeches," Robert C. Winthrop has given us a valuable contribution to history that must be regarded as conclusive evidence that Sir Walter Raleigh made quite a long speech on the scaffold immediately before his execution. This speech-that has usually been called his "Confession"-has been discredited by some historians, but Mr. Winthrop found in the "Common Place Book of Adam Winthrop, the father of the first Governor of Massachusetts," among several accounts of historical events, carefully copied from seemingly authentic sources, "The Confession and Execution of Sir Walter Raleigh." This copy, with unimportant variations only, agrees with the general version of the "Confession." Says Mr. Winthrop, "Sir Walter was executed in October, 1618, when Adam Winthrop was living at Groton, England, at seventy years of age, a magistrate of the old county of Suffolk, who, a few years before, had resigned the auditorship of Trinity College, Cambridge, which he had held sixteen or seventeen years. His son, who, twelve years afterwards, came over to New England as Governor of Massachusetts, was then about thirty years old. Both of these men took an intellgent interest in public affairs, and might have personally witnessed the execution of Raleigh, had they chanced to be in London at the time." Mr. Winthrop, after considering it very fully, observes, “In conclusion, we can hardly doubt that this speech was made substantially as it has been reported."

Another incident in Sir Walter's life, hardly less im

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portant, and about which much more serious doubt has been thrown, is the statement that he destroyed material he had collected for a continuation of his "History of the World." This appears in a book entitled "Celebrated Trials, Selected by a Member of the Philadelphia Bar" (John Jay Smith, born 1798), and published by L. A. Godey, in 1836. In this book it is stated that Sir Walter, some few days before he suffered, sent for Mr. Walter Burr, who formerly printed his first volume of the 'History of the World,' whom, taking by the hand, after some other discourse, he asked how it had sold? Mr. Burr returned this answer: 'It has sold so slowly that it has undone me.' At these words Sir Walter, stepping to his desk, took the other, unprinted part of his history, which he had brought down to the times he lived in, and, clapping his hand upon his breast, said, with a sigh, 'Ah! my friend, hath the first part undone thee? the second part shall undo no more: this ungrateful world is unworthy of it!' and immediately going to the fireside, threw it in, and set his foot upon it till it was consumed. As great a loss to learning as Christendom could have sustained; the greater because it could be repaired by no hand but his.”

Edward Edwards, author of a "Life of Sir Walter Raleigh," published in 1868, said to be the best ever written of him, attributes this story of the bookseller to one Winstanley, who, it would appear from the context, was, says Edwards, "the author of a very worthless book, published in 1660," forty-two years only after Sir Walter's execution, when, if not true, its falsity must have been known to thousands of his contemporaries then living. Was it denied at the time? Edwards says, "It has neither authority nor corroboration," and, thereupon, enters into what seems to me a weak argument to convince his readers that, "at any period, the destruction, irrevocably, of the result of long toil on the faith of a statement like that given in the story of Walter Burr, smacks rather of fable than of history.

Strictly true [he continues] Winstanley's statement cannot be, since a second edition of the History of the World' had actually appeared before the date assigned, with so much precision, to this conversation in the Tower between the author and bookseller." What, I venture to ask, does this prove? Mind, it was not a "second volume," which "had actually appeared," but a "second edition of the first and only volume ever issued,—the large octavo volume of 1614, a copy of which I have examined in the Congressional Library. Who knows that the bookseller's misfortune did not arise from undertaking a second edition, after the first, probably a small one, had been disposed of? Look at these additional facts. This old volume, as already remarked, bears date 1614, two years before Sir Walter was released from the Tower to take charge of his last and fatal Guiana expedition. It comprises the whole of his "History of the World." It is divided into five books, the fifth bearing this heading: "From the settled rule of Alexander's Successors in the East untill the Romans (prevailing over all) made conquest of Asia and Macedon." Of course, this fifth and last book is plainly not "brought down to the times he lived in." Now mark: In the closing paragraph of his history he wrote, "Lastly, whereas this Booke, by the title it hath, calls itselfe The first part of the Generall Historie of the World,' implying a Second and Third Volume, which I also intended and have hewne out; besides many other discouragements perswading my silence, it hath pleased God to take that glorious Prince out of the world, to whom they were directed; whose unspeakable and never enough lamented losse hath taught me to say with Job, 'Versa, est in Luctum Cithara mea & organum meum in vocem flentium.'"

1

What has become of the materials for these second and third volumes, thus "hewne out?" Evidently, whatever

1 Chapter xxx. 31.

the bookseller might reasonably have supposed was a complete "second part" was, in fact, only what had been "hewne out" for such volume; and, now that Sir Walter knew he was about to suffer death, what more natural, independently of any irritation from seeing his great work was ill appreciated, than that he should wish to destroy his undigested notes, in order to prevent their possible use in a manner to detract from his well-earned "fame to come, which [Edwards declares] he loved with a passion hardly second in intensity to the love of wife and children." Moreover, we have seen that his "Confession," as related, presumably, by the same writer who gives us the story of the bookseller, agrees in all essential particulars with the best authenticated version thereof. Why, then, should that story, which Edwards says had been current "now for more than two centuries," be discarded as fabulous, since it forms a consecutive part of the author's account of the trial, conviction, and execution of Raleigh?

Finally, let it be remembered, that Sir Walter was confined in the Tower for at least two months immediately preceding his death. Is it not reasonable, therefore, to suppose that he occupied more or less of this time in collecting materials for the continuation of his history? However this may be, we have his positive and undoubted assertion that he had "hewne out" a second and third volume, and, unless these materials can be accounted for in some other way, there is the strongest presumptive evidence that he committed them to the flames in the presence of his publisher.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.

Circumstances under which it was written-Two Accounts-Capture of Dr. Beans and other Americans-F. S. Key goes for their Release and is detained on a British Ship.

GENERALLY well known as are the main circumstances under which our stirring national song of the "StarSpangled Banner" was written, the particulars thereof are not so familiar to all as not to be worthy of record in this place. Recently, in examining a file of the old National Intelligencer, I came across this song as first published in that paper on the 27th of September, 1814, a fortnight only after the battle of North Point, Baltimore. It appears there with the following heading and preface:

"6 DEFENCE OF FORT M'HENRY.

“(From a Baltimore paper.)

"The annexed song was composed under the following circumstances: A gentleman had left Baltimore, with a flag of truce, for the purpose of getting released from the British fleet a friend of his, who had been captured at Marlborough. He went as far as the mouth of the Patuxent, and was not permitted to return, lest the intended attack on Baltimore should be disclosed. He was therefore brought up the bay to the mouth of the Patapsco, where the flag vessel was kept under the guns of a frigate, and he was compelled to witness the bombardment of Fort M'Henry, which the Admiral (Cockburn) had boasted that he would carry in a few hours, and that the city must fall. He watched the flag at the fort through the whole day with an anxiety that can be better felt than described, until the night prevented him from seeing it. In the night he watched the bomb-shells, and at early dawn his eye was again greeted by the proudly waving flag of his country.

"Tune-Anacreon in Heaven."

Here follows the song, at the bottom of which is this note in brackets: "(Whoever is the author of those lines,