Sir Walter Raleigh's Prison

Going back to our 1995 visit to London, this was taken on a very cold 5th of December.

Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned twice at the Tower of London. Queen Elizabeth had been embarrassed at his hounding of Spanish galleons at a point when she was not actively encouraging such action.

The second time was after the Queen had died in 1603. James I took the throne and Raleigh was framed as a member of a plot against the throne and sentenced to life imprisonment.

This is the room where he was kept and it has been kept the way it was when he was there in the 16th Century, with his writing desk and bed, which is over against the opposite wall, to the right of this photograph.

He was able to take some exercise along a short parapet on the wall outside his room.

At one low point in December 1603, convinced that the King would order him executed, he wrote a most moving letter to his beloved wife Bess:

YOU SHALL RECEIVE, dear wife, my last words in these my last lines. My love I send you that you may keep it when I am dead, and my counsel that you may remember it when I am no more. I would not, with my last will, present you with sorrows, dear Bess. Let them go to the grave with me and be buried in the dust. And seeing it is not the will of God that ever I shall see you in this life, bear my destruction gently and with a heart like yourself.

First, I send you all the thanks my heart may conceive or my pen express, for your many troubles and cares taken for me, which-- though they have not taken effect as you wished-- yet my debt is to you never the less; but pay it I never shall in this world.

Secondly, I beseech you, for the love you bore me living, that you do not hide yourself many days, but by your travel seek to help your miserable fortunes and the right of your poor children. Your mourning cannot avail me that am but dust.

...To what friend to direct thee I know not, for all mine have left me in the true time of trial; and I plainly perceive that my death was determined from the first day. Most sorry I am (as God knoweth) that being thus surprised with death, I can leave you no better estate. I meant you all mine office of wines or that I could purchase by selling it; half my stuff and jewels, but some few for my boy. But God hath prevented all my determinations: the great God that worketh all in all. If you can live free from want, care for no more; for the rest is but vanity. Love God and begin betimes to repose yourself on Him; therein shall you find true and lasting riches and endless comfort. For the rest, when you have travailed and wearied your thoughts on all sorts of worldly cogitations, you shall sit down by sorrow in the end. Teach your son also to serve and fear God while he is young, that the fear of God may grow up in him. Then will God be a husband unto you and a father unto him; a husband and a father which can never be taken from you.

...[F]or my soul's health, I beseech you pay all poor men. When I am gone no doubt you shall be sought unto by many, for the world thinks that I am very rich; but take heed of the pretences of men and of their affections, for they last but in honest and worthy men. And no greater misery can befall you in this life than to become a prey, and afterwards to be despised. I speak it (God knows) not to dissuade you from marriage-- for that will be best for you-- both in respect of God and the world. As for me, I am no more yours nor you mine. Death hath cut us asunder, and God hath divided me from the world and you from me.

Remember your poor child for his father's sake, that comforted you and loved you in his happiest times.

Get those letters (if it be possible) which I writ to the Lords, wherein I sued for my life; but God knoweth that it was for you and yours that I desired it; but it is true that I disdain myself for begging it. And know it (dear wife) that your son is the child of a true man, and who, in his own respect, despiseth Death and all his misshapen and ugly forms.

I cannot write much. God knows how hardly I stole this time when all sleep; and it is time to separate my thoughts from the world. Beg my dead body, which living was denied you; and either lay it at Sherburne, if the land continue, or in Exeter Church by my father and mother. I can write no more. Time and Death call me away.

The everlasting, infinite, powerful and inscrutable God, that Almighty God that is goodness itself, mercy itself, the true life and light, keep you and yours, and have mercy on me and teach me to forgive my persecutors and false accusers; and send us to meet in His glorious kingdom. My true wife farewell. Bless my poor boy; pray for me. My true God hold you both in his arms. Written with the dying hand of sometime thy husband, but not (alas!) overthrown, yours that was but now not my own.

W. Raleigh

From Choice Passages from the Writings and Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh; being a small Sheaf of Gleanings from a golden Harvest by Alexander B. Grosart, printed by Elliot Stock, London, 1892.

Large versions of the photos: WR's writing desk, WR's bed, the White Tower