The Public Record Office Museum

Date:
1908
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/52/49
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Public Record Office Museum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    64. Letter from Sir Walter Ralegh to the Queen [ Anne, wife of James I.]. Inever sought employment in Guinea, “‘for all the gold in the earth could not invite me to travell after miserie and death.’ I only desired to do the King ‘“‘such a service as hath seildome bine performed for any King.” ‘‘My extreeme shortnes of breath doth grow fast on me, with the dispayre of obtayning so mich grace to walke with my keeper up the hill within the Tower.” After eight years’ imprisonment, I ‘‘am as strayghtly lockt up as I was the first day.” I ‘‘suffer for other mens offences.”’ I rather ‘‘ desire to dye once for all, and thereby to give end to the miseries of this life, than to strive agaynst the ordinance of God, who is a trew judge of my innocencie.’”’— [Dated at the Tower of London, 1611 or 1612.| English. Holograph. Signed ;—‘‘ W. Ralegh.”’ Sir Walter Ralegh was committed to the Tower in November 1603, and released in March 1616. 65. Letter from Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans, to King James I. In the absence of his friend [the Marquis of Buckingham |, he applies to the King ‘‘for a cell to retire unto.” This help will cost his Majesty nothing. He prays for the ‘‘goode returne’”’ of the King’s ‘‘ treasure abrode [the Prince of Wales] which passeth all Indian fleetes.”.—Dated [at Gray’s Inn] 25 March 1628. English. Holograph. Signed ;-—‘ Fs. St. Albanes.”’ This application was made by Bacon nearly two years after his fall. From another letter written by him, somewhat less carefully, on the same day to Secretary Conway, it appears that the ‘cell’? which he desired was the Provostship of Eton. This, however, he did not obtain. The Prince of Wales and the Marquis of Buckingham, the great dispenser of patronage, were absent on their romantic expedition to Spain.