e lived so under the eye of the State that,
whensoever she would, it was in her power to suppress him.' This last,
one would think, might have been an argument for mercy. The Queen
instructed Cecil to tell Sir George Carew, that whatever pardon was
extended to others, none might be shown to Cormac.

It was in the same spirit of rigour that Raleigh had for two years past
advised the retention of the gentle and learned Florence MacCarthy in
the Tower, as 'a man reconciled to the Pope, dangerous to the present
State, beloved of such as seek the ruin of the realm;' and this at the
very time when MacCarthy, trusting in his twenty years' acquaintance
with Raleigh, was praying Cecil to let him be his judge. Raleigh little
thought that the doors which detained Florence MacCarthy would soon open
for a moment to inclose himself, and that in two neighbouring cells
through long years of captivity the _History of the World_ would grow
beside the growing _History of the Early Ages of Ireland_.

In this year, 1602, Raleigh parted with his vast Irish estates to
Richard Boyle, afterwards Earl of Cork, and placed the purchase-money in
privateering enterprises. It is known that Cecil had an interest in this
fleet of merchantmen, and as late as January 1603 he writes about a
cruiser in which Raleigh and he were partners, begging Raleigh, from
prudential reasons, to conceal the fact that Cecil was in the adventure.
There was no abatement whatever in the friendliness of Cecil's tone to
Raleigh, although in his own crafty mind he had decided that the death
of the Queen should set the term to Raleigh's prosperity. On March 30,
1603, Elizabeth died, and with her last breath the fortune and even the
personal safety of Raleigh expired.

We may pause here a moment to consider what was Raleigh's condition and
fame at this critical point in his life. He was over fifty years of age,
but in health and spirits much older than his time of life suggested;
his energy had shown signs of abatement, and for five years he had done
nothing that had drawn public attention strongly to his gifts. If he had
died in 1603, unattainted, in peace at Sherborne, it is a question
whether he would have attracted the notice of posterity in any very
general degree. To close students of the reign of Elizabeth he would
still be, as Mr. Gardiner says, 'the man who had more genius than all
the Privy Council put together.' But he would not be to us all the
embodiment of the sp