The fate of Sir Walter Ralegh was therefore sealed. Twenty-three years before, he had acquired for the crown of England a claim to the continent of Guiana; and, in his second expedition, had planned, and executed through his son Walter, the sacking of St. Thomas, a small town which the Spaniards, not acknowledging the British claim to the territory of Guiana, had built on the river Oronooko. The young Walter Ralegh was killed in that attempt. He was a young man more desirous of honour than safety; “with whom,” said the agonized father, on hearing of his loss, “to say truth, all the respects of this world have taken end in me.”[237]
Ralegh was now to suffer for the results of an enterprise which he had undertaken with the express consent of the King.[238] Whilst proceedings were carried on against him, Gondomar was entertained, as it will be remembered, with a marked distinction by Buckingham. The extreme youth of the favourite had indeed attracted the witticisms of the artful Spaniard, who had converted that circumstance into a compliment to the King’s penetration, telling his Majesty “that he was the wisest and happiest prince in Christendom, to make privy-counsellors sage at the age of twenty-one, when his master, the King of Spain, could not do it when they were sixty.”[239] The wily Spaniard dealt out his phrases in points and conceits, a sort of discourse then well received in society, and peculiarly agreeable to the King. He affected, also, to speak false Latin. The King laughed at him, on which the Ambassador rejoined, “Your Majesty speaks like a pedant, but I speak like a gentleman,” and James gloried in his acknowledged superiority in the classics. By these small contrivances had Gondomar insinuated himself into royal favour, so that no boon that he could ask—not even the life of the venerated Ralegh—could be refused.
Oldmixon. History of the House of Stuart, p. 52.
There was another wheel within this closely-contrived political machine. The Countess of Buckingham was inclined to Popery; and became, eventually, a convert to that faith. This circumstance naturally influenced greatly the son, over whose counsels the Countess continued to hold a sway, and to dispose them to the marriage of the heir apparent to a Catholic.