was present upon duty, and was likewise examined with relation to a conference which he had upon the Thames the morning of the insurrection with Sir Ferdinando Gorges.  At the execution of Essex, six days after, in the Tower, Raleigh attended, probably in his character of captain of the guard, and stood near the scaffold that he might the better answer if Essex should be desirous of speaking to him, but retired before the earl’s execution, because the people seemed to take his appearance there in a wrong light; tho’ he afterwards repented of it, as the earl expressed an inclination to see and speak with him before his death, which was in all probability to have asked Raleigh’s forgiveness for having traduced, and calumniated him in order to colour his own rash designs.

In 1602 our author sold his estate in Ireland, to Mr. Boyle, afterwards earl of Cork, and about Midsummer he settled his estate of Sherbone on his son Walter, on account of a challenge which he had received from Sir Amias Preston, who had been knighted at Cadiz by the earl of Essex; which challenge Sir Walter intended to accept, and therefore disposed his affairs in proper order.  The cause of their quarrel does not appear, but they were afterwards reconciled without proceeding to a duel[9].

The death of Queen Elizabeth on the 24th of March 1602-3 proved a great misfortune to Raleigh; James her successor having been prejudiced against him by the earl of Essex, who insinuated that Raleigh was no friend to his succession, nor had any regard for his family.  And these prejudices were heightened by secretary Cecil in his private correspondence with that pusilanimous, jealous prince, before he ascended the Throne of England, or at least immediately upon that event; for tho’ Raleigh and Cecil had united against Essex, yet after the ruin of that earl and his party, their seeming friendship terminated in a mutual struggle for a superiority of power.  But there is another important cause of James’s disgust to Sir Walter, which is, that he, lord Cobham, and Sir John Fortescue, would have obliged the king to articles before he was admitted to the throne, and that the number of his countrymen should be limitted; which added to the circumstance of Sir Walter’s zeal to take off his mother, inspired his majesty with a confirmed aversion to him; and indeed the tragical end of the queen of Scots is, perhaps, the greatest error with which the annals of that glorious reign is stained.  Raleigh in vain endeavoured to gain the affection of the new king, which he attempted by transfering on secretary Cecil the blood of the earl of Essex, as well as that of his royal mother; but this attempt to secure the affections of a weak prince, ended in his ruin, for it exasperated Cecil the more against him; and as Sir Walter was of an active martial genius, the king, who was a lover of peace, and a natural coward, was afraid that so military a man would involve him in a war, which he hated above all things in the world.  Our author was soon removed from his command as captain of the guard, which was bestowed upon Sir Thomas Erskin, his majesty’s favourite as well as countryman[10], the predecessor to the earl of Mar, whose actions, performed in the year 1715, are recent in every one’s memory.