290
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. xn. OCT. 10, 1909.
('Life of Ralegh,' 1868, ii. 413) suggests it
was penned on 30 October, the day after
the execution. But if the inscription on the
present tablet be correct, Ralegh's remains
were interred in the chancel of that church
"on the day" of the beheadal ; and Lady
Ralegh's letter must therefore have been
written on the same day.
Why her request was not complied with we know not. According to Gardiner ( ( Hist. of England,' 1883, iii. 151) "his remains were delivered to his wife, and were by her buried in St. Margaret's." For this Gardiner gives no authority, nor are the probabilities in favour of it. There is greater reason to rely on the statement in the ' D.N.B.' of the burial having taken place there "in spite of "that is, in opposition to the expressed desire of Lady Ralegh for the removal to Beddington. The cause of this sudden alteration in the intended disposal of the body has been indicated by Edwards (i. 692-3, 709). Al- though the king was absent from London, his warrant " pro decollatione Walteri Ralegh, Militis," is dated " Westminster, 28 Oct.," it having
"been predetermined that the hearing [at West- minster] should be immediately followed by the beheading, despite all entreaty, at an early hour [8 o'clock] at the very next morning. That was the morning of the Lord Mayor's pageant, which would be sure to draw the London crowd eastwards. Before anything could be generally known of the doom that doom would have been fulfilled."
James kept away from the capital, so that no further intercession in favour of the condemned man was possible ; and the king "spent some of the hours unoccupied by field sports in writing 'Meditations on the Lord's Prayer.' "
As might well be supposed, it was soon discovered that a most unpopular act had been committed, and one that would bring discredit on all C9ncerned in it. The removal of the body to its destined resting-place in Surrey would evidently prove to be a hazard- ous proceeding, as probably leading to a popular outbreak. We can scarcely doubt that the fear of a popular demonstration follow- ing the indecently hasty execution prompted the authorities to run no risk of that kind and thereupon they hastily determined, despite the promise to Lady Ralegh (who already had possession of her late husband's head)
t0 u- u r the b ? dy in the nearest church^ which happened to be St. Margaret's, other- wise there appeared to be no special reason for selecting it beyond any other. To use the words of Aubrey (1626-97), he was "buried privately" there. And the same author forcibly remarks, "Sir Walter Raleigh
hath neither stone nor inscription " (* Brief
Lives,' 1898, ii. 193).
According to Edwards (i. 706), " for a long time no inscription was placed above the grave of Ralegh." Edwards adds, " The spot was marked, I believe, by the armorial bear- ings of the tenant." It would be of interest to learn whence he derived his information, as none of the authorities yet examined refer to it. Sir Walter's son Carew was interred in his father's grave on 1 January, 1666, but neither a separate inscription, nor a sculptured coat of arms on the gravestone, could have existed at that time, otherwise Aubrey, who was aware of the second burial, must have seen and recorded it. Nor, so far as the stone is concerned, was anything noticed upon it during the church restorations of the past century.
We now come to your correspondent's quotation from the Rev. M. E. C. Walcott's
- History of St. Margaret's Church,' viz., " The
old wooden tablet was replaced in 1845 at the expense of several subscribers." If he had consulted the later work of that writer, entitled ' Memorials of Westminster,' he would have noticed the following extended account :
" The old wooden tablet, which had been put up by a churchwarden, gave way to a memorial of ' plain tin or copper with a frame, painted blue with gilt letters,' which was replaced in 1845 by an elegant mural tablet, with a brass plate, at the expense of several subscribers " (ed. 1S51, p. 142).
This intermediate tablet must have had a comparatively brief existence, as the wooden one, according to an entry in Manning and Bray's 'History of Surrey' (iii. 40), remained in situ in 1814.
The main object of this communication has been simply to point out that it was not until a century after his death had elapsed that a Ralegh memorial of any kind was to be seen in St. Margaret's Church. Tradition alone seems to have preserved the memory of the site where the remains of the great Englishman were deposited.
Since the foregoing was written, the follow- ing paragraph relating to the Ralegh memorial has been found in Pennant's 'London, 'and as this was first published in the last decade of the eighteenth century, the inscribed board must have been fixed about the year 1770: "It was left to a sensible churchwarden to inform us of the fact, who inscribed it on a board, about twenty years ago" (ed. 1813, i. 125).
T. N. BRUSHFIELD, M.D.
Salterton, Devon.
Is MR. HARLAND-OXLEY in his very interest- ng paper quite accurate as to the origin of
