[The following is a letter sent from Sir Walter Raleigh to his wife before his execution.]
Raleigh had written another farewell letter to his wife and in this one it seems he really had accepted he was going to die:
You shall now receive (my dear wife) my last words in these my last lines. My love I send you, that you may keep it when I am dead, and my counsel, that you may remember it when I am no more. I would not by my will present you with sorrows (dear Bess). Let them go into the grave with me and be buried in the dust… remember your poor child for his father’s sake, who chose you and loved you in his happiest times. Get those letters (if it be possible) which I writ to the Lords wherein I sued for my life. God is my witness, it was for you and ours I desired life. But it is true I distain myself for begging it.
For know it (dear wife) that your son is the son of a true man, and one who, in his own respect, despises death, and all his misshapen and ugly shapes. I cannot write much. God knows how hardly I steal this time while others sleep, and it is also high time that I should separate my thoughts from this world. Beg my dead body which living was denied thee and either lay it at Sherborne (if the land continue) or in Exeter church by my mother and father. I can say no more, time and death call me away...
My dear wife farewell. Bless my poor boy. Pray for me and let my good God hold you both in his arms.
Written with the dying hand of sometime thy husband but now (alas) overthrown, Wa. Raleigh.
Source:
Lisle, Leanda De. "The God of Truth and Time" After Elizabeth: The Rise of James of Scotland and the Struggle for the Throne of England. New York: Ballantine, 2005. 272. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Raleigh, Letters, pp. 263-5.
Further Reading:
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