Read "The Great Captain" by Katharine Tynan online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Once again we were in the dolorous Tower, and this time there was no returning. They arrested him at Plymouth on the moment of his landing. As though they could never slay him fast enough, he was put on his trial and found guilty of abusing the King's confidence and injuring the subjects of Spain, and condemned to death on the old sentence.
Perhaps they thought if they were not speedy that the people would not suffer it. To kill a Raleigh was better sport than witch-burning, yet they hardly paused from their torture of innocent crones and helpless girls to see the lion die. One grace they gave him -- that his body was to be spared the last indignities and to be handed over to his wife for burial where she would. "It is well, Bess," he said to her, rallying her, "thou mayst dispose of that dead which thou hadst not always the disposal of when living."