It needs no ears under the walls of the Tower to tell us what were the duties of this learned and trusted friend, who had been Sir Walter’s confidential factor for a quarter of a century in all his most important enterprises.  Hariot, it will be perceived, was the only one named, in this house-list, without an assigned profession.  Fortunately there is still preserved a ’ hoggeshead of papers’ in Hariot’s handwriting, ill-assorted and hitherto unsifted, which partially reveal the secrets of this prison-house, and show Hariot here, there, and everywhere, mixed up with all the studies, toils, experiments, books, and literary ventures of our honored traitor.

So passed, with tantalizing uncertainty, the year 1605, with many fears for the future and some hopes; but 1606 brought into the Tower Sir Walter’s old friend Henry Percy, another ‘traitor.’  With him, at first, there was considerable liberality on the part of the officials (all paid for), and both Raleigh and Percy had each a garden to cultivate and walk in, and a still-room or laboratory in which to study and perform their ’ magic.’  Hariot was the master of both in these occult sciences.  The ’ furnace ’ and the ’ still’ were at first Raleigh’s chief amusement and study.  Assaying and transfusing metals, distilling simples and compounds, concocting medicines, and testing antidotes, with exercises in chemistry and alchemy, were the studies of both Raleigh and the Earl.  But soon the policy of the Court changed.  The prisoners had less liberty and saw less of each other, and so the stills were pulled down, and the gardens given up.  Raleigh was more closely watched, and entrapped.  Then there was fencing and defencing, for nothing could stand against the King’s persistent rancor, and Cecil’s dissimulation.  From time to time Sir Walter’s titles, his offices, his Elizabethan monopolies and his appointments were all taken from him.  All his emoluments were wanted for hungry favourites ; and finally the Sherburne estate which he had been permitted to entail on his son went by no higher law than the king’s, ’ I mon hae it for Carr.’

During all these anxious months Hariot was Sir Walter’s close-mouthed and trusted Mercury, a silent messenger who floated frequently by the tide on the Thames between the Tower and his residence at Sion, a pensioner of, and one of Percy’s staff of wise men, but really Raleigh’s strong right hand.  He adroitly and faithfully served two masters, preserving his own independence and self reliance, and not losing the confidence of either.

From the trial at Winchester to the final transfer of Sherburne, a period of some five years, every step against Raleigh was taken through the high Courts of Justice.  That the cannie monarch was capable of all this moral wrong and legal crookedness need not surprise any one who has investigated his antecedents and proclivities, but that he on coming to England should have developed that masterly power of warping great minds and bending the English Courts of Justice to his purposes, and even crunching its strong old oaken Bench and Bar into his own royal privy pocket, does surprise one.  The secret of this unenglish strength, however, has been attributed partly to his Bur-leigh help.