Raleigh

, in Devonshire, then belonging to his father; it passed out of the family, and in 1584 Sir Walter attempted to buy it back. 'For the natural disposition I have to

h, in his third marriage became the second husband of Katherine Gilbert, daughter of Sir Philip Champernoun of Modbury. By Otto Gilbert, her first husband, she had been the mother of two boys destined to be bold navigators and colonists, Humphrey

y the manor of Sidmouth to 'Walter Rawlegh the elder, Carow Ralegh, and Walter Ralegh the younger,' on September 10, 1560. In 1578 the same persons passed over their interest in the fish-titles in another deed, which contains their signatures.

in heaven, not on earth, and this with so much sweet persuasiveness that when Mrs. Raleigh 'came home to her husband she declared to him that in her life she never heard any woman, of such simplicity to see to, talk so godly and so earnestly; insomuch, that if God were not with her she could not speak such things-"I was not able to answer her, I, who can read, and she cannot."' It is easy to perceive that this anecdote wou

urch also. Perhaps he went to Christ Church first as a boy of fourteen, in 1566, and removed to Oriel at sixteen. Sir Philip Sidney, Hakluyt, and Camden were all of them at Oxford during those years, and we may conjecture that Raleigh's acquaintance with them began there. Wood tells us that Rale

s seems circumstantial enough, but there exist statements of Raleigh's own which tend to show that, if he was one of his cousin's volunteers, he yet preceded him into France. In the History of the World he speaks of personally remembering the conduct of the Protestants, immediately after the death of Condé, at the battle of Jarnac (March 13, 1569). Still more positively Raleigh says, 'myself was an eye-witness' of the retreat at Moncontour, on Octobe

ry possibly have put a term to Raleigh's adventures as a Protestant soldier in France. The allusions to his early experiences are rare and slight in the History of the World, but one curious passage has often been quoted. In illustration of the way in which Alexander the Great harassed Bessus, Raleigh mentions that, 'in the third civil war of France,' he saw certain Catholics,

copy of eighteen congratulatory verses was prefixed by 'Walter Rawely of the middle Temple.' These lines are perfunctory and are noticeable only for their heading 'of the middle Temple.' Raleigh positively tells us that he never studied law until he found

t there has hitherto been no evidence of the fact. In examining the Middlesex records, Mr. Jeaffreson has discovered that on the night of December 16, 1577, a party of merry roisterers broke the peace at Hornsey. Their ringleaders were a certain Richard Paunsf

he first wonderful legend of the hidden treasure-house of the Spaniard in the West Indies. He was at Oxford when England thrilled with the news of Hawkins' tragical third voyage. He came back from France just in time to share the general satisfaction at Drake's revenge for San Juan de Ulloa. All through his early days the splendour and perilous romance of the Spanish Indies hung before him, inflaming his fancy, rousing his ambition. In his own family, Sir Humphrey Gilbert represented a milder and more generous class of adventurers than Drake and Hawkins, a race more set on discovery and colonisation than on mere brutal rapine, the r

nearer home, and he first comes clearly before us in connection with the Catholic invasion of Ireland in the close of 1579. It was on July 17, 1579, that the Catholic expedition from Ferrol landed at Dingle. Fearing to stay there, it passed four miles westward to Smerwick Bay, and there built a fortress called Fort del Ore, on a sandy isthmus, thinking in case of need easily to slip away to the ocean. The murder of an English officer, who was stabbed in his bed while the guest of the brother of the Earl of Desmond, was recommended by Sandars the legate as a sweet sacrifice in the sight of God, and ruthlessly committed. The result was what Sandars had forese

ase, he left London, and passed down the Thames, in command of a troop of one hundred foot soldiers, on January 15, 1580. By the same computation, they reached the Isle of Wight on the 21st, and stayed there to be transferred into ships of Her Majesty's fleet, not starting again until February 5. On his reaching Cork, Raleigh found that his men and he were only to be paid from the day of their arrival in Ireland, and he wr

Munster, in a commission to try Sir James, the younger brother of the Earl of Desmond, who had been captured by the Sheriff of Cork. No mercy could be expected by so prominent a Geraldine; he was hanged, drawn and quartered, and the fragments of his body were hung in chains over the gates of Cork. Meanwhile, on August 12, Lord Grey de Wilton arrived in Dub

e battle-field of Glenmalure, that Raleigh began his momentous friendship with Spenser, whose Shepherd's Calender had inaugurated a new epoch in English poetry just a month before Raleigh's departure for Ireland. It is scarcely too fanciful to believe that this tiny anonymous volume of delicious song may have lightened the weariness of that winter voyage of 1580

d Grey. Hooker, who was an eye-witness, supplies us with some very interesting glimpses of Raleigh in his Supply of the Irish Chronicles, a supplement to Holinshed. We learn from him that when Lord Grey broke into the camp at Rakele, Raleigh stayed behind, having observed that the kerns had the habit of swooping down upon any deserted encampment to rob and murder the camp followers. This expectation was fulfilled; the hungry Irish poured into Rakele as soon as the Deputy's back

uritan' of the most fierce and frigid type. There is no evidence to show that the gentle Englishmen who accompanied him, some of the best and loveliest spirits of the age, shrank from sharing his fanaticism. There was massacre to be gone through, but neither Edmund Spenser, nor Fulke Greville, nor Walter Raleigh dreamed of withdrawing his sanction. The story has been told and retold. For simple horror it is surpassed, in the Irish history of the time, only by the earlier exploit which depopulated the island of Rathlin. In the perfectly legitimate opening of the siege of Fort del Ore, Raleigh held a very

on the wall of the fort. The bodies of the six hundred were stripped and laid out on the sands-'as gallant goodly personages,' Lord Grey reported, 'as ever were beheld.' The Deputy took all the responsibility and expected no blame; he received none. In reply to his report, Elizabeth assured him a month later that 'this late enterprise had been performed by him greatly to her liking.' It is useless to expatiate on a code of morals that seems to us positively Japanese. To Lord Grey and the rest the rebellious ke

Barry Court, at the disposal of the Geraldines. Raleigh obtained permission to seize and hold this property, and returned from Dublin to carry out his duty. On his way back, as he was approaching Barry's country, with his men straggling behind him, the Seneschal of Imokelly, the strongest and craftiest of the remaining Geraldines, laid an ambush to seize him at the ford of Corabby. Raleigh not only escaped himself, but returned in the face of a force which was to his as twe

leaders, and Raleigh showed no mock-modesty in his criticism of that policy. Ormond had been on friendly terms with him, but as early as February 25 a quarrel was ready to break out. Ormond wished to hold Barry Court, which was the key to the important road between Cork and Youghal, as his own; while Raleigh was no less clamorous in claiming it. In the summer, not satisfied with complaining of Ormond to Grey, he denounced Grey to Leicester. In the mea

irable, he set out with ninety men on the adventure. His troop arrived at Harsh very early in the morning, but not so early but that the townspeople, to the number of five hundred, had collected to oppose his little force. He soon put them to flight, and then, by a nimble trick, contrived to enter the castle itself, to seize Lord and Lady Roche at their breakfast-table, to slip out with them and through the town unmolested, and to regain Cork next day with the loss of only a single man. The whole affair was a piec

ve come into a certain amount of property, for his Irish pay as a captain was, he says, so poor that but for honour he 'would disdain it as much as to keep sheep.' This fact disposes o

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