Raleigh

he had passed, four years before, within the precincts of the Court, but we do not know whether the

, having no use of such poor followers, hath utterly forgotten me. Notwithstanding, if your Lordship shall please to think me yours, as I am, I will be found as r

claim Elizabeth's hand, and during this critical time it is possible that he enjoyed his personal introduction to the Queen. Walter Raleigh in the prime of his strength and beauty formed a curious contrast to poor Alen?on, and the difference was one which El

of Shipping, who gives us this interesting information, and he goes on to say that when the Prince of Orange 'delivered me his letters to her Majesty, he prayed me to say to the Queen from him, Sub umbra alarum tuarum protegimur: for certainly, said he, they had withered in the bud, and sunk in the beginning of their navigation, had not her Majesty assisted them.' It would have been natural to entrust to Leicester such confidential utterances as

nt with regard to service in Ireland, and the band of infantry hitherto commanded in tha

are which We have to do him good, in respect of his kindred that have served Us, some of them (as you know) near about Our person [probably Mrs. Catherine Ashley, who was Raleigh's aunt]; these are to require you that the leading of the said band may be comm

ng' for six months after the issue of this warrant, but there is no evidence that he was spared at any time during 1582 to relieve

features, and for this reason, perhaps, is usually hidden in the portraits by a hat. We must think of Raleigh at this time as a tall, somewhat bony man, about six feet high, with dark hair and a high colour, a facial expression of great brightness and alertness, personable from the virile force of his figure, and illustrating these attractions by a splendid taste in dress. His clothes were at all times noticeably gorgeous; and to the end of his life he was commonly bedizened with precious stones to his very shoes. When he was arrested in 1603 he was carrying 4,000l. in jewels on his bosom, and when he was finally captured on August 10, 1618, his pockets were found full of the diamonds and jacinths which he

he public of all which cluster around his personality. It is true that they rest on no earlier testimony than that of Fuller, who, writing in the lifetime of men who knew Raleigh, gives the following account of his introduction to Elizabeth: 'Her Majesty, meeting with a plashy place, made some scruple to go on; when Raleigh (dressed in the gay and genteel habit of those times) presently cast off and spread his new plush cloak on the

at the full tide of Raleigh's fortunes with the Quee

limb, but that

Elizabet

il thee, then c

ect the popular and doubtless faithful impressio

sible show of thrift and commodity.' It is interesting to find Raleigh so supple, and so familiar already with the Queen's foibles. It was probably earlier in the year, and about this same Irish business, that Raleigh spoke to Elizabeth, on the occasion which Naunton describes. 'Raleigh,' he says, 'had gotten the Queen's ear at a trice; and she began to be taken with his elocution, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands; and the truth is, she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all.' Lord Grey, who was no diplomatist, had the want of caution to show that he was annoyed at advice being asked from a young man who was so lately his inferior. In answer to a special recommendation of Raleigh

as a limit even to Raleigh's versatility, and he was not a statesman. It was political ambition which was the vulnerable spot in this Achilles, and until he meddled with statecraft, his position was practically unassailed. It must not be overlooked, in this connection, that in spite of Raleigh's influence with the Queen, he never was admitted as a Privy Councillor, his advice being asked in private, by Elizabeth or by her ministers, and not across the table,

y twenty shillings a year to Raleigh as a license duty on the sale of wines. This was, in fact, a great relief to the wine trade, for until this time the mayors of corporations had levied this duty at their own judgment, and some of them had made a licensing charge not less than six times as heavy as the new duty. The grant, moreover, gave Raleigh a part of all fines accruing to the Crown under the provisions of the wines statute of Edward VI. From his 'Farm of Wines' Raleigh seems at

ame of Gilbert deserves to be better remembered than it is; and America, at least, will one day be constrained to honour the memory of the man who was the first to dream of colonising her shores. Until his time, the ambition of Englishmen in the west had been confined to an angry claim to contest the wealth

acious

e with English

ans shall not r

ps from sailing

northern hemisphere colonies of English race. It was Sir Humphrey Gilbert who first thought o

only forty-three, but his troubles had made an old man of him, and he pleads his white hairs, blanched in long service of her Majesty, as a reason why the means of continuing to serve her should not be withheld from him. Raleigh had warmly recommended his brother before he was himself in power, and he now used all his influence in his favour. It is plain that Gilbert's application was promptly attended to, for we find him presently in a position to pursue the colonising enterprises which lay

all authorities, Raleigh had expended a considerable sum in the outfit; according to one writer, Hayes (in Hakluyt), he was owner of th

f the fleet crossed the Atlantic successfully, and Newfoundland was taken in the Queen's name. One ship out of the remaining four had meanwhile been sent back to England with a sick crew. Late in September 1583 a second sailed into Plymouth with the news that the other two

harter in his own name. In company with a younger half-brother, Adrian Gilbert, and with the experienced though unlucky navigator John Davis as a third partner, Raleigh was now incorporated as representing 'The College of the Fellowship for the Discovery of the North West Passage.' In this he was following the precedent of Gilbert, who had made use of the Queen's favourite dream of a northern rout

n September this first expedition returned, bringing Raleigh, as a token of the wealth of the new lands, 'a string of pearls as large as great peas.' In honour of 'the eternal Maiden Queen,' the new country received the name of Virginia, and Raleigh ordered his own arms to be cut anew, with this legend, Propria insignia Walteri Ralegh, militis, Domini et Gubernatoris Virgini?. No attempt had been made on this occasion to colonise. It was early in the following year that Raleigh sent out his second Virginia

ugh gold had not yet been showered upon him, the Queen presented to him, on March 25, 1584, a grant of license to export woollen broad-cloths, a privilege the excessive profits of which soon attracted the critical notice of Burghley. Raleigh's grant, however, was long left unassailed, and was renewed year by year at least until May 1589. It would seem that his income from the trade in undyed broad-cloth was of a two-fold nature, a fixed duty on exportation in general, and a charge on 'ov

great enemy, Spain, should sink into the shade, and he fancied himself the gorgeous viceroy of such a kingdom. His imagination, which had led him on so bravely, gulled him sometimes when it came to details. His sailors had seen the light of sunset on the cliffs of Roanoke, and Raleigh took the yellow gleam for gold. He set his faith too lightly on the fabulous ores of Chaunis Temotam. But he was not the slave of these fancies, as were

enlarged his borders in several ways. He leased of the Queen, Durham House, close to the river, covering the site of the present Adelphi Terrace. This was the vast fourteenth-century palace of the Bishops of Durham, which had come into possession of the Crown late in the reign of Henry VIII. Elizabeth herself had occupied it during the lifetime

nce more identified with the only race that ever really loved him, the men of his native Devonshire. In July he succeeded the Earl of Bedford as Lord Warden of the Stannaries; in September he was appointed Lieutenant of the County of Cornwall; in November, Vice-Admiral of the two counties. He, appointed Lord Beauc

an to picture him squabbling for rooms at Court with 'Pecora Campi,' or ogling a captious royal beauty of some fifty summers, Ral

lculated to vex him to the quick, and we find him protesting (March 29, 1586): 'I have consumed the best part of my fortune, hating the tyrannous prosperity of that State, and it were now strange and monstrous that I should become an enemy to my country and conscience.' Two months later he was threatened with the loss of his post as Vice-Admiral if he did not withdraw a fleet he had fitted out to harass the Spaniards in the Newfoundland waters. About the same time he strengthened his connection with the Leicester faction by marrying his cousin, Barbara Gamage, t

solemn elegy on him is one of the finest of the many poems which that sad event called forth. It blends the passion of personal re

d thy limbs, tha

lour, where it

sorrow, where

want; the world

it had already been printed, in 1593, in the Ph?nix Nest, an

se men were not supported or even encouraged at Dublin Castle. 'The doting Deputy,' as Raleigh calls him, treated his Devonshire farmers with less consideration than the Irish kerns, and although it is certain that of all the 'undertakers' Raleigh was the one who, after his lights, tried to do the best for his land, his experience as an Irish colonist was on the whole dispiriting. By far the richest part of his property was the 'haven royal' of Youghal, with the thic

ugh she kept him rigidly outside the pale of politics, in other respects her affection had been lavish in the extreme. Without ceasing to hold Hatton and Leicester captive, she had now for five years given Raleigh the chief place in her heart. But, in May 1587, we suddenly find him in danger of being dethroned in favour of a boy of twenty, and it is the new Earl of Essex, with his petulant beauty, who 'is, at cards, or one game or another, with her, till the birds sing in the morning.' The remarkable sc

ord 'disdain,' she said there was 'no such cause why I should disdain him.' This speech did trouble me so much that, as near as I could, I did describe unto her what he had been, and what he was.... I then did let her know, whether I had cause to disdain his competition of love, or whether I could have comf

zabeth, 'See how the Knave commands the Queen!' Elizabeth supported her old favourite, but there is no doubt that these attacks made their impression on her irritable temperament. Meanwhile Raleigh, en

h expedition, fitted out under Sir Richard Grenville, was stopped by the Government at Bideford. Raleigh was not easily daunted, however, and in the midst of the preparations for the great struggle he contrived to send out two pinnaces from Bideford, on April 22, 1588, for the succour of his unfortunate Virginians; but these little vessels were ignominiously stripped off Madeira by privateers from La Rochelle, and sent helpless back to England. Raleigh had

ima Armada. Within the limits of the present life of Sir Walter it is impossible to tell over again a story which is among the most thrilling i

d opponent, Lord Grey. Three months before this, Raleigh had reported to the Queen on the state of the counties under his charge, and his counsel on the subject had been taken. That he was profoundly excited at

complete the defences of that fortress. Either by land or sea, according to conflicting accounts, he then hurried back to Plymouth, and joined the main body of the fleet on July 23. There is a very early tradition that his advice was asked by the Admiral, Howard of Effingham, on the quest

ke sort had Lord Charles Howard, Admiral of England, been lost in the year 1588, if he had not been better advised than a great many malignant fools were that found fault with his demeanour. The Spaniards had an army ab

back in England, however, in time to receive orders on August 28 to prepare a fleet for Ireland. Whether that fleet ever started or no is doubtful, and the latest incident of Raleigh's connection with the Armada is that on September 5, 1588, he and Sir Francis Drake received an equal number of wealthy Spanish prisone