Raleigh

It was the custom of the Queen to go to bed early, and one winter's evening the Earl of Southampton, Raleigh, and a man named Parker were playing the game of primero in the Presence Cha

he interference, and in the scuffle that ensued Willoughby pulled ou

but she had offended Essex past forgiveness, and his tongue held no parley with her. It must have been in Raleigh's presence-for he it is who has recorded it in the grave pages of his Prerogative of Parliament-that Essex told the Queen 'that her conditions were as crooked as her carcass,' a terrible speech which, as Raleigh says, 'cost him his head.' This was perhaps a little later, in 1600. In 1598 these cruel squabbles were already making life at Court a misery. The Queen kept Raleigh by her, but would give him nothing. In January he applied for the post of Vice-chamberlain, but without success. The new earl, Lord Nottingham, could theatrically wipe th

demanded that each knight should be disguised. It was, however, known that Sir Walter Raleigh would ride in his own uniform of orange tawny medley, trimmed with black budge of lamb's wool. Essex, to vex him, came to the lists with a body-guard of two thousand retainers all dressed in orange tawny, so that Raleigh and his men should seem a fragment of the great Essex following. The story goes on to

med to encourage him in his West Indian projects, yet that when it came to the point he always, as Raleigh quaintly put it, retired into his back-shop. Meanwhile, the interest felt in Raleigh's narrative was increasing, and in 1599 the well-known geographer Levinus Hulsius brought out in Nuremburg a Latin translation of the Discovery, with five curious plates, including one of the city of Manoa, and another of the Ewaipanoma, or men without heads. The German version of the book and its English reprint in Haklu

igh's, and presently to be his most intelligent fellow-prisoner in the Tower. From Sherborne, Raleigh wrote on the 6th of April saying frankly that if her Majesty persisted in excluding him from every sort of preferment, 'I must begin to keep sheep betime.' He hinted in the same letter that he would accept the Governorship of Jersey, which was expected to fall

d. I pray let us hear from you at least, for if you come not we will go hereby home, and make but short tarrying here. My wife will de

verest faithful,

Ral

berland on their brief and fruitless visit to Ostend. The friends started from Sandwich on July 11, and were received in the Low Countries by Lord Grey; they were entertained at Ostend with extraordinary respect, but they gained nothing of political or diplomatic value. Affairs in Ireland, connected with th

s the English postal port for Jersey, was also the natural harbour of Sherborne, and Raleigh had been accustomed, as it was, to keep more than one vessel there. The appointment in Jersey was combined with a gift of the manor of St. Germain in that island, but the Queen thought it right, in consideration of this present, to strike off three hundred pounds from the Governor's salary. Cecil was Raleigh's guest at Sherborne when the appointment was made, and Raleigh w

but he was so much struck with its stately architecture and commanding position that he determined to spare it, and in fact he told off a detachment of his men then and there to guard it. Raleigh's work in Jersey was considerable. While he remained governor, he established a trade between the island and New

initely settled about property in this 'rotten house,' which Sir Walter was constantly repairing and improving without possessing any proper lease of it. As a matter of fact, when the crash came, Durham House was the first of his losses. Early in November 1600, Raleigh was in Cornwall, improving the condition of

eigh and Cobham as his enemies and the enemies of England; not reflecting that both of these personages were in the Queen's confidence, and that he was out of it. We may presume that it was more than Raleigh could bear to be shown a letter addressed to the Queen in which Essex deliberately accused him of 'wishing the ill success of your Majesty's most important action, the decay of your greatest strength, and the destructio

to Cecil which forms the only evidence we possess that he had definitely come to the d

r Majesty's pusillanimity and not to your good nature, knowing that you work but upon her humour, and not out of any love towards him. The less you make him, the less he shall be able to harm you and yours; and if her Majest

man, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who was one of Essex's men, to come down to Durham House to speak with him. Gorges, startled at the message, consulted Essex, who advised him to say that he would meet Raleigh, not at Durham House, but half-way, on the river. Raleigh assented to this, and came alone, while Gorges, with two other gentlemen, met him. Raleigh told his cousin that a warrant was out to seize him, and advised him to leave London at once for

lready solemnly retracted the accusations he had made against him; but it is said that this message of peace was not conveyed to Raleigh until it was too late. According to Raleigh'

affold. But I take God to witness I shed tears for him when he died. I confess I was of a contrary faction, b

not believe Sir Walter Raleigh intended to assassinate the Earl, nor that Essex himself feared it, 'only it was a word cast out to colour other matters.' We are told that Raleigh suffered from a profound

the bailiff of the manor and the constable of the castle, and when Raleigh at last dismissed the former bailiff and appointed another, Meeres put himself under the protection of an old enemy of Raleigh's, Lord Thomas Howard, now Lord Howard of Bindon, and refused to quit. In the month of August, Meeres audaciously arrested the rival bailiff, whereupon Raleigh had Meeres himself put in the stocks in the market-place of Sherborne. The town took Raleigh's side, and when Meeres was released, the people riot

ly he meant to have used him for some mischief against me; and, if Essex had prevailed, he had been used

he time being, and wrote to Cecil from his prison in the Gatehouse that he was very sorry for what he had said so 'furiously and foolishly' abou

Winchester, at Basing, and so, on September 9, Raleigh took the Duke and his suite down to the Vine, a house in Hampshire, where he was royally entertained. The Queen visited them here, and on the 12th they all came over to stay with her at Basing Park. By the Queen's desire, Raleigh wrote to Cobham, who had stayed at Bath, to come over to Basing and help to entertain the Frenchmen; he added, that in three or four days the visit would be over, and he and Cobham could go back to Bath together. The letters of Raleigh display an intimate friendship between Lord Cobham and himself which is not to be overlooked in the light of coming events. The French were all dressed in black, a colour Raleigh did not possess in his copious wardrobe, so that he had to order the making of a black taffeta suit in a hurry

e points of attack. Meanwhile, he wrote out for the Queen's perusal a State paper on The Dangers of a Spanish Faction in Scotland. This paper has not been preserved, but the rumour of its contents is supposed to have frightened James in his correspondence with Rome, and to have made him judge it prudent to offer Elizabeth three thousand Scotch troops against the invader. Raleigh's casual remarks with regard to Irish affairs at this critical ti

favourable to the candidature of James. The whole incident is exceedingly dark, and the particulars of it rest mainly on a tainted authority, that of Lord Henry Howard. It may be conjectured that what really happened was that the Duke of Lennox, learning that Raleigh was in town, desired Sir Arthur Savage to introduce him; that he then suggested a private conference, which was first refused, the

mariner, Captain Gosnoll, went to look for the lost colony and city of Raleigh. These latter started in a small barque on March 26, but though they enjoyed an interesting voyage, they never touched Virginia at all. They discovered and named Martha's Vineyard, and some other of the islands in the same group; then, after a pleasant sojourn, they came back to England, and landed at Exmouth on July

e barques away again, having saved the charge in sassafras wood.' From the same letter we find that Gilbert and Gosnoll went off without Raleigh's leave, though in his ship and at his expense, and the latter therefore prays that his nephew may be stripped of his rich store of sass

rborne, in going through the round of his duties. All the month of July he spent in Jersey, 'walking in the wilderness,' as he says, hearing from no one, and troubled in mind by vague rumours, blown over to him from Normandy, of the disgrace of the Duc de Biron. He is also 'much pestered with the coming of many Norman gentlemen, but cannot prevent it.' On August 9, he left Jersey, in his ship the 'Antelope,' fearing if he staye

orne ... but I will not endure wrong at so peevish a fool's hands any longer. I will rather lose my life, and I think that my Lord Puritan Peryam doth think that the Q

ber we find him again at Sherborne, in very low spirits, sending by Cobham to the Queen a stone which Bartholomew Gilbert had brought from America, and which Raleigh took to be a diamond. Immediately after this, he set out on what he calls his 'miserable journey into Cornwall,' no other than his customary autumn circuit through the Stannary Courts. Once he had enjoyed these bracing ride

rtaining' to Cormac MacDermod McCarthy, Lord of Muskerry, and to burn all his castles and villages from Carrigrohan to Inchigeelagh. Cecil was inclined to think that severity had been pushed too far, and that the wretched Cormac might be left in peace. But Elizabeth had long been accustomed to turn to Raleigh for advice on her Irish policy. He gave, as usual, his unflinching constant counsel for drastic severity. He 'very earne

such as seek the ruin of the realm;' and this at the very time when MacCarthy, trusting in his twenty years' acquaintance with Raleigh, was praying Cecil to let him be his judge. Raleigh little thought that the doors which detai

s January 1603 he writes about a cruiser in which Raleigh and he were partners, begging Raleigh, from prudential reasons, to conceal the fact that Cecil was in the adventure. There was no abatement whatever in the friendliness of Cecil's tone to R

attainted, in peace at Sherborne, it is a question whether he would have attracted the notice of posterity in any very general degree. To close students of the reign of Elizabeth he would still be, as Mr. Gardiner says, 'the man who had more genius than all the Privy Council put together.' But he would not be to us all the embodiment of the spirit of England in the great ag

ould use the arts of a diplomatist, he overplayed his part, and stung his rivals to the quick by an obsequiousness in speech to which his eyes and shoulders gave the lie. With all his wealth and influence, he missed the crowning points of his ambition; he never sat in the House of Peers, he never pushed his way to the council board, he never held quite the highest rank in any naval expedition, he never ruled with only the Queen above him even in Ireland. He who of all men hated most and deserved leas

leigh at fault for a tax which was really insisted on by the Queen's rapacity. He prays Cecil to induce Elizabeth to remit it, for, he says, 'I cannot live, nor show my face out of my doors, without it, nor dare ride through the t