To the Queen he owed his emergence from an obscurity, which posterity wonders to find enveloping him till thirty. His was not a nature which ripens late. As a boy at home, as an undergraduate at Oxford, as an adventurer in France, as a seaman in the Atlantic, as a military leader in Munster, as a commencing courtier, he might have been expected to flash forth from the ma.s.s of his comrades. No apathy of contemporary opinion is to blame for the long delay. Rather it was the hurry and the glitter of contemporary life. A nation, like the English under Elizabeth, facing the dawn of a new age, does not pause to mark degrees of individual brightness. All eyes are dazzled with the radiance of the era itself. The few rare and peculiar stars are not discriminated as shining with a l.u.s.tre of their own. The Queen would not be better able than her subjects to measure the particular mode in which Ralegh overtopped his neighbours. She discerned the special gifts which others discerned, the "good presence in a handsome and well compacted person; the strong natural wit and a better judgment, with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage." She was diverted by his flights of fancy emphasized by the broad Devon accent, which, to the day of his death, he never lost, or tried to lose.
She must have been conscious of depths of capacity, to which, whatever the exigency, appeal was never made in vain. But the surpa.s.sing attraction for her was the feeling that he and his grandeur were her creature and creation.
[Sidenote: _Scandal._]
Personally she chose him, and she exacted that his service should be personally rendered to her. He understood the conditions of his tenure of influence, and generally fulfilled them faithfully. She knew, and he knew, that he was selected for gifts which made him a valuable servant of the State, as impersonated in its chief. Yet it is not strange that, in an age of coa.r.s.e feeling, and coa.r.s.er language, his elevation should have been attributed to mere feminine weakness. It is much more surprising that the warning, "No scandal about Queen Elizabeth," should have been disregarded by grave modern historians and biographers. Mr.
Edward Edwards, for instance, Ralegh"s most thorough and painstaking biographer since the learned but unmethodical Oldys, takes the report for granted, and appears to think it honourable. The belief cannot bear the least examination. Elizabeth was in the habit of requiring all her courtiers to kneel to her as woman as well as Queen, to hail her at once Gloriana and Belphoebe. The fashion was among her instruments of government. By appealing to the devotion of her courtiers as lovers, she hoped to kindle their zeal in serving their Queen. They who mock at her claims to adoration as the Lady of the land are ungrateful to a policy which preserved the tone of English society for a generation romantic, poetical, and chivalrous. In pursuance of her usual system, and in innocence of any vice but vanity, she was sure to invite the language of pa.s.sion from the owner of genius and looks like Ralegh"s. She played upon his Christian name, writing it as she and others p.r.o.nounced it, Water. She enjoyed the anger her kindness aroused in other admirers, such as Hatton. He was willing to offer the homage for which she thirsted. So were other courtiers by the dozen. Cautious methodical George Carew wrote to her when she was seventy, and nearing the grave, envying "the blessing others enjoy in beholding your Royal person whose beauty adorns the world." Of sensual love between her and Ralegh there is not a t.i.ttle of evidence which will be accepted by any who do not start by presuming in her the morals of a courtesan. In support of the calumny, pa.s.sages of the _Faerie Queene_ have been cited, in which the poet has been interpreted as literally and as illiberally as the courtier. Fastidious Spenser would have shuddered to imagine the coa.r.s.e construction against his Queen to which his delicate allegories were to be wrested. Had there been ground for the legend, we may feel tolerably certain that Lady Ralegh would have known of it. She could not have refrained from hinting at a motive for the wrath with which, it will hereafter be seen, her mistress visited her transgression.
[Sidenote: _Ralegh"s Versatility._]
Ralegh himself may not have been sufficiently careful to guard against a fable flattering to his charms, if injurious to his independence. He furthered malignant humours in his own time by his fondness for personal adornment. His lavish vanity seems to have been taken as proof of his and his Sovereign"s amours. He must in any case, by no fault of his own, but by the excessive bounty of nature in heaping courtly graces upon him, have been exposed to the liability of misconstruction by later ages. Measured by his force of character and his acts he has as little as possible in common with a Leicester or a Hatton. Yet posterity, misled by tradition, has never been sure whether his distinctive vocation were not that of a fine gentleman. Contemporaries, partly from misapprehension, partly from admiration, and partly from jealousy, tried to fasten him to that. When the splendour of his exploits by sea and land demonstrated him to be more than a courtier, they ranked him as seaman or swordsman. His versatility lent itself to the error, and operated to the disappointment of his real aim. His constant effort was to be accepted and trusted as a serious statesman. He might have attained his end more completely if his absorption in it had dimmed the brightness of his marvellous intelligence, or deadened his delight in its gymnastics. But he had to live his life according to his nature. The multiplicity of his interests separates him from others of his mental level. He loved power, both the contest for it and its exercise. He coveted money for its uses, and equally for the inspiring experiences involved in its acquisition. He liked to act the patron, and was content in turn to play the client. He loved toil, and he could enjoy ease. He revelled in the strifes of statesmanship and the physical perils of battles and travel. He resembled his period, with its dangers and glories, its possibilities of Spanish dungeons and Spanish plunder, its uncertainties of theology and morality. He had a natural gift for deriving pleasure from his actual circ.u.mstances, a dull and brutal civil war, or a prison, though none could utter more dismal groans. By predilection he basked in a Court, where simultaneously he could adore its mistress and help to sway her sceptre.
[Sidenote: _His Aspect._]
[Sidenote: _Dates of Portraits._]
Hitherto his career had been run outside the verge of chronicles. Its early stages left few direct records. They have to be pieced together by retrospective allusions proceeding from himself or others, after he had already risen. The difficulties of his biographers are not at an end when he has mounted into the full blaze of publicity. His name thenceforth was in a mult.i.tude of mouths; yet much in his character, position, and motives always remains shadowy and uncertain. His appearance at the time it was winning an entrance for him at Court can only be conjectured. He was tall and well-proportioned, with thick curly locks, beard, and mustache, full red lips, bluish-grey eyes, and the high forehead and long bold face, remarked in a contemporary epigram.
Aubrey describes him by report similarly, with the addition that he was sour eye-lidded. His characteristic features, and the "general aspect of ascendency," were the same in youth and in later life. They are vividly represented by several extant portraits, by Zucchero"s, somewhat wanting in repose and dignity, at Longleat; by another of Zucchero"s, now in the National Gallery of Ireland, the original of the print in Sir Henry Ellis"s collection of letters, representing Ralegh at forty-four, with a map of Cadiz; by that at Knole, from which Vertue"s print in Oldys"s Life probably was engraved; by that of 1588, formerly in Sir Carew Ralegh"s house at Downton, and now in the National Portrait Gallery; by one belonging to Mr. J.D. Wingfield Digby; by one, dated 1618, in the possession of Mr. T.L. Thurlow; and by the best, in Mr. George Scharf"s decisive judgment, the picture in possession of Sir John Farnaby Lennard, at Wickham Court, Kent. The last, the original of Houbraken"s engraving, was painted in 1602 for the Carews of Beddington. Young Walter, then eight years old, stands by Ralegh"s side, a handsome boy, richly dressed, with features, as they remained in later life, like his father"s, and the same air of command. A picture, described as by Cornelius Janssen, sold at Christie"s rooms in December, 1890, represents a visage worn and sombre, the hair on the head thin. As the artist"s first commonly acknowledged portraits taken in England are dated 1618, the work, if by Janssen, must have been executed after Ralegh"s second Guiana expedition, and might naturally exhibit these traits. There are also several contemporary miniatures, one, in particular, at Belvoir Castle. This is of especial interest, on account of the age inscribed, sixty-five, and the year, 1618, which imply a belief that he was born later than 1552. From the date, 1618, and the representation of a battle, on the companion miniature of young Walter, apparently by the same hand, it may be inferred that the portrait of the father was, as that of the son must have been, painted after the second voyage to Guiana. Probably, to judge from the combination of Lady Ralegh"s and her husband"s initials on the back, it was executed for her. In it, to a degree even beyond the portrait attributed to Janssen, the hair of the head is pathetically white. Though elsewhere the marks of age have not been so openly betrayed, all the extant portraits, unless that in the National Portrait Gallery be an exception, were executed after he had reached middle life. He may be beheld in most of them as he appeared to his rivals and partisans, the veteran knight in magnificent apparel, pearls, and silver armour, haughty and subtle, tanned, hardened, and worn with voyages to the Spanish Main and fighting at Cadiz, "Ralegh the witch," the "scourge of Spain," the "soldier, sailor, scholar, courtier, orator, historian, and philosopher." We do not see the daredevil trooper of Languedoc and Munster, the duellist, the master of the roistering watch-beating Paunsfords. He is not visible as pictured to the vivid fancy of the author of _Kenilworth_, the youthful aspirant, graceful, eager, slender, dark, restless, and supercilious, with a sonnet or an epigram ever ready on his lips to delight friends and sting enemies.
[Sidenote: _Spelling of Name._]
[Sidenote: _Seventy-four Forms._]
The spelling of his name for the first thirty-two years of his life was as vague and unsettled as his acts. There was no standard of orthography for surnames till the latter part of the seventeenth century. Neither the owners, nor others, were slaves to uniformity. Posterity has used its own liberty of selection, often very arbitrarily. Robert Cecil, for instance, signed his name Cecyll, and n.o.body follows him, not even his descendants. For Ralegh"s name his contemporaries never had a fixed rule to the end of him. Transcribers with the signature clear before them would not copy it; they could not keep to one form of their own. His correspondents and friends followed the idea of the moment. Lord Burleigh wrote Rawly. Robert Cecil wrote to him as Rawley, Raleigh, and Ralegh. A secretary of Cecil wrote Raweley and Rawlegh. King James, for whom in Scotland he had been Raulie, wrote once at any rate, and Carew Ralegh commonly, Raleigh. Carew"s son Philip spelt his name both Raleigh and Ralegh. Lady Ralegh signed one letter Raleigh, but all others which have been preserved, Ralegh. The only known signature of young Walter is Ralegh. The Privy Council wrote the name Raleghe, Rawleighe, and Rawleigh. George Villiers spelt it Raughleigh, and Cobham, Rawlye. In Irish State Papers he is Rawleie. Lord Henry Howard wrote Rawlegh and Rawlie. The Lord Admiral called him Rawlighe. For some he was Raileigh, Raughlie, and Rauleigh. In a warrant he was Raleighe, and in the register of Stepney Church, Raylie. Naunton wrote Rawleigh and Raghley, and Milton, in a ma.n.u.script commonplace book, Raugleigh. Sir Edward Peyton in his book spelt the name Rawliegh. Stukely in his Apology spelt it Raligh. The name to his verses printed in Gascoigne"s volume is Rawely, and in a ma.n.u.script poem it is Wrawly. In another ma.n.u.script poem it is Raghlie. Puttenham printed it Rawleygh. In the wonderful ma.s.s of ma.n.u.scripts at Lambeth, collected by Sir George Carew, who kept every paper sent him, though his correspondents might beg him to burn their letters, the name, beside forms already given, appears spelt as Ralighe, Raule, Rawlee, Rauley, Rawleye, Raulyghe, Rawlyghe, and Ralleigh. In a letter from Sir Thomas Norreys in the equally wonderful, but less admirable, pile of Lismore papers, he is Raulighe. In the books of the Stationers" Company he is Rawleighe, and Rauleighe in the copy in the Harleian MSS. of the discourse of 1602 on a War with Spain. In Drummond"s Conversations with Ben Jonson he is Raughlie. References occur to him in Mr. Andrew Clark"s _Oxford Register_, as Rallegh, Rawlei, Rauly, Raughley, Raughly, Raughleigh, Raylye, and Rolye.
Foreigners referred to him as Ralle, Ralle, Raleghus, Raleich, Raleik, Raulaeus, Rale, Real, Reali, Ralego, and Rhalegh. In addition, I have found in lists compiled by Dr. Brushfield the name spelt Raley, Raleye, Raleagh, Raleygh, Raleyghe, Ralli, Raughleye, Rauleghe, Raulghe, Raweleigh, Raylygh, Reigley, Rhaleigh, Rhaley, Rhaly, and Wrawley.
Ralegh himself had not kept the same spelling throughout his life. Down to 1583 his more usual signature had been the phonetic Rauley. But in 1578 he signed as Rawleyghe a deed which his father signed as Ralegh, and his brother Carew as Rawlygh. A letter of March 17, 1583, is the first he is known to have signed as Ralegh; and in the following April and May he reverted to the signature Rauley. From June 9, 1584, he used till his death no other signature than Ralegh. It appears in his books when the name is mentioned. It is used in a pedigree drawn up for him in 1601. Of the hundred and sixty-nine letters collected by Mr. Edward Edwards, a hundred and thirty-five are thus signed. Six signed Rauley, one Raleghe, and one Rauleigh, belong to an earlier date. The rest are either unsigned or initialled. The reason of his adoption of the spelling Ralegh from 1584, unless that it was his dead father"s, is unknown. Of the fact there is no doubt. The spelling Raleigh, which posterity has preferred, happens to be one he is not known to have ever employed.
CHAPTER IV.
OFFICES AND ENDOWMENTS (1582-1587).
[Sidenote: _Employment._]
[Sidenote: _Envoy and Counsellor._]
His promotion, when it commenced, was liberal; it was not meteoric. He had won his full entry at Court before he gained permanent offices and emoluments. For a time he continued dependent upon the long-suffering Irish Exchequer. In February he received an order for 200 upon the entertainment due to him in Ireland. That, however, seems to have been payment of arrears for previous and actual service. Notwithstanding an angry protest by the Lord Deputy, already alluded to, a fresh commission was issued to him in April, 1582, as Captain of the late Captain Appesley"s band of footmen in Ireland. The reason a.s.signed was that he might be required for some time longer in that realm for his better experience in martial affairs. He had leave to appoint a lieutenant, while he was "for some considerations by Us excused to stay here." He did not want for employment, though he was given no fixed duties. A system of personal government like that of the Tutors demanded extraordinary services of various degrees of importance. Any and all Ralegh could excellently render. Frequently he acted as the Queen"s private secretary. Sometimes he had to escort a foreign envoy.
Negotiations were pending for the marriage of Elizabeth to the Duke of Anjou. Leicester was jealous of the Duke and of Simier, his dexterous and personally fascinating agent. Simier was returning to France in the autumn of 1581. He had to be protected, it was rumoured, from Flushing pirates known to be in Leicester"s pay. Ralegh"s professed adhesion to Leicester did not prevent his appointment as one of the escort. In the publication by an anonymous contemporary, called _Leicester"s Commonwealth_, it is related that the vessel containing the returning escort was chased for several hours: "Master Ralegh well knoweth it, being there present." Anjou himself quitted England in February, 1582, to a.s.sume the sovereignty of the Netherlands. Ralegh again was of the company sent to introduce the Duke to the Queen"s allies. He stayed behind the rest, and was entrusted by the Prince of Orange with letters to the Queen. He has recorded that the Prince confided to him a private, if not very particular, message to her: "Sub umbra alarum tuarum protegimur." Probably that was only a text upon which the Prince"s communications enabled him to enlarge. He was consulted much concerning Ireland, both by the Council and by the Queen. In March, 1582, articles were exhibited against Ormond for alleged indulgence in his government of Munster towards Irish rebels. He was suspected, for example, of having apprised the Seneschal of Imokelly that "two choice persons" had stolen into the Seneschal"s camp to murder him. Ralegh was named among those who were to be called upon to prove the charges. Burleigh himself, who did not approve of the fierceness of Ralegh"s method of dealing with Irish turbulence, respected his experience. In October, 1582, the Lord Treasurer is said to have taken careful notes of his advice how to secure the adhesion of some Munster lords. Lord Grey"s reception of a letter from the Treasurer in the preceding January citing an opinion of "Mr. Rawley" on the mode of levying Irish taxes for the support of the English troops, has already been described. Use was made also of his engineering ability. There are references to reports by him on estimates for the repair of the fortifications of Portsmouth, and to his discussion of the question with Burleigh and Suss.e.x in the Queen"s presence. He is even found sitting on a commission with Sir Thomas Heneage to investigate a complaint against Lord Mayor Pullison, of having attached, to satisfy a debt to himself, the ransom of a Barbary captive.
[Sidenote: _The Stannaries and the Guard._]
Not till after a probation of years did he obtain definite official rank. In 1584 he had been elected one of the members for Devonshire, with Sir William Courtenay. Apparently in the early part of the same year he was knighted; for in his colonizing patent of March, 1584, he is styled "Mr. Walter Ralegh, Knight." In 1585 he succeeded the Earl of Bedford as Warden of the Stannaries. He had as Warden to regulate mining privileges in Devon and Cornwall, to hold the Stannary Parliament on the wild heights of Crockern Tor, and judicially to decide disputes on the customs, which, though written, he has said, in the Stannary of Devon, were unwritten in Cornwall. Long after his death the rules he had prescribed prevailed. As Warden he commanded the Cornish militia. He had a claim, which was resisted by the Earl of Bath, the Lord Lieutenant of Devonshire, to military powers there also. His prerogatives were strengthened by his appointment shortly afterwards to the Lieutenancy of Cornwall, and to the Vice-Admiralty of the two counties. The Vice-Admiralty was a very convenient office for a dealer in privateering. He nominated as his deputies in the Vice-Admiralty Lord Beauchamp for Cornwall, and his eldest half-brother, Sir John Gilbert, for Devon. Beside his other offices, he is supposed to have held the post of a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. Later he received a more signal token than any of royal confidence. He was appointed Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard. For several years Sir Christopher Hatton had united the offices of Captain and Vice-Chamberlain. On April 29, 1587, by a preposterous exercise of royal patronage, he became Lord Chancellor. He had already ceased to command the Guard, though the actual date of his retirement is not specified. His immediate successor, appointed perhaps as a stop-gap, was Sir Henry Goodier. Sir Anthony Paulett also is sometimes mentioned in connexion with the post. But the office was permanently filled by the nomination of Ralegh in the early summer of 1586. The Captain"s pay consisted of a yearly uniform. Six yards of tawney medley at 13_s._ 4_d._ a yard, with a fur of black budge rated at 10, is the warrant for 1592. The cost in the next reign was estimated at 14. Ralegh had to fill vacancies in his band of fifty. He was known to have a sharp eye for suitable recruits, young, tall, strong, and handsome. The regular duty was to guard the Queen from weapons and from poison; to watch over her safety by day and night wherever she went, by land or water. At the Palace the Captain"s place was in the antechamber, where he could almost hear the conversations between her and her counsellors. To share them he had but to be beckoned within. Naturally the command seemed to be a stepping-stone to a Vice-Chamberlainship at least, if not to the Keepership of the Queen"s conscience.
[Sidenote: _Royal Parsimony._]
None of these offices were in themselves lucrative. A maintenance for the new favourite and the new public servant had otherwise to be found.
His endowment came from the usual sources. Naunton says that, "though he gained much at the Court, he took it not out of the Exchequer, or merely out of the Queen"s purse, but by his wit and the help of the prerogative; for the Queen was never profuse in delivering over her treasures, but paid most of her servants, part in money, and the rest with grace." He adds, it may be hoped, before October 29, 1618: "Leaving the arrears of recompense due for their merit to her great successor, who paid them all with advantage." Ralegh himself, after a similar compliment to James, laments in his History the Queen"s parsimony to her "martial men, both by sea and land," none of whom, he remembers, "the Lord Admiral excepted, her eldest and most prosperous commander," did she "either enrich, or otherwise honour, for any service by them performed." Notices in official doc.u.ments of pecuniary grants to himself are rare. An order in September, 1587, for a payment of 2000 to be spent according to her Majesty"s direction appears to have been for works at Portsmouth. No meagre subst.i.tute was supplied by forfeitures, by enforced demises of collegiate, capitular, and episcopal estates, by monopolies, and by letters of marque.
[Sidenote: _Farm of Wines._]
[Sidenote: _Broadcloths._]
To All Souls College, Oxford, belongs the honour of having been the first to help to make his fortune. In April, 1583, he wrote to Egerton, then Solicitor-General, mentioning a grant of two beneficial leases of lands which the Queen had extorted from the college after her manner. On May 4, 1583, he received a more lucrative gift, the farm of wines. By his patent every vintner was bound to pay him for his life an annual retail licence fee of a pound. To save himself trouble, he underlet his rights to one Richard Browne for seven years at 700, or, according to another account, 800, a year. Browne promoted a large increase in the number of licensed taverners. Ralegh had reason to believe that he had not his fair share of profits. Egerton advised him that the demise was disadvantageous, but that it might be hard to terminate it without Browne"s concurrence. Ralegh, to compel a surrender from Browne before the expiration of the term, obtained a revocation of his own patent in 1588. On August 9, 1588, a new patent for thirty-one years was granted.
It does not seem to have freed him wholly from Browne"s claims. This licence again he leased. The lessee was William Sanderson, the husband of his niece, Margaret Snedale. At a later period he had disputes with Sanderson also on the profits. By an account of 1592, he estimated them at a couple of thousand a year. It was never a very popular office to be chief publican. The year after the original grant, it involved Ralegh in a troublesome quarrel. He or Browne had licensed a vintner, John Keymer, at Cambridge, in defiance of the Vice-Chancellor"s jurisdiction. The undergraduates loyally beat the intruder, and they frightened his wife nearly to death. The Vice-Chancellor sent him to gaol. The University also invoked the aid of its Chancellor, the Queen"s Minister, against the Queen"s favourite. Burleigh procured an opinion of the two Chief Justices against the licence. Ralegh was obliged in the end to give way to his a.s.sured loving friend the Vice-Chancellor. In the second patent the privileges of Oxford and Cambridge were expressly saved. In other respects it was wider. It allowed Ralegh a moiety of the penalties accruing to the Crown. The controversy with Cambridge may have been due only to Browne, and his eagerness for fees. In general, Ralegh appears to have exercised his powers moderately. A grantee who succeeded commended him for having "ever had a special care to carry a very tender hand upon the business for avoiding of noise and clamour, well knowing it to be a thing extracted from the subject upon a nice point of a statute law." A year after the first patent of wines he received a similar boon. This was a licence in March, 1584, to export for a twelvemonth woollen broadcloths. A payment to the Crown was reserved. In 1585, 1587, and 1589 the same privilege was conferred and enlarged. One grant authorized him to export overlengths. Burleigh protested. He declared the conditions too beneficial to the grantee. Probably they were. The privilege brought him into collision with several bodies of merchants. Soon after the earliest of the licences had been granted, in June, 1584, we read of a pet.i.tion, backed by Walsingham, for the release of ships which had infringed his patent. The Queen would not consent unless upon the terms that the offenders compounded with him. In 1586 the Merchant Adventurers of Exeter obtained a commission of inquiry whether his officers did not levy excessive fees upon certificates. He is represented by a local antiquary as less popular in that city than elsewhere in Devonshire. His patent rights as well as his official duties caused ill-will between it and him.
[Sidenote: _An Irish Seigniory._]
A gift in appearance much more magnificent, though the gains eventually were meagre, was the Irish grant of 1586. At last the Earl of Desmond"s insurrection had been quelled, at the cost of the utter devastation of a province. The curse of G.o.d was, it was lamented, so great, and the land so barren, that whosoever did travel from one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to Limerick, about six score miles, he should not meet man, woman, nor child, save in cities or towns, nor yet see any beast, save foxes and wolves, or other ravening creatures. The few survivors fed upon weeds and carrion, robbing the graves and gibbets of their dead. It was determined to repeople the 574,268 forfeited acres. Ralegh retained his Irish captain"s commission. In 1587 his name occurs at the head of the list. He, Ormond, Hatton, and Fitton were among the princ.i.p.al Undertakers for the resettlement. By the scheme n.o.body was to undertake for more than twelve thousand acres. On each portion of that size eighty-six families were to be planted. In Ralegh"s favour, by express words and warrant in a special letter from her Majesty, the Crown rent was fixed at a hundred marks, calculated subsequently as 60 13_s._ 4_d._; and the limitation of acreage was relaxed. Seigniories varied in extent from twelve to four thousand acres. Possibly in order to avoid too gross an appearance of indulgence to him, Sir John Stowell and Sir John Clyston, according to the Boyle-Lismore papers, were a.s.sociated or named with him as joint undertakers. A Privy Seal warrant in February, 1586, confirmed by letters patent in the following October, awarded to the three three seigniories and a half in Waterford, Cork, and perhaps Tipperary. A certificate of March, 1587, stated that, if the lands a.s.signed to them and their tenants should not be found to amount to "three seigniories of twelve thousand acres apiece, and one seigniory of six thousand acres, then other lands should be added." The patronage of the Wardenship of Our Lady"s College of Youghal was added to Ralegh"s share with several other lucrative privileges. Three centuries afterwards the House of Lords decided that an exclusive salmon fishery in the tidal waters of the Blackwater was among them. The domain stretched along both banks of the river from Youghal harbour. The soil was rich; but the royal commissioners for the survey reported it waste from neglect. Generally it was overgrown with deep gra.s.s, and in most places with heath, brambles, and furze.
[Sidenote: _English Forfeitures._]
In 1587 he added English estates to his Irish. The Babington conspiracy had been detected the year before. By a grant which pa.s.sed the Great Seal without fee in March, 1587, he acquired much of the princ.i.p.al plotter"s property. He obtained lands in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, and Notts, together with all goods and personalty, except a curious clock reserved to the Queen"s own use. According to modern taste, the pillage of confiscated estates is not an honourable basis for a great man"s prosperity. In the reign of Elizabeth it was still the orthodox foundation. It was give and take, as Ralegh had to experience. That the unfortunate Babington had rested some hope of life on Ralegh"s known Court influence is but a coincidence. He wrote on the 19th of September, 1586, the day before his execution, of "Master Rawley having been moved for him, and been promised a thousand pounds, if he could get his pardon." There was a traffic in pardons at Court. Odious and suspicious as was the practice, and liable to the grossest abuse, the presentation of money in return did not necessarily mean that the leniency had been bought. The Sovereign levied fines thus for the benefit of favourites on men too guilty to be let off scot-free, and not guilty enough to be capitally punished. Ralegh himself appears in after years to have received large sums from two pardoned accomplices of Ess.e.x, Sir Edward Bainham and Mr. John Littleton. From Littleton he is said to have had 10,000. But in the present instance no evidence has been discovered that Babington"s overtures were countenanced in the least by Ralegh, or that he accepted money for urging them.
[Sidenote: _Luxury and splendour._]
Five years separated the needy Munster Captain from the Lord Warden of the Stannaries, the magnificent Captain of the Queen"s Guard, the owner of broad lands in England, and Irish seigniories. He had climbed high, though not so high as the insignificant Hatton. He had progressed fast, though another was soon to beat him in swiftness of advancement. He had gathered wealth and power. He was profuse in his application of both.
Much of his gains went in ostentation. He was fond of exquisite armour, gorgeous raiment, lace, embroideries, furs, diamonds, and great pearls.
As early as 1583 he must have begun to indulge his taste. On April 26 in that year the Middles.e.x Registers show that Hugh Pewe, gentleman, was tried for the theft of "a jewel worth 80, a hat band of pearls worth 30, and five yards of damask silk worth 3, goods and chattels of Walter Rawley, Esq., at Westminster." Pewe was enough of a gentleman to read "like a clerk," and thus save his neck. Later Ralegh was satirized by the Jesuit Parsons as the courtier too high in the regard of the English Cleopatra, who wore in his shoes jewels worth 6600 gold pieces.
Tradition speaks, with exaggeration as obvious, of one court dress which carried 60,000 worth of jewels. He loved architecture and building, gardens, pictures, books, furniture, and immense retinues of servants.
In his taste for personal luxury he resembled the entire tribe of contemporary courtiers. It was a sumptuous age everywhere. England, which had suddenly begun to be able to gratify a love of splendour, seemed in haste to make up for lost time. Elizabeth encouraged the propensity at her Court. Her statesmen, warriors, and favourites enriched themselves with sinecures, confiscations, and shares in trading and buccaneering adventures. They spent as rapidly. They were all extravagant, and mortgaged the future. Almost all were continually straitened for money. Impecuniosity rendered them rapacious. The Lord Admiral received, as Ralegh has intimated, enormous gains from the Queen and from prizes, and was perpetually in need. Robert Cecil had to supplement his vast legitimate revenues from illicit sources, and died 38,000 in debt. Ess.e.x, whose disinterestedness is eulogized, had 300,000 from the Queen, in addition to most lucrative offices. The whole was insufficient for his wants. All alike, old friends and old foes, fed on one another, when there was n.o.body else to spoil.
Prodigality and greediness in money matters were, it is to be feared, common traits of Elizabethan heroes. They were far from perfect; their defects differed from those of their modern descendants in the ethical consequences; they did not make offenders ashamed of themselves, and afraid of being found out; they did not necessarily vitiate the substance of their characters, and destroy their self-respect.
CHAPTER V.
VIRGINIA (1583-1587).
[Sidenote: _Gilbert and Ralegh._]
Ralegh was not freer from the faults of his cla.s.s than the rest. Beyond the rest, he showed public spirit in his expenditure. By arguments, by his influence, by his example, he fanned the rising flame of national enterprise. From the first he devoted a large part of his sudden opulence to the promotion of the maritime prosperity of the nation.
Among his earliest subjects of outlay was the construction in 1583 of the Ark Ralegh. It was, according to a probable account, of two hundred tons burden, and cost 2000. Mr. Payne Collier gives its burden as eight hundred tons, and its worth as 5000. None understood better than Ralegh the ship-building art. Ten years of prison, it will be hereafter noticed, did not deaden his instinct. Humphrey Gilbert was again preparing for a voyage to "the Unknown Goal." Two-thirds of the six years of his patent for discoveries had run out. He was anxious to utilize the residue. Ralegh would gladly have accepted his invitation to accompany him as vice-admiral. The Queen had tried to hold back Gilbert "of her especial care, as a man noted of no good hap by sea." By earnest representations that he had no other means of maintaining his family, he prevailed upon her, through Walsingham, to give him leave. In a letter from Ralegh, she sent him a token, an anchor guided by a lady, with her wish of as great good-hap and safety to his ship, as if herself were there in person. She prayed him to be careful of himself, "as of that which she tendereth," and to leave his portrait with Ralegh for her.
Ralegh she peremptorily forbade to go. He had to content himself with lending his ship. It had not been more than two days out from Plymouth when a contagious sickness attacked the crew. It returned on June 13, 1583. Gilbert did not know the cause. He only saw the ship run away in fair and clear weather, having a large wind. So home he wrote denouncing the men as knaves. How he took possession of Newfoundland, and how, on his return, he died, with his memorable last words, are matters belonging to his history, though incidentally that crosses Ralegh"s. But his companionship, example, and affection had contributed to form his brother, whom his courage fired, and his fate did not daunt.
[Sidenote: _Ralegh"s Patent._]
Ralegh immediately sought and obtained a royal licence corresponding to that bestowed on Gilbert. March 25, 1584, is an eventful date in the annals of colonization. On that day was sealed a patent for him to hold by homage remote heathen and barbarous lands, not actually possessed by any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people, which he might discover within the next six years. A fifth of the gold and silver acquired was reserved to the Crown. His eyes were bent on the region stretching to the north of the Gulf of Florida, and of any settled Spanish territory. In 1562 a French Protestant settlement had been attempted in Florida. Laudonniere reinforced it a couple of years later.
But the jealousy of Spain was aroused. Pedro Melendez de Avila pounced down in 1565. He captured the forts. Eight or nine hundred Huguenots he hanged on the neighbouring trees as heretics, not as Frenchmen.
Dominique de Gorgues, of Gascony, avenged their fate by hanging their Spanish supplanters in 1567, not as Spaniards, but as a.s.sa.s.sins. There the experiment at colonization ended. Neither Spain nor France had repeated the attempt. The whole land was vacant of white men.
[Sidenote: _The Discovery._]
Ralegh"s fancy was inspired with visions, destined to be more than realized ultimately, of an English counterpart in the north to the Spanish empire in the south. He had already begun to equip a couple of vessels. He despatched them to America on April 27, 1584, under Captains Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow. They took the roundabout route by the Canaries and West Indies. In July they were saluted with a most fragrant gale from the land they were seeking. Sailing into the mouth of a river they saw vines laden with grapes, climbing up tall cedars. On July 13 they proclaimed the Queen"s sovereignty, afterwards delivering the country over to the use of Ralegh. It was the isle of Wokoken, in Ocrac.o.ke Inlet, off the North Carolina coast. In the neighbourhood were a hundred other islands. One of the largest was named Roanoke. They were visited by Granganimeo, father or brother to King Wingina, who lay ill of wounds received in war. The visit was returned by them. They bought of Granganimeo twenty skins, worth as many n.o.bles, for a tin dish which he coveted as a gorget. His wife offered a great box of pearls for armour and a sword. After some stay with the friendly and timid people, they returned to England about the middle of September. They brought to Ralegh chamois and other skins, a bracelet of pearls as big as peas, and two Indians, Manteo and Wanchese.