 Preface of Raleigh by Edmund Goss This Librebox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Eugene Smith Preface The existing lives of Raleigh are very numerous. To this day, the most interesting of these, as a literary production, is that published in 1736 by Willem Oldus, afterwards Noroi, King at Arms. This book was a marvel of research, as well as a biographical skill, at the time of its appearance, but can no longer compete with later lives as an authority. By a curious chance, two writers who were each ignorant of the other simultaneously collected information regarding Raleigh and produced two laborious and copious lives of him at the same moment in 1868. Each of these collections, respectively by Mr. Edward Edwards, whose death is announced as these words are leaving the printers, and by the late Mr. James Augustus St. John, added very largely to our knowledge of Raleigh, but, of course, each of these writers was precluded from using the discoveries of the other. The present life is the first in which the fresh matter brought forward by Mr. Edwards and by Mr. St. John has been collated. Mr. Edwards, moreover, deserved well of all Raleigh students by editing for the first time in 1868 the correspondence of Raleigh. I hope that I do not seem to disparage Mr. Edwards' book when I say that in his arrangement and conjectural dating of undated documents I am very frequently in disagree with him. The present life contains various small data, which are now, for the first time, published in more than one fact of considerable importance which I owe to the courtesy of Mr. John Cordy Jefferson. I have, moreover, taken advantage up to date of the reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission and of the two volumes of Lismore papers this year published. In his prospectus to the latter, Dr. Grossart promises us still more about Raleigh in later issues. My dates are news-style. The present sketch of Raleigh's life is the first attempt which has been made to portray his personal career disengaged from the general history of his time. To keep so full a life within bounds it has been necessary to pass rapidly over events of signal importance in which he took but a secondary part. I may point, as an example, to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, a chapter in English history which has usually occupied a large space in the chronicle of Raleigh at his times. Mrs. Creighton's excellent little volume on the latter and wider theme may be recommended to those who wish to see Raleigh painted not in a full-length portrait but in an historical composition of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. I have to thank Dr. Brushfield for the use of his valuable Raleigh bibliography now in the press and for other kind help. Contents Chapter 1 Youth Chapter 2 At Court Chapter 3 In Disgrace Chapter 4 Iana Chapter 5 Cadiz Chapter 6 Last Days of Elizabeth Chapter 7 The Trial at Winchester Chapter 8 In the Tower Chapter 9 The Second Voyage to Giada Chapter 10 The End End of Preface Chapter 1 Of Raleigh By Edmund Goss This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Eugene Smith Chapter 1 Youth Walter Raleigh was born, so Camden, an anonymous astrologer combined to assure us in 1552. The place was Hayes Barton, a farmstead in the parish of East Budley in Devonshire, then belonging to his father. It passed out of the family, and in 1584 Sir Walter attempted to buy it back. Quote, for the natural disposition I have to the place, being born in that house, I had rather seat myself there than anywhere else. End quote. He wrote to a Mr. Richard Duke, they then possess her, who refused to sell it. Genealogists, from himself downwards, have found a rich treasure in Raleigh's family tree, which winds its branches into those of some of the best Devonshire houses, the Gilberts, the Carus, the Champernounds. His father, the elder Walter Raleigh, in his third marriage, became the second husband of Catherine 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 and Adrian Gilbert. It is certainly the influence of his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert of Compton, which is most strongly marked upon the character of young Raleigh, while Adrian was one of his own earliest converts to a Virginia enterprise. The earliest notice of Sir Walter Raleigh known to exist was found and communicated to the Transactions of the Devonshire Association by Dr. Brushfield in 1883. It is indeed preserved in Sidmouth Church, by which tithes of fish are leased by the manner of Sidmouth to, quote, Walter Raleigh the Elder, Carol Raleigh, and Walter Raleigh the Younger, end quote, on September 10, 1560. In 1578 the same persons passed over their interest in the fish titles in another deed, which contains their signatures. It is amusing to find that the family had not decided how to spell its name. The father writes R-A-L-E-G-H. His elder son, Carol, writes C-A-R-O-R-A-W-L-Y-H. While the subject of this memoir, in this his earliest known signature, calls himself R-A-U-L-E-Y-G-H. His father was a Protestant when Young Walter was born, but his mother seems to have remained a Catholic. In the persecution under Mary, she, as we learn from Fox, went into Exeter to visit the heretics in jail, and in particular to see Agnes pressed before her burning. Mrs. Raleigh began to exhort her to repentance, but the martyr turned the tables on her visitor and urged the gentleman to seek the blessed body of Christ in heaven, not on earth. And this, with so much sweet persuasiveness, that when Mrs. Raleigh, quote, 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, in so much that if God were not with her, she could not speak such things. Quote, I was not able to answer her, I who can read, and she cannot. End quotes. It is easy to perceive that this anecdote would not have been preserved if the incident had not heralded the final secession of Raleigh's parents from the creed of Philip II, and thus Agnes pressed was not without her share in forging Raleigh's hatred of bigotry and of the Spaniard. Very little else is known about Walter and Catherine Raleigh. They lived at their manorial farm of Hayes Barton, and they were buried side by side as their son tells us, quote, in Exeter Church. End quote. The university career for Raleigh is vague to us in the highest degree. The only certain fact is that he left Oxford in 1569. Anthony Wood says that he was three years there, and that he entered Oriel College as a commoner in or about the year 1568. Fuller speaks of him as resident at Christ Church also. Perhaps he went to Christ Church first as a boy of 14 in 1566, and removed Oriel at 16. Sir Philip Sidney, Huckloot, and Camden were all of them at Oxford during those years, and we make conjecture that Raleigh's acquaintance with them began there. Wood tells us that Raleigh, being, quote, strongly advanced by academic learning at Oxford under the care of an excellent tutor, became the ornament of the juniors and a proficient in oratory and philosophy, that quote. Bacon and Aubrey preserved each an anecdote of Raleigh's university career, neither of them worth repeating here. The exact date at which he left Oxford is uncertain. Camden, who was Raleigh's age and at the university at the same time, says authoritatively in his annals that he was one of a hundred gentlemen volunteers taken to the help of the Protestant princes by Harry Champernone, who was Raleigh's first cousin, the son of his mother's elder brother. We learn from Dethu that Campernone's contingent arrived at the Huguenot camp on October 5th, 1569. This 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 Conde at the Battle of Jeanac, March 13th, 1569. Still more positively, Raleigh says, quote, myself was an eyewitness, end quote, of the retreat at Boncontour on October 3rd, two days before the arrival of Champernone. A provoking obscurity conceals Walter Raleigh from us for the next six or seven years. When Hocklid printed his voyages in 1589, he mentioned that he himself was five years in France. In a previous dedication, he had reminded Raleigh that the latter had made a longer stay in that country than himself. Raleigh has therefore been conjectured to have fought in France for six years. That is to say, until 1575. During this long and important period, we are almost without a glimpse of him, nor is it anything but fancy which has depicted him as shut up by Walsingham at the English Embassy in Paris on the fatal evening of Saint Bartholomew's. Another cousin of his, Gowen Champernone, became the son-in-law and follower of the Huguenot chief, Montgomery, whose murder on June 26th, 1574 may very 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 is often been quoted. In illustration of the way in which Alexander the Great harassed Beasus, Raleigh mentions that, quote, in the Third Civil War of France, end quote, he saw certain Catholics who had retired to mountain caves in Languedoc, smoked out of their retreat by the burning of bundles of straw at the cave's mouth. There has lately been shown to be no probability in the conjecture made by several of his biographers that he was one of the English volunteers in the Low Countries who fought in their shirts and drawers at the Battle of Reminal in August 1578. On April 15th, 1576, the poet Gascoigne, who was the protege of Raleigh's half-brother, issued his satire in blank verse entitled The Steel Glass, a little volume which holds an important place in the development of our poetical literature. To this satire, a copy of 18 congratulatory verses was prefixed by, quote, Walter Raleigh of the Middle Temple, end quote. These lines are perfunctory and are noticeable only for their heading, quote, of the Middle Temple, end quote. Raleigh positively tells us that he never studied law until he found himself a prisoner in the tower, and he was probably only a passing lodger in some portion of the Middle Temple in 1576. On October 7, 1577, Gascoigne died prematurely and deprived us of a picturesque pen which might have gossiped of Raleigh's early career. I am happy, through the courtesy of Mr. J. Cordy Jefferson, in being able for the first time to prove that Walter Raleigh was admitted to the court as early as 1577. So much has been suspected from his language to Lester in a later letter from Ireland, but there has hitherto been no evidence of the fact. In examining the middle sex records, Mr. Jefferson 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 Pondsford and his brother who are described in the recognizances taken next day before the magistrate Jasper Fisher as the servants of, quote, Walter Raleigh of Islington, Esquire, end quote, and two days later as Yeoman in the service of Walter Raleigh Esquire, quote, of the court, de Curia, end quote. It is very important to find him thus early, officially described as of the court. As Raleigh afterwards said, the education of his youth was a training in the arts of a gentleman and a soldier, but it extended further than this. It embraced an extraordinary knowledge of the sea, and in particular of naval warfare. It is tantalizing that we have but the slenderest evidence of the mode in which this particular schooling was obtained. The western ocean was, all through the youth of Raleigh, the most fascinating and mysterious of the new fields which were being thrown open to English enterprise. He was a babe when Thompson came back with the 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 Uluwa. All through his early days the splendor 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 colonization than on mere butyl rapine, the race at which Raleigh was ultimately to become the most illustrious example. If we possess minute accounts of the various expeditions in which Gilbert took part, we should probably find that his young half-brother was often his companion. As early as 1584, Barlow addresses Raleigh as one personally conversant with the islands of the Gulf of Mexico, and there was a volume, never printed and now lost, written about the same time, entitled Sir Walter Raleigh's Wage to the West Indies. This expedition, no other allusion to which has survived, must have taken place before he went to Ireland in 1580 and may be conjecturally dated 1577. The incidents of the next two years may be rapidly noted. They are all of them involved in obscurity. It is known that Raleigh crossed the Atlantic for a second time, on board one of the ships of Gilbert's ill-starred expedition to the St. Lawrence, in the winter of 1578. In February of the next year, he was again in London and was committed to the fleet prison for a, quote, fray, end quote, with another courier. In September 1579 he was involved in Sir Philip Sidney's tennis court quarrel with Lord Oxford. In May of the same year he was stopped at Plymouth when in the act of starting on a piratical expedition against Spanish America. He had work to do in opposing Spain nearer home, and he first comes clearly before us in connection with the Catholic invasion of Ireland in the close of 1579. He was on July 17, 1579, but the Catholic expedition from Feral landed at Dingle. Fearing to stay there, it passed four miles westward to Smirwick Bay and there built a fortress called Fort Delore, 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 Sanders, the legate, as a sweet sacrifice in the sight of God, and ruthlessly committed. The result was what Sanders had foreseen, the Geraldine's hopelessly compromised, throughout the fiction of loyalty to Elizabeth. Sir Nicholas Malby defeated the rebels in the Limerick Woods in September, but in return the Geraldine's burned Ugoll and drove the deputy within the walls of Cork, where he died of chagrin. The temporary command fell on an old friend of Raleigh's, Sir Warren de Saint-Lagé, who wrote in December 1579 a letter of earnest appeal which broke up the apathy of the English government. Among other steps hurriedly taken to uphold the Queen's power in Ireland, young Walter Raleigh was sent where his half-brother, of Fr. Gilbert, had so much distinguished himself ten years before. The biographer breathes more freely when he holds at last the earliest letter which remains in the handwriting of his hero. All else may be erroneous or conjectural, but here, at least, for a moment, he presses his fingers upon the very pulse of the machine. On February 22nd, 1580, Raleigh wrote from Cork to Burgley, giving him an account of his voyage. It appears that he wrote on the day of his arrival, and if that be the case, he left London and passed down the Thames, in command of a troop of 100 foot soldiers, on January 15th, 1580. By the same computation they reached the Isle of White on the 21st and stayed there to be transferred into ships of Her Majesty's fleet, not starting again until February 5th. 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 wrote off at once to Burgley to secure, if possible, the arrears. His arrival was a welcome reinforcement to Saint Leger, who was holding Cork in the greatest peril, with only 40 Englishmen. It must be recollected that this force under Raleigh was but a fragment of what English squadrons were busy bringing through this month of January into every port of Ireland. Elizabeth had, at last, awakened an earnest to her danger. Raleigh, in all probability, took no part in the marchings and skirmishings of the English armies until the summer. His, reckoning, or duty-pay, as a captain in the field, begins on July 13th, 1580, and perhaps, until that date, his services consisted in defending Cork under Saint Leger. In August he was joined with the latter, who was now provost Marshall of 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 12th, Lord Gray de Wilton arrived in Dublin to relieve Pelham of sovereign command in Ireland. Gray, though he learned to dislike Raleigh, was probably more cognizant of his powers than Pelham, who may never have heard of him. Gray had been the patron of the poet Gascoigne, and one of the most prominent men in the group with whom we have already seen that Raleigh was identified in his early youth. From the moment of Gray's arrival in Ireland, the name of Raleigh ceased to be obscure. Sir William Pelham retired on September 7, and Lord Gray, who had brought the newly famous poet Edmund Spencer with him, as his secretary, marched into Munster. With his exploits we have nothing to do, save to notice that it must have been in the camp at Raquel, if not on the battlefield of Lynne Mollure, that Raleigh began his momentous friendship with Spencer, whose shepherd's calendar 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, which was to prove so momentous in the career of, quote, the shepherd of the ocean, end quote. Ludovic brisket, Fulke Grevo, Barnaby Goode, Geoffrey Fenton, were minor songsters of the copious Elizabethan age who were now in Munster as agents or soldiers, and we may suppose that the tedious guerrilla warfare in the woods had its hours of literary recreation for Raleigh. The fortress on the peninsula of Dingle was now occupied by a fresh body of Catholic invaders, mainly Italians, and Smerwick Bay again attracted general interest. Gray, as deputy, and Ormond, as governor of Munster, united their forces and marched towards this extremity of Kerry. Raleigh, with his infantry, joined them at Raquel, and we may take September 30th, 1580, which is the date when his first, quote, reckoning, end quote, closes, as that on which he took some fresh kind of service under Lord Gray. Hooker, who was an eyewitness, supplies us with some very interesting glimpses of Raleigh in his supply of the Irish Chronicles, a supplement to Hollenschein. We learn from him that when Lord Gray broke into the camp at Raquel, Raleigh stayed behind, having observed that the curns had the habit of sweeping down upon any deserted encampment to rob and murder the camp followers. This expectation was fulfilled. The hungry Irish poured into Raquel as soon as the deputy's back was turned. Raleigh had the satisfaction of capturing a large body of these poor creatures. One of them carried a great bundle of withys, and Raleigh asked him what they were for, quote, to have hung up the famous churros with, end quote, was the bold reply. Quote, well, said Raleigh, but now they shall serve for an Irish curn, end quote, and commanded him, quote, to be immediately tucked up in one of his own neck bands, end quote. The rest were served in a similar way. And then the young Englishman rode on after the army. Towards the end of October, they came inside of Smerwick Bay and of the fort on the sandy isthmus in which the Italians and Spaniards were lying in the hope of slipping back to Spain. The legate had no sanguine aspirations left. Every roof that could harbor the Geraldines had been destroyed in the English fores. Desmond was hiding like a wild beast in the wood. By all the principles of modern warfare, a time had come for mercy and conciliation, and one man in Ireland, Ormond, thought as much. But Lord Gray was a soldier of the old disposition, an implacable enemy to pulperate, what we now call a quote puritan, end quote, of the most fierce and frigid type. There is no evidence to show that the gentle Englishman 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 Spencer nor Folke Greville nor Walter Raleigh dreamed of withdrawing his section. 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 Rathland. In the perfectly legitimate opening of the siege of Fort Del Ore, Raleigh held a very prominent commission, and we see that his talents were rapidly being recognized from the fact that for the first three days he was entrusted with the principal command. It would appear that on the fourth day when the Italians waved their white flag and screamed, quote, Misericordia, Misericordia, end quote. It was not Raleigh, but Zauch who was commanding in the trenches. The parley the Catholics demanded was refused, and they were told they need not hope for mercy. Next day, which was November 9, 1580, the fort yielded helplessly. Raleigh and Mackworth received Grey's orders to enter and, quote, fall straight to execution, end quote. It was thought proper to give Catholic Europe a warning not to meddle with Catholic Ireland. In the words of the official report immediately sent home to Walsingham, as soon as the fort was yielded, quote, all the Irish men and women were hanged and 600 and upwards of Italians, Spaniards, Biscayans and others put to the sword. The colonel, captain, secretary, campmaster and others of the best sort saved to the number of 20 persons, end quote. Of these last two had their arms and legs broken before being hanged on a gallows on the wall of the fort. The bodies of the 600 were stripped and laid out on the sands, quote, as gallant, goodly personages, end quote, Lord Gray reported, quote, as ever were beheld, end quote. 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, quote, this late enterprise has been performed by him greatly to her liking, end quote. It is useless to expatiate on a code of morals that seems to us positively Japanese. To Lord Gray and the rest of the rebellious curds and their southern allies were enemies of God and the Queen, beyond the scope of mercy in this world or the next, and no more to be spared or paltred with than modent vermin. In his inexperience, Rolly, to be soon ripened by knowledge of life and man, agreed with this view. But happily for Ireland and England too, there were others who declined to sink, as Mr. Frude says, quote, to the level of the Catholic continental tyrannies, end quote. At Orman's instigation, the Queen said over in April 1581, a general pardon. Severe as Lord Gray was, he seemed too lenient to Rolly. In January 1581, the young captain left Cork and made the perilous journey to Dublin, to expulsionally with the deputy, and to urge him to treat with greater stringency various monster chieftains who were blowing the embers of the rebellion into fresh flame. Among these malcontents, the worst was a certain David Barry, son of Lord Barry, himself a prisoner at Dublin Castle. David Barry had placed the family stronghold, Barry Court, at the disposal of the Geraldines. Rolly 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 Senescal of Emocheli, the strongest and craftiest of the remaining Geraldines, laid an ambush to seize him at the foot of Karabi. Rolly not only escaped himself, but returned in the face of a force which was to his as twenty to one in order to rescue a comrade whose horse had thrown him in the river. With a quarter-staff in one hand, and a pistol in the other, he held the Senescal and his curds at bay, and brought his little body of troops through the ambush without the loss of one man. In the dreary monotony of the war, this brilliant act of courage, of which Rolly himself in a letter gives a very modest account, touched the popular heart, and did as much as anything to make him famous. The existing documents which illustrate Rolly's life in Ireland during 1581, and they are somewhat numerous, give the student a much higher notion of his brilliant aptitude for business and of his active courage than of his amiability. His vivacity and ingenuity were sources of irritation to him, as the vigor of an active man may vex him in waiting across loose sands. There was no stability, and apparently no hope or aim in the policy of the English leaders, and Rolly showed no modesty in his criticism of that policy. Ormond had been on friendly terms with him, but as early as February 25th, a quarrel was ready to break out. Ormond wished to hold Barry Court, which was the key to the important road between Cork and Yughal, as his own, while Rolly was no less clamorous in claiming it. In the summer, not satisfied with complaining of Ormond to Gray, he denounced Gray to Lester. In the meantime, he had succeeded in ousting Ormond, who was recalled to England, and in getting himself made, if not nominally, practically, Governor of Munster. He proceeded to Lismore, then the English capital of the province, and made that town the center of those incessant sallies and forays which Hooker describes. One of these skirmishes, closing in the defeat of Lord Barry at Cleave, showed consummate military ability, and deserves almost a rank as a battle. In August, Rolly's temporary governorship of Munster ended. He was too young and too little known a man permanently to hold such a post. Zauch took his place at Lismore, and Rolly, returning to Cork, was made governor of that city. It was at this time, or possibly a little earlier in the year, that Rolly made his romantic attack upon Castle Bally in Harsh, the seat of Lord Roche. On the very same evening that Rolly received a hint from headquarters that the capture of this strongly fortified place was desirable, 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 a loss of only a single man. The whole affair was a piece of military sleight of hand, brilliantly designed, incomparably well carried out. The summer and autumn were passed and scouring the woods and ravines of Munster from Tipperary to Kilkenny. Miserable work, he found it, and glad he must have been when a summons from London put an end to his military service in Ireland. In two years he had won a great reputation. Elizabeth, it may well be, desired to see him and talk with him on what he called, the business of this lost land. In December 1581, he returned to England. One point more may be mentioned. In a letter dated May 1st, 1581, Raleigh offers to rebuild the ruined fortress of Barry Court at his own expense. This shows that he must by this time have come into a certain amount of property, for his Irish pay as a captain was, he says, so poor that but for Munner he, quote, would disdain it as much as to keep sheep, end quote. This fact disposes of the notion that Raleigh arrived at the court of Elizabeth in the guise of a handsome, penniless adventurer. Perhaps he had by this time inherited his share of the paternal estates. End of chapter one. Chapter two of Raleigh. This is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings from the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Raleigh by Edmund Goss, chapter two at court. Raleigh had not completed his 30th year when he became a recognised courtier. We have seen that he had passed four years before within the precincts of the court, but we do not know whether the Queen had noticed him or not. In the summer of 1581 he had written us to Leicester from Lismore, quote, I may not forget continually to put your honour in mind of my affection under your lordship, having to the world both professed and protested the same. Your honour, having no use of such poor followers, has utterly forgotten me. Notwithstanding if your lordship shall please to think me yours as I am, I will be found as ready, and dare do as much in your service as any man you may command, and deny the so much despair of myself, but that I may be somewhere able to perform so much, unquote. To Leicester then we may be sure he went to find him and the whole court with him in the throes of the Queen's latest and final matrimonial embroilment. Raleigh had a few weeks in which to admire the empty and hideous suitor whom France had sent over to claim Elizabeth's hand, and during this critical time it is possible that he enjoyed his personal introduction to the Queen. While Raleigh in the prime of his strength and beauty formed a curious contrast to poor allançon, and the difference was one which Elizabeth would not fail to recognise, on February 1st 1582 he was paid the sum of 200 pounds for his Irish services and a week later he set out under Leicester in company with the Philip of Sydney, among the throng that conducted the French Prince to the Netherlands. When Elizabeth's poor frog, as she called allançon, had been duly led through the gorgeous pageant prepared in his honour at Antwerp on February the 17th, the English lords and their train, glad to be free of their burden, passed to flushing and hastened home with as little ceremony as might be. Raleigh alone remained behind to carry some special message of compliment from the Queen to the Prince of Orange. It is Raleigh himself in his invention of shipping who gives us this interesting information and he goes on to say that when the Prince of Orange quote, delivered me his letters to Her Majesty, he prayed me to say to the Queen from him, sub umbra larum duarum 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, unquote. Would have been natural to entrust to Leicester such confidential utterances, these were a reply to, but Elizabeth was passing through a paroxysm of rage with Leicester at the moment. She ventured to call him traitor and to accuse him of conspiring with the Prince of Orange. Notwithstanding this, his influence was still paramount with her and it was characteristic of her shrewd petulance to confide in Leicester's protégé, though not in Leicester himself. Towards the end of March Raleigh settled at the English court. On April 1st 1582 Elizabeth issued from Greenwich a strange and self-contradictory warrant with regard to service in Ireland and the band of infantry hitherto commanded in that country by a certain Captain Annasley now deceased. The words must be quoted verbatim, quote. For that our pleasure is to have our servant Walter Rawley, this was the way in which the name was pronounced during Raleigh's lifetime, trained some time longer in that our realm in Square Bracket's Ireland for his better experience in martial affairs and for the special care 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 in Square Bracket's probably Mrs. Catherine Ashley who was Raleigh's aunt. These are to require you that the leading of the said band may be committed to the said Rawley and for that he is for some considerations biased excuse to stay here. Our pleasure is that the said band be in the meantime till he repair unto that our realm, delivered to some such as he shall depute to be his lieutenant there, unquote. He is to be captain in Ireland but not just yet. Not till the two tender Queen can spare him. We find that he was paid his reckoning 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 his Irish deputy. He was now in fact installed as first favourite in the still susceptible heart of the Virgin Star of the North. This then is a favourable opportunity for pausing to consider what manner of man it was who had so suddenly passed into the intimate favour of the Queen. Norton has described Raleigh with the precision of one who is superior to the weakness of depreciating the exterior qualities of his enemy, quote. Having a good presence and a handsome and well compacted person, a strong natural wit and a better judgment with the bold and plausible tongue whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage, unquote. His face had neither the ethereal beauty of Sydney's nor the intellectual delicacy of Spencer's. It was cast in a rougher mould than theirs. The forehead it is acknowledged was too high for the proportion of the 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 splendid taste in dress. His clothes were at all times noticeably gorgeous and to the end of his life he was commonly bedisoned with precious stones to his very shoes. When he was arrested in 1603 he was carrying 4,000 pounds in jewels on his bosom and when he was finally captured on August the 10th 1618 his pockets were found full of the diamonds and jasps which he had hastily removed from various parts of his person. His letters display his solicitor's love of jewels, velvets and embroidered damasques. Mr Jefferson has lately found among the middle sex manuscripts that as early as April the 26th 1584 a gentleman named Hugh Pugh stole at Westminster and carried off Balderale's pearl hut band and another jewelled article of attire valued together in money of that time at 113 pounds. The owner with characteristic promptitude shut the thief up in Yuga and made him disgorge. To complete our picture of the vigorous and brilliant soldier poet we must add that he spoke to the end of his life with that strong deafensher accent it was never displeasing to the ears of Elizabeth. The muse of history is surely in our days too disdainful of all information that does not reach her signed and counter-signed. In biography at least it must be a mistake to accept none but documentary evidence since tradition if it does not give us truth fact gives us what is often at least as valuable truth of impression. The later biographies of Raleigh have scorned even to repeat those anecdotes that are best known to the 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 quote Her majesty meeting with the 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 ground were on the queen trod gently over rewarding him afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so fair a foot cloth unquote. The only point about this story which is incredible is that this act was Raleigh's introduction to the queen. Regarded as a fantastic incident of their later attachment the anecdote is in the highest degree characteristic of the readiness of the one and the romantic sentiment of the other. Not less entertaining is Fuller's other story that at the full tide of Raleigh's fortunes of the queen he wrote on a pane of glass with his diamond ring. Fane would I climb but that I fear to fall. Whereupon Elizabeth replied if they heart fairly then climb not at all. Of these tales we can only assert that they reflect the popular and doubtless faithful impression of Raleigh's mother wit and audacious alacrity. If he did not go back to fight in Ireland his experience of Irish affairs was made useful by the government. He showed a considerable pliancy in giving his counsel. In May 1581 he had denounced Ormond and even Gray for not being severe enough but in June 1582 he adhered round to Burley's opinion that it was time to moderate English tyranny in Ireland. A paper written partly by Burley and partly by Raleigh but entitled The Opinion of Mr Raleigh still exists among the Irish correspondents and is dated October the 25th 1582. This document is in the highest degree conciliatory towards the Irish chieftains whom it recommends the queen to win over peacefully to her side. This policy quote offering a very plausible show of thrift and commodity unquote. 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 Norton describes quote. Raleigh he says had gotten the queen's ear at a trice and she began to be taken with his alipution and loved to hear his reasons to her demands and the truth is she took him for a kind of oracle which netled them all unquote. Lord Gray 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 from the Queen Lord Gray ventured to reply quote. For my own part I must be plain and either like his carriage nor his company and therefore other than by direction and commandment and what his right requires he is not to expect from my hands unquote. Lord Gray did not understand the man he was dealing with. The result was that in August 1582 he was abruptly deposed from his dignity as Lord Deputy in Ireland but we see that Raleigh could be exceeding the antipathetic to any man who crossed his path. That it was willful arrogance and not inability to please is proved by the fact that he seems to have contrived to reconcile not lest or only but even hadn't Elizabeth Steer peck or a comfy to his intrusion at court. As far as we can perceive Raleigh's success as a courtier was unclouded from 1582 to 1586 and these years are the most peaceful and uneventful in the record of his career. He took a confidential place by the Queen's side but so unobtrusively that in these earliest years at least his presence leaves no perceptible mark on the political history of the country. Great in so many fields eminent as a soldier as a navigator as a poet as a courtier. There was 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 counsellor. His advice being asked in private by Elizabeth or by her ministers and not across the table where his arrogant manner might have introduced discussions fruitless to the state. In 1598 when he was at the zenith of his power he actually succeeded as we shall see him being proposed for privy council but the Queen did not permit him to be sworn. Nothing would be more remarkable than Elizabeth's infatuation for her favourites if we were not still more surprised at his skill in gauging their capacities and her firmness in defining their ambitions. Already in 1583 Walter Raleigh began to be the recipient of the Queen's gifts. On April the 10th of that year he came into possession of two estates Stolney and Newland which had passed to the Queen from All Souls College Oxford. A few days later May the 4th he became enriched by obtaining letters patent for the farm of wines. Thanks forward to be one of the main sources of his wealth. According to this grant which extended to all places within the kingdom each ventner was obliged to pay 20 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 mares 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 ever the six. From his farm of wines Raleigh seems at one time to obtain something like two thousand pounds a year. The emoluments dwindled at last just before Raleigh was forced to resign his patent to James I to one thousand pounds a year. But even this was an income equivalent to six thousand pounds of our money. The grant was to expire in 1619 and would therefore if he had died a natural death about lived Raleigh himself. We must not forget that the cost of collecting monies and the salaries to deputy licenses consumed a large part of these receipts. While Raleigh was shaking down a fortune from the green ivy bushes that hung at the vintners doors the western continent at which he had already cast whistle glances remained the treasure house of Spain. His unfortunate but indomitable half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert recalled it to his memory. The name of a Gilbert deserves to be better remembered than it is and America at least will one day be constrained to honor the memory of the man who was the first to dream of colonizing her. Until this time the ambition of Englishmen in the west had been confined to an angry claim to contest the wealth and beauty of the new world with the Spaniard. The fabulous minds of Cusco, the plateships of Lima and Guereacil, the pearl fisheries of Panama. These had been hit the too the loads star of English enterprise. The hope was that such feats as those of Drake would bring about a time when as George Wither put it, quote, the spacious west being still more with English blood possessed the proud Iberians shall not rule those seas to check our ships from sailing where they please, unquote. Even Frabisher had not entertained the notion of leaving Spain alone and of planting in the northern hemisphere colonies of English race. It was Sir Humphrey Gilbert who first thought of a settlement in North America and the honor of priority is due to him, although he failed. His royal charter was dated June 1578 and covered a space of six years with its privilege. We have already seen that various enterprises undertaken by Gilbert in consequence of it had failed in one way or another. After the disaster of 1579 he desisted and lent three of his remaining vessels to the government to serve on the coast of Ireland. As late as July 1582 the rent due to him on these vessels was unpaid and he wrote a dignified appeal to Walsingham for the money in arrears. He was only 43 but his troubles had made an old man of him and he pleads his white hairs blanched in long service of a 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 favor. It is plain that Gilbert's application was promptly attended to for we find him presently in a position to pursue the colonizing enterprises which lay so dear to his heart. The Queen however could not be induced to encourage him. She shrewdly remarks that Gilbert quote had no good luck at sea unquote which was pathetically true. However Gilbert's six years charter was about to expire and his hopes were all bound up in making one more effort. He pleaded and Raleigh supported him until Elizabeth finally gave way merely refusing to allow Raleigh himself to take part in any such quote. Dangerous sea fights unquote as the crossing of the Atlantic might entail. On June the 11th 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed from Plymouth with the little fleet of five vessels bound for North America. According to all authorities Raleigh had expended a considerable sum in the outfit. According to one writer Hayes in Hackwood he was the owner of the entire expedition. He spent we know two thousand pounds in building and fitting out one vessel which he named after himself the Ark Raleigh. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was not born under a fortunate star. Two days after starting a contagious fever broke out on board the Ark Raleigh and in a tumult of panic without explaining her desertion to the Admiral she hastened back in great distress to Plymouth. The rest of 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 had sunk in an Atlantic storm on the eighth or ninth of that month. The last thing known of the gallant Admiral before his ship went down was that quote sitting above with a book in his hand he had called out we have good heart my friends we are as near to heaven by sea as by land unquote at the death of Gilbert his schemes as a colonizing navigator passed as by inheritance to Raleigh. That he had no intention of letting them drop is shown by the fact that he was careful not to allow Gilbert's original charter to expire. In June 1584 other hands might have seized his brother's relinquished enterprise and therefore it was on March the 25th that Raleigh moved the Queen to renew the charter in his own name. In company with the 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 the discovery of the Northwest Passage. In this he was following the president of Gilbert who had made use of the Queen's favorite dream of a northern route to China to cover his less attractive schemes of colonization. Raleigh however took care to secure himself a charter which gave him the fullest possible power to quote inhabit or retain build or spotify the discretion of the said W. Raleigh unquote in any remote lands that he might find hitherto unoccupied by any Christian power. Armed with this extensive grant Raleigh began to make his preparations. It is needful here to pass rapidly over the chronicle of the expeditions of America since they form no part of the personal history of Raleigh. On April the 27th he sent out his first fleet under Amadas and Barlow. They sailed blindly for the western continent but were guided at last by quote delicate sweet smell far out in ocean to the coast of Florida. They then sailed north and finally landed on the islands of Wokhogan and Roanoke which with the adjoining mainland they annexed in the name of her majesty. In September this first expedition returned bringing Raleigh as a token of the wealth of the new lands quote a string of pearls as large as great peas. In honor of quote 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. Procrea insignia Walteri Raleigh, Militis Dominiet Gubernatoris, Virginia. No attempt have he made on this occasion to colonize. It was early in the following year that Raleigh sent out his second Virginia expedition under the brave Sir Richard Grenville to settle in the country. The experiment was not completely successful at first but from August the 17th 1585 which is the birth day of the American people to June the 18th 1586 108 persons under the command of Ralph Lane and in the service of Raleigh made Roanoke their habitation. It is true that the colonists lost courage and abandoned Virginia at the latter date but an essay at least had been made to justify the sanguine hopes of Raleigh. These expeditions to North America were very costly and by their very nature unremunerative for the present. Raleigh however was by this time quite wealthy enough to support the expense and on the second occasion accident befriended him. Sir Richard Grenville in the Tiger fell in with the Spanish plate ship on his return voyage and towed into Plymouth harbour a prize which was estimated at the value of 50,000 pounds but Raleigh was indeed at this time a veritable donnery. As though enough gold had not yet been showered upon him the queen presented to him on March the 25th 1584 a grant of license to export woollen broadcloths a privilege the excessive profits of which soon attracted the critical notice of Burley. 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 undied broadcloth was of a twofold nature a fixed duty on exportation in general and a charge on overlinks that is to say on pieces which exceeded the maximum length of 24 yards. When Burley has sailed this whole system of taxation in 1591 he stated that Raleigh had in the first year only of his grant received 3,950 pounds from a privilege for which he paid to the state a rent of only 700 pounds. If this was correct and no one could be in a better position than Burley to check the figures Raleigh's income from broadcloth alone was something like 18,000 pounds of Victorian money such were the sources of an opulence which we must do Raleigh the credit to say was expended not on debauchery or display but in the most enlightened efforts to extend the field of English commercial enterprise beyond the Atlantic. We need not suppose him to have been unselfish beyond the fashion of his age in his action there was no doubt an element of personal ambition he dreamed of raising a state in the west before which his great enemy Spain should sink into the shade and he fancied himself the gorgeous vice-roy 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 oars of Tornus to Motum but he was not the slave of these fancies as were the more vulgar adventurers of his age more than the promise of pearls and silver it was the only products of the new country that attracted him and his captains were bitten to bring news to him of the fish and fruit of Virginia its salts and dyes and textile grasses nor was it a goldsmith that he sent out to the new colonias his scientific agent but a young mathematician of promise the practical and observant Thomas Harriet some personal details of Raleigh's private life during these two years may now be touched on he was in close attendance upon the queen at Greenwich and at Windsor when he was not in his own house in the still rural village of Islington in the summer of 1584 probably in consequence of the new wealth his broadcloth patent had secured him he enlarged his borders in several ways he leased of the queen Durham house close to the river covering the site of the prison to Delphi Terrace this was the vast 14th 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 of her brother and she had recovered it again after the death of Mary retaining certain rooms she now relinquished it to her favorite and in this stately mansion as his townhouse Raleigh lived from 1584 to 1603 in spite of his uncertain tenure he spent very large sums in repairing quote this rotten house as Lady Raleigh afterwards called it sometime between December the 14th 1584 and February the 24th 1585 Raleigh was knighted on the latter date we first find him styled Sir Walter in an order from Burley to report on the force of the Devonshire stannery's his activities were now concentrated from several points upon the west of England and he became once 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 stannery's in September he was appointed lieutenant of the county of Cornwall in November vice admiral of the two counties he appointed Lord Beecham his deputy in Cornwall and his own eldest half brother Sir John Gilbert of Greenway his deputy in Devonshire in the same year 1585 he entered parliament as one of the two county members for Devonshire as warden of the stannery's he introduced reforms which greatly mitigated the hardships of the miners it is pleasent to think of Raleigh administering rough justice from the granite judgment seat on some windy tour of Dartmoor than to picture him squabbling for rooms at court with peck or a campy or ogling a captures royal beauty of some 50 summers Raleigh's work in the west has made little noise in history but it was as wholesome and capable as the most famous of his exploits in March 1586 Lester found himself in disgrace with Elizabeth and so openly attributed to Raleigh that the Queen ordered Walsingham to deny that the latter had ceased to plead for his former patron Raleigh himself sent Lester a band of Devonshire miners to serve in the Netherlands and comforted him at the same time by adding quote the Queen is in very good terms with you and thanks be to God well pacified you are again her sweet Robin it seems that the strange accusation have been made against Raleigh that he desired to favor Spain this was calculated to vex him to the quick and we find him protesting March the 29th 1586 quote I have consumed the best part of my fortune hating the tyrannous prosperity of that state and it would now strange and monstrous that I should become an enemy to my country and conscience unquote two months later he was threatened with the loss of his post as vice admiral if he did not withdraw a fleet he had figured out to harass the Spaniards in the Newfoundland waters about the same time he strengthened his connection with the Lester faction by marrying his cousin Barbara Gammage to Sir Philip Sydney's younger brother Robert this lady became the grandmother of Wallace Sakurisa the collapse of the Virginia colony was an annoyance in the summer of this year but it was tempered to rally by the success of another of his enterprises his fleet in the Azores one of the prizes brought home by this purely piratical expedition was a Spanish colonial governor of much fame and dignity Dom Pedro Samiento Raleigh demanded a ransom for this personage and while it was being collected he entertained his prisoners sumptuously in Durham House on October the 7th 1586 Raleigh's old friend Sir Philip Sydney closed his chivalrous career on the battlefield at Zutphen Raleigh's solemn elegy on him was one of the finest of the many poems which that sad event called forth it blends the passion of personal regret with the dignity of public grief as all great elegyical poems should one stanza might be inscribed on a monument to Sydney England doth hold thy limbs that bred the same land as thy valour where it last was tried the camp thy sorrow where thy body died thy friends thy want the world thy virtue's fame this elegy appeared with the rest in Astrofel in 1595 but it had already been printed in 1593 in the phoenix nest and as early as 1591 Sir John Harrington quotes it as Raleigh's it was not till the following spring that Raleigh took possession of certain vast estates in Ireland the Queen had named him among the gentleman undertakers between whom the eschetered lands of the Earl of Desmond were to be divided he received about 42,000 acres in the counties of Cork, Waterford and Tiberary and is set about re-peopling this desolate region with his usual vigor of action he brought settlers over from the west of England but these 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 Coons and although it is certain that of 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 Yorle with the thickly wooded lands on either side of the river Blackwater he is scarcely to be forgiven for what appears to have been the wanton destruction of the Geraldine friary of Yorle built in 1268 which is men pulled down and burned while he was mayor of the town in 1587 Raleigh's Irish residences at this time were his manor house in Yorle which still remains and Lismore Castle which he rented from 1587 onwards of the official Archbishop of Castle Myla McGraw we have now reached the zenith of Raleigh's personal success his fame was to proceed far beyond anything that he had yet gained or deserved but his mere worldly success was to reach no further and even from this moment sensibly to decline Elizabeth had showered wealth and influence upon him although she had refrained at her most doting moments from lifting him up to the lowest step in the ladder of aristocratic preferment but although her favour towards Raleigh had this singular limit and although 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 lester 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 20 and it is the new Earl of Essex with his petalant beauty who quote is that cards or one gamer another with her to the bird sing in the morning unquote the remarkable scene in which Essex dead to demand the sacrifice of Raleigh as the price of his own devotion is best described by the new favourite in his own words Raleigh had now been made captain of the guard and we have to imagine him standing at the door in his uniform of orange tawny while the pertined pouting boy is half declaiming half whispering in the ear of the queen whose beating heart forgets to remind her that she might be the mother of one of her lovers and the grandmother of the other Essex writes quote I told her that what she didn't was only to please that naive Raleigh for whose sake I saw she would both grieve me and my love and disgrace me in the eye of the world from thence she came to speak of Raleigh and it seemed she could not well endure anything to be spoken against him and taking hold of my word 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 comfort to give myself over to the service of a mistress which was an awe of such a man I spoke with grief and collar as much against him as I could and I think he standing at the door might very well hear the worst that I spoke of himself in that end I saw she was resolved to defend him and to cross me unquote it was probably about this time and owing to the instigation of Essex that Tarleton the comedian laid himself open to banishment from court for calling out while Raleigh was playing cards with Elizabeth see how the nave commands the queen Elizabeth supported her old favorite but there is no doubt that these attacks made their impression on her irritable temperament meanwhile Raleigh engaged in a dozen different enterprises and eager to post hither and dither everland and to see was probably not ill disposed to see his royal mistress diverted from a to absorbing attention to himself on May the 8th 1587 Raleigh sent forth from Plymouth his fourth virginian expedition under captain John White it was found that the second colony the handful of men left behind by Sir Richard Grenville had perished with 150 men White landed at Hatterasque and proposed to found a town of Raleigh in the new country every species of disaster attended this third colony and in the midst of the excitement caused the following year by the Spanish Armada a fifth expedition fitted out under Sir Richard Grenville was stopped by the government at Byteford Raleigh was not easily daunted however and in the midst of the preparations for the great struggle he contrived to send out two penises from Byteford on April the 22nd 1588 for the succor of his unfortunate Virginians but these little vessels were ignominiously stripped off Madero by privateers from La Rochelle and sent helpless back to England Raleigh had now spent more than 40,000 pounds upon the barren colony of Virginia and finding that no one at court supported his hopes in that direction he began to withdraw a little from a contest in which he was so heavily handicapped in the next chapter we shall touch upon the modification of his American policy he had failed hitherto and yet in failing he had already secured for his own name the highest place in the early history of colonial America we now reach that famous incident in English history over which every biographer of Raleigh is tempted to linger the ruin of Philip's spheric isima 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 in the chronicles of the world but in which Raleigh's part was not a foremost one we possess no letter of 1588 in which he refers to the fight on March the 31st every one of the nine commissioners who met to consider the best means of resisting invasion in the same body of men sat two of Raleigh's captains Gwenville and Ralph Lane as well as his old opponent Lord Gray three months before this valley had reported to the Queen on the state of the counties under his charge and his counsel on the subject have been taken that he was profoundly excited that this crisis in English affairs is proved by the many illusions he makes to the Armada in the history of the world it is on the whole surprising that he was not called to take a more prominent part in the event it is believed that he was in Ireland when the storm actually broke that he hastened into the west of England to raise levies of Cornish and Devonian miners and that he then proceeded to Portland of which among his many officers he was now governor in order that he might revise and complete the defenses 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 the 23rd there's a very early tradition that his advice was asked by the Admiral Howard of Effingham on the question whether it would be wise to try to board the Spanish galleons the Admiral thought not but was almost over persuaded by younger men eager for distinction when rally came to his aid with counsel that tallied with the Admiral's judgment in the history of the world rally remarks quote to clap ships together without any consideration belongs rather to a madman than to a man of war by such an ignorant bravery was Peter Stodds he lost at the Azores when he fought against the Marquis of Santa Cruz in like 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 word that found fault with his demeanor the Spaniards had an army aboard them and he had none they had more ships than he had and a higher building and charging so that had he entangled himself with those great and powerful vessels he had greatly endangered this kingdom of England unquote rally's impression of the whole comedy of the amada is summed up in an admirable sentence in his report of the fight in the Azores to which the reader must hear merely be referred his ship was one of those which pursued the numbering Spanish galleons furthest in their wild flight towards the Danish waters he was back in England however in time to receive orders on August the 28th to prepare a fleet for Ireland whether that fleet ever started or no is doubtful and the latest incident of rally's connection with the amada is that on September the 5th 1588 he and Sir Francis Drake received an equal number of wealthy Spanish prisoners whose ransoms were to be the reward of Drake's and rally's achievements more important to the latter was the fact that his skill in naval tactics and his genius for rapid action had very favorably impressed the Lord Admiral who hence forward publicly treated him as a recognized authority in these matters end of chapter two