EATER E SIR WALTER • RALEGH • MARTIN A.S.HUME rftovwHoor tHT FREE GRACE' iDlDSt BVILD VP tfflS BRItlANNiaC EMPIRE llO A GLORIOVS AND .ENVIABLE IIEIGHtH,\mH^ , ALL HEPx DAVGHtER ILANDS ABOVT HER, .StAYVS INtHIS ,FEUCmE. MIKfON. Date Due mmr^ tHQcW <^ - , ' trct^ 4S&0^^ Cornell University Library DA 86.22.R16H92 Sir Walter Ralegh, the British dominion 3 1924 027 900 632 Cornell University Library rv»j< The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027900632 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN Edited by H. F. WILSON, M.A. Barrister-at-Lazu Late Felltnv of Trinity College^ Cambridge DEDICATED BY SPECIAL PERMISSION TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN 1. SIR WALTER RALEGH ; the British Dominion of the West. By MARTIN A. S. Hume. 2. SIR THOMAS MAITLAND ; the Masters of the Mediterranean. By Walter Frewen Lord. 3. JOHN CABOT AND HIS SONS ; the Discovery of North America. By C. RAYMOND Beazley, M.A. 4. LORD CLIVE; the Foundation of British Rule in India. By Sir A. J. Arbuthnot, K.C.S.I., CLE. 5. EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD ; the Coloni- sation of South Australia and New Zealand. By R. Garnett, C.B., LL.D. 6. RAJAH BROOKE ; the Englishman as Ruler of an Eastern State. By Sir Spenser St John, G. C. M. G. 7. ADMIRAL PHILIP ; the Founding of New South Wales. By Louis Becke and Walter Jeffrey. 8. SIR STAMFORD RAFFLES; England in the Far East. By the Editor. Builders of Greater Britain SIR WALTER RALEGH SIR WALTER RALEGH THE BRITISH DOMINION OF THE WEST MARTIN A. S. HUME AUTHOR OF THE COURTSHIPS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH THE YEAR AFTER THE ARMADA EDITOR OF THE SPANISH STATE PAPERS OF ELIZABETH With Photogravure Frontispiece and Maps NEW YORK LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE 1897 K A. 1 o^iWh Copyright by T. Fisher Unwin, 1897, for Great Britain and the United States of America ' TO HER WHO IS THE FIRST, AND MAY ALONE BE JUSTLY CALLED THE EMPRESS OF THE BRETANES.' Sir Walter Ralegh. PREFACE It is fitting that a series relating the lives of those who have reared the stately fabric of our Colonial Empire should begin with the story of the man who laid the foundation stone of it. The prescient genius of Sir Walter Ralegh first conceived the project of a Greater England across the seas, which should welcome the surplus population of the mother country to industry and plenty, and make of England the great mart for the products of its virgin soil. Others before him had dreamed of North- West passages to tap the trade of the teeming East; of gold, and gems, and sudden riches, to be grasped in far-ofF lands; but to Ralegh and his brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert belongs the more enduring honour of a nobler ideal — the planting in savage lands of English-speaking nations, ruled by English laws, enjoying English X PREFACE liberties, and united by links of kinship, and allegiance to the English crown. To them, more than to any other men, is it due that for all time to come the mighty continent of North America will share with England the cherished traditions and the virile speech of the race to which Ralegh belonged. To measure the greatness of the world's debt to him it will suffice to compare the sloth and poverty of the Southern part of the continent with the riches and activity of the North. Through all the stirring career of Ralegh, splendid favourite, successful soldier, statesman, poet, historian, philosopher, chemist, admiral, explorer and privateer, there ran, like a golden thread, shining brightly amid the dross that surrounded it, the inextinguishable resolve that the arrogant claim of the Philips to the exclusive possession of the western world, by virtue of a Pope's bull, should be resisted to the death; and that in order to make this resistance effective England must be supreme upon the sea. To this ruling principle he devoted his talents, his fortune and his life; he was the apostle and the martyr of a British Colonial PREFACE xi Empire; and this is the phase of his multi- tudinous activities in which the present short biography is intended to regard him. His commanding personality, and the strange vicissitudes of his fortune, from the first im- pressed the imagination of his countrymen; and his life has been written so often, and so thoroughly, that there is little fresh material to reward the research of more recent inquirers. In 1733, before the modern methods of his- torical investigation were possible, Oldys, with marvellous industry, collected every fact then obtainable respecting the life of his hero; much of his information being derived from sources not now easily accessible. In 1867 Mr Edwards, with equal thoroughness and erudi- tion, ransacked State - archives, official docu- ments and private muniment rooms, for such information as they contained on the subject. To Oldys's Life of Ralegh, in the eleventh edition of the History of the World, and to Edwards's Life and Letters of Ralegh all sub- sequent biographers must perforce be in- debted, either for direct information or for the indication of original lines of research. To a lesser degree acknowledgment is due to xii PREFACE the works of Southey, Tytler, Sir Robert Schomburgk, Mr Stebbing, and especially to Dr S. R. Gardiner. But however well gleaned a field may be, there is always some stray grain still to be gathered; and another Life of Ralegh would hardly be justifiable, unless it contained some new contribution, however humble, to the knowledge of the subject; some fresh fact, however small, which should aid us in arriving at a just judgment upon the extraordinary, and sometimes problematical, circumstances of Ralegh's career. It has always been known that he was deliberately sacrificed to the importunities of the Spanish Ambassador, Gondomar, and many reasons have been suggested for the Spaniard's apparent ani- mosity. Dr Gardiner has to some extent lifted the veil, but the exact process and reasons of Ralegh's ruin by Gondomar have hitherto never been set forth in Gondomar's own words. It will be seen in the course of the present volume that it was no private revenge, it was with no desire to inflict punishment for the injury actually done on the last Guiana voyage, that led Gondomar to PREFACE xiii hound Ralegh to death, for he was practically condemned before he sailed, but to serve as an object lesson to England that all South America, at least, belonged to Spain. The reason why the weak King allowed Gondomar to hector him into judicially murdering his most distinguished subject is also clearly seen in the Spanish papers utilised for the present volume, to have been a pusillanimous desire to curry favour with Spain at any cost, and to sell Ralegh's head at as high a price as he could get for it. ■ Gondomar's letters at Simancas and in the Palace Library at Madrid place this beyond doubt, and furnish also several side lights which help to elucidate other disputable points. They have likewise afForded me an opportunity of including in the present work two important letters from Ralegh to Lord Carew which are not contained in Mr Edwards's collection. MARTIN A. S. HUME. London, June 1897. CONTENTS C HAPTER I PAGE Development of England's Maritime Power — Ancestry and Parentage of Ralegh, ..... i CHAPTER II Education and Early Years — First Projects for Colonising North America — Ralegh in Ireland, . . .14 CHAPTER III Court Favour — Power and Fortune — Ralegh's Communica- tions with the Spaniards, • . . .31 CHAPTER IV Sir Humphrey Gilbert and the Colonisation of North America — Ralegh's Patent for the Planting of Virginia — The First Voyage thither — The Settlement at Wokoken, . . . . ■ -53 CHAPTER V The Settlement of Virginia — Tobacco — The Second Colony OF Virginia — The Armada — Abandonment of the Virginian Settlers, . . . . • 17 XV . CONTENTS CHAPTER VI PAGE Expedition TO Lisbon — Edwakd Spenser and the Faerie ^xjeen — Ralegh as a Poet — Prose Writings, . .98 CHAPTER VII The Fight of the * Revenge* — Ralegh's Privateering Ex- pedition — His Disgrace and Imprisonment — The Great Carrack — Ralegh as a Parliament Man, . . 117 CHAPTER VIII Guiana — The First Expedition thither, . . . 140 CHAPTER IX Frustrated Plans for the Settlement of Guiana — Spanish Activity in the Region — Captain Kemys*s Voyage to Guiana, 1596 — Ralegh at the Sacking of Cadiz, . 169 CHAPTER X The Expedition to the Azores under Essex — Disgrace of Essex — Ralegh's Action with Regard to Essex — Robert Cecil and Essex — Execution of Essex — Cecil and Ralegh, ....... 200 CHAPTER XI The Succession to the Crown — The Infanta's Claim — Cecil, Henry Howard and James VI. — Ralegh marked out for Destruction — Death of the (^ueen — Disgrace of Ralegh — Arrest of Cobham and Ralegh — Accused of Treason, . . . . . . .230 CONTENTS CHAPTER XII Ralegh's Trial at Winchester — Condemned to Death — His Prayers for Life— Reprieve — In the Tower, . 265 CHAPTER XIII Prayers for Pardon — Life in the Tower — The Sherborne Estate given to Carew — Prince Henry and ^ueen Anne — The * History of the World ' — New Plans for an Ex- pedition to Guiana — Release from the Tower, . 285 CHAPTER XIV Diego Sarmiento De Acuna, Count de Gondomar — James's Promise to Him, on Hand, Faith and Word — Political Intrigues at Court — The French and Spanish Parties — Fitting out the Guiana Expedition — Sailing OF THE Expedition — Lanzarote, Canary and Gomera — Gondomar's Efforts against Ralegh, . . . 5°9 CHAPTER XV Ralegh in Guiana — The River Expedition — Attack on -San Thome — Death of Young Walter Ralegh — Failure and Return of the River Expedition — Gondomar claims the Fulfilment of the King's Promise — His Conversations WITH James, . . . . . . 341 CHAPTER XVI Gondomar and the King — Ralegh arrested on His arrival AT Plymouth— His Letters to Carew, . . ■ 3^5 CONTENTS CHAPTER XVII PAGE Ralegh's Journey to London — Stukeley — Attempt to Escape — Pretended Madness at Salisbury — Another Attempt to Escape — Betrayed by Stukeley — Proceed- ings AGAINST Ralegh — Attempts to entrap Him — Mock Trial at Westminster before the Council — Condemned to Death — Last Interview with His Wife — On the Scaffold in Old Palace Yard, . . , 395 LIST OF PLATES Portrait of Ralegh in His Silver Armour, as Captain of the Guard, from Vertue's En- graving OF A Contemporary Picture at Knole, ..... Frontispiece Sketch Map, showing the Position of the First English Settlements in North America, . Facing page 68 Sketch Map of Guiana, illustrating Ralegh's Two Voyages, . ' . . Facing page 326 Sir Walter Ralegh CHAPTER I DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLAND'S MARITIME POWER — ANCESTRY AND PARENTAGE OF RALEGH The most striking development of national thought in modern times has been the almost sudden quicken- ing of the imperial instincts of our race. There has been little excitement or shouting about it ; but the stream of conviction flows swiftly, and with ever- growing potency, that the stately confederacy of nations we call the British Empire has a future- before it even more splendid than its glowing past, and that all its citizens from the highest to the . humblest may with reason hold their heads higher as they claim their share in the glory of theii common birthright. It was not always so. For many a long year we were so busy garnering the results of empire that we had almost lost sight of the means of retaining it. Over-prosperity, per- chance, had softened our muscles and thickened our brains, and we were content for a time to continue A 2 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN to reap without sowing ; but the national awakening came in good season^ and has braced us with the knowledge that the responsibilities of empire must be boldly faced if the pride of empire is to be preserved. We know now that Britain must be undisputed mistress of the seas, or meekly take a secondary place amongst the nations ; and there is no divided counsel, no wavering faith amongst us as to the fulfilment of our duty. Our insular position has intermittently brought the fact home to us ever since we were a united nation. Every hundred years or so, the conviction grows irresistibly great, and leads to effective action ; but only if the material elements of effective action have been evolved during the period of quiescence. If during that period wealth has not increased, science has not advanced, practical seamanship has not improved, or the physical development of the race has decayed, then no amount of popular enthusiasm, however dire the need, will conjure up a great navy as by the touch of a magician's wand. Great navies, like great empires, are things of slow growth, depending for their very being upon previously existing material, and experienced knowledge. The great Portuguese African and American possessions sprang from the patiently accumulated elements, material and scientific, gathered at the instance of one enlightened prince from all quarters of the known world, through a long SIR WALTER RALEGH 3 series of years. Seamen, navigators, cosmographers, astronomers, mathematicians and naval architects were all bribed to surrender their observation or their learning to the man who slowly built up a navy with the deliberate intention of founding a colonial empire for his country. But valuable as may have been the services rendered to Prince Henry's great plans by the wise men from afar, the ultimate success of his efforts, and of the subsequent triumphs of Columbus, depended mainly upon the existence of a school of fearless mariners who Jcnew the sea and loved it, and the invention of the caravel, a form of craft, finer in line, handier in working, and swifter in pace than had ever been seen before. The great naval renaissance in England, during the reign of Elizabeth, sprang from exactly similar circumstances. During the lifetime of the great Queen the sceptre of the seas passed from the hands of Spain into the powerful grasp which has held it ever since, and the dramatic completeness of the transference is rightly looked upon as one of the greatest marvels of that virile age. But wonderful as it seems when regarded from a distance, the causes are perfectly clear. The Queen personally did but little for it, except in so far that her national policy gave all Englishmen pride and faith in their country, and that she honoured success when it came. The Spanish Armada was not beaten by fighting 4 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN but by not fighting. It was the fact that they could not get at the swift, handy craft of the Enghsh which turned the proud confidence of the Spaniards into dismay and panic. It was the superior build of the English ships, and the greater efficiency of the English seamen, which gave Spain her deathblow upon the seas ; and these circumstances arose from causes long anterior to the date of the armada itself. The foundation was laid by Henry VIII. He knew that Columbus had offered to discover the new world for England,, and had been repulsed by the cautious Henry VII. He knew that the Cabots had failed to reach Cathay by the west, and that if he was to secure his share of the spoils of the Indies — for it was no question of a colonial empire for England yet — he must have larger and stronger ships. He was rich, clever, and ambitious, and set about improving his navy. The royal dockyards were refitted : navigators, shipbuilders and cannon founders were brought from the English west country, from Genoa and from Portugal ; and before he died he had the satisfaction of knowing that some of the finest ships that sailed the seas flew the flag of St George. An eye-witness of the attempt of Francis I. with his fleet of three hundred sail to attack the Isle of Wight in 1544 echoes the impartial foreign opinion of Henry's navy at the time. The English had only sixty ships to five times that number of SIR WALTER RALEGH 5 Frenchmen. But amongst them were the Great Harry and Mary Rose, of nearly a thousand tons burden each, and there were many of those wonder- ful vessels ' such as had never been seen before which would work to windward with sails trimmed fore and aft ' ; invented by * Mr Fletcher of Rye ' : and the English were so little dismayed, that great Harry, the King, had himself come down to see the victory of his beloved fleet. The watchword on board was ' God save the King,' and the answer was .' Long to reign over us.' ' You may believe me,' says the eye-witness, ' that one English ship was worth more than any five Frenchmen. It was truly a pleasant sight to see them anchored all in a line.' The French did not enjoy the sight so much as the onlooker, and decided to leave great Harry's ships alone. Then a period of quiescence came, and England's navy was allowed to rot in harbour. Somerset and Northumberland were too rapacious, Mary too poor, to spend money on the fleet ; and in 1555 the Council was obliged to confess to King Philip that the English navy was unfit to put to sea. Even he saw that, at all costs, this must be remedied, and wrote to them that — 'England's chief defence depends upon its navy being always in good order to protect the kingdom against aggression. The ships must not only be fit for sea, but instantly available.' 6 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN When Elizabeth came to the throne, the merchant navy of England engaged in lawful commerce amounted to no more than 50,000 tons, and the royal navy in commission consisted only of seven cruisers, the largest 120 tons, and eight armed merchant brigs. The navy was a mere skeleton ; but the material was being formed in this period of depression from which England's future maritime greatness was to be built. The constant wars between Charles V. and the French kings had caused the English Channel to swarm with Spanish, Flemish and French privateers. Some bore letters of marque, some were mere pirates, but whatever they were, the sight of their easy gains and their adventurous lives fired the young English west country seamen, into whose ports they came. There were no sailors better than the Cornish and Devon- shire men. Their voyages were the longest and roughest ; for Falmouth, Dartmouth, Exmouth, Ply- mouth, Bideford and Bristol well nigh monopolised the over-sea traffic, excepting that with France and Flanders. The abolition of the fasts of the Church had immensely decreased the demand for fish, for the consumption of anything but flesh was looked upon almost as a sign of Papistry, and it was an easy step for the English sailors to take up such a profitable trade as piracy in exchange for fishery. Vessels of all sorts passed into the business ; younger sons of county families, and even sober merchants, SIR WALTER RALEGH 7 were attracted by the gains ; and soon anarchy reigned on the seas. The race was with the swift, the battle with the strong ; and only the swiftest and the strongest survived. The stauncher, the handier, the quicker a vessel was, the greater was its chance of success,' the bolder, and more hardy the men, the greater was their gain ; and out of this welter there arose such a race of seamen and shipbuilders as the world had never seen before. In the struggle for the survival of the fittest, Devonshire and Cornwall carried ofF the victory ; and when the supreme effort had to be made, which was to establish the sea power of England for good and for all, the stout hearts, the keen eyes, the matured experience of these scourges of the sea, were ready to fight their country's battle. The national policy of Elizabeth in adopting the reformed faith, and keeping Spain at arm's length, her aid of the revolting Netherlands, and of the Huguenots in France, had naturally led to a recrud- escence of the persecution of English Protestants who fell into the hands of the Spaniards. The English sailors were of course those who suffered most, and their kinsmen at home at Plymouth, Falmouth, or Exmouth, gradually concentrated most of their attacks upon Spanish shipping. There were few country gentlemen on the Devonshire coast who had not a swift cutter or two at sea, on the look out for plunder or revenge ; and the talk at the firesides 8 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN of cottage and manor house alike, was all of daring and profitable adventure, and of the improvement of shipbuilding which made it possible. These must have been the topics which from his earliest child- hood filled the eager ears of young Walter Ralegh, His father, Walter Ralegh of Fardell, had been thrice married, and had a large family — four sons and two daughters, Walter being the second son by the third wife, Katharine Champernoun, widow of Otho Gilbert. Wonder has been expressed by Ralegh's biographers as to how, or when, he acquired his skill in maritime affairs, since he is not known to have had much practical experience in seamanship before he appeared as a naval commander of accepted authority. But, apart from the marvellous versatility, which enabled him, as one of his contemporaries said, to do each thing as if he had been born especially for it, love of the sea, and all that belonged to it, must have been in his very blood. Champernouns, Gilberts, Gren- villes and Carews — men whose names ring across the ages like a trumpet-blast in the ears of English- men to this day — were all his kinsmen. His mother's cousin had been that Sir Peter Carew, ' the prettiest man, and the finest seaman in England,' who had commanded the Mary Rose, and was drowned in her when she capsized off the Spit at the time of Francis I.'s attempt on the Isle of Wight. Sir Arthur Cham- pernoun, his mother's brother, was the Vice-Admiral SIR WALTER RALEGH . 9 of the west country, in command at Plymouth ; and his Champernoun cousins were, almost to a man, hardy sea-rovers, gentlemen of long lineage and noble blood, sailing their own ships, carrying their lives 'in their hands, now searching for the north- west passage to Cathay, now swooping down and plundering Spanish settlements on the American coast, or carrying thither cargoes of negroes from Guinea for legitimate trade, now standing off the Azores to await the coming of the homeward bound silver fleet with King Philip's doubloons on board. There was short shrift for them, they knew, if they were beaten, but they took care usually not to be beaten. The Queen repudiated them and called them hard names in public ; but she was quite willing that they should continue to weaken and terrify her enemy, and enrich herself, so long as no responsibility rested upon her. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was Ralegh's half- brother, many years older than himself, and to him, perhaps, rather than to his greater brother, should be given the credit for the first projecting of an England over the sea ; though in his case, as will be told, the project was never effected, as it was by Ralegh. Of the youth of few Englishmen of the first rank is so little known as that of Ralegh. Such stray hints as exist are mostly scattered by way of illustration in his own writings, and have been carefully pieced together by successive biographers. But, withal, the result is almost a complete blank lo BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN until he emerges into the full clearness of day, already an acknowledged man of light and leading. The family of Ralegh was an ancient one, although before the date of Walter's birth it had become some- what impoverished. Walter Ralegh, the father, had ceased to live at his picturesque manor house of Fardell, on the borders of Dartmoor, two miles from Ivybridge, aud occupied a solitary thatched farmhouse called Hayes, standing — as it still does — in a dip on the edge of the downs, about two miles through the wood from Budleigh Salterton Bay. The house, of which the elder Walter Ralegh had only the remainder of a lease, cannot have changed very much since the boyhood of the hero. It can never have been a grand or imposing residence for so large a family as that of its owner. The country gentry had lived like toads under a harrow for the last three reigns, except those few who had succeeded in grabbing some of the Church lands ; and young Walter" Ralegh's earliest days must have been far from opulent. All that is known of his father is that he was a pronounced Prostestant. In the Catholic ' Rising in the West,' his religious opinions nearly caused a premature end to his career. It was early in 1549 that, when he was on his way from Hayes to Exeter, he overtook an old woman telling her beads. Consider- ing that the whole country was in a religious ferment, and that the city of Exeter itself was surrounded SIR WALTER RALEGH ii by the rebels, it argues more zeal than discretion on the part of Walter Ralegh that he took the • old woman to task for illegally pursuing her Popish practices. She roused the congregation of the church of Clyst St Mary, crying that the gentleman had threatened to burn their houses over their heads, unless they would leave their beads, and give over holy bread and holy water. The infuriated rustics barricaded Clyst Bridge towards Exeter, and sent a body in pursuit of Ralegh. He took refuge from them in a wayside chapel, 'whence he was rescued by some mariners of Exmouth.' No sooner had he escaped from his assailants than he was met and captured by another band who carried him to St Sidwell's, where they imprisoned him in the church tower until the turmoil was over, and the ' Rising in the West ' had been crushed at the bloody battle of Clyst Heath. It is a fact which appears to have been generally overlooked, that amongst Lord Grey's force, which so ruthlessly put down the rebellion, was a considerable number of Spanish mercenaries. This may to some extent, perhaps, have deepened the feeling of hatred which the people of Devonshire afterwards showed towards the Spaniards. In any case, the marriage of Queen Mary to a Spanish prince was nowhere more un- popular than in the west country, although the Catholics there were in a majority. On the pre- mature outbreak and collapse of Wyatt's rising, the 12 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN Carews and other heads of revolt in Devonshire saw the game was lost ; and Sir Peter Carew was carried by Walter Ralegh's ship to France, where, during the rest of Mary's reign, he was chief of the little band of English exiles who sullenly refused to be reconciled to their Spanish king. Foxe, in his Acts and Monuments, tells a story of Katharine Champernoun, our Ralegh's mother, which proves that she, too, as became her ancestry, was as strong a Protestant as her husband. In the time of the Marian persecution, a poor woman, afterwards martyred at the stake, was confined for her faith in Exeter Castle. Her name was Agnes Prest ; she was an illiterate, but steadfastly firm, woman, whose heroic adherence to her principles, in the face of great suffering, aroused the admiration of those who, like her, held to the reformed religion. To visit and comfort her was a brave deed, but Sir Walter Ralegh's mother did it. 'There resorted to her,' says Foxe, ' the wife of Walter Ralegh — a woman of noble wit and of good and godly opinions, who coming to the prison and talking with her, she said the Creed to the gentlewoman. When she came to the article " He ascended" there she stayed, and bade the gentlewoman to seek His blessed body in Heaven, not on earth ; and said that God dwelleth not in temples made with hands.' And, says Foxe, when Mrs Ralegh 'came home to her husband, she declared to him that in her life she SIR WALTER RALEGH 13 never heard any woman of such simplicity to see, to talk so godly and so earnestly ; insomuch that if God were not with her she could not speak such things. I was not able to answer her — I, who can read, and she cannot.' CHAPTER II EDUCATION AND EARLY YEARS FIRST PROJECTS FOR COLONISING NORTH AMERICA RALEGH IN IRELAND These were the conditions and circumstances which surrounded the youth of Ralegh. We can only con- jecture in the light of his after life the influence they exerted on his character. The younger son of an im- poverished family of great descent, with all his kinsmen engaged more or less in the search for wealth and adventure on the sea, it is hardly wonderful that in after years the lustre of his genius should have been blurred by greed, arrogance and unscrupulousness. He was the child of his age, the same age that pro- duced Bacon ; when heroism and baseness went hand in hand ; when that sweet persuasive Elizabethan English, which Ralegh managed in so masterly a fashion, could clothe wicked deeds with splendid sophistry, and black treachery could be hidden under fervent appeals to the God of faith and righteousness. England had burst into a new life during the early H SIR WALTER RALEGH 15 years of Ralegh's boyhood. The conviction of grow- ing national potency was running riot through the veins of Englishmen. It was a period of youth : ignorance had burst its bonds, and a fresh era of en- lightenment and intellectual beauty was dazzling men's eyes. New worlds, enclosing untold wealth, unheard- of wonders, were being discovered by the bold and adventurous ; the limits of the universe, moral and material, were extending in the sight of men ; and Englishmen for the first time in their history realised the fact that to their country, to their race, belonged the coming heritage of universal greatness. But youth and ambition are ever arrogant and unscrupulous, and the Elizabethan age, with its noble ideals, its splendid promises, its great ambitions, its exuberance and its force, was a young era, and bore upon it the defects as well as the advantages of youth. Of its virtues, as well as its vices, Ralegh may be taken as the fairest prototype ; and any attempt to apologise for, or to minimise the more questionable side of his character, would lead to the presentation of an imperfect picture of the man, and the period which he illustrated. Ralegh was, it is believed, born in 1552, and until his sixteenth year lived upon the Devonshire coast, either at the farmhouse at Hayes, or at a house in the city of Exeter which is sometimes incorrectly claimed for his birthplace. He was a great reader, and must have listened many times to home-coming sailors telling thrilling stories of their adventures on sea and land, of i6 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN their sufferings at the hands of the Inquisition, of the wonders of far-off countries, and of the boundless wealth of gold and gems to be won in the Indies by the bold and fortunate. Even thus young, he must have been eager for action. We are told by Anthony a Wood that he entered as a Commoner at Oriel, Oxford, in 1568, and stayed there for three years, looked upon 'as the ornament of the juniors ; and was worthily esteemed a proficient in oratory and philosophy.' This last may well have been true, but although his name appears as an undergraduate in the Oxford Register in 1572, he could not have remained at the University during the interval, and he certainly did not take a degree. The first war of religion was raging in France, and Cardinal Chatillon, Coligny's brother, was at Elizabeth's court praying for aid and countenance for the Huguenots. The Queen, as usual, was diplomatic, and would not openly pledge herself, but was quite willing that her subjects should help the cause of Protestantism on their own responsibility. Gawen Champernoun, Ralegh's first cousin, had married Gabrielle de Montgomeri, the daughter of that Anglo-French Huguenot leader who had had the mischance to kill the King, Henry II., at the tourney to celebrate the peace of Chateau Cambresis. The connection, no doubt, deeply interested the family in the war, and young Ralegh must have left Oxford early in 1569, to join the forces of the SIR WALTER RALEGH 17 Huguenots under Conde ; for in the History of the World he incidentally states that he was present at the battle of Jarnac, where Conde was slain, on the 13th March in that year. Whether he continued in France thenceforward until the autumn is un- certain, but his cousin, Gawen Champernoun, raised a body of one hundred western gentlemen later in the year to go to the aid of the Huguenots. They arrived two days after the disastrous battle of Montoncourt ; but according to Ralegh's own state- ment he was present at the battle and retreat itself, so that it is probable that he remained with the Huguenots in the interval. Thenceforward, for five years and a half, nothing is known of him, except that he was engaged in the civil war in France. The experience was doubtless a valuable one in every way. His remarks upon tactics in the History of the World and in his other writings prove that his marvellously receptive mind had assimilated and stored up the most profound lessons of military, as well as naval, strategy ; and whatever else the long and cruel campaigns in France may have taught him, he certainly emerged from them an accomplished soldier at the age of twenty-three. But to be a soldier alone did not satisfy his multitudinous mind. Even whilst in France he must have kept his name on the books of his university ; perhaps with the thought of some day returning and taking his degree. This he did not do, but in February 1575 entered as a member B 1 8 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN of the Middle Temple, having previously obtained admission into Lyon's Inn. When on his trial for treason in 1603, he solemnly protested that he had never read a word of law in his life. This may have been true, although neither on this, or any other occasion, is it safe to take his word with absolute literalness ; for many young men entered the Inns for fashion's sake, as they did in after times, and he may well have become a member of Middle Temple in order to be near the Court, and to have an ostensible career. His brother, Humphrey Gilbert, had in 1572 commanded the English contingent in the service of the States at Flushing, and before Ter Goes, and Ralegh would appear to have served for a short time in the year 1577 or 1578 in the same service under Sir John Norris ; but it cannot have been much more than a flying visit, for during a portion of 1577 he is known to have been in London, leading — if Aubrey is to be believed — a somewhat free and riotous life about the Court, apparently with a country retreat at Islington. Nothing is known of his means, but even already he must have moved in good society, to which, moreover, his relationship to the Champernouns and Gilbert would be a passport. For instance, in 1580, he had a quarrel with Sir Thomas Perrot, and both combatants were lodged in the Fleet for six days for brawling. He must also have managed at this time to fasten himself somehow upon the Earl of Leicester — probably he wore his SIR WALTER RALEGH 19 colours, for hundreds of aspiring gentlemen nominally entered the household of the favourite, in order to obtain an introduction into the Court, and the support in need of a powerful protector. Thus far Ralegh's life is mostly dim and conjectural, but he soon emerges into the full light of day. In November 1572, Humphrey Gilbert had re- turned v^ith his men secretly from Holland, and after seeing the Queen, was told to go through the pretence of arriving publicly, but as if afraid to approach the Court until he had obtained her Majesty's pardon for helping the States without her leave. Her responsibility was thus saved, whilst her end was served. Gilbert was already a notable man on land and sea ; and it was fitting that some reward should be given to' him. In March 1574, accord- ingly, he joined with his cousin Sir Richard Grenville, Sir George Peckham, Captain Carlile, and others, in a petition to the Queen begging her ' To allow of an enterprise by them conceived ; and with the help of God under the protection of Her Majesty's most princely name and goodness, at their own charges and adventure, to be performed, for discovery gf sundry rich and unknown lands, fatally, and it seemeth by God's providence, reserved for England, and for the honour of Her Majesty.' They assure the Queen that they have means easily to carry out their project, and that the profits will be large. Here we have the first practical suggestion for an English 20 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN colonial empire. It is no longer an expedition for trade, or gold, or negroes, but a proposal to take possession of lands — 'by God's providence reserved for England.' The matter was referred to a com- mittee of the Council, w^ho wrere at length persuaded by Carlile that 'the northern part of America was inhabited by a savage people of a mild and tractable disposition, and of all other unfrequented places the only most fittest and most commodious for us to intermeddle withal.' Ten years before, Captain Ribaut of Dieppe had sailed with a commission from Coligny, the Huguenot leader, to take possession of Florida, whether in the name of England or France is uncertain, but the Spanish admiral, Menendez de Avila, had landed and hanged every man of them, fastening upon the breast of each a placard, setting forth that they had not been hanged because they were Frenchmen, but because they were pirates. The French had retorted later by land- ing in the same place and hanging all the Spaniards they found there ; ' not because they were Spaniards, but because they were murderers.' Thenceforward no further attempt had been made to settle any part of the continent north of the point of Florida, although the Biscay smacks were already finding their way to the rich fishing grounds ofF New- foundland ; and the theoretical claim of the Spaniards to the whole of the American continent had never been relaxed by them, nor admitted by the English. SIR WALTER RALEGH 21 In Gilbert's patent, therefore, which was granted in June 1578, he was authorised to discover and take possession, in the name of England, of ' any remote, barbarous and heathen lands not possessed by any christian prince or people.' With Humphrey Gilbert in this enterprise Ralegh was associated. By the 23rd September of the same year Gilbert had gathered in Dartmouth ready to sail, eleven vessels victualled for a year, 'and furnished with five hundred choice soldiers and sailors.' But misfortune dogged the enterprise from the first. The Spanish ambassador looked on with jealous eyes, and tried his hardest to obstruct the expedition, which was to be piloted by Simon Fernandez, one of the best of the King of Spain's pilots, who had been drawn away from his service by Walsingham ; and an Englishman in Spanish pay accompanied the expedition, unknown to Gilbert, in order if possible to frustrate its objects. Just as the expedition was about to sail it was ordered to delay its departure until some question with regard to the capture of a Spanish ship was settled ; but it put to sea all the same, and Ralegh went with it on the Falcon as captain. Young Knollys, the son of the Queen's cousin Sir Francis, who owned -some of the ships, began to squabble with Gilbert before the contrary winds allowed them to sail, insulted him at table, flouted his knighthood, and otherwise misbehaved himself. Whilst the expedition was beating about 22 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN in the Bay of Biscay, Knollys deserted with all the men he could prevail upon to follow him, and went his own way. Then Gilbert had an encounter with some Spaniards, in which he lost a ship ; and Ralegh was in great danger, many of his company being slain. Head winds at last drove them all back to Plymouth in November, where Ralegh, with the rest of Gilbert's faithfiil oiKcers, laid a de- position before the Mayor against Knollys for his desertion. By the summer of 1579 Gilbert was again roving in the Channel, on the look-out for plunder, when news came that James Fitzmaurice, the Earl of Desmond's brother, had started with a Spanish- Papal expedition to land in Ireland, and Gilbert was ordered to capture him at sea, if possible. He failed ; but in revenge he swooped down upon the coast of Spain, in Galfcia, sacked a hermitage, and committed other damage, and then returned to England. Whether Ralegh was with him on this raid is uncertain, but most probably he was, for we hear no more of him until the summer of the following year, 1580, when, for the first time, he received the Queen's Commission, as captain of one hundred foot soldiers, raised to fight the Desmond rebels in Munster. Gilbert had been President of Munster in 1569-70, during another attempt at a rising, which, by the means of the most merciless severity, he had suppressed in two months. His SIR WALTER RALEGH 23 methods were a little too brutal, even for Elizabeth, and he was recalled ; but, as we shall see, his half- brother, Ralegh, fully approved of his way of deal- ing with the Irish. Ralegh's pay, as captain, was four shillings a day, 'not leaving him food and raiment,' and the work was hard and little to his taste, for he was ambitious for a larger field. Upon the Irish he had no mercy, and made no pretence of winning by any other means than fear. The Viceroy, Lord Grey of Wilton, was as severe as his young captain ; but Ralegh's im- mediate superior, the Earl of Ormond, Deputy of Munster, an Irishman himself, was inclined to ques- tion the wisdom or justice of his methods. The first public act of Ralegh in Ireland was to join Sir Warham S' Leger in trying and executing, at Cork, the unfortunate Sir James Fitzgerald, who was hanged, drawn and quartered in August 1580. Philip II. had allowed to be fitted out in the Biscay ports an expedition, nominally under the Papal flag and commanded by Italian officers, but consisting mainly of Spanish troops, to aid the Desmond insurgents in Munster. The expedition arrived ofF the coast in the middle of September, and the men were landed at Smerwick, where they entrenched themselves in a fort they called Ore. Lord Grey had assumed the Viceroyalty in September, bringing with him as his secretary the poet Spenser, who subsequently became Ralegh's 24- BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN bosom friend. Grey arrived at Smerwick with a few ships under Winter, on the 7th November. He landed his small force of about two hundred men, and some guns, and at once attacked the Papal force. After a few shots only, a parley was called. Grey feared it was a stratagem to delay matters until Desmond came up and attacked them in the rear, and refused to parley until the next day, when Alexander Bertoni, the second in command of the Spaniards, came out, to crave quarter. He grovelled at Grey's feet and prayed for life. Grey asked him under whose orders he fought, and he replied, those of the Pope, where- upon the Viceroy answered that he would not treat them as soldiers, but simply as bandits. Grey de- manded immediate unconditional surrender, and in his apology he asserts that no conditions were granted; although the besieged and contemporary Irish records assert positively that a promise was given that the lives of the men should be spared. However that may be, as soon as the surrender was effected, and the weapons of the intruders secured. Grey ordered the two oiEcers of the day. Captains Ralegh and Mackworth, to put the whole garrison to the sword. Six hundred poor wretches were slaughtered in cold blood, and only two or three superior officers were held to ransom. Camden says that the slaughter ' was against the mind of the Lord Deputy, who shed tears at the determina- tion ' ; although, if Grey, and not Ormond, be meant, it is difficult to absolve him from the responsibility. SIR. WALTER RALEGH 25 His gifted secretary endeavours to justify the step in his View of the State of Ireland, by pointing out the difficulty of keeping so large a number of prisoners in a hostile country ; and it must not be forgotten that the rebel Desmond was only three days' march away with a force greatly superior in numbers to that of the English. In any case, it will not be just to cast blame upon Ralegh for his share of the carnage, although, with his expressed opinions as to the only way to deal with Irish disaffection, there is every reason to suppose that he approved of it. The Queen was, or pretended to be, much displeased ; and Grey's many enemies at Court, especially Leicester, made the most of it, and eventually brought about his dismissal. During the winter of 1580 Ralegh was quartered at Cork. The Desmond rebellion still lingered, and all south-western Ireland outside of the English garri- sons was honeycombed with disaffection. Ralegh, at Cork, was in the midst of it, and apparently considered that Lord Grey was not striking at the roots. The young captain was indefatigable, and gave the rebels no rest, night or day. On one occasion he rode to Dublin to urge Lord Grey and his council to allow him to capture David, Lord Barry of Barry- court, whose loyalty was more than doubtful. He was given a free hand ; but spies were everywhere, and Barry was fully informed of Ralegh's project. To anticipate the action of the English, he burnt 26 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN his own castle and wasted his lands, and one of Desmond's vassals, Fitz-Edmond, lay in ambush for Captain Ralegh at a ford he had to cross between Youghal and Cork. Ralegh's escort was a small one, only six men, most of whom had straggled when the ford was reached. Ralegh suddenly found himself face to face in a dangerous place with a relatively large force of horse and foot. Almost alone, he literally cut his way through to the opposite bank of the river, accompanied by another young Devonian named Moyle. In crossing the river the latter twice foundered in deep water, and twice his life was rescued by Ralegh at the risk of his own. Then Ralegh, standing with a pistol in one hand and his iron-shod quarter-stafF in the other, withstood the rebel force until his stragg- ling escort had crossed the stream. Shortly after- wards, Fitz-Edmond, with other rebels, was present at a parley with Ormond and Ralegh, and ventured to speak of his own bravery. Ralegh told him flatly that he was a coward, for he himself alone had withstood him and twenty men. Ormond, jealous, apparently, of the imputation upon Irish valour, challenged Fitz-Edmond, Sir John Desmond, and any four others to fight him, Ormond, Ralegh, and four men of their choosing, but the rebels, per- haps wisely, shirked the encounter, and nothing came of it. On the retirement of Ormond from the presidency of Munster in the spring of 158 1, the • SIR WALTER RALEGH 27 government of the province was entrusted jointly to Captain Ralegh, Sir William Morgan and Captain Piers. All the summer Ralegh and his little force of ninety men lay at Lismore and in the neighbourhood, scourging the rebels ceaselessly, until in the autumn he was able safely to return to his old quarters at Cork. Desperate as was Ralegh's energy in his service, how little it was to his taste is seen by a letter hi wrote at the time to the Earl of Leicester. It has already been remarked that he must have attached himself in ■ some way to Leicester's party during his stay in London. On the 25th August 1 58 1, he wrote to him : — ' I may not forgett continu- ally to put your Honour in mind of my affection unto your Lordshipe, havinge to the worlde bothe professed and protested the same. Your Honour having no use of such poore followers, hathe utterly forgotten mee. Notwithstandinge, if your Lordshipe shall please to thinke me your's, as I am, I wilbe found redy, and dare do as miche in your service as any man you may commande ; and do neither so miche dispaire of my self, but that I may be som- way able to perform as miche. I have spent some time here under the Deputy, in such poore place and charge as, were it not for that I knew him to be one of yours, I would disdayn it, as miche as to keap sheep. I will not troble your Honour with the bussiness of this lost lande, for that Sir Warram Sent- leger can best of any man deliver unto your Lordshipe z8 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN the good, the badd, the mischiefs, the means to amend, and all in all of this common-wealthe or rather common-woe.' Sir Warham St Leger had now been appointed Deputy of Munster, and with him Ralegh apparently agreed better than with Ormond or Grey. In February 1581, before Ormond retired, Ralegh had not scrupled to write to Walsingham an impeachment of his general conduct towards his rebel countrymen, Ormond was far too lenient, he thought, and his kinship with many of the disaffected Irish was a danger. ' Considering that this man having now been Lord Generall of Munstre about two yeares, theire ar at this instant a thowsand traytors more than were the first day. Would God the service of Sir Humphrey Gilbert might be rightly looked into, who, with the third part of the garrison now in Ireland, ended a rebellion not miche inferior to this in three monethes.' Ralegh, indeed, all through his career, seems to have been a diiEcult man to get on with. Like many men of vast ambitions, great vitality, and conscious genius, he was fractious until stricken with adversity, and even then his finer qualities did not appear until all seemed lost. His service in Ireland gave several instances of his daring. During his march from Lismore to Cork he learnt that Lord Barry was at Clove, with a body of several hundred rebels v/hom he determined to attack with his own eighty- eight men. He charged and put them to flight. SIR WALTER RALEGH 29 Thinking he had done with them, he went on his way with only six horsemen, the rest lagging behind, and soon overtook another band of Irishmen greatly superior in numbers to his own. They faced him and fought desperately, five out of Ralegh's six horses being killed. Ralegh being dismounted, was being overborne by numbers, when one of his men, a Yorkshireman named Nicholas Wright, coped with six of his assailants, whilst an Irishman called Patrick Fagan dealt with some more. Whilst still fighting, Ralegh noticed an Irish gentleman, Fitz-Richards, hardly pressed, and told the sturdy Wright to stand by him no longer, ' but to charge above hand and save the gentleman,' which he did. His surprise and capture of Lord Roche in his own castle, surrounded by disaffection, was also an ex- traordinary feat. Roche seems to have been merely suspected, with little reason as it turned out, but Ralegh liked to strike terror, and although Fitz- Edmond, with eight hundred men, was, he knew, lying in ambush for him, he gave him the sHp, made a night march with marvellous celerity, obtained entrance to the castle of Roche by a stratagem, and safely carried the nobleman and all his family to Cork, through a country swarming with rebels. These and similar services were by no means kept in the background. On the contrary, Ralegh was very persevering in urging them upon his superiors, and claiming rewards and consideration for them. In 30 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN writing on one occasion to the Viceroy, Lord Grey (ist May 1581), partly with this object, he made a suggestion, a few words only, upon which, curiously enough, all his future greatness was to depend. 'If it please your Honour,' he wrote, ' to give commission, there may bee another hundred soldier layd uppon the cuntre heire aboute. I hope it willbe a most honor- able matter for your Lordshipe, most acceptable to Her Majestie, and profitable to the cuntre ; and the right meane to banish all idle and fruitles galliglas and kerne, the ministers of all miseryes.' It is not quite clear what the proposal was, but from a marginal note of Lord Grey's it was evidently a plan to force the Irish to find more men and money for the English service. Whatever it was, Lord Grey resented it and snubbed his aspiring captain for a time. By the end of 158 1 the rebellion in Munster had been got under. John of Desmond had been hanged by the heels at Cork, and his head sent to London ; his brother, the earl, was a hunted fugitive, and the terrified kerns had been crushed into sullen resignation for twenty years to come. Under the circumstances it was possible to reduce the English garrisons, and Ralegh's company was disbanded, the captain himself being sent to London with dispatches in December, with j^20 for the expenses of his journey. CHAPTER III COURT FAVOUR POWER AND FORTUNE RALEGh's COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE SPANIARDS Ralegh was now about to enter upon his splendid career as a courtier and statesman. He was thirty years of age, six feet high, his hair and beard dark, bushy, and naturally curling, his eyes steel grey, and very bright, though, to judge from his portraits, rather too close together. ' He had,' says Naunton, ' a good presence in a handsome and well compacted person, a strong natural wit, and a better judgment ; with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage.' Probably his per- suasive eloquence was one of his greatest gifts, and his personal fascination must have been marvellous ; for when he chose, which in his arrogance he rarely did, he could bring even those who hated him to his side. He took no care, however, to be popular, for he always scorned and contemned the people, and on the death of Elizabeth he was probably the best hated man in Eneland. A good instance of this occurs in a 31 32 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN letter from Dudley Carleton to Chamberlain, giving an account of the condemnation of Ralegh to death for treason at Winchester in 1603. He says that the two men who first took the news to the King were Roger Ashton and a Scotsman, ' whereof one affirmed that never man spake so well in times past, nor would do in the world to come; and the other said that, whereas, when he first saw him he was so led with the common hatred that he would have gone a hundred miles to have seen him hanged, he would, ere he parted, have gone a thousand to have saved his life. In one word, never was a man so hated and so popular in so short a time.' What was true of the matured genius in the moment of his adversity was equally true of the almost unknown young captain who came with dispatches from Ireland twenty years before. His attraction was irresistible. The par- ticular plan which Ralegh had submitted to Lord Grey for increasing the English forces in Munster without expense to the Queen has been lost ; but, whatever it was, Captain Ralegh lost no time in submitting it to the Queen and Council. It appears in the ordinary course to have been sent to Lord Grey for his opinion, and the irate Viceroy lost no time in making clear that he was offended at Ralegh's pre- sumption. In his letter to Lord Burghley, dated January 1582, he says, 'Having lately received advertisement of a plott delivered by Captain Rawley unto her Majestie, for the lessening of her charges SIR WALTER RALEGH 33 here in the province of Mounster, and disposing of the garrisons according to the same ; the matter at first, indeed, offering a very plausible show^ of thrifte and commoditie, vsrhich might easily occasion Her Majestie to thincke that I have not so carefully as behoved looked into the state of the cause and the search of Her Majestie's profitt.' He then goes on to say that he and his council having considered Captain Raw^ley's plan, have decided that it is inconvenient and im- possible. ' I doubt not but you w^ill soone discerne a difference betweene the judgments of those v\^ho, with grounded experience and approved reason, look into the condition of things, and those wfho upon no grownd but seeming fancies, and affecting credit w^ith profit, frame " plotts " upon impossibilities for others to execute.' To Walsingham at the same time the Viceroy vi^rote bitterly complaining of the way he was being traduced and misrepresented at Court. Leicester was a strenuous enemy of Grey, and doubtless was not sorry to bring forward the brilliant handsome captain, just arrived from Ireland, who might be made his instrument for further discrediting the Viceroy. In any case, although no record exists of it in the Council book, and Naunton's assertion that Ralegh and Grey personally met at the Council table is incorrect, it is certain that Ralegh on this occasion first made his favourable impression on the Queen. On the recep- tion of Grey's report there would naturally be some c 34 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN sort of consultation, at which Ralegh would be present, and it is possible that Naunton may have referred to such an occasion when he wrote, * Among the second causes of Ralegh's growth . . . that variance between him and Lord Grey in his descent upon Ireland was a principal ; for it drew them both over to the Council table . . . where he had much the better in telling of his tale ; and so much that the Queen and the Lords took no small mark of the man and his parts.' Afterwards, he adds that, 'Ralegh had gotten the Queen's ear in a trice ; and she began to be taken with his elocution, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands ; and the truth is she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all.' Doubtless this is true in the main, as Naunton of course knew Ralegh well ; but it is loosely told, and in detail open to question. The pretty story about the gallant captain spread- ing his rich cloak over a plashy place for the Queen to step upon, as told by old Fuller, has no other authority than his upon which to rest, but there is nothing inherently improbable in it. It is quite in keeping with the inflated gallantry of Elizabeth's Court, and with Ralegh's character. He was deter- mined to ' get on.' His ambition we know was boundless ; he could flatter and crawl as abjectly as the basest ; he could hector as insolently as the highest. He had passed six years amongst French gentlemen, bred in the preposterous fopperies of the SIR WALTER RALEGH 35 Court which Brantome describes so well. The trick of spreading the cloak was always a favourite one amongst Spanish gallants, and, of course, was well known in France, although apparently it never was acclimatised in England. It was just the thing to confirm the vain Queen in the good impression which Ralegh's eloquence and ability had already produced upon her, and even on Fuller's authority, we may accept the story for its verisimilitude. He had not been in England many weeks before the first sign of royal favour reached him. At the end of March 1582, only three months after his arrival in London, he was appointed to the captaincy of a company in Ireland, of which the captain (Appesley) had just died ; but he was excused from commanding in person, and was empowered to ap- point a deputy. Shortly before this, indeed, he had been awarded ;^ioo on account of his Irish services, to be paid out of the funds destined for the war. This was gall and wormwood to Lord Grey, who wrote a vigorous protest to Walsingham in April. ' As for Captain Rawley's assignment to the charge of Appeslei's band, which in your letter of the 2nd April you write to be signified to me by a letter from Her Majestic. I have no letter which specifi^th any such thing to me, and for myne own part, I must bee plain : I nether like his carriage nor his company, and therefore other than by direction and command- 36 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN ment, and what his right can require, he is not to expect at my hands.' But Ralegh's foot was well in the stirrup now, and Grey's ire was powerless to hurt him. On the contrary, it is evident from a paper in the Record Office in Burghley's hand, tnat he was in October of the same year consulted as to the government of Ireland, and the suppression of the rebellion, and his recommendations were submitted to the Queen. But by this time the Queen's languishing courtiers, who kept up the eternal pretence of being in love with her, had taken fright at the new-comer's good fortune. For the last few years she had been playing fast and loose with the young Duke of Anjou, and flirting desperately with his egregious representative Jean de Simier, but she was now rid of them. Leicester's marriage, too, had been divulged to her by Simier a year before, and his position towards her in future was changed ; but still her faithful ' bell wether,' Hatton, kept the old game going, and began to get jealous of Ralegh. Sir Thomas Heneage, another old flame of the Queen's, who had now dropped out of the active list of lovers, and was Vice-Chamberlain, sided with Hatton ; and at the request of the latter handed to the Queen one morning in October (1582) a letter from his friend, just as 'Her Highness was ready to ride abroad in the great park to kill a doe.' With the letter were sent three tokens — a book, a SIR WALTER RALEGH 37 bucket and a bodkin — presumably meaning that Hatton swore that if she did not leave Ralegh (whose pet name was 'water') he would kill himself. The Queen took the letter and tokens, and smilingly said, ' There never was such another.' She seems to have been too excited and pleased to fix the bodkin in her hair, as she tried to do, and gave it and the letter back to Heneage, until she could bring her horse to a stand still. ' She read it,' says Heneage, * with blushing cheeks, and uttered many speeches (which I refer till I see you), most of them tending to the discovery of a doubtful mind, whether she should be angry or well pleased.' She decided to be pleased, and told Heneage to answer, ' that she liked your preamble so ill, as she had little list to look upon the bucket or the book. If Princes were like gods, as they should be, they would suffer no element so to abound as to breed confusion. And that Pecora Campi (Hatton) was so dear unto her, that she had bounded her banks so sure, as no water nor floods should ever overthrow them. And for better assurance unto you that you shall not fear drowning, she hath sent you a bird that, together with the rainbow, brought the good tidings that there should be no more destruction by water, . . . You should remember she was a shepherd, and then you might think how dear her sheep was unto her. . . . To conclude, water hath been more welcome than were fit for so cold a season.' Three years later, when Ralegh was in the height of his favour, the 38 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN Queen again assured Hatton that Ralegh should not supplant him. She told Heneage at Croydon that she felt Hatton's absence from her side as much as he did, * and marvelled why you came not.' Heneage let her know that there was no place for him to stay in, as his lodging had been occupied. The Queen flew into a rage at this, and would not believe that anyone should dare to occupy Hatton's rooms. She sent to make inquiries, and found that Sir Walter Ralegh was lodged in them. ' Whereupon she grew more angry with the Lord Chamberlain than I wished she had been, and used bitterness of speech against R, telling me before him that she had rather see him hanged than equal him with you, or that the world should think she did so.' Even in that age of display no man perhaps was so gorgeous in his attire as Ralegh. Jewels, big pearls especially, were beloved by him, and wonderful stories were current in the Court as to the fabulous value of the adornments he wore ; one writer assert- ing that the gems upon his shoes alone were worth 6600 gold pieces. No courtier was more gallant at tourney or masque than he, no poet readier to turn a stanza in praise of his mistress, or to devise a far-fetched compliment ; but, unlike the other butterflies that fluttered round the Queen, he was far from confining his attention to these trifles. From the first the Queen had consulted him and employed him in affairs of State ; great plans for SIR WALTER RALEGH 39 the founding of an England over the sea were already working in his brain. He could dangle at Court and bandy compliments as well as the most empty-headed - fine gentlemen ; but he gave up only five hours of the twenty-four to sleep, and spent every hour he could snatch in study. His reading must have been omnivorous, for his breadth of view, his depth of knowledge, and his profundity of thought — far in advance of his contemporaries — prove him to have been perhaps the most universally capable Englishman that ever lived — a fit contemporary of Shakspeare and Bacon. We have seen that from his first appearance before Elizabeth in January 1582, when he defended his Irish plans, honours and emoluments were showered upon him. In the beginning of the following month of February, the Queen had managed, by dint of bribes, caresses and promises, to induce the Duke of Anjou to leave England and embark for Flushing, where he was to receive the sovereignty of the revolted Flemish States. William the Silent awaited him at the landing-place, and some of the principal courtiers of Elizabeth's Court accompanied the new sovereign to his dominions. He entered the town in great pomp, with William on one side of him and Leicester on the other, followed by Hunsdon, Willoughby, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir John Norris, Ralegh, and many others. When he was crowned in Antwerp a few days afterwards, Leicester and the Englishmen were present, Leicester had 40 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN tried his hardest through Hatton to avoid the journey, for he feared that the new sovereign might detain him against his will, whilst he pursued his love-making by letter with the Queen, undis- turbed by Leicester's presence near her. So im- mediately the investure was over, whilst the rest of the company was at dinner, Leicester escaped and sailed for England, leaving most of his train behind him. It suited the Queen for the moment to dis- claim the investure of Alen^on ; and Leicester and those with him were rated as traitors and rogues for having been present at the ceremony. William the Silent understood the position ; he knew that Anjou was a helpless puppet in the Queen's hands ; and when Ralegh took leave of him he entrusted him with dispatches for Elizabeth and her Council, and bade him deliver to her this message — '■Sub umbra alarum tuarum protegimur.' In the following year the Queen granted Ralegh the use of Durham House in the Strand, conveniently near to Whitehall and one of the largest of the river- side palaces, which for many years had been used as a royal guest-house. Here he lived in splendour until the Queen's death, having, as he subsequently said, a retinue of forty persons and as many horses always maintained there. 'I well remember,' says Aubrey, 'his study, which was on a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had a prospect which is as pleasant as any in the world.' All this SIR WALTER RALEGH 41 magnificence, however, needed large revenues to keep it up, and the Queen w^as not fond of reward- ing her favourites with direct gifts of money. She had other ways of enriching them, and these she adopted in Ralegh's case. In April 1583, the Queen induced All Souls College, Oxford, to grant him two beneficial leases of some property. In the following month he received a patent to license vintners, by which he was entitled to a half of all fines inflicted and to exact a fee of j^i per annum from every wine dealer in England, There was no pretence at supervision on his part, for he leased his patent to a certain Richard Browne for seven years at ;^8oo a year. Browne was industrious in increasing the number of taverns, and was making a very good thing of it, when Ralegh claimed a larger share of the profits. This Browne refused, and Ralegh being unable to induce him to surrender his lease, he went to the length of getting his own patent revoked, and regranted for thirty-one years. He subsequently drew large revenues from it — he himself stated ;^2000 a year — but it involved him in constant trouble and litigation, for the patent was an oppressive and unpopular one, and in the case of the University towns interfered with old and powerful vested interests. In March 1584, a license was given to him to export a certain number of woollen cloths, and in subsequent years this privilege was regranted and extended. This again brought him into collision 42 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN with merchants and shippers, who innocently, or otherwise, infringed his patents. It will be seen, therefore, that even in the case of a man less rapacious and extravagant than Ralegh, there was sufficient reason for his unpopularity, on account of these patents alone. In the following year, 1586, the confiscated lands of the defeated Desmonds in Munster were to be scrambled for, and Ralegh naturally came in for the lion's share, although the actual profit to him turned out in the end to be small. The province had been harried by fire and sword to such an extent, and most of the land itself was so poor, that Hooker speaks of it thus at the time : — ' The curse of God was so great, and the land so barren, both of man and beast, that whosoever did travel from one end of Munster ... to the other, about six score miles, he should not meet man, woman or child, saving in the towns.' The problem therefore vras to repeople this wilderness, 'and the land — 600,000 acres of it — was partitioned out amongst gentlemen who undertook to plant thereon a given number of well-afFected Englishmen. It was enacted that no person was to have more than 12,000 acres, upon which eighty- six families were to be settled, but Ralegh and two nominal associates got three seigniories and a half, of 12,000 acres each, of fine fertile well-wooded land, stretching on each side of the Blackwater from Youghal. He also obtained a grant of Lismore Castle from the SIR WALTER RALEGH 43 Bishop of Lismore at a nominal rent, and possessed a manor house at Youghal. Ralegh did his best with his vast estate, settling it with Cornish and Devonshire families, and introducing in after years many improvements in tillage and management, as well as first planting potatoes, but he met with constant obstruction and trouble, causing him end- less litigation with regard to the estate. His occupa- tions were many, and he was necessarily, for the most part, absent frorri Ireland. The prohibition of exportation of timber, pipe-staves, and the like, hit him especially hard ; for he had counted much upon the export of casks from Ireland to Spain. He had many a hard battle before he could get the prohibition even partially raised. He was in constant hot water, too, with his tenants, and with the English Viceroy, Fitzwilliam, in after years ; he was swindled by his partners and representatives, and his broad acres in Ireland brought him little but bitterness and disappointment. Even a more important gift was that of the Lord Wardenship of the Stannaries, which he received on the death of the Earl of Bedford in 1585. The Stannaries Parliament of Devon and Cornish miners was held on a secluded tor overlooking Dartmoor, and here the brilliant courtier, the accomplished poet, the experienced soldier, the subtle statesman, became the Devonshire squire ; giving laws to his own people, and settling the disputes of the rough 44 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN miners, in their own broad, soft accent, which even at Court he always retained to the day of his death. To this place of dignity was shortly afterwards added that of Vice-Admiral of the West, and, finally, in 1587, he became Captain of the Queen's Guard in succession to the forlorn ' bell wether,' Lord Chancellor Hatton. The post was a valuable one, although no salary was attached to it, except the uniform of ' six yards of tawney medley at 13s. 4d. a yard, with a fur of black budge, rated at ;^io,' but it kept him near the Queen's person, and gave him opportunities for asking favours for which he probably exacted large payments from the suitors whose causes he pleaded ; as did, indeed, all persons in similar position at the time. A still greater instance of the royal favour even than this came to Ralegh about the same time as the captaincy of the guard, under circumstances which, to say the least, lay him open to the gravest suspicion. In May 1586, the priest Ballard had been sent by the English Catholics to the Spanish ambassador in Paris, Mendoza, with a proposal for the miirder of the Queen, and a Catholic rising in England with Spanish help. The answer was vaguely sympathetic, but it was sufficient for the purpose. In August of the same year GifFord went to Paris with the full plan. They felt, he said, that war with Spain was inevitable, and that Elizabeth's reign was drawing to a close, and in order to avert ruin they had decided to precipitate matters. SIR WALTER RALEGH 45 For this purpose they had attracted to their side a large number of supporters who were not Catholics, but who were anxious for Mary Stuart to succeed. He gave Mendoza a list of a great number of noblemen and gentlemen who would welcome a Spanish force, and raise a revolt the moment the Queen was despatched ; and said that six of the Queen's servants, having constant access to her person, had sworn to commit the deed of murder. This was a repetition or Ballard's message in May, and when it came in its more authorative form it was cautiously welcomed by Philip. It is useless to remind the reader that the main threads of the conspiracy were all in Walsingham's hands from the first, and that before Philip's reply could reach them Babington and his principal associates were captured and in jail. When Mendoza wrote to the King, loth September, that the conspiracy had been discovered, he says that out of the six men who had sworn to kill the Queen, and whose names had never previously been mentioned, 'only two have escaped, namely, the favourite Ralegh, and the brother of Lord Windsor.' At the first sight it appears absolutely impossible that Ralegh can have been associated with the conspirators to kill the Queen, unless it were as a spy ; but there are some curious un- explained circumstances in connection with the matter, which — like the allegation itself — have not hitherto been noticed, Morgan, the Queen of Scotland's agent in Paris, wrote to her in April 1585, saying that 46 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN he had made friends with several of the English gentle- men who had come over to Paris with Lord Derby, and had since continued in secret communication with them, whereby he hoped to have drawn some secret service for her Majesty (Mary Stuart) ; but in the midst of his negotiations he had been lodged in the Bastile, and his purpose had been disappointed. ' Amongst those that I mean was one named William Langharne, secretary to Master Rawley the Quene's dere minion who daylye groweth in creditt. The said secretary is a good Catholic, and his master and Her Majestie's new hoste Poulett are friends, which moved me the more willingly to take hold of his pro- ferred amity.' It is true that this mysterious action of Ralegh's secretary does not in any way compromise his master ; but it is certain that the latter was play- ing a double game at the time, whatever his object may have been. In 1586, a ship belonging to him had captured at sea a Portuguese vessel, on board of which was Don Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, King Philip's governor of the Spanish settlements in Patagonia. He was an important person, and a famous navigator, and in the ordinary course would have been held to heavy ransom. The English merchants just then were crying out about the ruin brought to their commerce by the state of war with Spain, and it suited Elizabeth to sound Philip about the conclusion of a peaceable arrangement. It was therefore settled that Sarmiento should be released by SIR WALTER RALEGH 47 Ralegh without ransom, and proceed to Spain with offers for peace. He had more than one interview with the Queen, Cecil, and Ralegh, who entrusted him with pacific messages for the King. Sarmiento told Mendoza that he had had many private conversa- tions with Ralegh ; ' and signified to him how wise it would be for him to ofi^er his services to Your Majesty, as the Queen's favour to him could not last long. He said that if he (Ralegh) would attend sincerely to Your Majesty's interests in England, apart from the direct reward he would receive. Your Majesty's support when occasion arose might prevent him from falling. Ralegh accepted the advice, and asked Sarmiento to inform Your Majesty of his willingness, if Your Majesty would accept his services, to oppose Don Antonio's attempts, and to prevent the sailing of expeditions from England. He would, moreover, send a large ship of his own heavily armed to Lisbon, and sell it for Your Majesty's service for the sum of 5000 crowns. In order that he might learn whether Your Majesty would accept his services, he gave Sarmiento a countersign, and wrote to a nephew of his here (in Paris) learning the language, telling him, that the moment I gave him a letter from Sarmiento he was to start with it to England.' Sarmiento was captured by Huguenots on his way through the south of France, and held as a prisoner. Both Elizabeth and Philip were indignant, and made great efforts to procure his release. As soon as Mendoza learned of Sarmiento's capture, he sent word 48 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN to Ralegh's nephew, who volunteered to start for England at once and inform his uncle. The latter immediately dispatched two of his followers to France to beg Henry of Navarre, in the name of the Queen, to release Sarmiento. They were first to address themselves to Mendoza, who lent them lOO crowns for their expenses on Ralegh's account. On the i8th February 1587, Mendoza writes to Philip: — ^'I am assured that he (Ralegh) is very cold about these naval preparations (i.e., in England), and is trying secretly to dissuade the Queen from them. He is much more desirous of sending to Spain his own two ships for sale, than to use them for robbery. To con- firm him in his good tendency I came to the help of the two gentlemen he sent hither, who asked me for some money. . . . This will give him hopes that Your Majesty will accept his services, and will cause him to continue to oppose Don Antonio {i.e., the Portuguese pretender), who is upheld by the Earl of Leicester.' In response to this, Philip ordered his ambassador to assure Ralegh that ' his aid would be highly esteemed, and adequately rewarded.' But Philip was somewhat suspicious, for in his next letter he says: — 'As for his (Ralegh) seeding for sale the two ships he mentions, that is out of the question, in the first place to avoid his being looked upon with suspicion in his own country, in consequence of his being well-treated (here), whilst all his countrymen are persecuted j and secondly to guard ourselves SIR WALTER RALEGH 49 against the coming of the ships under this pretext being a feint or trick upon us — which is far from being improbable — but you need only mention the first reason to him.' All this may have been perfectly innocent, or more likely, intended to mislead the Spaniards, but it certainly establishes the fact that communications between them and Ralegh were taking place at that time. And yet in March 1586, when, according, to Mendoza, he was one of the six men privy to the intention to kill the Queen, he writes thus to the Earl of Leicester, then in Holland as the Queen's governor, who had asked him to send over some English pioneers. He assures the earl of his desire 'to performe all offices of love, honour, and service towards you.' ' But I have byn of late very pestilent reported to be rather a drawer back than a fartherer of the action where you govern. Your Lordship doth well understand my affection towards Spayn, and how I have consumed the best part of my fortune, hating the tyrannous prosperity of that State ; and it were now Strang and monsterous that I should becum an enemy of my countrey and conscience.' Yet, only a few months afterwards, he was ostensibly oiFering his humble services to Philip to hamper English arma- ments against him, and wishing to sell his two armed ships to be used against his own country. However this may be, no sooner was the wretched Babington condemned, than he founded all his hope D so BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN of pardon upon Ralegh's action in his favour, and directed his cousin to ofFer the favourite ^^looo for his life. ' Showr this note,' he says, ' to young Master Lovelace, and bid him tell Master Flower that, in respect of the service I can do Her Majesty, I desire to speak writh his master ' {i.e. Ralegh). It is fair to say, however, that there is no other known evidence to connect Ralegh with Babington, except the before- quoted assertion of the Spanish ambassador. By Babington's death the favourite's wealth was very largely increased. His own younger son's estate in Devonshire was a small one indeed — only the poor manor of Collaton Ralegh — and his Irish estates produced but little. But now the Queen granted to him nearly every acre of the broad lands in five English counties possessed by the unfortunate Babington, together with all his goods and property of every sort, with the sole exception of a curious clock which Her Majesty kept for herself. This may be considered as the highest point of Ralegh's power and splendour ; but already a younger rival was in the field, who, by-and-by, was to deprive him of much of the sovereign's personal regard for him. When in 1587 Mendoza had told his master that the reason why Ralegh was opposed to the plans of the Portuguese pretender, Don Antonio, was because the Earl of Leicester favoured them, he was. somewhat behind the times. Leicester's influence over the Queen had greatly SIR WALTER RALEGH 51 decreased ; and, in fact, he never was a strong supporter of Don Antonio, except when he could get some advantange for himself. The real backer of Don Antonio was Leicester's turbulent young step-son, the Earl of Essex, and it is far more pro- bable that Ralegh's approaches to the Spanish interests were prompted by a desire to check the efforts of the rising fevourite. Essex was only twenty years old at the time, and this is what a courtier writes of his relations with the Queen, who was over fifty. 'When she is abroad nobody is near her but my Lord of Essex ; and at night my Lord is at cards, or onp game or another with her, till the birds sing in the morning.' But great as was the favour shown to him, Essex, it was gall to him if ' that knave Ralegh,' as he called him, shared with him the good ■graces of the Queen. On one occasion (1587) Essex thought the Queen had slighted him to please Ralegh ; ' 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 Ralegh, and it seemed she could not well endure anything to be spoken against him ; and taking hold of one word " disdain," she said there was no such cause why I should disdain him. This speech troubled me so much that, as near as I could, I did describe unto her what he had been and v/hat he was.' ■ The insolent young noble little thought, probably, 52 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN that his elder rival was not only a fortunate favourite, and the Queen's platonic lover, but a great genius, whose knowledge was already encyclopedic, and whose busy brain was teeming with far-reaching plans for giving England a noble share in the new found lands beyond the sea. For the present we have done with him in the enervating surroundings of the Court of the virgin Queen, and will now consider him in his capacity of a prime builder of the empire. CHAPTER IV SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT AND THE COLONISATION OF NORTH AMERICA RALEGh's PATENT FOR THE PLANTING OF VIRGINIA THE FIRST VOYAGE THITHER THE SETTLEMENT AT WOKOKEN The age was a prodigal and lavish one. The wondrous tales of the gold brought from the Indies by the Spaniards had fired the greed of the English mariners, who were fully conscious now that they and their ships were more than a match for any others that sailed the sea. They exulted in the knowledge, and flinched from no opportunity of proving their metal. The Spaniards had found their way by the Straits of Magellan into the Southern Sea ; the dream of English mariners was to discover a better and nearer road still to Cathay by the north- west, and perhaps find gold on the way. The Cabots, Master Hore, and Sir Hugh Willoughby and others, long before, had essayed it and had failed, but all undismayed the Elizabethan sailors pursued the same phantom. In 1576 Martin Frobisher thought S3 54- BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN he had succeeded when he slowly groped his way into Hudson's Bay. He had only two tiny craft of 35 tons each, and had no thought yet of colonisa- tion, but merely of opening up a new way to the teeming East for trade. By chance a shining piece of pyritic ore glittering with metal was picked up on the shore, and brought to England. It was falsely reported to be rich in gold, and the next year Frobisher went again and brought home three cargoes of the stuiF. Gilbert himself wrote a treatise, which was published without his consent in 1576, demonstrating the probability of a passage being discovered that way to China. We have seen how his and Ralegh's attempt to establish an English settlement on the North American coast in 1578 had been frus- ' trated, but Gilbert was ever on the alert, and in the meantime had not been idle. The pilot, Simon Fernandez, had, with Walsingham's help, been sent to the coast of America, and had brought back glowing accounts of the fertility of the land.. In the year 1583 David Ingram of Barking, mariner, allowed his imagination full play in describing the banqueting houses of crystal, with pillars of gold and silver, to be found there, and Captain Walker reported the discovery of a silver mine within the mystic River Norumbega. In all these attempts, the discovery of the north-west passage was the first object, the finding of gold the second, and only in Gilbert's case was colonisation aim.ed at. SIR WALTER RALEGH 55 But in the meanwhile Gilbert's six years' patent was running out, and it was necessary for him to make a serious attempt to effect its object. Drake's triumphant return from his voyage round the world in the autumn of 1580 had given an immense im- petus to the fitting out of expeditions for plunder and discovery in all directions, but still with no view to permanent settlements. With Ralegh's sudden rise at Court in 1582 came his step-brother's opportunity. The latter had been nearly ruined, 'forced,' as he wrote to Walsingham, ' to sell his wife's clothes from her back,' in consequence of his three ships having been pressed for the Queen's service in Ireland during the rebellion, whereby he lost ^^2000, his ships having been stolen and carried away in his absence. This was written in July 158 1 ; but by June 1582 all had changed. Ralegh was then at the Queen's ear and could do most things ; and his own means were spent without stint on the object he had nearest his heart, namely, English maritime and colonial enterprise. The revived project of the expedition was a patriotic one in two senses. There was a considerable number of Catholic gentlemen in England who were heartily tired of the continual contest with their fellow-countrymen which their religion forced upon them. They had no desire to become the tools of Spanish ambition. They desired to remain Englishmen • and yet to retain the exercise of their faith. These 'Schismatics,' as they were 56 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN called hy the Jesuits and the extreme Catholics, were approached by Walsingham with a suggestion that, if they would provide money for the expedition, colonies of English Catholics could be planted on the American coast, where they would remain under the English flag, but at liberty to govern their own lives as they pleased. The Spanish party were horrified at the idea, which they said had been invented by Walsingham for the purpose of splitting and weaken- ing the Catholic party in the country. This may well have been the case, though we can afford now to give him credit for higher and more patriotic motives. In June 1582, accordingly, two moderate Catholic gentlemen. Sir George Gerrard and Sir Thomas Peckham, received power from Gilbert in virtue of his patent, ' to discover all lands and isles upon that part of America between Cape Florida and Cape Breton. Any two out of four islands discovered by them, or by Gilbert for them, were to be held by them and their heirs for ever, to- gether with 1,500,000 acres of land on the "supposed adjoining continent," paying a small chief-rent to Gilbert, together with two-fifths of all gold and silver, pearls or precious stones found.' A further agreement of the same date set forth, ' that for the more speedy executing of Her Majesty's grant, and the enlargement of her dominions^ Sir Thomas Peckham is to be entitled to take possession of a further 500,000 acres on the continent. SIR WALTER RALEGH 57 Shortly before this date the Spanish ambassador had got wind of the project — for he had his spies every- where reporting upon the movements of English ships — and wrote to his King that, 'when the Queen was petitioned to aid in the expedition, Gilbert was told that he was to go, and when he had landed and fortified the place, the Queen would send him 10,000 men to hold it.' By the middle of July the matter was settled. The lands were to be held under the crown of England in fee simple. One soldier was to be maintained by the colonists for every 5000 acres occupied, and the best places were to be reserved for building towns, 'with sufficient ground for their commons of pasture rent free, and also some small portion, not exceeding 10 acres, to be allowed for every house built, for the better maintenance of the poor inhabitants, reserving some small rents for the same. All the colonists were to be sent over at the cost of the realm, and each person was to receive a grant of 60 acres of land for three lives, besides common for so much cattle in the summer as they can keep in the winter, with such allowance for housebote, hedgebote and ploughbote as the country may serve.' There were minute con- ditions for manuring the lands, for the payment of fines and heriots, all of which feudal parapher- nalia reads quaintly and curiously, as applying to the boundless continent of America. Every poor 58 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN colonist was to take over so much food, and picks, spades, saws, etc., for the cost of all of which the colony was to pay the mother country every third year — ' which can be no loss to England.' Every person who paid his own passage, and brought with him a sword and harquebuss, was to have six score acres of land, and every gentle- man with five followers was to receive a grant of 2000 acres in fee simple, and every adventurer of ^5, looo acres. Each parish was to consist of exactly 3 miles square, with the church in the midst, the minister to have his tithes, and 300 acres of land free, each bishop 10,000 acres, and each archbishop 20,000 acres. It will thus be seen that the project was a large one ; the intention being really to plant a great England in North America. The Spaniards fully understood it in this light. Mendoza wrote to his master on the day following the signing of the agreement, from which the above particulars are extracted (8th July 1582): — 'As I wrote some time ago, Humphrey Gilbert is fitting out ships to gain a footing in Florida, and in order to make this not only prejudicial to Your Majesty's interests, but injurious to Catholics here, whilst benefiting the heretics, Walsingham approached two Catholic gentlemen, whose estate had been ruined, and in- timated to them that, if they would help Humphrey SIR WALTER RALEGH 59 Gilbert in the voyage, their Hves and liberties might be saved, and the Queen might . . , allow them to settle there in the enjoyment of freedom of con- science, and of their property in England, for wrhich purpose they might avail themselves of the inter- cession of Philip Sidney. As they were desirous of living as Catholics, w^ithout endangering their lives, they thought the proposal a good one. They with other Catholics have petitioned the Queen, and she has granted them a patent ... to colonise Florida, on the banks of the Norumbega, where they are to be allowed to live as their conscience dic- tates, and to enjoy such revenues as they possess in England.' The writer then gives an account of the efforts he has made to dissuade the Catholics from the project. He tells them it is only a trick to destroy them, that the country in question be- longed to Spain, and they would all be murdered, as Ribaut was, that they were acting against the interests of His Holiness, whose leave should first be asked. Father Allen, at Rome, was warned also to induce the Pope to ban the expedition. But still the project went on, and in the summer two ships were sent to reconnoitre the sites of the in- tended settlements. By December 1582, a great company of ad- venturers was formed to trade with the new colony, most of the principal people in England having shares in it, including all those — Ralegh 6o BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN amongst them — who had been partners in Gilbert's former abortive attempt. For the purpose of taking part in the expedition, of which he was to be Vice-Admiral, Ralegh decided to put into practice some of his advanced theories with regard to naval construction, and built a ship of 200 tons, which he called the Bark-Ralegh. The exact con- struction of this vessel is not known, but it has been usual to confuse her with the much larger vessel called the Ark-Ralegh, built by Ralegh in X587, and employed in the Armada. The larger ship, the Ark-Ralegh, was looked upon as a sort of wonder ; and Lord Admiral Howard, who had hoisted his pennant on it, calls it the oddest ship in the world, and the best for all conditions. At length, in the spring of 1583, all was ready for sailing. The Queen had vetoed the going of Ralegh himself ; and mindful of Gilbert's former misfortune, endeavoured to restrain him also. He had started first in February, but was driven back and kept at South- ampton, and she, or Walsingham for her, sent him word that she wished him to stay at home, ' as a man noted for no good hap at sea.' But he pleaded hard to be allowed to go. He had spent, he said, all his means on the enterprise, had sold his lands, and risked everything. His unfortunate return on the last occasion was only because he would not do, or allow others to do, anything against the Queen's command. The Queen was appeased, and ordered Ralegh to SIR WALTER RALEGH 6i send to Sir Humphrey a token and the following letter : — 'RlCHUOilDT.,iyti Marci 1583. ' Brother, — I have sent you a token from Her Majestic, an anchor guided by a lady as you see ; and farther. Her Highness willed me to sende you worde that she wished you as great good hap, and safty to your ship, as if her sealf were ther in person : desiring you to have care of your sealf, as of that which she tendereth ; and therefore for her sake you must pro- vide for it accordingly. * Further, she commandeth me that you leve your picture with me. For the rest I leve till our meet- ing, or to the report of this bearer, who would needs be messengre of this good newse. So I committ you to the will and protection of God, Who send us such life or death as He shall please, or hath appointed. Your treu brother, W. Ralegh.' It was the nth June before the expedition sailed. The Bark-Ralegh of 200 tons was much the largest of the ships ; but they had hardly got out of the Channel when she deserted them and came back. It was said that a contagious disease had broken out on board, but evidently Sir Humphrey did not believe, or was unaware of it, for he wrote angrily to Sir George Peckham, that she had run from him in fair clear weather, having a large wind. 'I pray you solicit my brother Ralegh to make them an example to 62 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN all knaves.' With the other four little ships Sir Humphrey sailed west until he reached the coast of Newfoundland. This was not the place it was in- tended to colonise, but as he was there he took pos- session of it for the English crown by the quaint ceremony of cutting a sod and accepting a hazel wand. There were thirty or forty fishing boats of various nationalities ofF the coast, and Gilbert invited the captains on shore to witness the ceremony. Many of them came, and offered no protest. They were peaceful folk, and it was perhaps wise that they did not. The Queen's arms were set up on the shore, and nominal grants of territory were given to the members of the expedition. But they were a lawless lot, and whilst Gilbert was on shore, his crews tried to desert with his ships, failing in which they robbed the fishing boats; Many fell sick and had to be sent home in the Swallow; many more died, and the commander, with his remaining three ships, was glad to sail for the more hospitable south, where the new colony was to be founded. They left St John's on the 20th August, and were driven backwards and forwards on the tempestuous North Atlantic until the 20th, when the Delight ran on a bank and was wrecked. The other two vessels, the Golden Hinde^ and a tiny cockboat of lo tons burden called the Squirrel, overladen, crowded with sick, beset by perils, still battled against head winds. Terrible marine monsters were seen ; shoals, storms, and fog took SIR WALTER RALEGH 63 hope and spirit from the men, who prayed Gilbert to abandon the voyage, and set his course to England. When they had arrived at a point north of the Azores, still in fearful weather, it became apparent that the Squirrel could not live through the sea. The men on the Golden Hinde besought Gilbert to leave the crazy, overloaded boat and go on board the larger vessel, but he resolutely refused. ' I will-not,' he said, ' forsake my little company with whom I have passed through so many perils.' Those on the Golden Hinde saw him calmly, with a book in his hand, sitting in the stern of his doomed craft, and as the ships on one occasion came within hailing distance, he cried out to them, ' Be of good heart, my friends. We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land.' A few hours afterwards, on the night of the 9th September, the light of the Squirrel was suddenly quenched, and brave Sir Humphrey and his little company were seen no more. He had faced death on the seas a hundred times before, and could look upon it undismayed, as such a hero should. He had risked all he had in the venture, and probably courted death rather than return home with the indelible brand upon him of ' a man of no good hap at sea.' The Golden Hinde found her way into Falmouth on the 22d September, with the dismal news that Gilbert's second attempt to colonise North America for England had failed more disastrously than the first. The great dream of the Gilberts, like that of 64 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN Cabot, Willoughby, Frobisher, Davis, and most English seamen of the time, was the discovery of a north-west passage to China ; and to this task the younger of the brothers, Adrian Gilbert, succeeded Sir Humphrey, always with the support and help of Ralegh. But the genius of the latter enabled him to foresee the importance of the still greater work — that of founding an English nation across the sea, as he himself expressed it— and to this idea through evil fortune, and through good, he was true to the rest of his life — even to martyrdom. On the 24th March 1584, fresh letters-patent were granted, giving to Sir Walter Ralegh, Esq., and his heirs 'free liberty to discover barbarous countries, not actually possessed of any Christian prince and inhabited by Christian people, to occupy and enjoy the same for ever.' The country was to be held by homage to the Sovereign of England, who was to receive the fifth part of all precious metals found. The inhabi- tants were to 'enjoy all the privileges of free denizens of England,' and Ralegh or his representatives were to have power ' to punish, pardon, govern and rule ' ; the laws to be 'as near as may be agreeable to the laws of England.' Exactly a month after this (on the 27th April 1584) Ralegh dispatched two of his captains, Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlow, under the guidance of the pilot Simon Fernandez, on a reconnoitring voyage to the proposed settlement, which had previously been fixed upon five years before SIR WALTER RALEGH 65 by Fernandez. They wrongly calculated that the current from the Gulf of Mexico would have carried them greatly in a northerly direction, and accordingly set their course far to the south of the point they desired to gain. Touching the Canaries on the loth May, they reached the West Indies on the loth June. They then stretched across to the mainland of Florida, which they reached on the 4th July, and thence groped up the coast to the point previously selected by Fernandez, arriving there on the 13th July. In the report furnished by the captains to Ralegh, they describe how they entered the harbour, three harque- buss shots' distance inland, and then landed and took possession for the Queen of England. Grapes in marvellous abundance grew down to the water's edge ; magnificent cedars and other trees abounded, and the soil appeared to them to be of wonderful fertility. On further search, they found the land to be an island, 20 miles long, and about 6 broad, running parallel with the continent, forming part of a chain of similar islands, extending for a distance of 200 miles along the coast. The natives they found unsuspicious of all harm, peaceful, conciliatory and mild. The brother of the King of the country which they called Wingandecoia — the name of the island being Woke- ken — came to them with a band of natives who soon became extremely friendly. Skins, coral and pearls were brought freely in exchange for the wonderful treasures of the white man. The King's brother was E 66 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN especially enamoured of a tin dish, which he obtained and suspended from his neck as a defence against the darts of enemies. ' He had,' says the captains, ' a great liking for our armour, a sword, and divers other things which we had, and offered to lay a great box of pearls in gage for them. But we refused it for this time, because we would not make them know we esteemed thereof, until we had understood in what places of the country the pearls grew.' A glowing picture is given of the luxuriance of the vegetation. Two crops of corn were gathered in the year, and food, especially fruit, was so abundant, that the narrators are obliged to confess that surely this was the best soil under heaven. The elaborate conditions in the original patent as to the proper periodical manuring of the land must have struck the discoverers as strangely unnecessary, now that, for the first time, their eyes rested upon the teeming virgin soil of the West. They heard of a great city five days' journey away, called Sicoak, and themselves visited the next island of the chain, that of Roanoak ; and then, bringing away with them two of the mild natives, Manteo and Wanchese, they sailed to take the news to Ralegh of the fertile country of which he in future was to be the lord. The booty they brought with them was not magnificent, consisting as it did only of skins and a bracelet of pearls, ' as big as peasen,' but it doubtless satisfied Ralegh. What he wanted was a firm foothold for his countrymen on the northern SIR WALTER RALEGH 67 continent of America, which should balance the over- weening power of the Spaniards in the South. In after years, it became necessary for him to hold out the bait of gold, in order to attract adventurers to aid his expeditions with funds, but it was never his own prime object, much as he loved the splendour for which it would pay. The misfortune of the Spanish dominion in the Indies had always been that the main object of the explorers had been gold. Their first question on landing had been as to its presence and whereabouts ; and the heartrending cruelties perpetrated upon in- offensive natives to extort the disclosure of their supposed treasures had shocked the more humane of the Spaniards themselves. The capture and sacking of Quito and Cuzco with their countless hoards of gold and gems, the pillage of the Incas with wealth beyond conception, had inflamed the greed of the world ; and the bait which had drawn the earlier English navigators to the West had been a share, either by discovery or plunder, of the golden stream which seemed inexhaustible. It is to the lasting glory of Ralegh that his clear prescience pierced beyond the momentary advantage of easily gained mineral wealth. He and his brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert, indeed, were the forerunners of the school of thought which has now grown predominant, namely, that gold itself is only one instrument of commerce, not a substitute for it. 68 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN Gilbert in his treatise on the existence of a north- west passage, which was published without authority by Ralegh's friend Gascoigne, and shows unmistak- able signs of Ralegh's own hand, points out the advantage of planting settlements in suitable situa- tions under English rule, as a means of extending and enriching commerce, and of furnishing employ- ment 'to those needy people who trouble the commonwealth through want at home.' Captain Carleill, who was a follower of Ralegh, and Thomas Hariot, the famous mathematician, who was employed by him to report upon the natural productions arid commercial capabilities of Virginia, both enforced the principles, then novel, which had been conceived by the master mind, namely, that colonisation, trade, and the enlargement of empire were all more im- portant for the welfare of England than the discovery of gold. Purchas publishes an anonymous treatise written during Ralegh's life — at the beginning of the seventeenth century-— -which shows how quickly his ideas had taken hold of the more thinking minds of his countrymen. The sound views of political economy expressed therein were practically undreamt of before Ralegh's time. ' The very name of colony,' says the author, ' imports a reasonable and seasonable culture and planting, before a harvest or vintage can be expected. Though gold and silver have enriched the Spanish exchequer, yet their storehouses hold other and greater wealth, whereof Virginia is no less /Ar\ v\' \&=«x ig=~"v v^ t<«^: 'XOO if, \C/^£S^P£rAff£ /r %, 7fM ■w^ ifl4L£SHS )s£-COA/Jf "^acX ""av^ y\ '^^ a v>< ^ f&mi - P0CL>^/MEO\ XN ENGLISH^ 'f . COi-O/^jyyBV \ ep^ERT ^ iSBi ' \ \ - \ J ^^^"'^^ . ' \ # ^V-^^ - \ - \ - \ , [jsi o MAP SHOWING THE POSITION OF THE FIRST ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS IN NORTH AMERICA. SIR WALTER RALEGH 69 capable, namely, the country's commodities. What mines have they in Brazil and in the islands where yet so many wealthy Spaniards and Portuguese in- habit ? Their ginger, hides, tobacco, and other merchandise, it may be boldly affirmed, yield far more profit to the generality of the Spanish' subjects than the mines do, or have done this last age. Who gave gold and silver the monopoly of wealth, or made them the Almighty's favourites ? That is the richest land which feeds most men. What remarkable mines hath France, Belgium, Lombardy ? What this our fertile mother England ? Do we not see that the. silks, calicoes, drugs and spices of the East swallow up all the mines of the West ? ' These or similar ideas were those which animated Ralegh in his first attempts to establish an ' English nation ' on the other side of the Atlantic, and they have been justified by the added experience of three centuries. The two captains returned to England in September 1584 with their glowing report pf the new land they had visited, and with the natives they had brought. Ralegh submitted the information to the Queen, who herself dubbed the new dominion Virginia, and then the favourite set about his colonising plans in earnest. He was chosen one of the members of parliament for Devonshire at the end of the year ; and early in 1585 obtained a parliamentary confirma- tion of his colonising patent. But the Spaniards 70 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN were watching him with jealous eyes. Drake was fit- ting out his expedition to the West Indies to sack and plunder ; Ralegh being one of the shareholders. Under his auspices, and those of Adrian Gilbert, Davis was preparing for another attempt to discover the north- west passage, and English rovers were busier than ever lying in wait for the rich Spanish galleons. The Spanish ambassador had been expelled from England, and a state of war existed between the two countries ; but Mendoza, in Paris, had his spies in every Eng- lish port, and ceaselessly sent to his master minute accounts of the movements of English shipping. On the 22d Febuary 1585, he writes: — 'The Queen has knighted Ralegh, her favourite, and has given him a ship of her own of 180 tons burden, with five pieces of artillery on each side, and two culverins in the bows. Ralegh has also bought two Dutch fly- boats of 120 tons each to carry stores, and two other boats of 40 tons, in addition to which he is having built four pinnaces of 20 to 30 tons each. Altogether Ralegh will fit out no fewer than 16 vessels, in which he intends to convey 400 men. The Oueen has assured him that if he will refrain from going himself she will defray all the expenses of the preparations. Ralegh's fleet will be ready to sail for Norumbega at the beginning of next month.' How disturbed the Spaniards were at all these preparations is seen in a letter from Hakluyt, in Paris, to Walsingham on the 7th April. ' The rumour of Sir Walter Rawley's SIR WALTER RALEGH 71 fleet, and especially the preparations of Sir Francis Drake, doth so much vex the Spaniard and his factors, as nothing can be more, and therefore I could wish that although Sir Francis Drake's journey be stayed, yet the rumour of his setting forth might continue.' They had reason to be vexed, for the English ' corsairs ' vsrere growing ever bolder, and a few weeks after this was written, a ship called the Primrose entered the river at Bilbao, kidnapped the Lieutenant-Governor of Biscay, and a number of his countrymen, and coolly brought them to Eng- • land for ransom. Unfortunately the Queen's affection for Ralegh prevented him from personally accompanying his colonial expedition, which was accordingly entrusted to the command of his cousin Sir Richard Grenville. Like most of the men of his stamp and period, he was brave and magnanimous to a fault, but over- bearing, proud, and tyrannical. Fight and plunder were what he gloried in, and the far-reaching ideas of his statesman-cousin with regard to the extension of commerce and empire probably appealed to him but little. In any case, he exhibited no tact in» carrying them out. The expedition sailed from Plymouth on the 9th April 1585, and consisted of a smaller number of vessels than that reported by the Spanish ambassador. There was the Tyger of 140 tons, the Roebuck of 140, the Lyon of 100, the Elizabeth of 50, the Dorothy and two other 72 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN small pinnaces, seven sail in all ; and besides Grenville there were Ralph Lane, one of the Queen's equerries, who was to be the governor of the new colony, Captain Amadas, Thomas Cavendish, John Arundell, Stukeley, Hariot, the Indian Manteo, and over a hundred colonists. They, too, went a very roundabout course, arriving at Lanzarote on the 14th April, at Dominica on the 7th May, and on the I2th landed in Mosquito Bay, Porto Rico, where they entrenched themselves and set about building a new pinnace. This was decidedly against instructions, as they were not to assail the dominions of any Christian prince, and the Spaniards were unquestionably in possession of the island. After some days of spying upon the intruders, the Spanish officials came with a flag of truce and mildly expostulated with Grenville for erect- ing a fortification on their territory. With some dis- cussion they were reassured, and they promised a supply of provisions, which for some reason — Grenville calls it their 'habitual perjurie' — they delayed or neglected to bring j ' so we fired the woods all about,' and sailed away on the 29th. On the ist June the expedition anchored in the Bay of Isabela, in the island of Hispaniola, after capturing an unoffending Spanish frigate. They found the Spanish governor extremely hospitable and friendly, which attitude they rather ungenerously ascribed to his fear of their superior forces. In any case, his friendship for the English must soon have received a rude shock when SIR WALTER RALEGH 73 Drake, a few months afterwards, sacked and plundered the chief town of the island. On the 7th June they took their departure, and sailing along the Bahamas, sighted the mainland of what was then called Florida, but is now the State of South Carolina, somewhere north of the site of the present Charleston, on the 20th June. They were nearly wrecked off Cape Fear three days afterwards, and on the 26th reached their destination, the island of Wokoken. The entrance they made use of seems to have been the Okeracoke Inlet, and in this entrance they nearly wrecked the Tyger, one of their principal ships, on the 29th, by the fault, according to Grenville, of the pilot Fernandez. They lost no time in sending news of their arrival to the friendly chief Wingina on the larger island of Roanoak ; and on the nth July Gren- ville, Arundell, Stukeley, Hariot, Governor Lane, and Assistant-Governor Amadas, victualled for eight days, set forth to effect a landing on the continent of North America. They heard rumours of great towns and powerful peoples, all more or less vague, but from the petty chiefs they met they experienced nothing but kindness and hospitality. On their expedition one of the savages stole a silver cup, and a boat was sent ashore to demand the restitution, which was promised by the chief. The promise apparently was not kept, and the whole town was consequently ' burned and spoyled ' in revenge, the first of a series of feuds, which changed the kindly 74 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN aborigines into stealthy, cruel enemies of the white men. The furthest point north reached by the expedition on this occasion appears to have been Cape Hatteras ; and on the 27 th July they again arrived at the site of the future settlement, on the island of Wokoken. Houses having been erected, and stores of all sorts landed, the first colony of England in the v^est was formerly in- augurated, with Ralph Lane as governor, and 107 settlers ; and Sir Richard Grenville sailed away for England on the 25th August. Governor Lane re- ported to Walsingham that Grenville had from the first exhibited intolerable pride and ambition towards the entire company, and they were probably not very sorry to see the back of him. He had left the colonists sufficient supplies to last them for a year, but faithfully promised to return before the following Easter with fresh provisions. Six days after leaving the settlement Grenville fell in with a Spanish ship, richly laden, of 300 tons burden. He had no proper ship's boat, but was determined not to be baulked of so tempting a prize as this, so he and his men shifted to board her in a boat made of sides of provision chests, which with difficulty could be kept afloat until it was brought alongside the Spanish ship. The moment they boarded the prize their boat went down, but the poor Spaniards made no resistance and were meekly carried to England by their captors, arriving in Plymouth Sound on the i8th October. On board the prize the principal treasure was a fine cabinet SIR WALTER RALEGH 75 of pearls ; and much wrangling ensued between the captors as to their respective shares of the booty. Sir Lewis Stukeley, who was afterwards Ralegh's jailer and betrayer, said that Ralegh had charged Elizabeth with taking all the pearls for herself, ' without so much as even giving him one pearl ' ; which, indeed, was an extremely likely thing for her to do, though it was unlike Ralegh to talk about it. Amongst the men who had been pressed in Plymouth to accompany the expedition was a German shipmaster, who, much against his will, accompanied Grenville through the voyage. It was not easy for him to get away from England when he came back, but eventually he managed to find his way to Spain, and gave Philip a long account in Latin of the whole voyage. This was sent to Philip's ambassador in Paris, and in reference thereto the ambassador sent his master some further interesting particulars. He says, 'The ship which this captain says was captured by Ralegh's expedition, with so large a treasure in gold, silver, pearls, cochineal, sugar, ivory and hides was the one I advised Your Majesty of months ago as having arrived in England, and that Ralegh himself had gone down to the port to take possession of her cargo, so as not to allow it to be distributed amongst the sailors.' The Queen had granted 70 fresh letters of marque in reprisal for the embargo placed on English ships in Biscay ports, and the sea posi- tively swarmed with privateers. Philip and his officers 76 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN were in despair, for the command of the sea was even now slipping away from him. The friendly treat- ment which Ralegh's expedition had encountered at Porto Rico and Hispaniola was reported to the King by the German captain, and excited great indignation against the officials. Spanish settlers were accused even of making signal fires at night to give notice to the English privateers that they were willing to exchange food for merchandise^ — ■ merchandise which had mostly been stolen from out- ward bound Spaniards. Matters had reached such a pass, indeed, that it is difficult to blame the settlers. Philip had prohibited all traffic with the Indies except by means of Spanish ships sailing from Seville. These ships regularly took the same course, by the Azores, where they were just as regularly captured by the crowds of corsairs that awaited them ; and storm and punish as Philip and his officers might, it often happened that the only means the Spanish settlers had of obtaining European commodities at all was through the English privateers. CHAPTER V THE SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA TOBACCO THE SECOND COLONY OF VIRGINIA THE ARMADA ABANDONMENT OF THE VIRGINIAN SETTLERS Most of the misfortunes wrhich befell Ralegh's attempt to settle his nev7 dominion arose from the fact that his duties near the Queen prevented him from giving it the benefit of his personal supervision. His power, prestige, knowledge of men and enthusiasm would probably have saved the colonists from the insub- ordination and folly which led to their failure. Lane manfully did his best, and sent home by Gren- ville glowing accounts of the country. To Walsing- ham (i2th August 1585) he wrote that they had ' discovered so many rare and singular commodities in Her Majesty's new kingdom of Virginia, that no state in Christendom do yield better or more plenti- ful, and the ship's freight we are sending will prove I do not lie.' He says that they have named the three ports, Trinity, Scarborough and Ocana, where the fleet stuck, and the Tyger was nearly lost. The 77 78 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN best port, which was discovered by the pilot -major Simon Fernandez, would, he says, be able to resist the whole force of Spain. He continues, — 'We have undertaken to remain with a good company, rather to lose our lives than to defer the possession of so noble a kingdom to the Queen, our country and our noble patron Sir Walter Ralegh, through whose and your worship's (Walsingham's) most worthy endeavour and infinite charge, an honourable entry is made to the conquest. ... I am assured that we will by this means be relieved of the tyranny of the Spaniards, and that the Papists will not be suffered by God to triumph. . . . God will command even the ravens to feed us.' But after Grenville's departure affairs grew less promising, and Lane's position became more difficult. Quarrels soon broke out amongst the settlers them- selves, and between them and the Indians, whom the first visitors had described as ' the most gentle, loving and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as live after the manner of the golden age.' It is impossible to say now on which side the fault lay, but differences arose between the settlers and the Indians almost as soon as Grenville sailed away. The settlers ploughed, planted and sowed ; explored for pearl-fisheries and mines ; and Hariot especially was indefatigable In obtaining knowledge of the natural products of the country. He it was who first tried the native habit of smoking tobacco, and enjoyed it ; SIR WALTER RALEGH 79 the food value of the potato also appealed strongly to his practical wisdom, and he urged the experiment of its cultivation in England. The governor explored and took possession of the coast for a distance of 80 miles south of Roanoak and 130 to the north, as far as the Chesapeake. In the spring the King's brother Granganimeo, the friend of the English, died. Lane in his subsequent apology alleges that the King, Wingina, then under another name, plotted an in- surrection against the English, for which he and his friends were put to death, another chief called Okisa doing homage to the Queen of England in his stead. Grenville had promised to return by Easter, but he came not, and the colonists lost heart. The provisions were well nigh exhausted, although the corn was almost ready for cutting, when, on the loth June 1586, a large fleet of ships appeared on the coast. This could not be Grenville, they knew, for he would not come in so strong a force. Their anxiety was soon relieved by learning that the fleet was that of Sir Francis Drake, gorged with plunder from the sack of Cartagena and Santo Domingo. The admiral had bethought him to visit the new colony on his way home, and it may be imagined how the disheartened settlers would yearn with homesickness to desert their savage quarters, and sail in a powerful and prosperous fleet back again to their native land. At first they were appeased by the gift of fresh supplies, ammunition, and two boats, in which Lane promised them that 8o BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN they should all return to England in August, unless Grenville came in the meanwhile with re-inforce- ments. But as they were writing letters to their friends in England for Drake to carry home, a tempest sprang up and drove many of the ships out to sea ; amongst them the vessels with the provisions and pilots destined for the relief of the colonists, with many of the latter who were on board. In vain Sir Francis offered the rest of them another ship and supplies ; they insisted upon being taken on board the fleet and conveyed to England. Drake at last gave way, and the whole of the remaining colonists sailed for England on the 19th June. Even before Grenville had arrived in England, Ralegh had ordered supplies to be prepared for the relief of his people in Virginia. Some slight delay had taken place in their departure, probably owing to the dispute about the division of the plunder from the prize. A swift vessel, of 100 tons burden, sailed, however, soon after Easter with all necessary stores for the colonists. It arrived at the deserted settle- ment almost immediately after Drake had sailed, and after unsuccessfully searching for the settlers, was forced to return to England with the stores intact. About a fortnight after she had left. Sir Richard Grenville himself, with the main relief and some fresh intended colonists, appeared at Port Ferdinando, as the settlers called their principal harbour. He, of course, was equally unsuccessful in his search for the SIR WALTER RALEGH 8i colonists, and in his turn had to set sail for England, after leaving 15 new men on the island of Roanoak to continue the possession of the dominion. On his way home Grenville, as usual, fell to plundering such Spanish ships as came in his way ; and the voyage was not an unprofitable one to Ralegh, although the main object had failed. Ralegh, indeed, was quite largely engaged in the privateering business at the time. Most of the details of the voyages have, naturally, not been recorded ; they were more or less business enterprises, and were looked upon in a very prosaic light. But by the industry of a certain John Evesham, gentleman, a musketeer on board of one of Ralegh's two pinnaces Serpent (35 tons) and Mary Spark (50 tons), we have in Hakluyt an interesting account of the proceedings of the two pinnaces during this summer of 1586. Sailing on the 1 0th June, they first captured a barque loaded with shumach, with the Governor of S' Michael's on board ; then when off the island of Graciosa they sighted a flotilla of homeward bound Spaniards to windward of them. Hoisting the Spanish flag, Ralegh's pitmaces gradually crept near their prey. When they came near enough, down went the false flag and up to the peak went the cross of S' George. The first vessel they overhauled proved to be only a fisherman and not worth the keeping, so she was let go again ; but the delay in taking her had given time for the other richly-loaded ships and a caravel to creep under the 82 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN guns of Graciosa. The pinnaces were to leeward, and could not approach near enough to attack ; and the Spaniards thought themselves safe for the time ; but, says Evesham, we had a small boat called a lighthorseman in . which a musketeer (myself) and four men with calivers and four rowers entered, and rowed towards them. The Spaniards were hurriedly attempting to land their precious cargoes, and there were 150 musketeers on the beach to protect them, but the gallant little 'lighthorseman,' with its five gunners, cut out the Spanish ships from under the very cannon of the fort, and towed the caravel and her cargo out to sea. Two more of the ships were then captured and manned by English sailors, all the Spaniards being released but those who were worth ransom, especially the already mentioned Sarmiento de Gamboa, Governor of Patagonia. These three rich prizes being sent home, there were left only 60 men on the pinnaces. Thus weakened, they fell in with two great carracks of 1200 tons burden, ten galleons, and as many caravels, loaded with treasure. Nothing daunted, the two tiny pinnaces engaged the whole fleet for thirty-two hours in succession, and finally sailed away — without capturing them it is true, but without the loss of a single man. The deserting colonists from Virginia arrived at Plymouth in Drake's fleet at the end of July, and brought with them into England, probably for the first time, the habit of smoking tobacco, which Ralegh . SIR WALTER RALEGH 83 himself subsequently made fashionable at Court. The practice met with considerable opposition at first, and a proclamation was issued against it as the imitation of the manners of savage people. Camden says that it was feared that the English would degenerate thereby into barbarism. The learned Hariot, however, was loud in his praises of the medical virtue of tobacco. The descrip- tion he gives of the cultivation of the plant by the Indians is quaint. He says that they distinguished it by sowing it apart from all other vegetables, and held it of the highest estimation in all their sacrifices by fire, water and air ; either for thanksgiving to, or pacification of, their gods. 'And as by sucking it through pipes of clay, they purged all gross humours from the head and stomach, opened all the pores and passages of the body, preserving it from obstructions or breaking them, whereby they notably preserved their health, and knew not many grievous diseases, wherewith we in England are often afflicted. So we ourselves during the time we were there used to suck it after their manner, as also since our return, and have found many rare and wonderful experiments of its virtues, whereof the relation would require a volume by itself; the use of which by so many men and women of great calling, as well as others, and some learned physicians also, is sufficient witness.' The ' learned physicians ' and others would probably have cried up in vain the virtue of the plant, had not the 84 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN splendid Ralegh made it fashionable amongst the fine Court gentlemen, who envied, imitated and admired him. Howell tells the story that Ralegh was descanting to the Queen upon the virtues of the new herb — the use of which had been strongly encouraged in France by her rival Queen Catherine de Medici — when he assured Her Majesty he had so well experienced the nature of it, that he could tell her what weight even the smoke would be in any quantity proposed to be consumed. ' Her Majesty, fixing her thoughts upon the most impracticable part of the experiment, that of bounding the smoke in a balance, suspected that he put the traveller upon her, and would needs lay him a wager that he could not solve the doubt : so he pro- cured a quantity agreed upon, to be thoroughly smoked, then went to weighing, but it was of the ashes, and in conclusion what was wanting in the prime weight of the tobacco Her Majesty did not deny to have been evaporated in smoke, and further said that many labourers, in the fire she had heard of, who turned their gold into smoke, but Ralegh was the first who had turned smoke into gold.' As is usually the case in similar enterprises, some of the returned colonists sought to cast the blame of their failure upon the qualities of the new country. Fortunately, however, there was at least one man amongst them of advanced, enlightened views and trained intelligence, who published a defence of it in a SIR WALTER RALEGH 85 notable treatise published shortly afterwards. This was Thomas Hariot, who had been specially commissioned by Ralegh to report minutely upon the natural products and capabilities of the region, and his work is per- haps the first methodical statistical survey of a country ever published in English. He describes with great care the merchantable products of the country, and the best means for turning the possession to profit.* ' Seeing the air there,' he says, ' is so temperate and wholesome, the soil so fertile, and yielding such commodities as I have before mentioned ; the voyage also to and fro sufficiently experienced to be per- formed twice a year with ease, and at any season ; and the dealings of Sir Walter Ralegh so liberal in giving and granting . lands there, as is already known with many helps and futherances else ; the least that he hath granted having been 500 acres to a man only for the adventure of his person, I • It was published in 1588, and was called A Briefe and true report of the netv found land of Virginia, of the commodities there found and to be raysed, as ivell marcJiantable as others for victual, building and other necessarie use for those that are or shall he planters there ; and of the nature and manner of the naturall inhabitants disco'vered by the English Colony there sealed by Sir Richard Grenville, Kt., in the yeere 1585, zuhich remained under the government of Rafe Lane, Esq., one of Her Majestic^ s equerries, during the space of 12 Koneths. At the special charge of the Honhle. Sir Salter Ralegh, Kt, ; directed to the adventurers, favourers and ivell-vjiihers of the action of inhabiting and planting there ,• by Thomas Hariot, servant of the above-named Sir Walther, a member of the Colony, and there employed in the discoverie, London, 1588. 86 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN hope there remains no cause whereby the action should be misliked.' Doubtless the real reason for the discouragement of the colonists was the absence of gold in the new country. The ideas of Ralegh and Hariot were in advance of the times ; the majority of the adventurers had no taste for permanent expatriation and the slow toil of agriculture in a new country. The idea of all such men was to grow suddenly rich by plunder or the discovery of gold, and to return home to spend their wealth ; the colonisa- tion of an agricultural country, indeed, was calculated to be of permanent benefit to the nation, but could hardly bring great or rapid riches to the persons who took part in it. Ralegh's perseverance in it at his own expense becomes in this light the more patriotic. He obtained, it is true, vast sums of money, but he spent them lavishly in what he conceived to be the public good. However this may have been ignored by the crowd, with whom Ralegh was always unpopular, it was recognised by the wiser heads of the time. Hooker, in his dedica- tion to him of his Irish History, says, ' It is well known that it had been no less easy for you than for such as have been advanced by kings to have builded great houses, purchased great circuits, and to have used the fruits of princes' favours, as most men in all former and present ages have done, had you not preferred the general honour and commodity SIR WALTER RALEGH 87 of your prince and country before all that is private, whereby you have been rather a servant than a Commander of your own fortune.' The cost of the three previous expeditions to Virginia had already been enormous, and had been almost entirely defrayed by Ralegh ; but on the return of Grenville he lost no time in making another attempt. He selected 150 more men as colonists, v^ith a Mr John White as governor, •with a council of government of 12 associates. These he incorporated under the title of ' The governor and assistants of the city of Ralegh in Virginia,' and the expedition sailed from Ports- mouth on the 26th April 1587* It suited Elizabeth for the moment to feign a desire to be friendly with Spain, and Ralegh was warned that there must be no attacks upon Spaniards on this occasion ; so that the expedition made direct for Cape Hatteras, which was reached within three months. Thence they went to the fort on the island of Roan oak to seek the 15 men left there by Grenville the year before, the intention being to take them off, and establish the new city of Ralegh in Chesapeake Bay. But they found Lane's fort and houses on the north point of Roanoak in ruins and already overgrown with vegetation, and they subsequently learnt from Manteo, the Indian who had visited England, that the little garrison of white men had been treacherously attacked and most of them murdered, the rest being carried into the interior. The Indians on the coast 88 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN had now grown suspicious of the white men, and stood aloof. To conciliate them, Manteo was solemnly baptised and made lord of Roanoak ; forts and houses were again erected, stores landed, and the little colony once more established. But the work of clearing and planting had all to be begun over again, and it was clear that before crops could be produced the stores would be exhausted. The colonists thereupon prayed Governor White himself to return to England in the ships, in order to obtain fresh supplies for them. His daughter, Eleanor Dare, had just given birth to a girl infant, who was christened Virginia— the first child of English blood ever born in North America — and he hesitated to leave his- charge and family under such circumstances. After some persuasion, he unfortunately consented to do so, and arrived in England towards the end of 1587, having left in the new colony 89 men, 17 women, and II children. When White arrived in England, the world was ringing with the pompous preparations of the Spaniards for the conquest and domination of England. Philip's ' leaden foot,' after thirty years of hesitancy, had moved at last, and the ' heretic ' Queen and her Counsellors were to be crushed for once and for all, Drake, Hawkins, Grenville, Ralegh and others of the same sort, who knew by experience how the English corsairs had terrorised the Spaniards at sea, were confident of success, if SIR WALTER RALEGH 89 only Philip's force could be encountered before it landed. Ralegh wrote that the ramparts of England only consisted of men's bodies, there were few coast for- tresses, and that a fleet could travel more quickly than an army, and choose its point of attack where the de- fender was least prepared. The Spaniard, he urged, must be met and fought at sea. Drake thought so too, and had in the summer, much to the Queen's misgiving, suddenly sailed into Cadiz harbour, burnt and sunk all the ships there destined for the Armada, and had then quietly sailed out again, without losing a man or a boat. If gallant Drake had been allowed to have his way, indeed, unhampered by the Queen's tricky diplomacy, and by the secret Catholic influence at Court, he would have made the Armada impossible at this time. He looked into the Tagus, and could easily have burnt the unwieldy fleet ; for, as Santa Cruz confessed, there were no men or guns on board to resist him. As he came home he captured one of the richest prizes ever brought into England, the great East Indian galleon, San Felipe. Well might the mariners be confident, for they knew that the very name of Drake paralysed the Spaniards on every sea ; but the men ashore were not so confident. If Parma and the fierce Spanish infantry, the finest in the world, once landed, they thought it would go badly with the hastily raised militia — and they were probably right. But the government did its best, and from Berwick to the Land's End warlike pre- 90 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN parations went on ceaselessly. As Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall and Lord Warden of the Stannaries, as well as a member of the Commission of National Defence, Ralegh was busy in raising men and strengthening fortifications ; but his main depend- ence was always, and for the rest of his life, upon the fleet and the seamen. Everything that could arouse hatred and indigna- tion against the invader was spread abroad. Ship- loads of scourges were being sent to score the backs of free Englishman ; all adults, men and women, were to be killed ; and thousands of Spanish wet- nurses were coming to suckle the orphaned infants. Nonsense of this sort ran from mouth to mouth and was implicitly believed ; and the English people by the spring of 1588 had been raised to frenzy. There was no longer any room for doubt as to Philip's intentions. Mary Stuart's death had deprived him of the stalk- ing horse behind which he had worked, and he meant to assert his own claim by descent to the crown of England, and make his daughter Queen in his stead. For years the English exiles in his pay — the Jesuits and fanatics who swarmed in Flanders, France, Italy and Spain— had been egging him on to this. The English, they said, would have no beggarly Scot to rule over them. England was rich, powerful and Catholic at heart, and would welcome the Spaniard with open arms, to save them from the Frenchified Scotsmen, who would swarm like locusts over the SIR WALTER RALEGH 91 border. Philip had been told this so often, and so long, that he had got to believe it ; and at last, even the Pope and the French understood that the conquest of England by Philip would mean a Spanish domination of Europe. In both cases Philip's diplomacy had cunningly managed to gag them, and they could only look on im- potently in doubt and disapproval. But tht English it touched more nearly. The Peace Commissioners, it is true, were still sitting at Ostend ; and the frugal Queen had ordered her own warships to be dismantled and paid ofF. But everyone in England knew that war was inevitable, and whatever the Queen might do with her ships, the privateers and armed corsairs kept theirs ready for action, for the men on board were panting to fight a foe they knew they could beat. When the land militia were called out, nominally 100,000 of them, though only a third of that number were armed or drilled, Ralegh was commissioned to raise 2000 men in the west country. He had hardly set about it when the peace negotiations in Flanders seemed to hold out hopes of success, and the prepara- tions were suspended. Early in the spring of 1588, he went to his estate in Ireland, and served the office of Mayor of Youghal for that year. On the approach of the Armada, he hurried into the west country again. He was a member of the special commission for the defence of the country against invasion, and had some time before taken a leading part in the construction of the new fortifications of Portsmouth. He now set 92 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN about raising and arming the west country levies, for which he was responsible, and strengthening the de- fences of the island of Portland. On Saturday, July 20th, 1588, the 'most fortunate' Armada was collected oiF the Lizard ; and at three o'clock in the afternoon first sighted some of Howard's ships. The next morning the two fleets were face to fece, but the superior qualities of the craft and men of the English had given them the wind ; and thence- forward for a week the great galleons, as they sailed up the Channel, were ' pestered by the devilish folk,' who hung upon the flanks and rear — the horns of the great half-moon, in which the affrighted Spaniards sailed. What was the use of bravery f Of what service were great towering hulls and mighty armaments ; of the thousands of harquebussiers crowding the decks? They could not get near their foe to board him ; for the privateers who had carried their lives in their hands for twenty years had been spurred by necessity to invent ships that could sail round the Spaniards, and beat them piecemeal as they did, until dismay and panic turned the great Armada into a hustling mob, with a hostile fleet, fit and confident, to windward, and a shoally coast to lee ; and thus the sceptre of the sea passed from Spain to England. Ralegh's biographers, one and all, assert that he went on board Howard's fleet on the 23d July with other gentlemen volunteers, and witnessed the rest ot the fighting in the Channel. This is just possible, but SIR WALTER RALEGH 93 no more. Not the slightest reference to his presence appears in any^ of the official correspondence, and in any case he had no command and cannot have taken an active part. Whether he was a spectator or not, he thoroughly agreed with the successful tactics pursued by Howard and Drake. The Council sent Richard Drake to ask the Lord Admiral how it was that the Spanish ships had not been boarded, and Ralegh evidently refers to this question in his remarks in the History of the World. * Certainly,' he says, 'he that will happily perform a fight at sea must believe that there is more belonging to a good man of war upon the waters than great daring, and must know that there is a great deal of difference between fighting loose or at large, and grappling. To clap ships together without consideration belongs rather to a madman than to a man of war ; for by such an ignorant bravery was Peter Strozzi 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 were that found fault with his demeanour. The Spaniards had an army aboard them, and he had none ; they had more ships than he had, and of higher build- ing and charging ; so that had he entangled himself with those great and powerful vessels, he had greatly endangered this kingdom of England. For twenty men upon the defences are equal to a hundred that 94 BUILDERS OP GREATER BRITAIN board and enter ; whereas then the Spaniards, contrari- wise, had a hundred for twenty of ours to defend themselves withal. But our admiral knew his ad- vantage and held it ; which had he not done he had not been worthy to have held his head.' It is to be remembered, that what was acknow- ledged to be the best ship in the English fleet, the Lord Admiral's flagship the Ark-Ralegh, had been built by Ralegh on his own plan. It had been launched the previous year, 1587, and had been sold to the Queen for ^^5000 before it left the stocks. The Roebuck also, which Cecil specially praises as a fine ship, was owned and built by Ralegh, and the gallant ^e'y^n^^, Drake's flagship, had been partly owned by him. During the troublous time of preparation to resist the Armada, all ships on the English coast were requisitioned for the royal service, and forbidden to leave port. Grenville was fitting out a large expedition for the Virginia colony, at Bideford, when he was stopped. With difliculty Ralegh obtained a release for two ships bound for the West Indies, on condition of their taking colonists and stores to Virginia. The masters took advantage of the release to sail, but with few stores or settlers, and went on a plundering expedition. Off Madeira they were assailed by French pirates and plundered, whereupon, with Governor White on board, they returned to England, and the colonists for a time were left to their fate. Much ungenerous and unthinking odium has been cast upon Ralegh for his SIR WALTER RALEGH 95 supposed indifference to these unfortunate people, and Southey is particularly severe upon him for it. Ralegh had by this time spent ^T 40,000 on the venture, representing in spending pow^er at least four times that amount in the present day, and, as Hakluyt says in a dedication to him at the time, ' it w^ould have required a prince's purse to have followred it out.' Great as his resources had been, he had w^ell-nigh exhausted them. The ' mere adventurers,' as Hakluyt calls them, did not partake of his far-seeing patriotic views as to the permanent value of an agricultural country to be colonised by Englishmen. As soon as they understood that there were no gold mines, their enthusiasm cooled, and no money was forthcoming. Indeed, from their point of view, the speculation was much less promising than plundering Spaniards or finding an easy way to the rich commodities of the East. As a matter of fact, Ralegh for the rest of his life never ceased in his endeavours to reach the settlers he had sent out, although after 1589 his own personal responsibility was a moral one only. In that year he gave to a company, formed for the purpose, the right to trade in the colony, and kept for himself only the fifth of the precious metals, and the chief rents of the land ; and in pursuance of this transfer, White again started in August 1589 to relieve the settlers. This time he arrived at Roanoak, and found the colony had been transferred to the island of Croatan, 60 miles further south. White and his expedition set sail for 96 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN the place, but were caught in a storm, and once more driven back to England without reaching the settlers. Thenceforward the company made no further attempt to relieve them, nor did the Queen help in any way, although the plan from the first had been carried out in the interests of the country, and not in those of the patri- otic projector. At his own cost Ralegh subsequently sent at least five expeditions to discover the fate of his people, but always without success. It was afterwards learnt that the whole of them had been murdered by the Chief Powattan, and it was twenty years longer before a permanent settlement of Englishmen was fixed on the northern continent. But no subsequent events can take away the glory from Ralegh of having by his patriotism and example secured for the occupa- tion of the English-speaking race the great continent which now can never be alienated from it, come what may. In the dedication to him by Hakluyt of a narrative of French voyages to Florida, his really patriotic objects are fully recognised. ' Touching the speedy and effectual pursuing of your action, I am of opinion that you shall draw the same before long to be profitable and gainful, as well to those of our nation there remaining as to the merchants of England that shall trade hereafter thither, partly by certain secret commodities already discovered by your servants, and partly by breeding of divers sorts of beasts in those large and ample regions, and planting such things in that warm climate as will best prosper there, and our SIR WALTER RALEGH 97 realm stahdeth most in need of. Moreover, there is no other likelihood but that Her Majesty, who hath christened and given the name to your Virginia, if need require, will deal after the manner of honourable godmothers, which, seeing their gossips not fully able to bring up their children themselves, are wont to contribute to their honest education, the rather if they find any towardliness or reasonable hopes of goodness in them.' But the Virgin Queen was not a god- mother of that description, and Ralegh's colony got no help from her. Ralegh himself never lost hope or faith. ' I shall yet live,' he wrote, shortly before his ruin — ' I shall yet live to see it an English nation.' And so he did, but he was in the Tower a prisoner. In the meanwhile he had by his enterprise endowed his country with vegetable products from abroad, which others had seen and described, but which he alone had utilised. He had impressed upon his fellow- countrymen the indignation which he felt at the arrogant assumption of the Spaniards to the exclusive possession of the western world, by virtue of a papal bull ; he had demonstrated that limitless regions of fertile land, with untold natural wealth, were awaiting the benefits of civilisation and Christianity j he had sown the seed of English colonial enterprise, and others were to reap the harvest. CHAPTER VI EXPEDITION TO LISBON EDMUND SPENSER AND THE FAERIE QUEEN RALEGH AS A POET PROSE WRITINGS Adventure was in the air. The dramatic and com- plete catastrophe of the much-vaunted Armada made Englishmen more than ever confident that at sea henceforward they were to be paramount. The thirst for plunder spread, and citizens of all classes became eager to participate in the rapid gains of adventures against foes whom they had begun to despise. As a thorn in the side of Philip, both Elizabeth and Catharine de Medici in turn had entertained and encouraged Don Antonio, a pre- tender to the Portuguese crown, which Philip had assumed. From Elizabeth Antonio had hitherto got little but fine words, but the French Queen Mother had aided to fit out two disastrous naval expeditions to the Azores. By 1589 most of his jewels — the crown jewels of Portugal — had been pledged or SIR WALTER RALEGH 99 wheedled away from him, but he still had what is now called the Sancy diamond, and this he pledged, and came again to England. With Elizabeth's aid and countenance a joint stock company was formed to invade Portugal in Don Antonio's interest ; he was sure, poor sanguine man, that his countrymen would acclaim him king the moment he set foot on shore ; and he promised, if he were successful, not only to reimburse all the cost of the expedition, but to make Portugal almost a tributary of England, and above all to deliver the Spanish belongings in Lisbon to the sack of the men of the expedition. England was excited for revenge and loot, and rufSans, high and low, half the idlers of the Court, the sweepings of the streets, and the scum of the jails, flocked to take part in what was represented as being a pleasant excursion on summer seas to a paradise of plunder. An army of 16,000 soldiers, with 2500 sailors was raised ; and after much vexatious delay and disappoint- ment, the expedition of nearly 200 sail was ready in the middle of April, The chief command of the land forces was held by Sir John Norris, and Drake commanded at sea. Ralegh was one of the con- tributors to the adventure, and accompanied the expedition ; but the Queen had peremptorily refused the Earl of Essex permission to join. In the previous autumn there had been a squabble between him and Ralegh, which had led to a challenge, and the inter- 100 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN vention of the Privy Council to prevent hostilities. Jealous, doubtless, that Ralegh should take part in the enterprise wfhilst he was dangling at the skirts of the imperious old lady whom he alone dared to treat insolently, Essex escaped from Court, rushed in disguise to Plymouth, and got on board the Swiftsure, in which the chief oiBcer was Sir Roger Williams, the general second in command of the army. Before his pursuers could catch him, the Swiftsure, without Drake's orders, put to sea. The Queen was frantic with rage, swore that Drake and Norris were privy to the favourite's escape, and thenceforward she had nothing but hard words and sour looks for the expedi- tion. Sir Roger Williams especially was threatened with instant death on his return — a threat, by the way, of which he took very little notice. The Swiftsure joined the fleet after the latter had wasted ten days at Corunna, sacking, burning and plunder- ing, but neglecting the main object of the expedition. When they reached Peniche, Drake, true to his invariable policy of tackling the Spaniards on the water, was for forcing the entrance of the Tagus and sailing up in front of the city. In this he was supported by Ralegh, and if the plan had been adopted the result of the enterprise would probably have been very different from what it was. But Don Antonio, Norris and Essex, who were no sea- men, were for marching over land to Lisbon and besieging it. They had no siege guns or para- SIR WALTER RALEGH loi phernalia, no proper marching gear, no commissariat, and no medical stafF, but Antonio was so confident that Lisbon would open its gates to him, that Drake was overborne ; and foolish Essex had his way. It happens that all the historians of the unfortunate expedition were with Norris's force, so that we have no details of Drake's movements, except that he went with the fleet to the mouth of the river at Cascaes to await the return of and re-embark the army. No mention whatever is made of Ralegh, but it is certain that he did not go with Norris and Essex on their wild-goose chase. He and Drake were better employed. During the six days they had awaited Norris off Cascaes they had scoured the seas for miles around in search of prizes, and captured 40 German hulks loaded with goods for the Spaniards. Some of these, and the many other prizes taken, had to be abandoned for want of men ; for drink, disease and desertion had reduced the English force to about a quarter of its original number ; others were surreptitiously run into remote ports of England and Ireland, and the proceeds of them appropriated by their crews, so that the booty to be divided fairly amongst the adventurers was trifling. In one of Ralegh's prizes, some of Williams's men had been placed to escort it to England, and turbulent Sir Roger, who, henchman of Essex as he was, hated Ralegh, claimed the whole value of the prize, which, he said, but for his men, could not have been brought I02 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN to England. His claim was disallowed, for the Queen was still in a violent rage with him, and Essex had not yet dared to return to Court. Ralegh, on the con- trary, who had had no share in the failure, was welcomed, and received a gold chain as a new token of the Queen's regard. Williams thereupon addressed an insolent letter to the Council, saying that he de- served a chain as well as his fellows. He was pro- bably unaware that only a few weeks before the Queen had peremptorily ordered Drake and Norris to give him a halter. Before many weeks were over, however, Essex was taken into favour again, and soon made the Court too warm for Ralegh. ' My Lord of Essex hath chased Mr Ralegh from Court, and hath confined him to Ireland ' wrote Anthony Bacon's friend, Allen, in August, though it must be remembered that both of them belonged to Essex's party, and would be glad to exaggerate his influence. Ralegh himself appears to have heard some such gossip, for he wrrote, after his return to London in December 1589, to his cousin George Carew, ' For my retrait from Court, it was uppon good cause to take order for my prize.' He had other reasons for leaving Court. His great Irish estates were causing him endless worry. With characteristic energy, he was deep in experimental planting, mining, draining, and disforesting ; he was splendidly rebuilding Lismore Castle, and was full of schemes for improving his property. But Fitzwilliams, SIR WALTER RALEGH 103 the Viceroy, was apparently his enemy, and favoured squatters and claimants upon his lands, and generally hampered him. His reference to Fitzwilliams in the letter just quoted to Carew (who was then Master of the Ordnance in Ireland) is interesting as showing how his proud spirit chafed at the suggestion that he was a disgraced favourite. ' If in Irlande they thincke that I am not worth respectinge they shall mich deceave them sealvs. I am in place to be beleved not inferrior to any man, to pleasure or displeasure the greatest, and my oppinion is so receaved and beleved' as I can anger the best of them. And therfore if the Deputy {i.e., Fitzwilliams) be not as reddy to steed me as I have bynn to defend hyme — be it as it may. ' When Sir William Fitzwilliams shalbe in Ingland, I take my sealf ferr his better by the honorable offices I hold, as also by that nireness to Her Majestye which still I enjoy, and never more. I am willing to con- tinue towards hyme all frindly offices, and I doubt not of the like from hyme as well towards mee as my frinds.' This letter must have been written from London after his visit to Ireland and his short retirement from Court. He was now sure that his transient disgrace with the Queen had passed, for he had with him a new suppliant for her favour. ' When will you cease to be a beggar ? ' she asked him once. ' When your gracious Majesty ceases to be 3 benefactor,' was his 104 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN courtly reply. He was, in fact, never tired of playing the patron and friend of those who sought Court favour. In the spirit of the times in many cases he took care to be handsomely paid ; but where poets and men of letters were concerned, his disinterested- ness and generosity knew no bounds. Himself one of the noblest of Elizabethan courtly singers, rivalling Sidney, even approaching Shakespeare in his sonnets, perhaps the greatest service he rendered to English poetry was in snatching from obscurity the poet Spenser, and promoting the publication of the Faerie ^een. It was on the visit to Ireland in the autumn of 1589 that he renewed his acquaintance with him. In the rough days of the Desmond rebellion, when the masterful Captain Ralegh was sweeping the rebels from Cork by fire and sword, Edmund Spenser had been the secretary to the Viceroy, Lord Grey, with whom Ralegh had so many passages of arms. The two young men must have known each other then, for Ralegh had already written poetry whilst he was at the Temple, and Spenser had published verse ; but their lives had thenceforward lain in different places. Spenser had received the estate of Kilcolman, part of the Desmond forfeitures, and occupied an official post he had purchased in Cork ; and on Ralegh's flying visit to Ireland in 1589 they met. What happened at the meeting and afterwards, Spenser himself related, when he returned to Kilcolman in 1 591, in his poem dedicated to Ralegh, called Colin Clout's come Home SIR WALTER RALEGH 105 again. He tells how the ' Strange Shepherd ' found him * Keeping my sheep atnotig the cooly ihade. Of tlie green alders by the Mulla s shore* and how without env/ the two poets compared their songs. Ralegh's contribution to the conversation seems to have been a plaint, — * Of great unklndness and of usage hard^ Of Cynthia^ the Lady of the Sea, Which from her presence faultless him debarred. And ever and anon loith singulfs rife He cried out to make his undersong ,• j4h ! my love's ^een, and goddess of my life. Who shall pity me ivhen thou do'st me ivrong f ' Much as Ralegh might complain of the unkindness of ' Great Cynthia,' he was confident, as we have seen by his letter to Carew, of his ability to soften her heart ; and he persuaded Spenser to accompany him to Court and present his poem to the Queen. The commencement of the work had been encouraged by Sir Philip Sidney ; it was published by the advice of Sir Walter Ralegh. With the Queen's patronage the first three ' books ' were issued soon after the poet's appearance at Court, and by Ralegh's counsel they were accompanied by an explanatory exposition of the meaning of the allegory. This took the form of a letter printed as an appendix, and addressed to the ' Right noble and valorous Sir Walter Ralegh,' in which the poet's obligations to the favourite were io6 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN gratefulljr acknowledged. A pension of ,^50 a year was bestowed upon Spenser, which probably was sometimes paid to him, nothwithstanding Lord Treasurer Burghley's demur at ' all this for a song ? ' and the poet went back to 'Mulla's shore,' to con- tinue his immortal work, a much more important person than when the ' Shepherd of the ocean ' first found him there. Kilcolman, however, was not much more advantageous to Spenser than Lismore was to Ralegh. Disappointment and discouragement came to both the ' undertakers,' though Ralegh fortunately sold his vast domain to Boyle, afterwards Earl of Cork, in whose hands it prospered exceedingly. Spenser clung to Kilcolman until Tyrone's great uprising in 1598 harried his lands, burnt his home, and broke his heart. Of Ralegh's own position as a poet this is not the place to speak at any length. In a courtly dilettante way he must have written much, and his verse was held in high esteem by his contemporaries, though apparently he cared little for its preservation ; perhaps he almost despised his great poetic gift, for he signed hardly anything and printed nothing. He was con- tent to receive the applause of the cultured courtiers, by whom a turn for amorous verse was looked upon as a necessary accomplishment. In the fine sonnet addressed to him by Spenser at the end of the Faerie ^een, a noble compliment is paid to his poetry. SIR WALTER RALEGH 107 * To thee that art the sutnmcr\ nightingale^ Thy Sovereign goddess's most dear delight. Why do I send this rustic madrigal. That may thy tuneful ears un season quite ? Thou, only jit this argument to turite. In ivhose high thoughts Pleasure hath built her boiver, And dainty lo've learned s-vjeetly to indite. My rhymes, I kn(nu, unsavoury and sour To taste the streams, that like a golden shoiver Flo%v from the fruitful head of thy Love's praise ; Fitter perhaps to thunder martial stoivre, Whenso thee list thy lofty Muse to raise. Yet till that thou thy poem luill make known. Let thy fair Cynthia's praises be thus rudely shoivn.' The poem to which Spenser refers in the last two lines must have been shown or sketched out to him when Ralegh saw him in Ireland in 1589, as more than one reference is made to it in Colin Clout. The whole of it was thought to be lost, until recent years, when a continuation or sequel to it in Ralegh's hand was discovered at Hatfield, consisting of over 500 lines. The fragment was published entire in Dr Hannah's Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh., and it is there assumed to have been written shortly after the death of the Queen, to whom, of course, the poem itself must have been addressed. Mr Stebbing, on the contrary, supposes that the fragment in question was written during Ralegh's disgrace between 1592-5, and that the references to death in it do not apply to the Queen personally, but to her dead love for him. With this I am inclined to agree, although it would be pleasant to think that Ralegh's regard for his io8 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN benefactress should have led him to continue to praise her in the time of her successor. The following are the lines upon which the question turns : — ^ If to the living ivere my muse addressed^ Or did my mind her oiun spirit still inhold ; JVere not my living passion so repressed As to the deadf the dead did these unfold^ Whichever contention may be right, the poem is a stately one, but imbued, like all of Ralegh's verse, with deep melancholy. With the exception of a few lighter verses, the whole of his poems appear to have been written at periods of disappointment and despondency, as if it were only in depression that his mind was diverted from action. Like many sanguine men, Ralegh must have been easily — though perhaps momentarily — reduced to hopeless misery by failure. Some of his poems of discontent, which do not breathe despair and longing for release by death, are full of almost savage resentment, as in the case of The Lie. * C?o, ^oulj the body*s guesf^ Upon a tJiankless arrant ; Fear not to touch the best ,• The truth shall be thy loarrant : Go, since I needs must die, And give the ivorld the He. * Say to the court it gloivs And shines like rotten ivood ; Say to the church it shotvs PFhat''s good, and doth no good : If church and court reply j Then give them both the lie. SIR WALTER RALEGH 109 * Tell potentates they live Acting by others' action ,* Not loved unless they givCy Not strong but by a faction : If potentates reply. Give potentates the lie. ' Tell men of high condition. That manage the Estate, Their purpose is ambition, T/ieir practice only hate ; And if they once reply. Then give them all the He. Tell them that brave it most ; They beg for more by spending. Who in their greatest cost Seek nothing but commending : And iftJiey make reply. Then give them all the lie. Tell %eal it ivants devotion ; Tell love it is but lust ; Tell time it is but motion j Tell flesh it is but dust : And ivish them not reply. For thou must give the lie. Tell age it daily ivastetk ; Tell honour hotv it alters ; Tell beauty hoiv she blasteth ,■ Tell favour honv it falters : And as they sliall reply. Give every one the lie. ' Tell ivit hovj much it ivrangles In tickle points of niceness ; Tell tuisdom she entangles Herself in over-iviseness : And ivhen they do reply. Straight give them both the lie. no BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN ' Tell physic of her boldness ,■ Tell skill it is pretension ,* Tell charity of coldness ; Tell laiv it is contention : And as they do reply^ So give them still the lie. ' Tell fortune of her blindness ; Tell nature of decay ; Tell friendship of unkindness ; Tell justice of delay : And if they ivill reply^ Then gi-ve them all the lie. * Tell arts they ha've no soundness. But 'Vary by esteeming ; Tell schools they 'want profoundness. And stand too much on seeming : If arts and schools reply. Give arts and schools the He. * Tell faith it's fed the city ; Tell ho'w the country erreth ; Tell manhood shakes off pity ; Tell virtue least pref erreth ; And if they do reply^ Spare not to give the lie. ' So ivhen thou hast, as I Commanded thee, done blabbing — Although to give the lie Deserves no less than stabbing — Stab at thee he that ivill. No stab the soul can kill.' No wonder that a man full of such bitter thoughts and words as these — a man, moreover, arrogant, im- patient and proud — was cordially detested by the courtiers over whom he trampled roughshod, and by the people whom he never condescended to concili- SIR WALTER RALEGH iii ate — excepting always his own Devon and Cornish men, who knew and loved him ; and this very poem of The Lie brought many retorts from the author's enemies in similar metre. An extract of two stanzas from one of them will show the feeling against him. ' The Court hath settled suremss In banishing such boldness ; The Church retains her pureness^ Though Atheists shoiv their coldness ; The Court and Churchy though base^ Turn lies into thy face. ' The potentates reply. Thou base, by them ad'vanced, Sinisterly soarest high, And at their actions glanced ; They for this thankless part Turn lies into thy heart.* The accusation of Atheism against Ralegh, and also especially against his protege Hariot, was per- sisted in during the whole of his life, but, so far as Ralegh is concerned, there does not seem a tittle of evidence to support it ; the whole of his writings, especially towards the end of his life, breathing the sincerest devotion. The following poem called The Excuse is a good specimen of Ralegh's lighter verse. ^Calling to mind my eyes 'went long about. To cause my heart for to forsake my breast ; All in a rage I sought to pull them out ; As ivho had been such traitors to my rest : What could they say to ivin again my grace ? Forsooth that they had seen my mistress's face. 112 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN ^Another time my heart I called to mindy Thinking that he this ivoe on me had brought Because that he^ to love, hii force resigned JVhen of such luars my fancy never thought : What could he say ivhen I ivould him have slain ? That he was hers — and had forgone my chain. * At last ivhen I percei'ued both eyes and heart Excuse themsel-ves as guiltless of my ill, I found myself the cause of all my smart. And told myself that I myself luould kill : Tet ivhen I saw myself to you ivas true, I loved myself because myself loved you.* His reply to Spenser's address to him in the Faerie ^eeuy quoted above, is extremely dignified, and will compare with the finest sonnets in the language. ' Methought I sanv the gra've tvhere Laura lay, pyithin that temple ivhere the 'vestal fiame JVas zvont to burn ; and passing by that luay To see that buried dust of Vfuing fame. Whose tomb fair lo've and fairer virtue kept, All suddenly I saiv the Faerie S^ueen, At ivhose approach the soul of Petrarch ivept ; And from thenceforth those graces ivere not seen. For they this Siueen attended ^ in ivhose stead Oblivion laid htm doivn on Laura's hearse. Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed. And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce i Where Homer's sprite did tremble all for grief And cursed the ascess of that celestial thief.' Nothing of Ralegh's verse has remained imprinted on the mind of posterity ; hardly a word of his poetry has become blended into the common English speech and is unconsciously used, as is the case with certain expressions of Spenser, Sidney, and, above all, SIR WALTER RALEGH 113 the great Elizabethan dramatists, but curiously enough the rhyme of Ralegh's which is best known is a couplet contained in what were probably almost the first verses he wrote. They are three commendatory stanzas, prefixed to a satirical poem by his Temple friend Gascoigne, called The Steele Glass, published in 1576. The middle stanza is as follows, and the last couplet is not infrequently quoted without any knowledge of its origin. * Though sundry minds in sundry sorts do dee?n, Tet "worthiest ivights yield praise to every pain : But envious drains do nought, or light esteem, Such stately steps as they cannot attain ; For iv/to so reaps renonun above the rest, With heaps of hate shall surely he oppressed' This must have been written before Ralegh was twenty-four, when he was quite unknown ; and yet it is extraordinarily prophetic of the hatred and unpopu- larity which his own eminence brought upon him. Ralegh, doubtless, looked upon his poetic gift mainly as a solace in moments of disappointment, or as a means of venting his dissatisfaction, but his deeper studies must have been much nearer his heart ; although, with the exception of his great and really extraordinary History of the World and an account by him in Hakluyt of the loss of the Revenge, none of his prose writings were avowedly published during his life, many profound and advanced treatises have been given to the world since, and prove him to have been in H 114 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN most things far in advance of his age. In his Select Observations on Trade and Commerce^ he anticipates nearly all the arguments of free traders ; in his Prerogative of Parliaments he demonstrates, far in ad- vance of his contemporarieSjthat the power of the Crown is strengthened by the maintenance of the privileges of the House of Commons ; his writings on the con- struction of ships, and naval tactics, addressed to Prince Henry, anticipate many of the conclusions arrived at by scientific sailors of our own times, and his political Maxims of State, written whilst he was a prisoner, are full of far-seeing wisdom, and show how unquenchable was still his ambition to direct affairs and men, even from the Tower. This arrogant desire to take the management of everything and every- body was, through his life, the principal cause of his unpopularity. Few men care for another person calmly to assume, as of right, to talce the direction of their alFairs out of their hands, and this was what Ralegh invariably did in all matters with which he was concerned. Some of his writings have been lost ; amongst them a Life of ^een Elizabeth ; and several treatises pub- lished under his name are almost certainly by other hands; but the undoubted works of his that remain are sufficient in themselves to establish Ralegh's posi- tion as one of the greatest literary geniuses that England ever possessed ; and this, be it recollected, was a man who was essentially a man of action, who SIR WALTER RALEGH 115 used his literary gifts not for themselves, but for other ends, to advocate policies or actions, or to prove con- tentions, not for the sake of literary form. There was, indeed, never a man less vain of literary eminence than he ; so long as his writings produced the effect he desired, he cared nothing, what became of them. Of the History of the World I shall speak elsewhere, when treating of his life in the Tower, but the vast project of the work, in a literary sense one of the greatest ever conceived, proves the indomitable energy of the man and his confidence in his extraordinary powers. Even in a book of this character — treating of far distant times — his intense interest in current affairs, and his desire to influence them, are manifest upon almost every page, where apposite illustrations from his own life, or modern instances gathered from his own observation, supply the principal value of the book to modern readers. His benefactions to, and support of, literary men were endless. Hakluyt acknowledges gratefully the infor- mation, as well as the material aid, he obtained from him. He defrayed the cost of publication of coloured illustrations of Florida scenery painted by the fVench artist Jacques de Morgues ; Laudonniere's narrative of the disastrous French attempts to colonise that region was dedicated to him, both in French and English. He bought for ^60 the manuscript^ of Estevao de Gama's voyage to the Red Sea in 1541, and every Spanish book which could be obtained telling of the ii6 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN continent of the west, was eagerly purchased and avidly read by him. But through all his ceaseless activities, a speculator with shares in every venture, a shipowner with privateers scouring every sea, an active member of parliament, an assiduous courtier, a patient student, a voluminous writer, a great reforming landowner, chemist, engineer, statesman, official, and much else, like a golden vein there ran the determination that his country should oppose the arrogant assumption by Spain of the unchallenged domination of the new world. He knew by this time that the haughty claim was based upon an insecure foundation ; that without the empire of the sea, the empire of the lands across the sea was untenable. He and his kinsmen had proved — if any proof beyond the Armada were needed — that English ships and English seamen were far more than a match for the Spaniards. Hollow pride should be met by pride as haughty but better founded. The Spaniard's loudly proclaimed dominion of the western world must be challenged, and the challenger must be England. This was the master motive of Ralegh's busy life through soorm and sun- shine ; and however devious were the courses by which he sought to reach it, his goal was immoveable, and he held it unto martyrdom. CHAPTER VII THE FIGHT OF THE ' REVENGE ' RALEGh's PRIVA- TEERING EXPEDITION HIS DISGRACE AND IM- PRISONMENT THE GREAT CARRACK RALEGH AS A PARLIAMENT MAN On Ralegh's arrival in Court virith Spenser early in 1590, he was received once more into his mistress's good graces, and shortly afterwards the avowal of his rival Essex's marriage with the widow of Philip Sidney raised Ralegh again to his position of chief favourite. The Queen did not fall into ungovernable rage as she did upon Leicester's marriage with Essex's mother, but she insulted the bride, and pursued her with a spite and venom almost incredible, except by those who have studied closely the strange blending of grandeur and meanness in Elizabeth's character. During the short time of Essex's disgrace, and the longer period in the ensuing year 1 59 1, when he was in France com- manding the English contingent in aid of Henry IV. against Spain, Ralegh was all powerful with the Queen, 117 ii8 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN and when in the spring of 1591 it was determined to send an expedition to the Azores to intercept Philip's silver fleet from the west, he secured the appointment of Vice-Admiral. It was an enterprise which would, if successful, bring a great profit, and to this Ralegh was never indifferent. The supreme command was to be given to Lord Thomas Howard, and the squadron consisted of five of the Queen's ships, five cargo ships belonging to London, the Bark- Ralegh, and two or three pinnaces. But after all Elizabeth could not spare Ralegh ; Essex was away in France, and Hatton was dying ; and it was hard to have none of the courtier lovers by her ; so his appointment as Vice-Admiral was cancelled, and his cousin Sir Richard Grenville appointed in his stead, doubtless to Sir Walter's discontent. The squadron left England in the early spring, but the silver fleet that year was late. It had encountered heavy storms in the Gulf of Mexico, and other mishaps on the American coast, and Howard's fleet lingered on the look out for it all the summer and autumn. This gave time for Philip to send a powerful escort to bring the silver fleet into Seville, and on the loth September (N.S.) Captain Middleton, who had been cruising on the look out, came to the English fleet which was at anchor off Flores with the news that Don Alonso de Bazan — Santa Cruz's brother — was in the ofling with two squadrons of 53 ships. The English fleet was in bad order with its long waiting. Great SIR WALTER RALEGH 119 numbers of the men were down with scurvy and fever, the ships were crank for want of ballast, and many of the crews were ashore securing water. So short of men were they, that the Bonaventure^ one of the large ships, had not sufficient hands to work her, and a smaller vessel had to be burnt and the crew put on 'board the Bonaventure. The Spanish fleet was fresh, and enormously superior in strength, and Lord Thomas gave the word for the English to get away. So rapidly did the Spaniards come up that some of the English ships had not time to weigh anchor, but had to slip their cables and run. Sir Richard Grenville in the Revenge stood by the longest, to take oiF the men who had gone ashore ; so that whilst the other ships all recovered the wind, and stood ofF, he found himself jammed between the shore and the Spanish fleet on his weather bow. He still might escape if he set his mainsail, cast about briskly, and showed a clean pair of heels to the foe. His sailing-master advised him to take this course. ' No,' said Sir Richard, ' I would rather die than dishonour myself, my country, and Her Majesty's ship, by flying from Spaniards. I will force my way through both squadrons of them.' Then began that famous fight that great poets have sung and great historians related, a fight that still stands forth as one of the most splendid in the glorious annals of the British navy. No prose story of it is more vivid than that written by Ralegh himself soon after the 120 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN event. As the undaunted Revenge scornfully sailed on, the foremost ships of the Spanish fleet, surprised, perchance, at the audacity of the act, gave way, luffed, and fell astern of the English ship. But the giant San Felipe, of 1 500 tons burden, one of the biggest galleons afloat, came looming up to w^indw^ard, her towrering hull all carved and gilded, and her spreading sails becalming the little Revenge — she w^as only 500 tons burden — which now lay Hke a helpless log in the trough of the sea. Then four other great galleons closed around her, two to port and two to star- board, and the Revenge was hemmed in ; whilst all the navy of Spain stood by in case of need. Grenville was short handed ; 90 of his men lay sick and helpless below ; he had no regular fighting men on board, whilst the Spanish ships were crowded with trained soldiers. The tactics of the Spaniards had always been to grapple and board their opponents, whilst the policy of the English was to fire low into the hulls of their enemies and disable them. The Revenge adopted this course as usual, and at three o'clock in the afternoon sent a broadside of bar-shot from her lowest row of ports crashing into the great round hull of the San Felipe, between wind and water. The galleon was too high to train her big guns on to the hull of the Revenge, and was fain to sheer out of the fight, other ships of lower build taking her place. The great galleons closed and grappled, storms of musketry swept the decks of the Revenge again and SIR WALTER RALEGH 121 again. Swarming up the sides came Spaniards by the hundred, only to be hurled headlong back again into the sea. Grinding of timbers, booming of great guns, patter of harquebusses, rose loud over the shouts of command and the sobs of the dying : and still hour after hour the unequal fight went on, till the decks of the Revenge were all bright and slippery with blood, and encumbered by the fallen. Grenville, with blazing eyes and grinding teeth, stood upon the poop of his ship through it all — some say sorely wounded from the first, but in any case there he stood. Once a bold little cargo ship, the George Noble of London, hanging on the lee of the Revenge, came near enough to shout to Sir Richard that they only awaited his commands to take part in the contest. ' Save yourselves,' he answered, ' and leave me to my fortune.' Through all the day, through all the night, the death-struggle raged unceasing. As fast as one crowd of boarders were beaten back, fresh masses swarmed up the sides, to be met and vanquished, steel to steel, by the dwindling row of heroes that lined the bulwarks of the Revenge. One after the other, the Revenge alone had to cope with 15 great men-of-war, and when the ghastly dawn came she was a riddled wreck ; her decks a shambles, her rigging and spars a hideous ruin over her sides, Grenville mortally hurt, and hardly a man on board unwounded. During the 15 hours fight, the Revenge had received 800 cannon shot and had sunk by her side two of her great assailants. 122 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN Then, when all was hopeless, no men, no ammuni- tion, no serviceable arms, Sir Richard ordered the ship to be scuttled and sunk. 'Trust to God,' he said to his men, ' and to none else. Lessen not your honour now by seeking to prolong your lives by a few days or hours.' But most of his men thought they had done enough for honour, and knew that the Spaniards would be as ready to offer terms as they to accept them. So Sir Richard and his master gunner were overborne, and with bared heads the generous and admiring enemies carried the dying hero on to the ships of Spain. All that chivalrous foes could do was done by the Spaniards for the brave remnant of the crew of the Revenge. ' Do with my body what thou wilt,' said Grenville, all helpless now as they carried him from the slaughter house on his decks ; and after three days he died on board the San Pablo, his last words being in the tongue of the victors, ' Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, having ended my life like a true soldier that has fought for his country. Queen, religion and honour.' In the fight the Spaniards lost looo men ; and a great storm a few days afterwards sunk the Revenge, 15 of the Spanish war ships, and as many of the Spanish Indiamen, with a total of 10,000 men on board, all of whom perished. Ralegh's eloquent account of this deed of daring, like all of his writings, was evidently written for a purpose. It was, indeed, a vigorous protest — in many SIR WALTER RALEGH 123 places violent and unjust — against the ambition of Spain. « How irreligiously they cover their greedy and ambitious practices with that veil of piety ; for sure I am that there is no kingdom or commonwealth in all Europe, but if reformed they invade it for religion's sake ; and if it be, as they term, Catholic, then they pretend title : as if the kings of Castile were the natural heirs of the world.'' Unfortunate as was the attempt to intercept the silver fleet in 1591, it was not entirely fruitless, for ' a Mr Watt's ship ' brought in some prizes, and a letter from Ralegh to Lord Burghley about the division of the spoil amongst the 12 adventurers is interesting. ' All of which amounteth not to the increase of one for one, which is a small return. Wee might have gotten more to have sent them a-fishinge. I assure your Lordship whatsoever is taken, fifty of the hundred goes cleare away from the adventurers to the mariners, the Lord Admiral, and to the Queene ; the rest being but jT 14,000 or therabout, is a small matter amounge twelve adventurers ; and of which ^ 14,000 the set- ting out cost us very nire ^8000. This is the very trewth, I assure your Lordship before the livinge God, as nire as wee can sett downe or gett knowledge of.' It will be curious to set forth the actual account of these prizes as rendered, showing, as it does, the shares received by the respective parties. 'Value of merchandise, etc., captured, ^^31,150. One third for the mariners, ;^ 10,383 ; for my Lord (Admiral) his 124 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN tenth, ^^3015 ; for the Queen's customs, ;^i6oo ; cost of bringing the goods, jf I200=;^i6,i98. Rests unto the owners and victuallers to be divided amongst twrelve, jT 14,952.' It will be seen that the business of plunder was organised on a thoroughly commercial system. However the result of the adventure of 1591 may have discontented Ralegh, he was determined to organise a still bolder enterprise for the following spring, and probably his violent diatribe against Spain in his account of the Revenge combat was intended to stir up feeling in England, and aid the procuring capital for the adventure. In this enter- prise he himself ventured everything he possessed and more, his principal partner being George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland. The design, as before, was to intercept the silver fleet, and also to repeat Drake's famous coup upon Panama. Thirteen well found and manned ships were provided by the adventurers, and two, the Garland and the Foresight, by the Queen, and Ralegh was to have chief command as Admiral, his Vice-Admiral being Sir John Borough. Ralegh busied himself in his preparations, but before the time came for him to sail, the Queen relented somewhat, and made him promise that as soon as the expedition was well out to sea, he would hand the chief command to Frobisher, whilst he returned to England in the Disdain. Frobisher was very unpopular with seamen, and Ralegh did not SIR WALTER RALEGH 125 like the idea, for, as he reminded Cecil, he had ventured everything he possessed in the enterprise. ' If I can persuade the cumpanies to follovsr Sir Martin Furbresher, I will virithout fail returne, and bringe them but into the sea some fifty or three score leagues . . . which to do, Her Majestie many tymes with great grace badd me remember, and sent me the same message by Will Killigrewe, which, God willinge, if I can persuade the cumpanies I meane to perform, though I dare not be acknown thereof to any creature.' This was written from Chatham on the lOth March 1592, and already there were rumours of an entanglement or marriage between the favourite and Elizabeth Throgmorton, one of the Queen's maids of honour. Ralegh's enemies at Court were even now whispering that when once his foot was on the deck of his ship, he would not come back until the Queen's anger was appeased. Cecil seems to have hinted to Ralegh that these rumours were afloat, for Ralegh, in the same letter as that quoted above, continues, ' I mean not to cume away as they say I will for fear of a marriage and I know not what. If any such thing weare, I would have im- parted it unto yoursealf before any man livinge ; and therefore I pray believe it not, and I beseich you to suppress what you can any such malicious report. For I protest before God, ther is none on the face of the yearth that I would be fastened unto.' Westerly winds held him in port whilst he grew more and 126 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN more despondent. 'More grieved than ever I wras in anything of this world for this cross weather.' By the end of May, however, he put to seat, but he had hardly set sail before Frobisher followed him with orders for him to return immediately to Court. Ralegh's heart was set upon the adventure in which his whole fortune was embarked. He had sworn positively — and falsely — that there was no truth in the marriage rumours, and had no relish for going back to Court just then. So he dared to disregard the Queen's positive orders, and went on his way. But discouragement met him. He learnt that no silver ships were to venture out this year ; for the Spaniards knew all about his enterprise. Then a great storm scattered his ships ofF Finisterre. It was too late in the season now to attempt the attack on Panama, and he therefore determined to leave Frobisher with one squadron on the Spanish coast to divert attention, and send Borough to the Azores to waylay such ships from the Indies as might happen to pass ; whilst he, Ralegh, returned home. He arrived in London in June, and was immediately arrested and lodged in the Tower. No reason was ever given for his imprisonment ; it is just possible that the ostensible excuse for it may have been his disobedience to the Queen's orders in not returning at once, but it is certain that his real crime was his liaison with Elizabeth Throgmorton. Taking such slight evidence as exists into consideration, it is SIR WALTER RALEGH 127 doubtful whether at this time Ralegh had been secretly married to her, though for the rest of his life she made him a tender, noble, and faithful wife. But the Virgin Queen arrogated to herself an absolute monopoly of love-making in her Court, and looked upon the marriage of her favourites as a personal insult to herself. The friends of Essex were openly jubilant, whilst the Cecils, his enemies, tried their best to soften the fate of Ralegh. Whether it be true that Lady Ralegh herself was imprisoned in the Tower, as stated, is not certain ; but in any case the Queen never forgave her whilst she lived, and Ralegh himself, desirous of winning back the Queen's favour, was careful to avoid all reference to the accomplice of his 'crime.' In a letter from the Tower to Cecil, about the payments on account of the uniform of the Queen's bodyguard, he writes in the following inflated strain. The Queen, be it remembered, was then approaching sixty. ' My heart was never broken till this day that I hear the Queen goes so far off — whom I have followed so many years with so great love and desire in so many journeys, and am now left behind her in a dark prison all alone. While she was yet nire at hand that I might hear of her once in two or three days, my sorrows were less, but even now my heart is cast into the depth of all misery. I, that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her 128 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN fair hair about her pure cheeks like a nymph ; some- times sitting in the shade like a goddess ; sometimes singing like an angell, sometime playing like Orpheus. Behold the sorrow of this world ! Once amiss hath bereaved me of all. O glory that only shineth in misfortune what is becum of thy assurance ? All wounds have skares (scars) but that of fantasie ; all affections their relenting but that of womankind. Who is the judge of friendship but adversity ? or when is grace witnessed but in offences ? There were no divinity but by reason of compassion, for revenges are brutish and mortal. All those times past — the loves, the sighs, the sorrows, the desires, can they not way down one frail misfortune ? Cannot one dropp of gall be hidden in so great heaps of sweetness ? I may then conclude Spes et fortuna^ valet e. She is gone, in whom I trusted, and of me hath not one thought of mercy, nor any respect of that that was. Do with me therefore what you list. I am more weary of life than they are desirous I should perish, which if it had been for her, as it is by her, I had been too happily born. Yours, not worthy any name or title. — W. R.' We may be certain that this outburst was not meant for the eyes of prosaic Robert Cecil alone ; but it was too early yet to appease the angry Queen. A little later Ralegh writes to the Lord Admiral Howard, ' I see there is a determination to disgrace and ruin me, and therefore beseech your Lordship not to offend Her SIR WALTER RALEGH 129 Majesty any more by suing for me. I am now re- solved of the matter. I only desire that I may be stayed not one hour from all the extremities that either law or precedent can avouch.' While Ralegh was in the Tower under a cloud, and his enemies at Court and in Ireland striving their utmost, as he says, to ruin him, his good ship Roebuck having escaped from the Spanish fleet sent out to capture her, fell in, off Flores, with the great East Indian carracks, bound to Lisbon. One of them escaped to the shelter of the land forts, and was burnt, but the greatest and richest of them all, the Madre de Dios^ was attacked and overpowered by Borough's squadron. The poor Spaniards fought well for three hours, but they were hopelessly outnumbered, their loss was terrible, and they surrendered. Traditions have lingered even to our own days of the excitement in the west country when this, the greatest prize ever brought to England, was towed into Dartmouth. The sacredness of the name of the ship, her great size, and the almost un- told wealth contained in her hold, struck the popular imagination. The statement of her purser sets forth that she contained '8500 quintals of pepper, 900 quintals of cloves, 700 quintals of cinnamon, 500 quintals of cochineal, and 450 of other like merchan- dise, with much musk, precious stones worth 400,000 cruzados, and some especially fine diamonds,' and Hawkins and Ralegh wrote to the Lord Admiral that the value of the prize would probably turn out I 130 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN to be j^500,ooo, although this was afterwards found to be an exaggeration, but the cargo filled ten English ships to bring it to London, and was worth fully j^ 1 50,000, besides the precious stones and the ship herself. Pilfering of the valuable cargo began before the ship came into port, each man trying to snatch for himself some share of the great plunder. In vain Borough embargoed it all as the Queen's property, to steal which was treason ; pearls and amber, musk and civet were portable, and a com- petency might be carried away in breeches' pockets. The ship's companies were deeply resentful to hear that their master, Ralegh, was a prisoner, and began to get out of hand. Sir John Hawkins then wrote that Sir Walter was ' the especial man ' to bring things to order. By appealing to the Queen's covetousness, Burghley was able to obtain leave for Ralegh to go down to the west, still ' the Queen's prisoner, in charge of Mr Blount,' to arrange matters. Whilst this was being negotiated, Burghley sent his son and successor. Sir Robert Cecil, post-haste to Dartmouth to stop the pilfering. Merchants from the neighbour- ing towns were already dealing in the rich plunder ; every cabin of the carrack had been rifled by the English sailors. Hernando de Mendoza, the captain, said that Sir John Borough got nothing, though the search of his chests told a different story. Cecil found that ^^28,000 worth of valuables had been filched before he reached Dartmouth. In the trunk SIR WALTER RALEGH 131 of one English sailor there was found 'a chain of orient pearls, two chains of gold, four great pearls of the bigness of a fair pea, four forks of crystal, and four spoons of crystal set with gold and stones, and two cords of musk.' The Portuguese on the English ships bought or plundered priceless gems ; from one of them being taken as many as 320 diamonds, whilst another had a bag of diamonds as big as a fist ; an English corporal had a big bag of rubies, and much of the plunder found its way to the East Coast and to London. Sir Robert Cecil's letters to his father (Calendar of State Papers. Dom.) on the subject are very curious. From Exeter he writes that he stopped every man he met on the road who had anything ' which did smell of the prizes,' and brought them back with him. He found the Exeter people back- ward in revealing the whereabouts of plunder, until he had clapped a few of them in prison, and this soon brought things to light ; ' a bag of seed pearls ' amongst others. ' By my rough dealing with them, I have left an impression with the Mayor and the rest. I have taken order to search every bag and mail coming from the west, and though I fear the birds be flown — for jewels, pearls, and amber — yet will I not doubt but to save Her Majesty that which shall be worth my journey. My Lord, there never was such spoil. I will suppress the confluence of these buyers, of which there are above two thousand. My sending down hath made many stagger. Fouler ways, desperate 132 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN ways, no more obstinate people did I ever meet with. . , . Her Majesty's captive comes after me, but I have outrid him, and will be at Dartmouth before him.' Ralegh followed Cecil close, and on his arrival at Dartmouth the latter writes to Heneage, 'I assure you, sir, his poor servants to the number of 140 goodly men, and all the mariners came to him with such shouts of joy, as I never saw a man more troubled to quiet them in my life. But his heart is broken ; for he is very extreme pensive, longer than he is busied, in which he can toil terribly. The meeting between him and Sir John Gilbert was with tears on Sir John's part. Whensoever he is saluted with congratulations for liberty, he doth answer, ' No, I am still the Queen of England's poor captive. I wished him to conceal it, because here it doth diminish his credit, which I do vow to you before God is greater amongst the mariners than I thought for. I do grace him as much as I may, for I find him marvellously greedy to do anything to recover the conceit of his brutish offence.' Ralegh, as has already been stated, embarked more than all his fortune in the enterprise, the entire amount contributed by the adventurers, except Cumberland, being ,^34,000, of which jT 18,000 had been subscribed in money, and the rest in shipping. The Queen had contributed ^1800 in money and two ships, so that her proper share would have been SIR WALTER RALEGH 133 one tenth of the proceeds. She was not satisfied with this and wished to grasp the lion's share. The Earl of Cumberland had contributed j/^ 19,000 and was offered ^36,000, or a clear profit of £i'j,ooo, whilst Ralegh and a few friends had contributed ;^34,000 and were offered a return of ^36,000, out of which they had to pay the city of London and others certain amounts, which left them nett losers of ;^2200. Ralegh was still the ' Queen's poor captive,' but he would not put up with such injustice as this without a protest ; the injustice indeed was so glaring that even Sir John Fortescue, Chancellor of the Exchequer, warned Lord Burghley that the 'adventurers would never be induced to further venture if they were not princely considered of.' The princely consideration ended in the Queen's keeping half of the great booty for herself, and Ralegh barely got his own back again, but after such a rich haul as this she could hardly send him back to his easy prison in the Brick Tower, and in December we find him once more installed in his own mansion of Durham Place, though for long afterwards he was not allowed to approach the Queen. Ralegh's release from attendance at Court, how- ever much he may have looked upon it as a crush- ing disgrace, gave him opportunities for employing his great powers in matters more worthy of him than feigned love-making to the elderly Queen and in- 134 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN trigue against Essex. In the Parliament of 1592-3 he took an active part in the debates. He had already established himself as one of the first authorities on parliamentary procedure and precedents, and his great eloquence and clearness of statement are noticeable, even in the summarised reports of his speeches in D'Ew^e's Journal of the Parliaments of Elizabeth. The Spaniards, through the action of the League, had now established a footing in Brittany ; and this near neighbourhood caused great anxiety to Eliza- beth's government. It became necessary, therefore, to demand considerable grants from Parliament for the defence of the country, and Ralegh took a prominent share in advocating a liberal policy in this respect, not — as he was careful to say — to please the Queen, but because he saw the urgent need of it. He was in favour of drc^ping the mask and making an open declaration of war. Many persons, he said, considered it wrong to take prizes from the Spaniards under the present circum- stances, but if a regular declaration of war was made, no such scruples would exist, and the Queen would have more volunteers at sea to fight the Spaniards than she needed. As usual, in this debate, Ralegh appears as a defender of the privileges of the House of Commons. It had been proposed that the House of Lords should be taken into conference with regard to the granting of the supplies ; and this would have been carried but for Ralegh, who SIR WALTER RALEGH 135 pointed out the objections to it. If, he said, the proposal had been for a general conference with the Lords touching the great and imminent dangers of the realm, there would be no objection. The effect would be the same and the privileges of the House preserved. A resolution to this effect was therefore carried. Ralegh, in this session, spoke strongly in the debate on the question of the alien retailer. It appears that a large number of Dutchmen had established them- selves in St Martin's le Grand, which was a sanctuary and extra-municipal, where they carried on a brisk trade as weavers, spinners and retailers of textiles, 'to the great detriment of merchants and regular dealers in our own city, inasmuch that threescore English retailers had been ruined by them since last Parliament.' A bill was introduced to make such alien retail trading illegal, and was supported by Ralegh in a vigorous speech. It was alleged by the opponents of the bill that it was being promoted by ' our mercantile engrossers,' in order that the ruin of the English retail shopkeeper might be imputed to the strangers rather than to the action of what then answered to our modern ' corners ' and ' trusts.' The answer to this was that ' engrossing ' was quite allowable amongst merchants. ' Others, again, ran upon the more universal topics of charity, in giving shelter and means of getting livelihood to poor, destitute strangers, who fly to us for religion and 136 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN relief.' Ralegh's reply to the opponents of the bill is extremely curious, touching as it does so closely a burning question of our own day. 'Whereas it is pretended,' he said, ' that for strangers it is against charity, against honour, against profit, to expel them, in my opinion it is no matter of charity to relieve them. For first : such as fly hither do so forsaking their own king ; and religion is no pretext for them, for we have no Dutchman here but such as come from where the Gospel is preached. Yet here they live, disliking our church. For honour : it is honour to use strangers as we be used amongst strangers, and it is a lightness in a Commonwealth — yea, a baseness in a nation — to give liberty to another nation which we cannot receive again. , . . And for profit: they are all of the house of Almoigne who pay nothing ; yea, eat out our profits and supplant our own nation. Custom, indeed, they pay — ifd. where we pay I2d. — but they are discharged of sub- sidies. The nature of the Dutchman is to fly to no man but for his profit, and they will obey no man long. . . . Therefore I see no reason that such respect should be given to them ; and to conclude : in the whole, no matter of honour, no matter of charity, no profit in relieving them.' The bill for the disestablishing the retailing ' Dutchmen ' was passed by 162 votes against 82. Sir Walter, on the other hand, threw cold water on a bill in the same Parliament for the suppression or SIR WALTER RALEGH 137 expulsion of the dissenting sect called Brownists. He had, he said, no sympathy with the sect, but pointed out the practical difficulties in the way of their expulsion, and the hardship it would bring about. In this case the bill was referred to a select committee, of which Ralegh was- chairman, and eventually passed in a very modified and innocuous form. Just before his disgrace, whilst he was in high fevour with the Queen, he had obtained, after much intrigue and importunity, the fine estate of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire. The estate belonged to the See of Salisbury, which had beer vacant for three years, having been twice refused because a condition was attached to the acceptance, that Sherborne Castle was to be surrendered. At length Ralegh got hold of a pliant cleric named Coldwell, and gave the Queen a jewel worth £250 to appoint him to the bishopric. No sooner was Coldwell appointed than he leased Sherborne to the crown for 99 years at a rent of ;^26o, which lease was almost immediately transferred to Ralegh. This beautiful domain became henceforward for the next ten years the best beloved abode of Ralegh and his wife. Deep in his books, his mind full of vast projects which should bring wealth to himself, and honour to his country, he passed here much of the three years following his so called disgrace ; and notwithstanding the heartbroken plaints contained in the fragment of ' Cynthia,' written at the time, to which reference has been made, it is questionable 138 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN whether this period was not really the happiest in his life. His wife and he were devotedly attached to each other and to their picturesque home; he had a son born to him in 1594 ; and his building, planning gardens, and planting copses, kept him busy whilst there. His occupations away from Sherborne were still numerous, and prevented him from rusting ; if, indeed, such a thing was possible to his keen mind. He still discharged his important duties as Lord Warden of the Stannaries, he was intensely absorbed in his plans at Lismore, in the misgovernment of Ireland, and in the pipe-stave enterprise on his Irish estates ; and his palace of Durham House was still filled by his family and a splendid train of followers at least once every year. While at Sherborne he kept up a close correspondence with Sir Robert Cecil, and other friends at Court ; he generally had some claim to forward, or some protege to help ; and de- spondent as his verses are with the perfunctory sorrow considered becoming on such occasions, there is no sign in his letters that Sir Walter had changed from the keen, active, ambitious, brilliant gentleman he had ever been ; though doubtless his pride suffered at the knowledge that, at last, his enemies at Court, who for so long had scoiFed at him as a 'jack,' a 'knave,' and an ' upstart,' had prevailed over him. The one thing they dreaded was that he should again obtain access to the Queen, and permission to perform his duties as captain of the guard. Sir Robert Cecil and SIR WALTER RALEGH 139 the old Lord Treasurer Burghley, against whom Essex was for ever railing, cautiously did what they could for Ralegh, and at one time, after his views on the severe suppression of disaffection in Ireland had been submitted to the Queen, it looked as if he might be recalled to Court and made a Privy Councillor. One of Essex's friends wrote at this juncture, 'It is now feared of all honest men, that Sir Walter Ralegh shall presently come to Court, and yet it is well withstood. God grant him some further resistance ; and that place he better deserveth, if he had his right.' CHAPTER VIII GUIANA THE FIRST EXPEDITION THITHER It must have become evident to Ralegh in his com- parative seclusion, that if ever he was to regain his influence over the Queen it could only be done by some bold and successful action, which should com- pletely throw his rivals into the shade. The vast plunder from the carrack had done something to rehabilitate his name ; but it had not gained him access to the sovereign. As we have seen, the main idea which had run through all the actions of his life had been to prove the impotence of Spain upon the sea, and to assert the claims of England to a share in the territory of the new world. The lukewarmness of ' capitalist adventurers ' in his Virginian plans had caused the comparative failure which had attended his efforts. The promptness of the colonists to abandon the settlements, and return to England, as soon as they understood that there was no opportunity of acquiring sudden wealth by plundering or discovering 140 SIR WALTER RALEGH 14.1 gold, had convinced Ralegh that mere extension of territory for England was a motive not powerful enough to unbutton the pocket of investors, ac- customed to the great, if uncertain, profits of piracy, or to induce men to risk their bodies in the adventure. He himself had spent the enormous sum of ,^40,000 on the Virginian enterprise, but neither the Queen nor the bankers would risk a shilling, and it was clear that the promise of gaining of vast and sudden wealth must be held out as a bait in future ventures of the same sort. Ralegh's own ideas, moreover, were extremely lavish and extravagant. He never hoarded money, and though his revenues must have been very large, his expenditure was still larger. His train was as numerous and splendid as that of the greatest nobles in England, whilst the value of his own attire and adornments were incomparably more costly than any. His buildings at Lismore and Sherborne, his experi- ments in forestry, agriculture, and industry, were all expensive, and unless he was to fall off and become an admittedly decayed and discarded courtier, against which his pride rebelled, it was necessary that he should somehow obtain the control of vast wealth. If he could at the same time perform some brilliant service to the country and his sovereign, then all might be well, and Essex placed in the background. He had always been a student of Spanish accounts of exploration and travel. He wanted to learn the methods by which the Spaniards had arrived at 142 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN success, and the reasons why, in some places, they had failed. ' There was,' says Lloyd, ' not an expert soldier or seaman but he consulted, not a printed or manuscript discourse of navigation or war but he perused, nor were there exacter rules or principles for both services than he drew up ; so contemplative was he, that you would think he was not active ; so active that you would think he was not prudent.' By Ralegh's own remarks in the History of the World we know that he ascribed the success of the Spaniards to their dogged perseverance in the face of repeated failure, and to their sowing dissension amongst the various tribes of natives ; whereas he attributes their failures to disunion and jealousy amongst themselves. Gold and territory were therefore the talismans that in Ralegh's eyes were to restore him to the first place in Elizabeth's favour. He knew full well that, as she would not make a formal declaration of war, no permanent occupation of territory in which the Spaniards were established would be permitted, even if it had been possible, and the problem, for Ralegh, was to find a place in which Spain had no footing, and yet where the existence of gold in great quantities was notorious, as a bait for capitalists and adventurers. It is hard to see where Ralegh could cast eyes except upon what was called the great empire of Guiana, the mysterious virgin land of gold, which had for fifty years filled the credulous SIR WALTER RALEGH 143 minds of men with dreams of wealth beyond human computation. Thousands of men, expedition after expedition, had set out to follow the glittering mirage, but it had always receded as they had advanced. Through dense tropical swamps, through trackless virgin forests, dark at noonday, over savage mountains and boundless savannahs, men had vainly sought the fabled city of burnished gold, on the brink of its inland sea. Pestilence and famine, savages and wild beasts, fatigue and accident, had stricken down the gold-seekers before they came within sight of the prize. Now and again a famished straggler came back, distraught perchance by his sufferings, with wondrous tales of the marvels his eyes had seen, or his ears had listened to, and the golden fables were sent on their rounds again, to inspire fresh expeditions and renewed sacrifice of human life. And yet, withal, in 1594 the great empire of Guiana was still virgin, awaiting the coming of its captor. Knowing what we do of Ralegh's character and circumstances, it is not wonderful that he was convinced that fate had reserved for him the honour of casting into his offended mistress's lap riches that should satisfy even her craving, and of endowing his country with an empire which should enable her to lower the pride of Spain. Everyone in England had heard of the land that had come to be called El Dorado, ' the gilded.' Fable 1+4 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN had been mixed with fact in such a way that the idea of where, or exactly what, it was must have been hazy, but the name was one that appealed to the imagination, and EngHshmen were eager for further knowledge. The story went that one of the Inca princes of Peru, the kinsman of the murdered sovereign Atahualpa, had fled before the Spanish persecutors, across the Andes with some thousands of Peruvians and vast treasures, and had conquered the empire of Guiana, making himself Emperor, with his capital Manoa on a supposed inland sea 600 miles long, the whole empire extending from the Amazon to the upper Orinoco. There seemed nothing in- trinsically improbable in these glowing stories to generations that had seen or heard of the sacking of Quito, Cuzco and Mexico ; and Ralegh's an- ticipations as to the natural riches of Guiana itself, for which even Sir Robert Schomburgk thought it necessary to apologise, are now turning out to be well justified. There is not the slightest ground for the assumption that Ralegh deliberately invented the stories about the abounding gold in Guiana, as David Hume and others would infer. The stories told by those who had seen it seemed convincing enough. Robert Dudley, who went up the Orinoco shortly after Ralegh's first voyage, said that he had found gold, and that the natives had brought him plates of the metal. A Spanish soldier asserted on his death-bed that he had lived for seven months in SIR WALTER RALEGH 145 Manoa, which city was so large that it took him thirty- hours to travel from the outskirts to the centre, and that when he departed the Emperor gave him as much gold as he and several carriers could convey. The Indians on the Orinoco were all anxious to send the greedy white men farther on, and ever farther on, with golden fables either out of the usual savage desire to surprise and delight their interlocutors, or else to save their own tribes from plunder. Ralegh must therefore be acquitted of a fraudulent desire to deceive. What he did was to place the getting of gold in the fore- front of the enterprise, because he knew by experience that that was the only inducement which would lead men to take part in it. The most recent attempt to open up Guiana had been made by Antonio de Berreo, who had married the daughter or niece of Hernan Perez de Quesada, who had attempted the task many years before, and was the founder and governor of the kingdom of New Granada. He, Berreo, told Ralegh that he had spent 300,000 ducats on his expeditions. He had started from New Granada with 700 horsemen, 1000 oxen and many Indians, and travelled 1500 miles before he could get within touch of Guiana. He appears to have gone down the Rio Negro into the Orinoco, down which river he also went, but for a whole year could hear no tidings of the great empire of Guiana, his company meanwhile dwindling fearfully with sickness and the attacks of the Indians. At last he 146 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN came to a country called Amapaia, where, after much fighting and many months of residence, he obtained news of Guiana from the natives, and acquired ten images of fine gold, plates, crescents, etc., ' which, as he swore to me and divers other gentlemen, were so curiously wrought, as he had not seen the like in Italy, Spain, or the Low Countries.' These he sent by his colonel, Domingo de Vera, to Philip II. After many fruitless attempts to reach Guiana, of which he heard much from an aged river chief called Carapana, Berreo, with the few survivors left to him, was forced to go down the river to Trinidad ; of which island he was made Governor. From there he kept up his attempts to obtain communication with Guiana, and as a preliminary to a systematic attempt at conquest, took possession of the River Orinoco for the King of Spain in April 1593. With the encouragement and help of the home government he was preparing for fitting out a strong new expedition for annexing Guiana to Spain, at the same time that Ralegh had determined, if possible, to capture it for England. Ralegh's project for a great expedition to Guiana met with opposition from many quarters. He had powerful enemies, and his character did not stand high amongst the people at large. There were persistent rumours that he was either going on a piratical expedition, or else to offer his services to Spain in revenge for his disgrace, and adventurers still fought shy of embarking in his risky enterprises. SIR WALTER RALEGH 147 His devoted wife, moreover, woman-like, was full of forebodings, and sought to divert his mind from the project. There is a curious letter at Hatfield from her to Sir Robert Cecil (8th February 1594) begging him to dissuade Ralegh from the Guiana enterprise. The orthography is so curious that, as a specimen, it may be given as written by Lady Ralegh. ' Now Sur, for the rest I hope for my sake you will rather draw Sur Watar towardes the est, then heulp hyme forward toward the soonsett, if ani respecke to me or love to him be not forgotten. But everi monthe hath its flower and everi season his contentment, and you greate counselares are so full of new councels, as you ar steddi in nothing, but wee poore soules that hath bought sorrow at a high price desiar, and can be pleased with the same misfortun wee hold, fering alltarracions will but multiply misseri, of wich we have allredi felt sufficiant. I knoo truly your parswadcions ar of efecke with hyme and hild as orrekeles tied to them by Love ; therfore I humbelle besiech you rathar stay hyme then furdar hyme. By the wich you shall bind me for ever.' During his preparations also other mariners with small forces thought they could forestall him. In a letter to Cecil at the end of December 1594, he urges that an embargo should be placed on shipping. ' For if Eaton's shipps go, who will attempt the chiefest places of my enterprise ? I shall be undun ; and I know they will be beaten and do no good. From 148 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN Alresford this Saturday after I left you with a hart half broken.' As a preliminary to his own expedition, Ralegh sent his old captain, Jacob Whiddon, in 1594, to recon- noitre the delta and entrances of the Orinoco. Whiddon seems to have been a brave, simple-minded sailor, who was beguiled by Berreo, Governor of Trinidad, into giving him a fiiU account of Ralegh's intentions, and he returned home at the end of the year with vague rumours of the golden wonders of Guiana, but with but little topographical information. On the 6th February 1595, Ralegh sailed out of Plymouth, his expedition consisting of five ships and some boats for river exploration. The list of officers who were to accompany him, as given by Ralegh himself, mentions Captain George GifFord as second in command, with Captains Caulfield, Amiotts Preston, Thynne, Laurence Kemys, Eynos, Whiddon, Clarke, Cross, and Facy ; but in the account of the voyage, he says that Howard's ship, the Lioris Whelps and Captain Amiotts Preston's ships failed to join them, and were left behind. Amongst other gentlemen present there seem to have been 'my cousin Butshead Gorges, my nephew John Gilbert, and my cousin Granville.' Altogether it is stated that there were a hundred men in the expedition, exclusive of the mariners, and from the letter above quoted from Ralegh to Cecil (December 1594) he SIR WALTER RALEGH 149 appears to have again employed the whole of his resources in the preparations. He had obtained a royal patent, addressed drily to 'our servant Sir Walter Ralegh,' authorising him to 'offend and enfeeble the King of Spain, and to discover and subdue heathen lands not in possession of any Christian prince, or inhabited by any Christian people, and to resist and expel any persons wrho should attempt to settle writhin 200 leagues of the place he fixed upon for the settlement.' By the time he arrived at Trinidad, 22nd March, the only ships he had were his own vessel and a small bark of Captain Cross's. With these he remained five days off point Curiapan, the south-west point of Trinidad, now called Hicacos, but could gain no speech of the natives, who were in fear of the Spaniards. Ralegh himself, in his barge, coasted close in shore, surveying every cove and harbour, and describes oysters growing on the mangrove trees, and the great pitch lake of Trinidad, familiar now to all travellers, but then new and marvellous. At what is now called Port of Spain, Ralegh found his missing ships ; and a party of Spaniards drawn up on the shore. The latter made signs of amity and of a desire to trade, 'more for doubt of their own strength than for aught else ' ; and Captain Whiddon was sent on shore to parley with them. After dusk a small Indian canoe stole alongside Ralegh's ship with a chief and another man on board, who had known Whiddon on his former 150 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN voyage, and desired to give the Englishmen informa- tion of the strength and whereabouts of the Spaniards, and especially of the Governor Berreo. The Spaniards, however, who visited Ralegh's ships for trade, or out of curiosity were hospitably received, and from them much knowledge was gained of Guiana. ' For these poor soldiers having been many years without wine a few draughts made them merry, in which mood they vaunted of Guiana, and of the riches thereof, but I bred in them an opinion that I was bound only for the relief of those English which I had planted in Virginia.' On the occasion of Whiddon's previous voyage. Governor Berreo had, it was said, treacherously enticed eight of his men ashore and murdered them, and Ralegh had determined to avenge this injury. He now learned from a friendly Indian spy that Berreo had sent to Margarita and Cumana for some more soldiers to surprise the expedition. The Indians, moreover, stole on board every night with hideous stories of the tortures Berreo was inflicting upon them. ' So as both to be revenged of the former wrong, as also considering that to enter Guiana by small boats, to depart 400 or 500 miles from my ships, and to leave a garrison at my back inter- ested in the same enterprise who also daily expected supplies out of Spain, I should have savoured very much of the ass ; and therefore taking a time of most advantage, I set upon the Corps de Garde in the evening, and having put them to the sword, sent SIR WALTER RALEGH 151 Captain Caulfield with 60 soldiers, and myself followed with 40 more, and so took their new city of San Joseph by break of day ; they abode not any fight, after a few shot, and all being dismissed but only Berreo and his companion, I brought them with me aboard, and at the instance of the Indians I set their new city of San Joseph on fire.' It would perhaps be unjust to judge this entirely unprovoked slaughter of Spaniards by the standard of morality existing in our own day, but it will be readily under- stood that the fact would be treasured up in the minds of their countrymen, as was the capture of the great carrack, and that when Spain had an opportunity of injuring Ralegh it was quite natural that revenge should be indulged in to the utmost. Before Ralegh left Trinidad, carrying Berreo with him, he assembled the Indians and told them that he was ' the servant of a Queen who was the great cacique of the north and a virgin, who had more caciques under her than there were trees in the island, that she was an enemy of the Castellanos in respect of their tyranny and oppression, and that she delivered all such nations about her as were by them oppressed, and having freed all the coast of the northern world from their servitude had sent me to free them also, and withal to defend the country of Guiana from their invasion and conquest. I showed them Her Majesty's picture, which they so much admired and honoured as it had been easy to have brought them idolatrous thereof. The like and 152 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN more large discourse I made to the rest of the nations both in my passing to Guiana and to those of the borders, so as in that part of the world Her Majesty is very famous and admirable.' Berreo made the best of matters, and gave Ralegh much information about Guiana, amongst other things that it was 600 miles further from the sea than Whiddon had reported ; a fact which was carefully concealed from the men on the expedition, 'who else would never have been brought to attempt the same.' The Lion's TVhelp, and Captain Kemys's ship, which had been lost sight of early in the voyage, having joined, and the expedition being complete, except for Preston's vessel, preparations were made for the river voyage. Ralegh thought that if Preston had come, and they had entered the river ten days earlier, before the floods, they might have reached Manoa, or near it. He was convinced, he said, that ' what- soever prince shall possess it (Guiana) he shall be lord of more gold and a more beautiful empire, and of more cities and people than either the King of Spain or the great Turk.' The ships were left at anchor in the Gulf of Paria, and the main exploring party embarked in an old 'gallego, which I caused to be fashioned hke a galley, and in one barge, two wherries and a ship's boat of the Lions Whelp we carried 100 persons and their victuals for a month in the same, being all SIR WALTER RALEGH 153 driven to lie in the rain and weather in the open air, in the burning sun, and upon hard boards, and to dress our meat, and to carry all manner of furniture in them, wherewith they were so pestered and un- savoury, that, what with victuals being most fish, with the wet clothes of so many men thrust together and the heat of the sun, I will undertake there was never any prison in England that could be found more unsavoury and loathsome, especially to myself, who had for many years before been dieted and cared for in a sort far differing.' Before Ralegh started he had obtained from Berreo, and from the Indians that could give information, such particulars as would guide him in his search for the golden city. It might be reached, it was said, from the point on the Orinoco belonging to the aged King Carapana, or from another point higher up called Morequito, where an expedition pre- viously sent by Berreo had been murdered, except one man, after approaching the confines of Guiana. Plates and crescents of gold, we are told, were pos- sessed in great quantities by the Indians all along the coasts, and even up the Amazon — obtained by trading with the Guianans ; and -the oft-told stories of the men who covered their naked bodies with gold dust during their drunken orgies, and of the riches, in comparison with which the treasures of Peru were insignificant, were all set forth again to the delight of the English explorers, eager now to start on 154 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN their quest. When Berreo learnt that Ralegh's object after all was to take possession of the golden land for England, ' he was stricken with great melancholy and sadness, and used all the arguments he could to dissuade me, and also assured the gentle- men of my company that it would be labour lost ; and that they should suffer many miseries if they proceeded.' No entrance, he said, could be obtained by the rivers, which were full of shoals ; no Indians would approach the English, but would fly before them ; the way was long, the winter at hand, the floods near, and all the chiefs on the borders of Guiana had decreed that no trade for gold should be carried on with Christians. This, and much else of the same sort, failed to move Ralegh, who had gone too far to recede, and was in higher hope now than ever. An unsuccessful attempt having been made to enter with the ships various branches of the Orinoco, Ralegh determined to trust entirely to the poor boats already described. In a heavy sea they crossed the bay of Guanipa, opposite Trinidad, and entered a river which ran into it. Their pilot was an Indian called Ferdi- nando from the River Barima, south of the Orinoco, who knew but little of the intricate network of rivers on the north of the delta, ' and if God had not sent us another help we might have wandered a whole year in that labyrinth of rivers ere we had found any way out or in. All the rivers and islands, he says, are SIR WALTER RALEGH 155 alike, bordered with huge trees ; and for many days they wandered backwards and forwards hopelessly astray ; until at last, in a river which Ralegh calls ' Red Cross River,' on the 22nd May, they providentially fell in with and captured a canoe with three Indians. ' The rest of the people, shadowed under the thick wood on the bank, watched in doubtful conceit what might befall those three we had taken. But when they saw we offered them no violence . . . they offered to traific with us for such things as they had . . . and we came with our barge to the mouth of a little creek, which came from their town into the great river.' The Indian pilot and his brother who went on shore had a near escape from death as a punishment for bringing a strange people thither, and in reprisal Ralegh seized a very old man of the tribe, and forced him to guide them into the great Orinoco. A good description is given by Ralegh of the Indians of the delta, whom he calls Tivitivas, ' a very goodly people and very valiant, and have the most manly speech that ever I heard.' They lived, it appears, on the ground in the summer, and in houses built in the trees when the floods of the Orinoco drowned their islands every winter.* * In Captain Thompson's map of the coast of Guiana, 1783, the north of the delta of the Orinoco traversed by Ralegh is thus described : ' Orinoko islands, covered with palm trees, and overflowed from the end of January to the middle of July. Inhabited by Guaraunas or Tivitivas, whose houses are built on piles or among the branches of the trees.' This description, it will be observed, exactly confirms that given by Ralegh. Thompson's map has been reprinted by the English Gover- ment in the supplement to the Venezuelan Blue Book. 156 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN ' They never eat anything that is set or sown, but only that which Nature without labour bringeth forth. They use the tops of palmitas for bread, and kill deer, fish and pork for the rest of their sustenance.' On the third day after leaving the Indian town, Ralegh's boats ran aground, ' stuck so fast, as we thought, that our discovery had ended there, and that we must have left sixty of our men to have inhabited like rooks upon the trees with these nations.' The shoals and rapids were a constant danger to them, the dense forests on the banks shut them out from air and prospect, and in the heat and gloom of the appar- ently endless network of streams, the spirits of the men sank lower and lower. Then, when they at length reached a wider river, the Amana (Manamo), the ebb and flow of tides abandoned them, and all day they had to struggle against the rapid current, ' or to return as wise as we went out.' The men were assured every day that two or three days more would bring them to their destination ; and the gentlemen, to encourage them, shared their spells at the oar. At last the companies began to despair, food ran short, the air bred faintness, the work was hard. The pilots were ordered to assure the men that every reach of the river was the last before the destination, where food in plenty would be found, whereas to return meant starvation. The gorgeous tropical birds and flowers, even the luscious fruits, had ceased to attract the weary rowers, when the old pilot suggested that the galley should be SIR WALTER RALEGH 157 anchored in the stream, and the other boats ascend a branch, where, he said, there was a village of Araucan Indians from whom food could be obtained. He assured Ralegh that they could return to the galley before night, and the suggestion was joyfully adopted. But hour after hour passed and the promised town did not appear, until, as night came on, the English were convinced that they were being betrayed. The pilot assured them that the place was only four reaches farther, but four, and another four, having been passed, 'our poor watermen even, heartbroken and tired, were ready to give up the ghost, for we had now come from the galley near 40 miles ' ; and it was decided to hang the pilot. But then came the thought that they should never find their way back with- out him. The river was so narrow and the vegetation so thick, that they had to hew their way through with their swords ; it was eight o'clock at night, pitch dark, and their stomachs were empty, and yet the poor old Indian kept urging them to row just one reach farther. At last at one o'clock in the morning they reached the village, where after a night's rest they obtained food and returned to the galley. As they came down the river by daylight with lighter hearts now, they saw that the country around them had changed. There were no more dense darkling woods such as for weeks past had closed them in, but flat rolling savannahs,- as far as the eye reached. Fine short grass fed great flocks of deer as tame as if in an English park. 158 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN thick flights of birds hovered over the banks, and vast quantities of fish inhabited the river. What most struck the explorers, however, was the enormous number of alligators, one of which, at the mouth of the river, devoured Ralegh's negro servant. In a few days their provisions were once more exhausted, when they espied four canoes coming down the river. Two of the canoes in despair ran ashore, and the men in them escaped, but the boats were full of cassava bread bound for Margarita, to be bartered to the Spaniards. In the small canoes that escaped were several Spaniards, who were apprised of Ralegh's treatment of their countrymen in Trinidad, and were trying to get away. The capture of the bread raised the Englishmen's spirits. ' Let us go on ! we care not how far,' they cried. But more important still, Ralegh, whilst groping about the underwood on the banks in search of the canoes that had escaped, discovered a basket containing quicksilver, saltpetre, and a gold refiner's outfit, and some gold dust. Some of the Indians that had been taken said that the small canoes contained much gold, and Ralegh offered ^500 reward for the capture of the three Spaniards, but without result. The chief of the Indians was employed as a pilot and guide, to show him where the Spaniards had laboured for gold, ' though I made not the same known to all.' Tools were required for gold mining, and tools they had none. It was considered im- prudent to stay long in the neighbourhood of the gold country, for fear that the crews might mark the spot SIR WALTER RALEGH 159 and sell their knowledge as soon as they reached a civilised country : ' and all our care taken for good usage of the people been utterly lost by those that only respect present profit.' When Ralegh reached home, he was blamed for not bringing at least a small quantity of ore from the place, but he defended him- self in his narrative by pointing out that the river was rising and the currents violent ; he had been over a month away from his ships, now 400 miles distant, ' and to stay to dig out gold with our nails had been opus lahorh but not ingenii ' ; besides which no sufficient quantity of ore could be obtained without the situation of the mines being made known. Things were looking brighter now. The Indians were propitiated, and promised protection against the injustice and cruelty of the Spaniards ; the former pilots were sent away rejoicing with letters to the ships in one of the captured canoes, and the new pilot and guide, the Araucan Indian Martin, installed in their place. After much hardship, on the fifteenth day, the eyes of the explorers were gladdened by the sight of what their guide told them were the mountains of Guiana, and in the early evening they glided, to their great joy, into the main stream of the Orinoco. Ralegh must have reached the main river by the Manamo, and emerged opposite the island of Tortola, the ranges described as the mountains of Guiana being the Sierra de Piacoa and the Sierra i6o BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN de Imataca. They anchored that night near the spot now called Barrancas, and the next day a border chief called Toparimaca came down to see the white men with many followers and presents of food. Wherever Ralegh had come within speak- ing distance of the natives, he had impressed upon them that he came to deliver them from the cruelty and oppression of the Spaniards, and consequently was warmly welcomed. He was, moreover, throughout the voyage most careful to prevent the slightest depredation or molestation of the Indians by his men, especially in the matter of native women, who, Ralegh says, were very beauti- ful, and the ill-treatment of whom by the Spaniards was a fertile source of irritation. Toparimaca led the white men to his town hard by, ' where some of our captains caroused of his wine till they were reasonably pleasant, for it is very strong with pepper and the juice of divers herbs and fruits digested and purged ; they keep it in great earthen pots of ten or twelve gallons, very clean and sweet, and are themselves at their meetings and feasts the greatest carousers and drunkards in the world.' Leav- ing here, the expedition passed the island of Tortola, which Ralegh calls by the native name of Assapana, and came to anchor at a place which was understood to be one of the principal entrances to the empire of Guiana. The province had been ruled by a great border chief called Morequito, whose name SIR WALTER RALEGH i6i it bore as well as Aromaia, but Morequito himself having been killed by Berreo, in revenge for the murder of a Spanish expedition, had at the time of Ralegh's visit been succeeded by Topiawari. Two Guianans, who had been staying in Toparimaca's town, were sent forward by Ralegh to a vassal chief of Topiawari to give notice of his coming, and the next few days were passed by the Englishmen rowing west- ward whilst exploring the river and neighbouring islands, feasting sumptuously the while on turtle eggs, which they found in abundance on the sands. The banks rose high, with a blue metallic lustre, which Ralegh thought was owing to the presence of steel, and on the north stretched the great plains of Sayma, far away over the delta towards Venezuela. They had continued to row gradually up the river until the sixth day, when they anchored at the port of Aromaia, the country of Morequito, and on the following day there came to welcome the white men the King Topiawari, the uncle of the dead Morequito. The old chieftain was no years old, and had walked the 28 miles from his town to the port, with presents of flesh, fish, fowl, pine- apples — the ' princess of fruits,' says Ralegh — and much else. Ralegh was gracious and bounteous, giving full value for everything he received ; he had come, he said, to deliver the Indians from Spanish tyranny, his Queen being greater and more powerful than the King of Spain. The old chief had himself 1 62 BUILDERS OF GREATER BRITAIN been the captive of the Spaniards, led by a chain, and had bought his liberty with a hundred plates of gold, so that he listened eagerly to promises of vengeance. The site of the port must have been on the south bank of the river, shortly below the mouth of the Caroni, for the roaring of the falls was audible therefrom ; and after much discourse with the ancient chief, in which direct knowledge of Guiana was gained, Ralegh started to explore the interior by the great river Caroni. They thought to have ascended it 40 miles, but so tremendous was the current, though the river was as broad as the Thames at Woolwich, that an eight-oared barge could not gain a stone's cast in an hour, so the attempt had to be abandoned. At last, Ralegh was in touch with the fabled Guiana. Topiawari had told him that his nation, and all those between the river bank and the mountains behind were Guianans, but ' that long, long ago there came a nation from so far off as the sun slept, with so great a multitude as could not be numbered or resisted, who had slain and rooted out as many of the ancient people as there were leaves on the trees, and had made themselves lords of all.' They wore hats andred coats, he said, and lived in houses of many rooms ; they had built on the border of their great plain a strong city called Macureguarai, at the foot of a high mountain, and here 3000 soldiers were kept to defend their country. Since the advent of the Spaniards, how- SIR WALTER RALEGH 163 ever, the Guianans and border people had become peaceful, and made common cause ; except certain tribes on the Caroni. It was now Ralegh's policy to reach these inimical tribes, and he sent from the mouth of the river native messengers in all directions to call them to a conference with the enemies of the Spaniards. The chiefs told him of power