Part 1 (1/2)

Raleigh

by Edh are very nu of these, as a literary production, is that published in 1736 by Willia at Arraphical skill, at the tier compete with later lives as an authority

By a curious chance, triters ere each ignorant of the other sih, and produced two laborious and copious Lives of him, at the same moment, in 1868 Each of these collections, respectively by Mr Edward Edwards, whose death is announced as these words are leaving the printers, and by the late Mr

Jae of Raleigh; but, of course, each of these writers was precluded fro the discoveries of the other The present Life is the first in which the fresh ht forward by Mr Edwards and by Mr St John has been collated; Mr Edwards,for the first tih I hope that I do not seee Mr Edwards's book when I say that in his arrange of undated documents I am very frequently in disaccord with him The present Life contains various small data which are now for the first time published, and more than one fact of considerable importance which I owe to the courtesy of Mr John Cordy Jeaffreson I have, e up to date of the _Reports_ of the Historical MSS Commission, and of the two volumes of _Lismore Papers_ this year published In his prospectus to the latter Dr Grosart proh in later issues My dates are new style

The present sketch of Raleigh's life is the first atteaged froeneral history of his time To keep so full a life within bounds it has been necessary to pass rapidly over events of signal importance in which he took but a secondary part I may point as an exalish history which has usually occupied a large space in the chronicle of Raleigh and his tihton's excellent little volume on the latter and wider theh painted not in a full-length portrait, but in an historical cons of Elizabeth and James I

I have to thank Dr Brushfield for the use of his valuable Raleigh bibliography, now in the press, and for other kind help

RALEIGH

CHAPTER I

YOUTH

Walter Raleigh was born, so Caer combine to assure us, in 1552 The place was Hayes Barton, a farh, in Devonshi+re, then belonging to his father; it passed out of the family, and in 1584 Sir Walter attempted to buy it back 'For the natural disposition I have to the place, being born in that house, I had rather seat myself there than anywhere else,' he wrote to a Mr Richard Duke, the then possessor, who refused to sell it

Genealogists, froh's family tree, which winds its branches into those of some of the best Devonshi+re houses, the Gilberts, the Carews, the Chah, in his third hter of Sir Philip Champernoun of Modbury By Otto Gilbert, her first husband, she had been the ators and colonists, Humphrey and Adrian Gilbert It, is certainly the influence of his half-brother Sir Huly h; while Adrian was one of his own earliest converts to Virginian enterprise

The earliest notice of Sir Walter Raleigh known to exist was found and communicated to the _Transactions of the Devonshi+re association_ by Dr

Brushfield in 1883 It is in a deed preserved in Sidmouth Church, by which tithes of fish are leased by the h, and Walter Ralegh the younger,' on September 10, 1560 In 1578 the same persons passed over their interest in the fish-titles in another deed, which contains their signatures It is a to find that the family had not decided how to spell its nah,' his elder son Carerites 'Caro Rawlyh,' while the subject of this nature, calls hi Walter was born, but his mother seems to have remained a Catholic In the persecution under Mary, she, as we learn froaol, and in particular to see Agnes Prest before her burning Mrs Raleigh began to exhort her to repentance, but the entlewoman to seek the blessed body of Christ in heaven, not on earth, and this with so h 'came home to her husband she declared to him that in her life she never heard any woman, of such simplicity to see to, talk so Godly and so earnestly; 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”' It is easy to perceive that this anecdote would not have been preserved if the incident had not heralded the final secession of Raleigh's parents frones Prest was not without her share in forging Raleigh's hatred of bigotry and of the Spaniard Very little else is known about Walter and Katherine Raleigh They lived at their manorial farm of Hayes Barton, and they were buried side by side, as their son tells us, 'in Exeter church'

The university career of Raleigh is vague to us in the highest degree

The only certain fact is that he left Oxford in 1569 Anthony a Wood says that he was three years there, and that he entered Oriel College as a commoner in or about the year 1568 Fuller speaks of him as resident at Christ Church also Perhaps he went to Christ Church first as a boy of fourteen, in 1566, and removed to Oriel at sixteen Sir Philip Sidney, Hakluyt, and Ca those years, and we an there Wood tells us that Raleigh, being 'strongly advanced by acade at Oxford, under the care of an excellent tutor, became the ornament of the juniors, and a proficient in oratory and philosophy' Bacon and Aubrey preserved each an anecdote of Raleigh's university career, neither of the here

The exact date at which he left Oxford is uncertain Cae, and at the university at the same time, says authoritatively in his _Annales_, that he was one of a hundred gentlemen volunteers taken to the help of the Protestant princes by Henry Chah's first-cousin, the son of his mother's elder brother We learn frouenot cah, but there exist stateh's ohich tend to show that, if he was one of his cousin's volunteers, he yet preceded him into France In the _History of the World_ he speaks of personally re the conduct of the Protestants, immediately after the death of Conde, at the battle of Jarnac (March 13, 1569) Still h says, 'myself was an eye-witness' of the retreat at Moncontour, on October 3, two days before the arrival of Chah from us for the next six or seven years When Hakluyt printed his _Voyages_ in 1589 he mentioned that he himself was five years in France In a previous dedication he had reer stay in that country than hiht in France for six years, that is to say, until 1575

During this long and ili but fancy which has depicted hilish e of St

Bartholomew's Another cousin of his, Gawen Chauenot chief, Montgomery, whose murder on June 26, 1574, h's adventures as a Protestant soldier in France The allusions to his early experiences are rare and slight in the _History of the World_, but one curious passage has often been quoted In illustration of the way in which Alexander the Great harassed Bessus, Raleigh mentions that, 'in the third civil war of France,' he saw certain Catholics, who had retired to uedoc, s of bundles of straw at the cave's mouth There has lately been shown to be no probability in the conjecture, lish volunteers in the Low Countries who fought in their shi+rts and drawers at the battle of Riust 1578

On April 15, 1576, the poet Gascoigne, as a _protege_, of Raleigh's half-brother, issued his satire in blank verse, entitled _The Steel Glass_, a little volume which holds an important place in the develophteen congratulatory verses was prefixed by 'Walter Rawely of the middle Temple' These lines are perfunctory and are noticeable only for their heading 'of the h positively tells us that he never studied law until he found himself a prisoner in the Tower, and he was probably only a passing lodger in some portion of the Middle Tene died preht have gossiped of Raleigh's early career

I ah the courtesy of Mr J Cordy Jeaffreson, in being able for the first tih was admitted to the Court as early as 1577 So e to Leicester in a later letter from Ireland, but there has hitherto been no evidence of the fact In exa the Middlesex records, Mr

Jeaffreson has discovered that on the night of December 16, 1577, a party of leaders were a certain Richard Paunsford and his brother, who are described in the recognisances taken next day before the istrate Jasper Fisher as the servants of 'Walter Rawley, of Islington, Esq,' and two days later as yeoman in the service of Walter Rawley, Esq, 'of the Court (_de curia_)'

It is very important to find hih afterwards said, the education of his youth was a training in the arts of a gentleman and a soldier But it extended further than this--it ee of the sea, and in particular of naval warfare It is tantalising that we have but the slenderest evidence of thewas obtained The western ocean was, all through the youth of Raleigh, theandthrown open to English enterprise He was a babe when Tonson caend of the hidden treasure-house of the Spaniard in the West Indies He was at Oxford when England thrilled with the news of Hawkins' tragical third voyage He caeneral satisfaction at Drake's revenge for San Juan de Ulloa All through his early days the splendour and perilous ro his fancy, rousing his ambition In his own faenerous class of adventurers than Drake and Hawkins, a race more set on discovery and colonisation than on h was ultimately to become the most illustrious example If we possessed minute accounts of the various expeditions in which Gilbert took part, we should probably find that his young half-brother was often his coh as one personally conversant with the islands of the Gulf of Mexico, and there was a volume, never printed and now lost, written about the sae to the West Indies_ This expedition, no other allusion to which has survived, must have taken place before he went to Ireland in 1580, and may be conjecturally dated 1577

The incidents of the next two years may be rapidly noted; they are all of theh crossed the Atlantic for a second time on board one of the shi+ps of Gilbert's ill-starred expedition to the St Lawrence in the winter of 1578 In February of the next year[1] he was again in London, and was committed to the Fleet Prison for a 'fray' with another courtier In September 1579, he was involved in Sir Philip Sidney's tennis-court quarrel with Lord Oxford In May of this sa on a piratical expedition against Spanish America