Part 1 (2/2)

He had work to do in opposing Spain nearer home, and he first comes clearly before us in connection with the Catholic invasion of Ireland in the close of 1579 It was on July 17, 1579, that the Catholic expedition fro to stay there, it passed four miles ard to Smerwick Bay, and there built a fortress called Fort del Ore, on a sandy isth in case of need easily to slip away to the ocean The lish officer, as stabbed in his bed while the guest of the brother of the Earl of Desate as a sweet sacrifice in the sight of God, and ruthlessly committed The result hat Sandars had foreseen; the Geraldines, hopelessly compromised, threw up the fiction of loyalty to Elizabeth Sir Nicholas Malby defeated the rebels in the Limerick woods in Septehal and drove the Deputy within the walls of Cork, where he died of chagrin The teh's, Sir Warhaer, rote in December 1579 a letter of earnest appeal which broke up the apathy of the English Govern other steps hurriedly taken to uphold the Queen's power in Ireland, young Walter Raleigh was sent where his half-brother, Huuished hirapher breathes more freely when he holds at last the earliest letter which re of his hero All else may be erroneous or conjectural, but here at least, for a ers upon the very pulse of the hley, giving hie It appears that he wrote on the day of his arrival, and if that be the case, he left London, and passed down the Thames, in command of a troop of one hundred foot soldiers, on January 15, 1580 By the saht on the 21st, and stayed there to be transferred into shi+ps of Her Majesty's fleet, not starting again until February 5 On his reaching Cork, Raleigh found that his men and he were only to be paid from the day of their arrival in Ireland, and he wrote off at once to Burghley to secure, if possible, the arrears His arrival was a welcoreatest peril, with only forty Englishh was but a fragh this month of January into every port of Ireland Elizabeth had, at last, awakened in earnest to her danger

Raleigh, in all probability, took no part in the lish ar,' or duty-pay, as a captain in the field, begins on July 13, 1580, and perhaps, until that date, his services consisted in defending Cork under Sentleger In August he was joined with the latter, as now Provost-marshal of Munster, in a coer brother of the Earl of Desmond, who had been captured by the Sheriff of Cork No mercy could be expected by so proed, drawn and quartered, and the fragates of Cork Meanwhile, on August 12, Lord Grey de Wilton arrived in Dublin to relieve Pelhah he learned to dislike Raleigh, was probably nisant of his powers than Pelham, who may never have heard of hine, and one of the roup e have already seen that Raleigh was identified in his early youth

Froh ceased to be obscure Sir Williaht the newly famous poet, Edmund Spenser, with him as his secretary,to do, save to notice that it must have been in the camp at Rakele, if not on the battle-field of Glenan his momentous friendshi+p with Spenser, whose _Shepherd's Calender_ had inaugurated a new epoch in English poetry just a h's departure for Ireland It is scarcely too fanciful to believe that this tiny anonyhtened the weariness of that winter voyage of 1580, which was to prove so momentous in the career of 'the Shepherd of the Ocean' Lodovick Bryskett, Fulke Greville, Barnabee Googe, and Geoffrey Fenton were e ere now in Munster as agents or soldiers, and we uerilla warfare, in the woods had its hours of literary recreation for Raleigh

The fortress on the peninsula of Dingle was now occupied by a fresh body of Catholic invaders, eneral interest Grey, as Deputy, and Orovernor of Munster, united their forces and h, with his infantry, joined them at Rakele; and we may take Septe'

closes, as that on which he took some fresh kind of service under Lord Grey Hooker, as an eye-witness, supplies us with soh in his _Supply of the Irish Chronicles_, a supplement to Holinshed We learn from hih stayed behind, having observed that the kerns had the habit of swooping down upon any deserted encampment to rob and murder the cary Irish poured into Rakele as soon as the Deputy's back was turned

Raleigh had the satisfaction of capturing a large body of these poor creatures One of theh asked hilish churls with,'

was the bold reply 'Well,' said Raleigh, 'but now they shall serve for an Irish kern,' and commanded him 'to be immediately tucked up in one of his own neck-bands' The rest were served in a silishman rode on after the arht of Smerwick Bay, and of the fort on the sandy isth in the hope of slipping back to Spain The Legate had no sanguine aspirations left; every roof that could harbour the Geraldines had been destroyed in the English forays; Des, like a wild beast, in the Wood By all the principles of modern warfare, the time had come for ht as much But Lord Grey was a soldier of the old disposition, an implacable enemy to Popery,call a 'Puritan' of the id type There is no evidence to show that the gentle Englishmen who accoe, shrank froone through, but neither Edh drea his sanction The story has been told and retold For simple horror it is surpassed, in the Irish history of the time, only by the earlier exploit which depopulated the island of Rathlin In the perfectly legitih held a very prominent conised, from the fact that for the first three days he was entrusted with the principal command It would appear that on the fourth day, when the Italians waved their white flag and screah, but Zouch, as co in the trenches The parley the Catholics demanded was refused, and they were told they need not hope for mercy Next day, which was Noveh and Mackworth received Grey's orders to enter and 'fall straight to execution'

It was thought proper to give Catholic Europe a warning not to meddle with Catholic Ireland In the words of the official report iham, as soon as the fort was yielded, 'all the Irish ed, and 600 and upwards of Italians, Spaniards, Biscayans and others put to the sword The Colonel, Captain, Secretary, Campmaster, and others of the best sort, saved to the nus broken before being hanged on a gallows on the wall of the fort The bodies of the six hundred were stripped and laid out on the sands--'as gallant goodly personages,' Lord Grey reported, 'as ever were beheld' The Deputy took all the responsibility and expected no blame; he received none In reply to his report, Elizabeth assured him a month later that 'this late enterprise had been perfor' It is useless to expatiate on a code of morals that seems to us positively japanese To Lord Grey and the rest the rebellious kerns and their Southern allies were enemies of God and the Queen, beyond the scope of mercy in this world or the next, and no nant verh, to be soon ripened by knowledge of life and land too, there were others who declined to sink, as Mr Froude says, 'to the level of the Catholic continental tyrannies' At Oreneral pardon

Severe as Lord Grey was, he see captain left Cork and made the perilous journey to Dublin to expostulate with the Deputy, and to urge hiency various Munster chieftains ere blowing the e these malcontents the worst was a certain David Barry, son of Lord Barry, himself a prisoner in Dublin Castle David Barry had placed the fahold, Barry Court, at the disposal of the Geraldines Raleigh obtained permission to seize and hold this property, and returned from Dublin to carry out his duty On his way back, as he was approaching Barry's country, with hisbehind hiest and craftiest of the re Geraldines, laid an ah not only escaped himself, but returned in the face of a force which was to his as twenty to one, in order to rescue a comrade whose horse had thrown him in the river With a quarter-staff in one hand and a pistol in the other, he held the Seneschal and his kerns at bay, and brought his little body of troops through the ambush without the loss of one man In the dreary e, of which Raleigh hiives a very modest account, touched the popular heart, and did asdocu 1581, and they are soher notion of his brilliant aptitude for business and of his active courage than of his aenuity were sources of irritation to hi across loose sands There was no stability and apparently no hope or aih showed no mock-modesty in his criticism of that policy Ormond had been on friendly terms with him, but as early as February 25 a quarrel was ready to break out

Ormond wished to hold Barry Court, which was the key to the ihal, as his ohile Raleigh was no less cla it In the su of Ormond to Grey, he denounced Grey to Leicester In theOr himself made, if not nominally, practically Governor of Munster

He proceeded to Lislish capital of the province, and made that town the centre of those incessant sallies and forays which Hooker describes One of these skir in the defeat of Lord Barry at Cleve, showed consummate military ability, and deserves alh's te and too little known a man permanently to hold such a post Zouch took his place at Lis to Cork, was made Governor of that city It was at this tih made his romantic attack upon Castle Bally-in-Harsh, the seat of Lord Roche On the very sah received a hint froly fortified place was desirable, he set out with ninety men on the adventure His troop arrived at Harsh very early in the , but not so early but that the townspeople, to the number of five hundred, had collected to oppose his little force He soon put theht, and then, by a nimble trick, contrived to enter the castle itself, to seize Lord and Lady Roche at their breakfast-table, to slip out with theain Cork next day with the loss of only a single ht of hand, brilliantly designed, incomparably well carried out

The su the woods and ravines of Munster frolad he must have been when a summons from London put an end to his reat reputation

Elizabeth, it may well be, desired to see him, and talk with him on what he called 'the business of this lost land' In Deceland

One point h offers to rebuild the ruined fortress of Barry Court at his own expense

This shows that he must by this time have come into a certain amount of property, for his Irish pay as a captain was, he says, so poor that but for honour he 'would disdain it as much as to keep sheep' This fact disposes of the notion that Raleigh arrived at the Court of Elizabeth in the guise of a handsome penniless adventurer Perhaps he had by this time inherited his share of the paternal estates[2]

[Illustration: SOUTH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND]

CHAPTER II

AT COURT

Raleigh had not conised courtier We have seen that he had passed, four years before, within the precincts of the Court, but we do not knohether the Queen had noticed him or not In the summer of 1581 he had written thus to Leicester froet continually to put your Honour into the world both professed and protested the sa no use of such poor followers, hath utterly forgotten , if your Lordshi+p shall please to think me yours, as I am, I will be found as ready, and dare do as much in your service, as any man you may command; and do neither so much despair of myself but that I may be some way able to perform so much

To Leicester, then, we may be sure, he went,--to find him, and the whole Court with him, in the throes of the Queen's latest and final h had a feeeks in which to admire the empty and hideous suitor who this critical time it is possible that he enjoyed his personal introduction to the Queen Walter Raleigh in the prith and beauty formed a curious contrast to poor Alencon, and the difference was one which Elizabeth would not fail to recognise On February 1, 1582, he was paid the sum of 200_l_ for his Irish services, and a week later he set out under Leicester, in co that conducted the French prince to the Netherlands

When Elizabeth's 'poor frog,' as she called Alencon, had been duly led through the gorgeous pageant prepared in his honour at Antwerp, on February 17, the English lords and their train, glad to be free of their burden, passed to Flushi+ng, and hastened hoh alone ree of coh hiives us this interesting infore 'delivered me his letters to her Majesty, he prayed me to say to the Queen froimur_: for certainly, said he, they had withered in the bud, and sunk in the beginning of their navigation, had not her Majesty assisted them' It would have been natural to entrust to Leicester such confidential utterances as these were a reply to But Elizabeth was passing through a paroxyse with Leicester at the moment She ventured to call hi with the Prince of Orange Notwithstanding this, his influence was still paramount with her, and it was characteristic of her shrewd petulance to confide in Leicester's _protege_, although not in Leicester hilish Court

On April 1, 1582, Elizabeth issued froard to service in Ireland, and the band of infantry hitherto commanded in that country by a certain Captain Annesley, now deceased The words must be quoted verbatim:--