Part 2 (2/2)

Spencer says:

When thus our pipes we both had wearied well,and each an end of singing reat disliking to my luckless lot;

and advised him to corace was great and bounty most rewardful

He then devotes no less than ninety-five lines to a description of the voyage, which was a very rough one, and at last he is brought by Raleigh into the Queen's presence:

The shepherd of the ocean

Unto that Goddess' grace me first enhanced, And to an take delight, And it desired at ti the publication of it On Deceistered, and a pension of 50_l_ secured for the poet The suppleenerous recognition of the services his friend had perforale, thy sovereign Goddess's reat poeistic pieces prefixed by friends to the _Faery Queen_ was that noble and justly celebrated sonnet signed W R which alone would justify Raleigh in taking a place ah's position was once ht He could hold Sir William Fitzwilliam informed, on December 29, that 'I take myself far his better by the honourable office I hold, as well as by that nearness to her Majesty which still I enjoy, and neverspace in Raleigh's career; he had reached the table-land of his fortunes, and neither rose nor fell in favour The violent crisis of the Spanish Armada had marked the close of an epoch at Court In Septeham, in September 1591 Sir Christopher Hatton, three ht be to vaunt his influence, he could never have felt absolutelyon, but for the ressive of his rivals, Essex, was disposed to wave a flag of truce Both Raleigh and Essex saw one thing more clearly than the Queen herself, namely, that the loyalty of the Puritans, whoainst Catholic encroach to protect the interests of ainst the Queen's turbulent prejudices In March 1591 we find it absolutely recorded that the Earl of Essex and Raleigh have joined 'as instruments from the Puritans to the Queen upon any particular occasion of relieving theenuine Protestant fervour see to all evidence, was a e in tolerance for the opinions of others, and he ayed, no doubt, in this as in other cases, by his dislike of persecution on the one hand, and his implacable enh was hurriedly sent down the Channel in a pinnace to warn Lord Thomas Howard that Spanish shi+ps had been seen near the Scilly Islands There was a project for sending a fleet of twenty shi+ps to Spain, and Raleigh was to be second in command, but the scheme was altered In November 1591 he first came before the public as an author with a tract in which he celebrated the prowess of one of his best friends and truest servants, Sir Richard Grenville, in a contest with the Spaniard which is one of the h's little voluht about the Iles of the Acores this last So of Spaine_ The fight had taken place on the preceding 10th of Septee' were so excessive that Grenville was freely bla 15,000 Spaniards with only 100 h wrote his _Report_ to justify the memory of his friend, and doubtless hastened its publication that it ht be received as evidence before Sir R

Beville's commission, which was to meet a month later to inquire into the circuh's view, and all English this fight as one 'ht of some heroical fable'

The _Report_ of 1591 was anony it in 1599, was permitted to state that it was 'penned by the honourable Sir Walter Ralegh, knight' Long entirely neglected, it has of late become the best known of all its author's productions It is written in a sane and lish narrative prose as it existed before the waters were troubled by the fashi+on of Euphues Not issued with Raleigh's nanised as his work, and it cannot have been without influence in deter the policy of the country with Spain The author's enmity to the Spaniard is inveterate, and he is careful in an eloquent introduction to prove that he is not actuated by resentment on account of this one act of cruel cowardice, but by a divine anger, justified by the events of years, 'against the ambitious and bloody pretences of the Spaniard, who, seeking to devour all nations, shall be themselves devoured' The tract closes with a passionate appeal to the loyalty of the English Catholics, who are warned by the sufferings of Portugal that 'the obedience even of the Turk is easy and a liberty, in respect of the slavery and tyranny of Spain,' and ill never be so safe as when they are trusting in the cleree characteristic of Raleigh, whose central idea in life was not prejudice against the Catholic religion, for he was singularly broad in this respect, but, in his oords, 'hatred of the tyrannous prosperity of Spain' This ran like a red strand through his whole career from Smerwick to the block, and this was at once the reatness and the secret of his fall

It was forh came into possession of Sherborne, his favourite country residence, in 1594, that is to say after the Throckree iiven to him after his fatal offence, and in fact it is now certain that the lease was extended to him much earlier, probably in October 1591 There is a pleasant legend that Raleigh and one of his half-brothers were riding up to town froh's horse stumbled and threw him within the precincts of a beautiful Dorsetshi+re estate, then in possession of the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury, and that Raleigh, choosing to consider that he had thus taken seisin of the soil, asked the Queen for Sherborne Castle when he arrived at Court It may have been on this occasion that Elizabeth asked hiar, and received the reply, 'When your Majesty ceases to be a benefactor!'

His first lease included a payment of 260_l_ a year to the Bishop of Salisbury, who asserted a claim to the property In January 1592, after the payh was confiran to improve and enjoy the property It consisted of the e park, a castle which had to be repaired, and several farh of Sherborne itself It is a curious fact that Raleigh had to present the Queen with a jeorth 250_l_ to induce her 'to make the Bishop,'

that is to say, to appoint to the see of Salisbury, now vacant, a man ould consent to the alienation of such rich Church lands as the manors of Sherborne and Yetminster John Meeres, afterwards so deterh's, was now[5] appointed his bailiff, and Adrian Gilbert a sort of general overseer of the works

Raleigh had been but two months settled in possession of Sherborne, with his ninety-nine years' lease clearly ht into the deepest shadow of approaching disfavour

The year opened with proh had yet displayed and enjoyed An expedition was to be sent to capture the rich fleet of plate-shi+ps, known as the Indian Carracks, and then to push on to storm the pearl treasuries of Panama

For the first ti to trust her favourite in person on the perilous western seas Raleigh was to command the fleet of fifteen shi+ps, and under him was to serve the morose hero of Cathay, the dreadful Sir Martin Frobisher Raleigh was not only to be admiral of the expedition, but its chief adventurer also, and in order to bear this expense he had collected his available fortune fro himself of all iht The Ark Raleigh, his largest shi+p, for 5,000_l_; and in February 1592 he was ready to sail When thecame, however, the Queen found it ih was appointed adly difficult to move with confidence in this obscure part of our narrative On March 10, 1592, we find Raleigh at Chatha to persuade them to serve under Frobisher, whose reputation for severity made him very unpopular

He writes on that day to Sir Robert Cecil, and uses these aard to a rumour of whichhear for the first time:

I mean not to coe, and I know not what If any such thing were, I would have i; and therefore, I pray, believe it not, and I beseech you to suppress, what you can, any such malicious report For I protest before God, there is none, on the face of the earth, that I would be fastened unto

Raleigh was now in a desperate embarrassment There was that concealed in his private life which could only be condoned by absence; he had seen before hiland, and now the Queen's tedious fondness had closed it again The desperate fault which he had committed was that he had loved too well and not at all wisely a beautiful orphan, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a maid of honour to the Queen It is supposed that she o or three and twenty at the time Whether he seduced her, and married her after his imprisonment in the Tower, or whether in the early e, has been doubted The biographers of Raleigh have preferred to believe the latter, but it is to be feared that his fair fa Sir Walter Raleigh's children one daughter appears to have been illegiti, for his sake ill be cruel to hih in 1603, and it ht down the vengeance of Queen Elizabeth upon their heads

His clandestine relations with Elizabeth Throckmorton were not in themselves without excuse To be the favourite of Elizabeth, who had now herself attained the sixtieth summer of her immortal charms, was tantamount to a condemnation to celibacy The vanity of Belphoebe would adence from the devotion justly due to her own imperial loveliness was a h than that at the age of forty he should have rebelled at last against this tyranny, is that he seems, in the crisis of his embarrass afterwards, 'I chose you and I loved you in my happiest times' After this brief dereliction, however, he returned to his duty, and for the rest of his life was eminently faithful to the hom he had taken under such painful circumstances

There is a lacuna in the evidence as to what actually happened early in 1592; the late Mr J P Collier filled up this gap with a convenient letter, which has found its way into the histories of Raleigh, but the original of which has never been seen by other eyes than the transcriber's What is certain is that Raleigh contrived to conceal the state of things from the Queen, and to steal away to sea on the pretext that he wasSir Martin Frobisher to the mouth of the Channel He says hiues off the Cape Finisterre' It was reported that the Queen sent a shi+p after hier would have had little chance of finding hial, and it isaway as far as he dared, he ca un, as a person in authority, with certain questions of international navigation Three weeks later the Queen seems to have discovered, what everyone about her knew already, the nature of Raleigh's relations with Elizabeth Throckmorton On July 28 Sir Edward Stafford wrote to Anthony Bacon: 'If you have anything to do with Sir Walter Raleigh, or any love to make to Mrs Throckmorton, at the Tower to-morrow you h was aded Belphoebe

Needless proh's, which lasted soly restive under constraint, however, and filled the air with the picturesque clamour of his distress His first idea was to soften the Queen's heart by outrageous protestations of anxious devotion to her person The following passage from a letter to Sir Robert Cecil is remarkable in many ways, curious as an example of affected passion in a soldier of forty for a maiden of sixty, curious as a piece of carefully modulated Euphuistic prose in the fashi+on of the hour, e of a man from whom the one woman that he really loved was divided by the damp wall of a prison:

My heart was never broken till this day, that I hear the Queen goes away so far off, whoreat love and desire, in so many journeys, and am now left behind her, in a dark prison all alone While she was yet nigher at hand, that I ht hear of her once in two or three days, my sorroere the less; but even now my heart is cast into the depth of alllike Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks, like a ny in the shade like a Goddess; so like Orpheus Behold the sorrow of this world! Once amiss, hath bereaved me of all O Glory, that only shi+neth in misfortune, what is become of thy assurance? All wounds have scars, but that of fantasy; all affections their relenting, but that of woe of friendshi+p, but adversity? or when is grace witnessed, but in offences? There were no divinity, but by reason of coes are brutish and hts, the sorrows, the desires, can they not weigh down one frail reat heaps of sweetness? I one in whoht of mercy, nor any respect of that that was Do with me now, therefore, what you list I am more weary of life than they are desirous I should perish

He kept up this coy One day, when the royal barge, passing down to Gravesend, crossed below his , he raved and storht the Queen thither 'to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus' toruise hiht of the Queen, or else his heart would break He drew his dagger on his keeper, Sir George Carew, and broke the knuckles of Sir Arthur Gorges, because he said they were restraining hiht of his Mistress He proposed to Lord Howard of Effingham at the close of a business letter, that he should be thrown to feed the lions, 'to save labour,' as the Queen was still so cruel Sir Arthur Gorges was in despair; he thought that Raleigh was going row,'