RALEIGH 



569 



to 1603. It was not till about the beginning of 

 1592 that he came into possession, on a ninety-nine 

 years' lease, of the splendid park and castle of 

 Sherborne alienated from the see of Salisbury. 



In 1583 Raleigh risked 2000 in Sir Humphrey 

 Gilbert's last ill-fated expedition, and on the news 

 of his half-brother's loss took up a fresh charter of 

 discovery and colonisation. In April 1584 he sent 

 ont a Heet under Amadas and Barlowe to explore 

 the coast north of Florida. They made a pros- 

 perous voyage, and formally took possession of a 

 district to which Elizabeth was pleased to give 

 the name Virginia. Next year Raleigh fitted 

 out a stronger expedition under Ralph Lane and 

 Sir Richard Grenville, but the hundred men who 

 lived a year under Lane's command on the island of 

 Roanoke returned to England in Drake's fleet com- 

 pletely dispirited with their hardships. Soon after 

 they set sail, Sir Richard Grenville arrived with 

 three ships, and left on the island fifteen men 

 well furnished with stores. One of the hundred 

 colonists the first citizens of America Thomas 

 Hariot, in his account of the colony and the 

 causes of its failure, speaks of the herb, ' called 

 by the inhabitants Yppmcoc,' which was destined 

 to become one of the closest comforts of life to 

 half the world. Raleigh himself took to the new 

 luxury, and would enjoy it in pipes of silver, the 

 queen sitting by liim while he smoked. In May 

 1587 he sent out three ships, unc'er Captain Charles 

 White, with 150 colonists, seventeen of whom were 

 women. They found the fifteen men had perished, 

 and ere long misfortune after misfortune over- 

 took themselves. White returned to England for 

 supplies, and at length, after many delays and 

 difficulties, reached Virginia in August 1590 to find 

 the settlement ruined and the colonists dis]>erse<l, 

 never afterwards to be seen. It was the last 

 direct attempt of Raleigh himself at the colonisa- 

 tion of Virginia. The undertaking, says Hakluyt, 

 ' required a prince's purse to have it thoroughly 

 followed out it is supposed that Raleigh himself 

 had spent forty thousand pounds upon it. 



Already in May 1587 the appearance of the 

 handsome young Earl of Essox at court had 

 endangered Raleigh's paramount place in the 

 favour of the queen. Hatton aid Leicester long 

 ere now had shown their jealousy of him, but this 

 impetuous and petulant boy openly tlouted him, 

 and at length drove him from the court to Ireland. 

 He had already received in the spring of 1587 a 

 grant of 42,000 acres in Munster, and with char- 

 acteristic vigour he at once set about repeopling 

 this tract with English settlers. He was in Ireland 

 when the Invincible Armada appeared in English 

 waters, but he hastened to the south of England to 

 superintend the coast defence, and he was present 

 with the fleet a trusted counsellor throughout that 

 glorious week of toil and triumph. His vessels 

 scoured the seas in privateering enterprises, which 

 gratified at once his inlxirn hate of Spain and 

 helped to provide the means for his vast expense 

 and his Virginian ventures. His over-zealous sea- 

 men sometimes transgressed the forbidden limit of 

 piracy, but the Treasury winked at such accidents 

 or made itself a receiver by claiming a share of the 

 plunder. Raleigh sailed with Drake on his Portugal 

 expedition of 1589, but by the autumn of that year 

 was again in Ireland, where he quickly liecame a 

 warm friend of Spenser, with the endless fame of 

 whose great poem his name is imperishably linked. 

 The poet had settled on his estate at Kilcolman 

 three years before, and here the ' Shepherd of the 

 Ocean' [Raleigli] visited him, and read him his 

 poem of The Ocean's Love to Cynthia [Elizabeth], 

 which Mr Gosse thinks must have contained at 

 least 10,<)00 lines, the extant 130 stanzas being 

 a fragment. In Colin Clout's Come Home Afjain 



we read how Raleigh carried the poet into the 

 presence of the queen, who took delight to hear 

 his poem, and commanded it to be published. 

 In his Youghal garden during this breathing- 

 space Raleigh planted tobacco, as well as the 

 first potatoes that grew on Irish soil. He quickly 

 recovered all his influence at court, and busied 

 himself with further schemes for reprisals on the 

 Spaniards down to the moment of his fall. His 

 famous tract, A Report of the Truth of the Fight 

 about the lies of the Azores this last Sommer, 

 appeared anonymously in 1591. It is a splendid 

 piece of heart-stirring prose, and three hundred 

 years later it gave the inspiration to Tennyson's 

 noblest ballad. Early in 1592 Raleigh pre- 

 pared a new expedition to seize the Spanish 

 treasure-ships, but again his doting mistress 

 forbade him to sail with the fleet, which he 

 had reluctantly to entrust to Frobisher and Sir 

 John Borough. Hardly had he returned before 

 she seems to have discovered his intrigue with 

 Bessy Throckmorton, one of her own maids-of- 

 honour an infidelity to her own supremacy which 

 her jealous temper could not brook. In Julv 1592 

 Raleigh was committed to the Tower, and it was 

 more than four years before he was again admitted 

 to his mistress' presence. He bore his imprison- 

 ment with characteristic impatience, and vexed 

 the air with exaggerated complaints of his loss 

 expressed in the fantastic fasliion of the time. 

 Meantime Borough had captured the Madre de 

 Dios, a huge carrack, which he brought into Dart- 

 mouth in September. So great was the excitement 

 and such the rapacity of the vultures that gathered 

 to the spoil that none but Raleigh could control 

 the tumult. He was sent down to Dartmouth with 

 a keeper, and Sir Robert Cecil describes with 

 astonishment his popularity and influence among 

 his sailors and his countrymen. ' But his heart is 

 broken,' he writes his father, ' for he is extremely 

 pensive longer than he is busied, in which he can 

 toil terribly.' Raleigh now married Bessy Throck- 

 morton, and for the next two years lived with her 

 in quiet happiness, building and gardening at 

 Sherlwne. About 1593 his imagination seems 

 first to have been fired by the descriptions of 

 Guiana, with its vast city of Manoa and its El 

 Dorado, and in 1594 he sent out Captain Whiddon 

 to Trinidad to make inquiries for him. In February 

 1595 he himself sailed with five ships, explored the 

 coasts of Trinidad, sailed up the Orinoco, and had 

 his imagination set aglow for life by the tropical 

 splendours of vegetation that he saw, and still 

 more by the auriferous quartz and glittering stones 

 he found, and marvellous stories of stores of gold 

 beyond brought to him by the native Indians. Six 

 months after his return he sent Captain Lawrence 

 Keymis to make further explorations, and later 

 Captain Berry, but he himself failed to rouse any 

 great public interest in England in his splendid 

 dream of a new world and untold wealth from the 

 mines of Guiana. Early in 1596 he published The 

 Discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of 

 Guiana ( tfakluyt Society, edited by Sir R. Schom- 

 burgk, 1848), a splendid piece of vigorous prose. 

 In June 1596 he sailed in the expedition under 

 Howard and Essex to Cadiz, and it was his advice 

 that governed the whole plan of action in that 

 splendid triumph which a second time shattered 

 the naval strength of Spain. His faults ever fell 

 from him in the hour of action, but never before or 

 again in life did he show such tact and temper as 

 in the skilful persuasions by which he forced the 

 Lord Admiral and Essex to agree to his plans. 

 Yet he was mortified to the heart, as he lay in his 

 ship suffering from a wound in the leg, when their 

 lack of energy allowed the Spaniards, two days 

 later, to burn the whole fleet of treasure-laden 



