SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 
133 
SIE WALTER EALEIGH. 
ABSTRACT OF LECTURE BY MR. R. COLLIER. 
(Read March 29th, 1877.) 
There is perhaps no period of English history which Englishmen 
of every shade of opinion look back upon with greater pride than 
the reign of Elizabeth, and assuredly of all Englishmen the men 
of Devon have most reason to cherish the records of that time. 
We remember all the dealings with the Armada, from the 
sinking of the first Spanish ship off the Eddy stone to the collapse 
of the expedition ; and the victory is so complete, that it does not 
occur to us that the result could ever have been doubtful. Eut 
three hundred years ago the dangers of a Spanish invasion were 
by no means lightly regarded. Ealeigh, as Lord-Lieutenant of 
Cornwall, and Yice- Admiral both of that county and of Devon, 
had made a careful survey of both counties ; and at his suggestion 
it had been decided, in case the Spaniards should be able to land 
in any force, not to risk a pitched battle, but to harass them in the 
flank, and lay waste the country in front of them. 
The career of Sir Walter Ealeigh possesses a unique fascination 
for the biographer. There is a veil of mystery surrounding his 
connection with the principal men of his day which stimulates 
curiosity; and his moral character, so far as it is revealed to 
us, forms of itself a most interesting study. Generally resolute 
and daring, and above all, noted among his contemporaries for 
being " damnable proud," at times all these qualities seem to 
have forsaken him, and we see him revealed in the light of a 
cringing suppliant, prizing life, and even riches, more than all 
these things which alone make life desirable. And yet at last he 
did not shrink from death; indeed, nothing in his life became 
him more than the leaving it. It is difficult to recognize in the 
old man on the scaffold, bowed down with sorrow and sickness, 
meeting death undismayed and cheerful, the same Ealeigh who 
in middle-life wrote letters in fulsome adulation of the justice 
and mercy of James L, just after that monarch had obtained his 
conviction for high treason by as gross a perversion of justice as 
