SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 
135 
Ealeigh claimed relationship with many great families. He 
reckoned among his kinsmen the Earls of Bedford and Totnes, 
and Lord Hunsdon. He began life, then, with very little money, 
but with good connections. We know nothing of his early boy- 
hood. At the age of fourteen he went to Oriel College, Oxford ; 
but left without taking his degree. 
When only seventeen he began his military career in France, 
under his uncle, Henry Champernowne, who commanded a band of 
volunteers on behalf of the Huguenots. He remained in France 
about six years; that is, from 1569 to 1575. There is scarcely 
any record of his services during those eventful years. On his 
return from France he took chambers in the Middle Temple ; but 
his legal reading was merely nominal. During the interval of 
some four years and a half that elapsed previous to his campaign 
in Ireland, he employed in maritime studies all the time he was 
willing to spare from the pursuit of pleasure. The fruit of these 
studies appeared in the year 1577 in the shape of a " Discourse" 
addressed to the Queen, and written in concert with his famous 
half-brother, Sir Humphry Gilbert. The scheme set forth by the 
two brothers does not impress one with a high idea of the tone of 
public morality then prevalent. The Queen was advised to send 
out two fleets — one as secretly as possible, carrying five or six 
thousand men, the other consisting of a few ships ostensibly for 
purposes of exploration. The two fleets were to effect a juncture, 
and then to capture the Spanish, French, and Portuguese shipping 
at the fisheries of Newfoundland. With the plunder thus ob- 
tained it was calculated that a much larger fleet might be fitted 
out, sufficient to dispossess the Spaniards in the West Indies. The 
Queen was of course to disclaim all knowledge of the enterprise, 
and even to denounce the adventurers as pirates. 
By the autumn of 1578 Gilbert had collected a fleet of eleven 
sail, manned with five hundred sailors and soldiers ; but the crews 
misbehaved themselves, and a bad example was set them by their 
officers, some of whom deserted with their ships and crews, and 
so on the 19th of November Ealeigh and Gilbert were obliged to 
set sail from Plymouth harbour with only seven ships and three 
hundred and fifty men. The expedition was not destined to be 
successful. In the spring of 1579 the little fleet was defeated 
by the Spaniards, and one ship taken ; but notwithstanding this 
reverse, at the return of the two brothers in the early part of the 
