SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 
137 
use one-fifth part of all ore of gold and silver. Armed with this 
document, Ealeigh promptly sent off an expedition under Captains 
Amadas and Barlow, who were the first colonizers of Virginia. By 
the end of March, 1585, he equipped and sent off from Plymouth 
harbour, under the command of Sir Eichard Grenville, a fleet of 
seven sail, with one hundred householders, and many things neces- 
sary to begin a new state. About this time Ealeigh entered upon 
new duties, being returned to Parliament for the first time as 
one of the members for Devon. In Parliament, as elsewhere, he 
speedily came to the front. We hear him spoken of as the first 
orator of his time ; and in addition to this element of distinction, 
the scanty records we possess show him to have held sound views 
far in advance of his day. He contended strenuously in opposition 
both to Eobert Cecil and to Bacon for the repeal of the statute of 
tillage. After observing that France had offered to supply the 
Queen with corn in Ireland at a rate at which the English farmer 
would be beggared, he said, " The Low Countrymen and the 
Hollander, who never sow corn, have by their industry such 
plenty that they serve other nations. I think the best course is to 
set corn at liberty, and have every man free, which is the desire 
of a true Englishman. " He argues further, concerning religious 
persecution, that men's actions, and not their intentions, are properly 
the subject of penal laws. He says, " The law is hard that taketh 
life or sendeth into banishment where men's intentions shall be 
judged by a jury, and they shall be judges what another man 
meant. But that law that is against a fact is just." Ealeigh also 
opposed a bill for the more diligent resort to church on Sundays, 
which was thrown out by only one vote. 
During the ten years immediately following his return from 
Ireland, at the end of 1581, Ealeigh' s career at Court was one 
uninterrupted success. He was given at various times large and 
very profitable grants of licences to export broadcloth. He had the 
exclusive privilege of licencing vintners throughout the kingdom 
except in London and Cambridge ; but, strange to say, this 
monopoly, even with leave to compound with offenders, only 
brought him in about £1,000 a year, equal to about £5,000 a 
year now. In 1585 he succeeded the Earl of Bedford as Lord- 
Warden of the Stannaries, in which capacity he used to hold a 
parliament of miners under the lee of some Dartmoor tor.* Soon 
♦ " Crockern Tor."— Ed. 
