Raleigh. Gosse Edmund

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      AT COURT

      Raleigh had not completed his thirtieth year when he became a recognised courtier. We have seen that he had passed, four years before, within the precincts of the Court, but we do not know whether the Queen had noticed him or not. In the summer of 1581 he had written thus to Leicester from Lismore: —

      To Leicester, then, we may be sure, he went, – to find him, and the whole Court with him, in the throes of the Queen's latest and final matrimonial embroilment. Raleigh had a few weeks in which to admire the empty and hideous suitor whom France had sent over to claim Elizabeth's hand, and during this critical time it is possible that he enjoyed his personal introduction to the Queen. Walter Raleigh in the prime of his strength and beauty formed a curious contrast to poor Alençon, and the difference was one which Elizabeth would not fail to recognise. On February 1, 1582, he was paid the sum of 200l. for his Irish services, and a week later he set out under Leicester, in company with Sir Philip Sidney, among the throng that conducted the French prince to the Netherlands.

      When Elizabeth's 'poor frog,' as she called Alençon, had been duly led through the gorgeous pageant prepared in his honour at Antwerp, on February 17, the English lords and their train, glad to be free of their burden, passed to Flushing, and hastened home with as little ceremony as might be. Raleigh alone remained behind, to carry some special message of compliment from the Queen to the Prince of Orange. It is Raleigh himself, in his Invention of Shipping, who gives us this interesting information, and he goes on to say that when the Prince of Orange 'delivered me his letters to her Majesty, he prayed me to say to the Queen from him, Sub umbra alarum tuarum protegimur: for certainly, said he, they had withered in the bud, and sunk in the beginning of their navigation, had not her Majesty assisted them.' It would have been natural to entrust to Leicester such confidential utterances as these were a reply to. But Elizabeth was passing through a paroxysm of rage with Leicester at the moment. She ventured to call him 'traitor' and to accuse him of conspiring with the Prince of Orange. Notwithstanding this, his influence was still paramount with her, and it was characteristic of her shrewd petulance to confide in Leicester's protégé, although not in Leicester himself. Towards the end of March, Raleigh settled at the English Court.

      On April 1, 1582, Elizabeth issued from Greenwich a strange and self-contradictory warrant with regard to service in Ireland, and the band of infantry hitherto commanded in that country by a certain Captain Annesley, now deceased. The words must be quoted verbatim: —

      He is to be captain in Ireland, but not just yet, not till a too tender Queen can spare him. We find that he was paid his 'reckoning' for six months after the issue of this warrant, but there is no evidence that he was spared at any time during 1582 to relieve his Irish deputy. He was now, in fact, installed as first favourite in the still susceptible heart of the Virgin Star of the North.

      This, then, is a favourable opportunity for pausing to consider what manner of man it was who had so suddenly passed into the intimate favour of the Queen. Naunton has described Raleigh with the precision of one who is superior to the weakness of depreciating the exterior qualities of his enemy: 'having a good presence, in a handsome and well-compacted person; a strong natural wit, and a better judgment; with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage.' His face had neither the ethereal beauty of Sidney's nor the intellectual delicacy of Spenser's; it was cast in a rougher mould than theirs. The forehead, it is acknowledged, was too high for the proportion of the features, and for this reason, perhaps, is usually hidden in the portraits by a hat. We must think of Raleigh at this time as a tall, somewhat bony man, about six feet high, with dark hair and a high colour, a facial expression of great brightness and alertness, personable from the virile force of his figure, and illustrating these attractions by a splendid taste in dress. His clothes were at all times noticeably gorgeous; and to the end of his life he was commonly bedizened with precious stones to his very shoes. When he was arrested in 1603 he was carrying 4,000l. in jewels on his bosom, and when he was finally captured on August 10, 1618, his pockets were found full of the diamonds and jacinths which he had hastily removed from various parts of his person. His letters display his solicitous love of jewels, velvets, and embroidered damasks. Mr. Jeaffreson has lately found among the Middlesex MSS. that as early as April 26, 1584, a gentleman named Hugh Pew stole at Westminster and carried off Walter Raleigh's pearl hat-band and another jewelled article of attire, valued together in money of that time at 113l. The owner, with characteristic promptitude, shut the thief up in Newgate, and made him disgorge. To complete our picture of the vigorous and brilliant soldier-poet, we must add that he spoke to the end of his life with that strong Devonshire accent which was never displeasing to the ears of Elizabeth.

      The Muse of History is surely now-a-days too disdainful of all information that does not reach her signed and countersigned. In biography, at least, it must be a mistake to accept none but documentary evidence, since tradition, if it does not give us truth of fact, gives us what is often at least as valuable, truth of impression. The later biographers of Raleigh have scorned even to repeat those anecdotes that are the best known to the public of all which cluster around his personality. It is true that they rest on no earlier testimony than that of Fuller, who, writing in the lifetime of men who knew Raleigh, gives the following account of his introduction to Elizabeth: 'Her Majesty, meeting with a plashy place, made some scruple to go on; when Raleigh (dressed in the gay and genteel habit of those times) presently cast off and spread his new plush cloak on the ground, whereon the queen trod gently over, rewarding him afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so fair a footcloth.' The only point about this story which is incredible is that this act was Raleigh's introduction to the Queen. Regarded as a fantastic incident of their later attachment, the anecdote is in the highest degree characteristic of the readiness of the one and the romantic sentiment of the other.

      Not less entertaining is Fuller's other story, that at the full tide of Raleigh's fortunes with the Queen, he wrote on a pane of glass with his diamond ring: —

      whereupon Elizabeth replied,

      Of these tales we can only assert that they reflect the popular and doubtless faithful impression of Raleigh's mother-wit and audacious alacrity.

      If he did not go back to fight in Ireland, his experience of Irish affairs was made use of by the Government. He showed a considerable pliancy in giving his counsel. In May 1581 he had denounced Ormond and even Grey for not being severe enough, but in June 1582 he had veered round to Burghley's opinion that it was time to moderate English tyranny in Ireland. A paper written partly by Burghley and partly by Raleigh, but entitled The Opinion of Mr. Rawley, still exists among the СКАЧАТЬ