limitations, in his greatness and in his defects, Walter Raleigh is
the very type of Elizabeth’s England. Like Robert Cecil, Spenser,
and Sidney, he was a child when the great queen ascended the throne;
like Shakespeare and Bacon, he had not passed the full vigour of
manhood when she died. He was a year older than Henry of Navarre, whom
he outlived by eight years. Walsingham was a grown man and William
Cecil a Secretary of State before any one of this younger group was
born. All of them were young men still when the crisis of Elizabeth’s
reign was reached and the Armada was dispersed. The older generation
raised England from weakness to strength; the younger saw her strength
made patent to the world. The older generation maintained her on the
defensive; it was the part of the younger to assert her primacy in
every field of endeavour.
Of this younger generation, Raleigh stands out as the typical
representative. In an age of men of action, he was one of the greatest
of the men of action. In one of the two greatest ages of English
poetry he was acclaimed as one of their peers by the poets. In the age
which saw the creation of English prose, he was one of the masters
of prose. The military world and the naval world were developing new
theories of strategy and tactics; in both fields he was a first-rate
authority and a brilliant performer. The expansion of Spain and
Portugal had brought new political conceptions into being; we owe
the conception of Greater Britain and all the first stubborn efforts
to realise it to the genius of Sir Walter. In a day of brilliant
courtiers, none was more brilliant than he; and in the day when Bacon
was formulating anew the principles of scientific inquiry, Raleigh was
incidentally an ardent experimentalist. In every field his versatility
was exercised, and in every field his place was in the front rank.
[Illustration: _SIR WALTER RALEIGH_
_From the Painting by_ FEDERIGO ZUCCARO _in the National Portrait
Gallery_]
And yet perhaps--save in one thing--never quite in the first rank.
His literary achievement does not set him beside Shakespeare and
Spenser. Drake was a greater commander and John Davis a greater
seaman. By land he was never tested in a great command. His scientific
pursuits were merely a parergon. As a statesman he never achieved the
control of England’s destinies; wily Robert Cecil was the craftier
politician. But two things he did: he taught Englishmen that the might
of England lay in her fleets--not as the accident of a moment but as a
permanent principle; and he created the idea of a Britain beyond the
seas, struggled for it almost alone year after year with persistent
tenacity, through good report and evil report and failure--finally
died for it. He it was that sowed the seed; ours is the tree that
sprang from it.
II
RALEIGH’S RISE
Walter Raleigh was born in 1552, a year before Mary Tudor ascended
the English throne. He was of a Devon house; himself, one of a large
and composite family, for his mother, Katharine Champernoun, was his
father’s third wife, and was herself a widow with several children
when she married him. It must have counted for something for a small
boy to have had two such big half-brothers as Humphrey and Adrian
Gilbert, both dreamers and idealists, and one of them a by-no-means
contemptible man of action to boot. The child was six years old when
the great persecution was ended by Elizabeth’s accession, and for the
next ten years he had endless opportunities of listening with all his
ears to mariners’ tales of Eldorado and of the Spanish Inquisition,
and learning at least watermanship if not seamanship. In 1568 he went
up to Oxford, at the moment when Alva was goading the Netherlands into
open rebellion and France was on the verge of a fresh outbreak of the
Huguenot wars. Raleigh’s career as an undergraduate was interrupted.
He went off to France as a volunteer, to get his baptism of blood at
Jarnac in March, and to be present at Montcontour later in the year.
After that, his career for some while is not easy to trace. It looks
as if he had returned to Oxford, for his name was still on the list of
undergraduates at Oriel in 1572; but it is also said that he remained
in France for five years, and even that he was in Paris at the time of
the massacre. In 1575 he entered--_pro forma_--at the Middle Temple;
and two or three years later appears to have been in the field again,
fighting in the Low Countries under Sir John Norreys. The chances are
that he had had some further military practice in the interval between
1569 and 1578, in France or the Netherlands or both, especially as his
brother Humphrey Gilbert was in command of the English contingent at
Flushing and elsewhere for some while. In 1578 Gilbert sailed on his
first colonising venture, and young Walter was one of his captains;
but the expedition, after a collision with some Spaniards, was driven
back to Plymouth by weather. In 1580, Raleigh emerges definitely as a
captain in the army employed for the suppression of Desmond’s rebellion
in Ireland--in which capacity he was present at the capture of
Smerwick, and had the unsavoury business of superintending the massacre
of the garrison.
Raleigh remained in Ireland on duty for something over a year, till
the end of 1581. While there he accomplished sundry feats of arms
of a brilliant character, all being of the kind in which personal
daring and skill, and resourcefulness in emergency, are the leading
characteristics--deeds in which he was acting with only some very small
escort. It was very much in the nature--_mutatis mutandis_--of police
work among hostile frontier tribes in India to-day. The young soldier’s
ideas of Irish government were derived from Humphrey Gilbert, who, in
all other relations of life, was a noble-hearted generous Christian
gentleman, but in this particular relation was as perfectly ruthless as
Alva himself might have been. It is one of the puzzles of the period
that men who upheld elsewhere the highest standards of chivalry and
honour--men such as Sussex, Henry Sidney, Walter Devereux--adopted
towards the native Irish the attitude of the primitive Hebrew towards
the Canaanites, seeming to account the human population as if they were
an irredeemably pernicious species of wild beasts; and Raleigh was no
exception to the rule.
Immediately on his return to England he sprang into high favour with
Elizabeth, partly through his brilliant abilities, partly through the
personal fascination which no one could exercise better when he chose.
But this charm was accompanied by an insatiable ambition, pridefulness,
and fiery temper, which effectually prevented him from making any
attempt to conciliate rivalry or hostility, cut him off from his
natural alliance with the court section of the war-party, and rather
associated him with Burghley. Favourite as he was, and in some ways
influential with the Queen, he was never admitted by her into the Privy
Council, though he was knighted so early as 1584, and received numerous
and exceedingly substantial marks of the royal goodwill.
In fact, it would seem that his imagination carried his mind away from
the current problems of administration and policy to another field.
He was less occupied with the question how war with Spain might be
precipitated or deferred than with that of setting up a rival empire.
If, as is most probable, the conception was primarily that of his
brother Humphrey Gilbert, the younger man made it his own; and in these
years the attempt to establish a colony in North America absorbed his
best energies and enthusiasms. For Burghley, Spain was primarily the
European Power which--however interests might clash--was a necessary
counterpoise to France; for Walsingham, she was the aggressive enemy
of Protestantism; for Raleigh, she was the claimant to the New World,
whose rights might be and ought to be successfully challenged by
England. Thus, the first desired to avert conflict; the second was at
least ready to join issue at once, lest it should be too late; whereas,
from Raleigh’s point of view, the time when Spain and England should
grapple was a matter of comparative indifference, provided that when
it arrived England should be ready. But there was probably no man
in England--not Drake himself--in whose political creed fundamental
hostility to Spain was a more essential article.
There is, however, a curious story that in 1586 Raleigh was engaged
in Spanish negotiations on his own account, which negotiations had
as their object that he should take measures to hamper the English
preparations for war, himself selling a couple of ships to Spain; and
it appears to be implied that he was one of those young gentlemen
about the Queen’s person who were going to put through Babington’s
plot for her assassination. We may therefore recall the fact that in
the Ridolfi days John Hawkins had figured as an enemy of his Queen,
only thirsting to betray the fleet to Philip. Hawkins, of course, was
really working in collusion with Burghley, and the whole thing was a
trick. It need not surprise any one, therefore, if Raleigh played the
same game at this time, though on a smaller scale. It would be a matter
of course, then, that pains would be taken to give the Spaniards--and
their informants in England--the impression that Sir Walter was really
disaffected. As for Ballard and Babington, they were so completely in
the toils of Walsingham from the outset that Raleigh may very well have
actually been the Secretary’s accomplice in tricking them. Patriotism,
principle, and consistency apart, no one has ever accused him of
lacking intelligence, of which he would stand hopelessly convicted
if the suggested allegations were true. Moreover, a man with so many
enemies would not have escaped without being incriminated. The only
definitely known facts are that he was at this time in communication
with Spain, and that the Spaniards had an idea that he was
well-affected towards them. The only inference we can quite confidently
draw is that he was hoodwinking them, though nothing definite seems to
have resulted.
When the Armada was expected, Raleigh was Vice-Admiral of the West, and
was also one of the special Defence Commission. It was on the great
ship which he had himself designed, the _Ark Raleigh_, that Admiral
Howard hoisted his flag; but Raleigh was not one of the commanders in
the fleet. He had been largely occupied in organising the defences in
the West Country, and had been urgent in pressing the true strategical
policy of fighting and beating the Spaniard on the sea--of an offensive
naval war as the only true defensive war. But it is not quite certain
whether he even had any personal part in the Armada engagements at all;
though, on the whole, there is not sufficient ground for discarding
the common report that he joined the fleet as a volunteer after the
engagement off Portland. At that stage, all fears had passed that the
Spaniard might effect a landing in the western division of the channel,
where Raleigh was responsible for the arrangements for meeting the
invader. Until then, he had been bound to remain at his post on shore.
But now, not only did the English fleet know that it was a match for
the enemy, but, if chance should enable them to attempt a landing,
it would certainly not be in Raleigh’s district. So there is an _a
priori_ probability that, being free to join the ships, he would not
have missed the opportunity if it offered. There is no doubt, in any
case, that he fully understood and appreciated the tactics adopted--a
complete innovation in the methods of naval warfare--whether he did or
did not take actual part, as a gentleman-volunteer, in the manœuvres.
The great _débâcle_ initiated a new phase in the relations of Spain
to England and to Europe generally. The defeat, of course, was not
of itself a death-blow, though if victory had gone the other way--if
the English fleet had been in effect annihilated--an invasion under
Parma would have followed; and Parma was the best general living,
while the whole number of Englishmen who had any real experience of
military service was small. But hitherto, wherever the Spaniards went,
afloat or ashore, they had the prestige of success; now at a single
blow the prestige passed from Spain to England--the theory of Spanish
invincibility was shattered. The change had no less effect on Spain’s
enemies on the Continent than in England, where for years past the
seamen at least had been in the habit of taking for granted that they
understood the art of fighting on the sea infinitely better than their
antagonists. Now, however, the landsmen and the men of peace had had
ocular demonstration of what the sailors had long been affirming as the
conclusion from their own practical experience. England, hitherto on
the defensive, was converted into the attacking power, and was filled
with the spirit of aggression.
III
VIRGINIA
Between his seventeenth and his thirtieth years, Raleigh was completing
his education as a soldier by his experiences in varied fields from
Jarnac to Munster--sandwiching in, as it would appear, some residence
at Oxford, and some in London as a nominal student of the law; not
actually becoming a courtier but making his first _entrée_ among
the associates of the court. In his thirtieth year he returned
from Ireland to London, with a reputation as a dashing officer, and
immediately made his way into the good graces of the Maiden Queen
who, already verging on fifty, was demanding with increased instead
of diminished avidity the amorous adulation of those who would find
favour in her eyes. Raleigh made love to her on the recognised lines;
with distinguished success, also on the recognised lines; to his own
profit, and the extreme annoyance of the Leicesters and Hattons. The
famous story of the cloak may or may not be true--it rests only on
the authority of that chronicler whom every self-respecting author
is obliged to refer to as “old Fuller”--but it is one of those
traditions which, like King Alfred’s cakes and George Washington’s
little hatchet, can never be surrendered. In these years there are
tales of Hatton’s jealousy; records of appeals to the favourite to
intervene now on behalf of Burghley, now of Leicester, to mitigate
the royal displeasure; rumours, such as may have been concocted by
spite, of not over-scrupulous methods employed in the pursuit of
personal aggrandisement. Beside these stories of court-gossip and
intrigue are those of his association with Bohemian literary circles,
of his originating the meetings at the Mermaid, of his friendship with
Marlowe, and his reputed “atheism”--a quite incredible, if by no means
surprising, charge against a man whose speculations were probably
as bold and unconventional in the field of religion as in those of
political, naval, and military theory. But assuredly the author of the
“History of the World” was no atheist.
But during these years, between 1582 and 1588, he was something more
than the brilliant courtier, keen-witted humanist, and active member of
the Defence Commission--he was the pioneer of colonial expansion.
Humphrey Gilbert was thirteen years older than his half-brother, whose
hero he would seem to have been, not undeservedly, in Raleigh’s younger
days. Of brilliant attainments, the bravest of the brave, intensely
religious, an idealist and dreamer, he was a kind of incarnation of
Arthurian knighthood; for the very mercilessness he displayed in
Ireland was by no means the outcome of inhumanity but of a fixed belief
that the Irish ought to be accounted not as human beings but as beasts
of prey. Raleigh himself was hardly more than a boy when his brother
was already fixing his thoughts on the colonisation of North America
and the discovery of the North West Passage. It cannot therefore be
claimed for Sir Walter that he actually originated the Colonial idea,
which was Gilbert’s; but he entered into it from the first and made it
his own; while Gilbert lived, they worked for it together; and when the
Atlantic billows swallowed up Sir Humphrey, it was to Raleigh that his
mantle passed undisputed.
About the time that the young man was entered at the Temple, Sir
Humphrey was at work on the treatise “to prove a passage by the North
West to Cathay and the East Indies,” which was published in 1576 by
Gascoign. In 1578 he obtained a charter authorising what he had already
been petitioning for four years earlier, an expedition to discover
and take possession of unknown lands--the charter extending over six
years. We have already noted Raleigh’s participation in the first
expedition, which put to sea late in 1579 but was obliged to return
to port with nothing accomplished. In 1583 the second expedition
sailed; but this time Raleigh, though he had embarked everything he
could in the venture, was at the last moment peremptorily forbidden
to accompany it in person by his exigent mistress. Quite definitely,
the purpose of the expedition was not to hunt for precious metals but
to establish a permanent agricultural settlement. Incidentally, it is
to be noted that Walsingham was active in furthering the project. The
expedition took formal possession of Newfoundland, but this was not its
actual destination. Disasters overtook it, and Gilbert finding himself
compelled for the time to abandon the design, sailed for England.
On the course of the voyage, the little _Squirrel_, in which he was
sailing, went down in a storm with all hands on board. Raleigh was
left to struggle single-handed for the carrying out of his brother’s
conception.
Now begins the story of Raleigh’s persistent effort at the colonisation
of Virginia.
A fresh patent was issued to Sir Walter, who had just been knighted,
in March 1584--just two years after his first entry into Elizabeth’s
court. The first step was taken immediately--an exploring expedition,
which found its way to the island of Roanoak on the coast of what is
now Carolina, opened friendly intercourse with the natives, took formal
possession, and returned to report.
Raleigh was largely interested in the series of Arctic voyages
undertaken by John Davis during the three ensuing years: exploration
and discovery pure and simple had an attraction for him only less
powerful than colonisation; but it was to this that he devoted his
keenest energies, and on this that he poured out the wealth he was
acquiring. In the spring of 1585 his fleet sailed for Virginia, as the
new settlement was called, under the command of his kinsman, Richard
Grenville. Raleigh himself the Queen, of course, could not spare. The
open breach with Spain and the open alliance with Orange were now
approaching rapidly, and Grenville’s voyage seems to have been, in his
own eyes, directed more against Spaniards than with a single eye to the
colony. In due course, however, Roanoak was reached, and the settlement
established with Ralph Lane as governor; and Grenville came home.
Unluckily, the original friendly relations with the natives were upset;
the quarrel led the colonists into “making an example” of an Indian
village; and the Indians resolved to retaliate. Till their opportunity
should come, they merely made things as difficult as they could for the
Englishman. A relief-expedition had been promised for the following
Easter. It did not appear; but Drake did, with the fleet which had just
been employed in sacking Cartagena. The settlers resolved to throw up
their attempt, and returned to England with Drake. A few days after
they had sailed, the delayed relief party under Grenville arrived to
find the settlement abandoned. Fifteen volunteers were now left behind,
to keep the place in occupation; but when a new band of settlers with
a new governor arrived in the following spring (1587), they found
that the little garrison had been massacred. The party set about
establishing a settlement once more; but under the existing conditions
they induced John White, the governor, to return himself to England to
bring fresh supplies and reinforcements.
This was the year in which the Armada ought to have sailed against
England; but Drake’s successful raid on the harbour of Cadiz deferred
the invasion for a year. In the meantime, however, it was a matter
of extreme difficulty to get permission for any ship to leave an
English port. The demands of the coming duel were paramount. A couple
of relief vessels with White were hardly allowed to sail; and these
returned without reaching the colony. Again, the next year there was
an expedition, but it found Roanoak deserted, and learned that the
settlers had taken up fresh quarters. But neither did it discover them,
nor did any one of the search expeditions which Raleigh subsequently
despatched one after another.
He had spent £40,000--the equivalent of something like five times that
sum at the present day. For a dozen years his ships sailed--sometimes
with fresh settlers, sometimes with stores only; to meet only with
disappointment--often with nothing but reports that the bones of the
last party left behind were bleaching in some undiscovered spot.
Half of the pioneers themselves were ready to turn back, abandoning
the adventure, as soon as they realised that their business was not
going to be picking up gold and silver. Men of Grenville’s type
enjoyed themselves thoroughly when they were boarding Spanish galleons
against immense odds, or engaged in any other form of dare-devilry; a
different type was required to settle down to a stubborn fight with
Nature, and found rural or commercial communities. The necessary type
was forthcoming in course of time, but it had not yet realised the
field that was open to it. As yet there were none to experiment, save
adventurers who wanted something quite other than North America had to
give. At last Raleigh felt that for a time, but only for a time, he
was beaten; that to obtain support he must have prospects to suggest,
at least, of gold mines and silver mines; and his next great venture
was in another region where the golden city of Manoa was fabled to
be hidden. But he never lost faith in his own ideal, or recanted his
prophecy that the northern Continent would yet be possessed and peopled
by men of his own race, that he would live to see Virginia an English
nation. His own experiment failed; yet he lived to see the beginnings
of fulfilment under other auspices, when again a colony of Virginia
received a charter in 1606--this time to establish and maintain herself
as the mother of the American people.
IV
AFTER THE ARMADA
The spirit of aggression engendered by the Armada was too strong for
Burghley and his mistress to oppose directly. Their object was to give
it such an outlet as would satisfy popular sentiment without ruining
Spain; and popular sentiment, as they saw, would find satisfaction in
a mere extension of the old raiding warfare upon Spanish commerce. The
danger, in their eyes, was that the control of operations might fall
into the hands of men who not only desired to annihilate Spain but
knew how to do it. Drake and Raleigh recognised in Spain the one Power
which stood in the way of a complete English dominion of the seas,
with everything that would mean: that dominion was already almost won,
and could be made good. But if Drake were discredited, Raleigh would
be unable to give their policy effect. This was duly brought about by
the manipulation from headquarters of the Lisbon expedition, which
caused it to fail of accomplishing its immediate object. Thereafter the
policy was indeed anti-Spanish, but on the lines advocated by Hawkins
and Essex (who may now be said to have taken the place occupied by
Leicester till his death in 1588), not by Raleigh and Drake.