IN SEARCH OF A CAREER (1552-1581).
[Sidenote: _Ralegh's Birthplace._]
Walter, the second son by the third marriage of Walter Ralegh of Fardell
and Hayes, was born in the reign of Edward VI, it has been supposed, in
1552. The exact date is not beyond doubt; for the registration of
baptisms at East Budleigh was not begun till two or three years later.
If the inscription on the National Portrait Gallery picture, '1588,
aetatis suae 34,' and that on Zucchero's in the Dublin Gallery, 'aet.
44, 1598,' be correct, his birth must have been not in 1552, but about
1554. A similar, or nearly similar, inference may be drawn from the
statement, on a miniature of him at Belvoir Castle, of his age as
sixty-five in 1618. One local writer, R. Izacke, has claimed the honour
of his birthplace for a house in Exeter, adjoining the Palace-gate.
Probably the rumour points, as I have intimated, to its occupation at
some time or other by his parents. Another author asserts that he was
born at Fardell. His own testimony, 'being born in that house,' is
decisive in favour of his father's Budleigh home, a lonely, one-storied,
thatched, late Tudor farmhouse, not a manor-house, of moderate size,
with gabled wings, and a projecting central porch. Tradition has marked
out the particular room in which he was born, as on the upper floor at
the west end, facing southwards. The house, which is a mile west of East
Budleigh church, and six from Exmouth, with the exception of some change
at the end of the east wing, probably retains its original character. It
was restored in 1627 by 'R.D.' For a century past it has been
denominated Hayes Barton, or simply Hayes. Previously it had been
called, after successive landlords, Poerhayes or Power's Hayes, and
Dukes-hayes. The hollow in which it lies, among low hills, is on the
verge of a tract of moorland; and Hayes Wood rises close at hand.
Through the oak wood to Budleigh Salterton Bay is two miles and a half.
[Sidenote: _At Oxford._]
In this quiet spot Ralegh spent his boyhood, in circumstances not very
unlike those of more eminent county families with which his was
connected. During the earlier half of the sixteenth century the majority
of the gentry were continually growing poorer, and a minority were
growing richer. The Raleghs, it is plain, had not met with the good
fortune of the Russells, and others of their rural peers. They were
declining, if hardly in the degree represented subsequently. But an
ampler share of prosperity could not have made much difference in young
Walter's prospects or training. Three brothers were all before him in
the succession to the patrimony. His birthright could not have comprised
more than the cadet's prescriptive portion of necessity and brains. It
is unfair to the natural curiosity of posterity that his extraordinary
endowments in the second respect are not traceable in anecdotes of his
childhood. Naturally a local legend reports him to have loved the
society of adventurous mariners. Sir John Millais in his 'Boyhood of
Ralegh,' which was painted at Budleigh Salterton, has embodied it. In a
narrative printed a century after his death a general assertion of his
fondness for books of voyages occurs. Otherwise his boyish tastes and
habits are wholly unknown. The name of his school has not been
preserved. The first accepted fact after his birth is his entrance, as a
commoner, into Oriel College, of which, says Anthony a Wood, his cousin,
C. Champernoun, was a member. According to a statement by Thomas Fuller,
of which there is no corroboration either in the books of Christ Church,
or elsewhere, he belonged also to Christ Church, before or after his
admission into Oriel. For any details of his academical course, as for
the dates of its commencement and close, posterity is indebted to Wood,
who remarks that he went up to Oriel 'in 1568, or thereabouts,' and,
'after he had spent about three years in that house, left the University
without a degree.' Wood declares that 'his natural parts being strangely
advanced by academical learning, under the care of an excellent tutor,
he became the ornament of the juniors, and was worthily esteemed a
proficient in oratory and philosophy.' It is exceedingly likely, Ralegh
being Ralegh. At the same time, particulars would have been welcome.
[Sidenote: _Chronological difficulties._]
Lord Bacon has enshrined in his Apophthegms an example of Ralegh's wit
at Oxford. A cowardly fellow happened to be a very good archer. Having
been grossly abused by another, he bemoaned himself to Ralegh, and asked
what he should do to repair the wrong that had been offered him. 'Why,
challenge him,' answered Ralegh, 'to a match of shooting.' If the
sarcasm is not very keen its preservation in academical memory implies
an impression of distinction in its author. Perhaps as much may be said
for another anecdote of his University career, for which John Aubrey
solemnly vouches, that he borrowed a gown at Oxford of one T. Child, and
never restored it. Bacon's anecdote, in any case, being contemporary
testimony, answers the useful purpose of confirming the reality of
Ralegh's membership of the University, which otherwise would have to be
believed on the faith simply of vague tradition, and of Wood's hasty
assertions. No evidence indeed of Ralegh's connection with Oxford has
ever been discovered in the College or University papers and books,
beyond the entry, a little below the name of C. Champernoun, of 'W.
Rawley,' in the list of members of Oriel, dated 1572. It is printed in
Mr. Andrew Clark's valuable _Oxford Register_. This W. Rawley must have
been, like Champernoun, an undergraduate; for the name has not the
graduate's prefix of 'Mr' or 'Sr.' The presence of the name in the
list, with that of Champernoun, would be known to Wood. He may have
built upon it the whole of his account of the periods both of Ralegh's
admission into Oriel, and his departure after some three years. It would
seem to him reasonable enough that Ralegh should have entered about
1568 at sixteen, and be still in residence three or four years later.
Unfortunately an interlude, put apparently by Wood several years later,
separates 1568 and 1572 in Ralegh's career. His academical course cannot
fill up the gap; and it at once renders the chronology of the _Athenae_
impossible, and that of the Oriel list hard to understand. Ralegh is
known to have been out of England for part, if not the whole, of 1569,
and is believed with good cause to have remained abroad over 1572. There
are ways of explaining the consequent discrepancies. The W. Rawley on
the Oriel list may have been, and probably was, our Walter Ralegh,
retained among the number of undergraduates, though he had ceased to
reside. A century later the name of the Duke of Monmouth, who had
resided for a few months only, was kept on the Corpus books for many
years. Again, to take and revise Wood's reference, Ralegh may well have
entered long before he was sixteen. If, having been, in accordance with
the common belief, born in 1552, he had, like his son Walter, gone up at
fourteen, he would, in 1569, have passed three years at Oxford. But at
all events Wood is mistaken in the assertion that he resided there about
three years from 1568; for in 1569 he certainly was campaigning in
France.
[Sidenote: _In France._]
It happened in this way. His maternal kinsmen, the Champernouns, were
connected by marriage with the Huguenot Comte de Montgomerie. One of
them, Henry, had obtained the leave of Elizabeth to raise a troop of a
hundred mounted gentlemen volunteers for the Protestant side. He
collected them chiefly from the West. Ralegh is said to have been among
those who accepted his invitation; 'admodum adolescens,' writes Camden
in the _Annals_, 'jam primum fatis monstratus.' He must have quitted
Oriel, perhaps in company with C. Champernoun, for the purpose.
Generally it has been supposed that he crossed the Channel with the rest
of the troop. But there is some reason for holding that he reached
France earlier. The contingent entered the Huguenot camp on October 5,
1569, two days after the defeat at Moncontour. Ralegh alludes to himself
in the _History of the World_ as of the beaten army. Praising Count
Lewis of Nassau for his skilful conduct of the Huguenot retreat, he
remarks: 'Of which myself was an eye-witness, and was one of them that
had cause to thank him for it.' The passage proves that he was in the
Huguenot camp after Moncontour. Nothing in the remark is inconsistent
with his earlier arrival, if there be, as there is, evidence to support
it. Elsewhere in the History he says: 'I remember it well, that, when
the Prince of Conde was slain after the battle of Jarnac,' the Huguenots
consoled themselves for his death. Jarnac was fought on March 13, 1669.
If, then, the phrase, 'I remember,' refer to Ralegh's personal
experiences of Huguenot sentiment on the field, he must have joined the
army at least half a year before the retreat after Moncontour. The only
way of avoiding that conclusion is to take the violent course of
supposing that he was recalling French criticisms delivered some time
after the actual event.
[Sidenote: _Ferocities of Civil War._]
A haze of uncertainty shrouds his original advent among the Huguenots.
It lifts for a moment to show him there; and that is all. As soon as he
has ridden within the Huguenot lines the clouds gather once more, and
darkness swallows up his individuality. He tells one anecdote in the
History of the manner in which the Huguenots chased Catholics in the
hills of Languedoc. They tracked the fugitives to caverns half way up
precipitous cliffs. Then they smoked them out with their treasures by
lighted bundles of straw let down by iron chains opposite the mouth.
General Pelissier plagiarised the device, with more murderous details,
in Algeria in 1849. It is a specimen of the brutalities of a conflict,
which its English assistants, though they had countenanced, would not
care to chronicle minutely. To Ralegh's keen sight the struggle would
soon have displayed itself shorn of the glamour of religious enthusiasm.
He regarded it simply as a civil war, by which 'the condition of no
nation,' as he wrote later, 'was ever bettered.' Of one of its prime
authors, Admiral Coligny, he has recorded his belief that he 'advised
the Prince of Conde to side with the Huguenots, not only out of love to
their persuasion, but to gain a party.' English troopers on their return
were not likely to dilate on their exploits at the Court of Elizabeth,
who audaciously disavowed to the French Catholic Court the auxiliaries
she had licensed.
[Sidenote: _In the Netherlands._]
[Sidenote: _The Middle Temple._]
On the authority of an observation of the younger Hakluyt's, that Ralegh
had resided longer in France than he, the period is computed to have
been not less than six years. As he appears to have been in London at
the end of February, 1575, that term would be completed within a
fortnight, if he were present at the battle of Jarnac. The time covered
the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, August 24, 1572. But there is no
foundation for the story that he was then in Paris, and was one of the
Englishmen sheltered in Walsingham's house. He had enlisted as a lad of
seventeen. He emerged a man of twenty-three. Of this long and critical
stage in his education we know really nothing, as we know nothing of his
youth at school and college. After he quitted France it would appear
from allusions by several contemporary writers that he served, about
1577-78, in the Netherlands with Sir John Norris's contingent under the
Prince of Orange. Modern enquirers have doubted the fact, on the ground
of evidence that he was in England between 1576 and 1578. The reasoning
is not demonstrative. He may, if a regular combatant, have obtained a
furlough to cross over, and see his family; or, from his English home,
he may have paid a flying visit or visits to his brother, Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, who commanded a regiment of the English auxiliaries. The dates
are not incompatible even with a statement that he fought at the battle
of Rimenant on August 1, 1578, though, had he been present on so famous
an occasion, it would have been more like him to refer somewhere to the
circumstance. But if there is no sufficient ground for questioning the
belief in his participation in the war of the Low Countries, there is
yet less for disputing his residence in England from 1576. His signature
to a family deed, already mentioned, in April, 1578, testifies that in
1578 and in ensuing years he was for a time in Devonshire. Evidence
exists that in 1576, if not earlier, he was living in London. For 1576
itself the proof consists of some commendatory verses by 'Walter Rawely
of the Middle Temple' prefixed to the _Steele Glasse_ by Gascoigne,
published in that year. Upon the description Wood has based a distinct
assertion that Ralegh went from Oxford to the Middle Temple to improve
himself in the intricate knowledge of the municipal laws. Oldys says he
had searched the Registers of the Inn and they yielded no sign of a
Walter Rawely or Ralegh. Moreover, if Ralegh had ever been formally a
law student, it has been argued he could scarcely have solemnly declared
at his trial in 1603 that he had never read a word of law or the
statutes. On the other hand, doubts of the identity of the Rawely of the
poem with Ralegh always involved intrinsic difficulties. Ralegh would
have known Gascoigne through Humphrey Gilbert, with whom Gascoigne
served in Flanders; and there is not a trace of the existence of a
namesake acquainted with Gascoigne, or able to compose the verses. Now,
at any rate, no room for serious dispute remains. A list in two
manuscript volumes of all members of the Middle Temple from the
commencement of the sixteenth century has lately been completed by order
of the Benchers. In it, under the date 1574/5, February 27, appears an
entry 'Walter Rawley, late of Lyons Inn, Gent. Son of Walter R. of
Budleigh, Co. Devon, Esq.' The specification of parentage is useful.
Without it a hypothesis would have been possible, that the traditions
both of Oxford and of the Temple had been concurrently and equally at
fault, and that some inglorious William or Walter had been personating
the future hero alike in 1572 and in 1575. As for Ralegh's assertions in
later years that he had read no law, as large a disclaimer might have
been conscientiously made by many students at Inns of Court beside him.
But it is evident that he intended to follow the profession of the law,
and took the orthodox steps towards initiation into it, having
commenced, as was usual, with admission into an Inn of Chancery, the
bygone little collection of brick tenements in Newcastle-street. There
is no reason to suppose that he was ever called to the Bar.
[Sidenote: _About the Court._]
In the year following the publication of the _Steele Glasse_ he
undoubtedly was living in London, though in a different quarter. William
and Richard Paunsford, two servants of his, as appears from the
Middlesex Registers edited by Mr. Jeaffreson, were in December, 1577,
taken up for defying the watch. They had to be bailed out. In the
recognizance for one Ralegh was described as 'Walter Rawley, Esq. of
Islington,' and in the other as 'Walter Rawley, Esq. de Curia,' that is
of the Court. Young men of good family and ambition were in the habit of
obtaining an introduction to the Court. They used it as a club, though
they might not advance beyond the threshold. Ralegh on his return from
France had pursued the regular course. He sought for opportunities of
advancement where they most abounded; and, while he waited for them, he
enjoyed the pleasures of life. In the use of his leisure he may not
always have been more discreet than his riotous dependents. His wife is
reported to have remarked of a censure upon their elder son's addiction
to equivocal society, that she had heard Ralegh in his youth showed
similar tastes. Aubrey, whom nobody believes and everybody quotes, the
'credulous, maggotty-headed, and sometimes little better than crazed'
antiquarian, as Wood, his debtor for much curious unsifted gossip,
courteously characterizes him, relates how, at a tavern revel, Ralegh
quieted a noisy fellow, named Charles Chester. He sealed up his mouth by
knotting together the beard and moustache. It is on record that in the
February of 1580 he was in trouble for a brawl with Sir Thomas Perrot,
who afterwards married the sister of Lord Essex, Lady Dorothy Devereux.
Ralegh and Perrot were committed by the Council to the Fleet for six
days. The affray is not creditable; but it indicates that Ralegh
associated with courtiers.
[Sidenote: _Maritime adventures._]
The company he kept was not all of Chester's or of Perrot's kind. His
later correspondence proves that at this early period he must have
become known to Walsingham and Burleigh, and have found means for
allying himself with Leicester. He can have been no absolutely obscure
adventurer now, any more than was his family at the time of his birth
the utterly fallen stock it has been the fashion to suppose it. Whence
he derived the resources for the maintenance of an establishment, and
for social extravagances, is not as clear. He may have brought spoil
from France; or, more probably, he had already begun to cultivate the
West country art of privateering. Assistance would be furnished at need
by his helpful half brother, Humphrey, his 'true brother,' as Ralegh
called him. When at last the employment Ralegh desired came, the opening
was made by Gilbert. Gilbert had in 1577 formed a plan for the capture,
without warning, of the foreign ships, especially the Spanish and
Portuguese, which resorted to the Newfoundland coast for the fisheries.
His prizes he proposed to bring into Dutch ports, where they could be
sold. With the proceeds he would have fitted out an expedition
sufficiently strong, he hoped, to conquer the chief Spanish possessions
in America. A main feature of the scheme was that the Queen's name
should not be compromised. The leaders were to represent themselves as
servants of the Prince of Orange. The English Government might, in proof
of good faith, punish any naval officers who had abetted the project.
Mr. St. John, a former biographer of Ralegh, has fancied that Ralegh's
hand can be detected in the design as laid in writing before Elizabeth.
Mr. Spedding is inclined to agree, on account of the extraordinary
resemblance he traces between it and the Guiana expedition of 1617-18.
The parallel is imaginary, as is the supposition that Gilbert's bold and
inventive intellect needed inspiration from any one. But undoubtedly,
had the Queen's wary counsellors given their sanction, Ralegh would have
been among the adventurers. The next year he accepted a command in the
expedition Gilbert was equipping for 'Norimbega,' in search, it was
said, for the North-West passage to Cathay. By a Royal charter Gilbert
had been authorized for six years from 1578 to discover and occupy
heathen territory not actually possessed by any Christian prince or
people. The adventure was retarded. A Seville merchant complained of the
seizure of his cargo of oranges and lemons at Dartmouth by some of Sir
Humphrey's company. At his suit the Privy Council ordered Gilbert and
Ralegh to remain until he should be compensated. The County authorities
were directed to stop the fleet. How the demand was settled, and whether
the embargo were formally taken off, is not recorded. A memorandum in
the Privy Council books stating the imposition of fines upon Ralegh and
several other West countrymen, and their payment in 1579, may perhaps
relate to the injunction, and imply that it was disregarded. At any
rate, before the end of 1578 the fleet sailed, though curtailed in
strength through quarrels among the adventurers. In an encounter with a
Spanish squadron it lost a ship. Ralegh's name is not mentioned in the
narrative in Hakluyt. Hooker, however, speaks of him as engaged in a
dangerous sea-fight wherein 'many of his company were slain.' Battered
and dispirited the expedition returned. From an allusion in Holinshed it
would appear that Ralegh held on his course for a time by himself,
though finally he too was compelled, early in 1579, to turn back through
want of victuals. The year 1579 came and went, and his fortune remained
unmade.
[Sidenote: _In Ireland._]
[Sidenote: _'Thorough.'_]
From Humphrey Gilbert came his second chance of distinction. Sir
Humphrey in 1569-70 had been appointed President of Munster. With many
noble qualities he was unruly. His friends admitted his liability to 'a
little too much warmth and presumption.' He had administered his Irish
province with a vigour somewhat in excess even of the taste of his age.
Consequently, he had been replaced by Sir John Perrot, father of
Ralegh's recent opponent. Sir John acted more leniently to the natives.
The collision between his son and Ralegh may have arisen out of
controversies on the proper policy to be pursued in the island. In any
case to Humphrey Gilbert's favour with the Queen, and to his continuing
interest in Irish affairs, Ralegh owed his regular entrance into the
public service. In 1580 he was commissioned as captain of a hundred
foot-soldiers raised to fight the insurgents of Munster, and their
Spanish and Italian confederates. From July 13, 1580, he drew allowances
in that capacity. The appointment was not lucrative. His pay was four
shillings a day. Sir Robert Naunton, who rose to be Secretary of State
to King James, and was connected with a crisis in Ralegh's fate,
compiled some biographical notes, entitled _Fragmenta Regalia_ on Queen
Elizabeth's favourite counsellors. Fuller describes the work, which was
not published till after the author's death, as a fruit of Naunton's
younger years. Allusions to events which occurred after the death of
James I prove that part or all was composed, or revised, when he had
already risen, and had access to authentic sources of information.
Ralegh's career is one of his themes, though he does not continue it
nearly to its close. He sketches it with a generosity which contrasts
strangely with the subsequent relations of the two men. Of Ralegh's
Irish appointment he speaks as 'not leaving him food and raiment, for it
was ever very poor.' The employment afforded abundance of hard work. He
gathered confidence in himself, if he ever lacked it. An untried, if not
wholly unknown, subordinate, he exhibited the spirit and sense of
responsibility of a viceroy. 'Thorough' was as much his motto as
Stafford's, and he acted upon it from the first. Towards American
Indians he could be gentle and just. His invariable rule with Irishmen
and Anglo-Irishmen of every degree was to crush. A characteristic story
is told of the outset of Ralegh's Irish career. A kerne was caught
carrying a bundle of withies on the outskirts of the English camp.
Ralegh asked their destination. 'To hang up English churls!' 'Well,'
retorted Ralegh, 'they will do for an Irishman;' and the prisoner was
strung up by them accordingly. It is a savage legend which deserves to
be remembered in justice to the audacity of the nameless peasant.
Probably invented to glorify a renowned Englishman's inflexibility, it
illustrates at all events the temper in which the war was waged.
Ferocity to Irishmen was accounted policy and steadfastness. Every
advantage was taken of the superiority of English steel and ordnance.
Writing in 1603 for the information of King James, Ralegh says that,
when he was a Captain in Ireland, a hundred foot and a hundred horse
would have beaten all the force of the strongest provinces, for 'in
those days the Irish had darts.' Towards the end of the Queen's reign
they had bought good English arms, and fought on even terms.
[Sidenote: _The Smerwick Massacre._]
One of his first public acts was to join Sir Warham St. Leger in trying
and executing at Cork in August, 1580, Sir James Fitzgerald, the Earl of
Desmond's brother. Fitzgerald was drawn, hanged, and quartered. His
immediate superior was the Earl of Ormond, the Lieutenant of Munster,
who showed occasional tenderness to his fellow-countrymen. The Lord
Deputy was Lord Grey of Wilton, whose views were generally as stern as
Ralegh's. Edmund Spenser was assistant secretary to Grey, and held as
austere a theory of Irish government. Ralegh in November, 1580, was with
Lord Grey's army. With the assistance of an English fleet under Admiral
Winter it blockaded at Smerwick in Kerry a mixed Spanish and Irish
garrison. On November 10 the garrison capitulated without conditions.
Thereupon Grey sent in Ralegh and Macworth, who had the ward of the day.
They are stated by Hooker, in his continuation of Holinshed, to have
made a great slaughter. Four hundred Spaniards and Italians were put to
the sword. All the Irishmen and several Irish women were hanged. An
Englishman and an Irish priest, who suffered the same doom, had their
legs and arms first broken. Only the foreign officers were held to
ransom. The act was that of the Deputy. Afterwards it was discovered
that the massacre excited general horror through Europe. Attempts were
made to repudiate sympathy with it on the Queen's part. Bacon wrote that
she was much displeased at the slaughter. Her own letters to Grey
comment on the whole proceeding as greatly to her liking. She expresses
discontent only that she had not been left free to kill or spare the
officers at her discretion. Personally Ralegh cannot be accounted
amenable for the atrocity. He is not named in Grey's despatch to the
Council. But it would be folly to pretend that he disapproved it.
Hooker, his eulogist, claims it for him as an eminent distinction. He
cordially sympathized with Grey's ideal of a Mahometan conquest for
Ireland.
[Sidenote: _Feats of Arms._]
His Irish service gave him opportunities of a nobler order. He ventured
his life in a score of hazardous feats. On one occasion his horse was
desperately wounded. He must have been slain but for the aid of his
servant Nicholas Wright, a trusty Yorkshireman. Another time the
Seneschal of Imokelly with fifteen horsemen and sixty foot lay in wait
for him at a ford between Youghal and Cork. He had crossed in safety
when Henry Moile, one of a few Downshire horsemen he had added to his
foot soldiers, was thrown in the middle of the stream. Back rode Ralegh,
and stood by his comrade in the face of tremendous odds. The Seneschal,
though his men outnumbered Ralegh's by twenty to one, was intimidated.
He let Ralegh accomplish his purpose, which was the occupation of
Barry's Court, the seat of Lord Barry. Barry was one of the Irish nobles
whose loyalty was not fixed. Ralegh desired to convince the class of the
futility of resistance by sudden blows. His courage in this instance was
more apparent than his wisdom. He had with difficulty obtained the
Deputy's consent to the enterprise. The result justified Grey's
hesitation. Barry had escaped before Ralegh's arrival at his castle. He
became, and remained for years, an open enemy. At last he seems to have
been reconciled to the Government. In 1594 Ralegh was interceding for
him against the grant of a favour at his expense to another veteran
malcontent, Florence MacCarthy. Ralegh's vigour had fuller success
against another suspected noble, Lord Roche, of Bally. Roche's castle,
twenty miles from Cork, was strong, and his retainers devoted and many.
With a petty detachment Ralegh set off on a dark night. He foiled two
bands, one of eight hundred, the other of five hundred, which
endeavoured to block his way. During a parley he contrived to introduce
first a few and then all his followers. Lord Roche professed much
loyalty, and entertained the intruders courteously at dinner. He refused
to accompany Ralegh on his return till he was shown that the castle was
in the hands of the English soldiers. Reluctantly he yielded, and Ralegh
conveyed him and his family across the rugged hills into Cork by night.
Roche proved an excellent subject.
[Sidenote: _Claim to Reward._]
Ralegh was indefatigable. He shunned no toil or danger. He did not care
if the enemy were five or twenty to one. But he was not a workman who
never complains of his tools, or an ox content to be muzzled while
treading out the corn. He spoke of his soldiers as such poor and
miserable creatures as their captains did not dare lead them into
battle. Wellington sometimes was as uncomplimentary to his. He bitterly
criticized Ormond. Grey had granted him the custody of Barry's Court. He
wrote in February, 1581, to Sir Francis Walsingham, with whom he had
established a correspondence. He asked the Secretary to obtain from the
Deputy Grey his confirmation in the post. He accused Ormond of
compelling so long a delay before Ralegh could enter, that Barry had
been able to dismantle the castle. He imputed the blunder either to
covetousness, or to unwillingness that any Englishman should have
anything. He contrasted the multiplication of traitors in Munster by a
thousand in the two years of Ormond's rule with Gilbert's suppression of
a previous rising in two months. 'Would God Sir Humphrey Gilbert's
behaviour were such in peace it did not make his good service forgotten,
and hold him from the preferment he is worthy of!' He was ashamed to
receive her Majesty's pay, though but a poor entertainment, and see her
so much abused. Walsingham wrote to Grey, and the Lord Deputy assigned
to Ralegh the Barry's Court domain from Rostellan Castle to Fota. It
comprised one side of Cork harbour, with the island now occupied by
Queenstown. The Queen, through the influence, it is said, of Burleigh,
refused her sanction. Next year Ralegh was writing again to Grey in
vehement censure of Ormond. He repudiated any complicity in the
defencelessness of the great wood of Conoloathe, and the country between
the Dingle and Kilkenny. The commissariat of Cork, he charged, had been
recklessly neglected; and Desmond's and Barry's wives were being
encouraged to gather help for their traitor lords.
[Sidenote: _Discontent._]
Denunciations of a general by his officer have an evil sound. Ralegh's
apology, such as it is, must be sought in his just sense of a masterly
capacity. He knew he was right; from the point of view of the prevalent
Elizabethan policy towards Ireland, though not from Burleigh's, he was
right. He raged at his want of official authority to correct the wrong.
He fretted, moreover, at being left in Ireland at all. Ormond quarrelled
with Grey, and was recalled in the spring of 1581. The lieutenancy of
Munster was assigned jointly to Ralegh, Sir William Morgan, and Captain
Piers. Ralegh continued discontented. He sighed for a wider sphere. From
his quarters at Lismore he wrote in August, 1581, to Lord Leicester. He
desired 'to put the Earl in mind of his affection, having to the world
both professed and practised the same.' Incidentally he intimated more
than readiness to return to England. 'I have spent,' he writes, 'some
time here under the Deputy, in such poor place and charge as, were it
not for I knew him to be one of yours, I would disdain it as much as to
keep sheep.' His tone implied that he understood he had come on
probation for more exalted functions elsewhere, and that he had a claim
upon Leicester's patronage. How he had established it is unknown.
Probably the intimacy began in London before he received his Irish
commission. He was at any rate sufficiently intimate to be able to
recommend a man of some eminence, as was Sir Warham St. Leger, to the
Earl's protection.
[Sidenote: _Return to England._]
He did not wish to stay in Ireland. The immediate success of his
hardness and resoluteness, when he was given a free hand, would have
deprived him of the option, if he had wished it. After Ormond's
dismissal the pacification of Munster went rapidly on under him and his
fellow lieutenants. Captain John Zouch, an officer as ruthless to
Irishmen as himself, who was appointed Governor of the province in
August, 1581, worked on the same lines. It became practicable to disband
part of the English forces. Ralegh's own company was paid off without
apparent dissatisfaction on his part. Being needed no longer in Ireland
he was sent home by Grey in December, 1581, with despatches. For his
expenses he was paid on December 29, at the liberal rate of L20, which
may be roughly reckoned as equivalent to L100.