OFFICES AND ENDOWMENTS (1582-1587).
[Sidenote: _Employment._]
[Sidenote: _Envoy and Counsellor._]
His promotion, when it commenced, was liberal; it was not meteoric. He
had won his full entry at Court before he gained permanent offices and
emoluments. For a time he continued dependent upon the long-suffering
Irish Exchequer. In February he received an order for L200 upon the
entertainment due to him in Ireland. That, however, seems to have been
payment of arrears for previous and actual service. Notwithstanding an
angry protest by the Lord Deputy, already alluded to, a fresh commission
was issued to him in April, 1582, as Captain of the late Captain
Appesley's band of footmen in Ireland. The reason assigned was that he
might be required for some time longer in that realm for his better
experience in martial affairs. He had leave to appoint a lieutenant,
while he was 'for some considerations by Us excused to stay here.' He
did not want for employment, though he was given no fixed duties. A
system of personal government like that of the Tutors demanded
extraordinary services of various degrees of importance. Any and all
Ralegh could excellently render. Frequently he acted as the Queen's
private secretary. Sometimes he had to escort a foreign envoy.
Negotiations were pending for the marriage of Elizabeth to the Duke of
Anjou. Leicester was jealous of the Duke and of Simier, his dexterous
and personally fascinating agent. Simier was returning to France in the
autumn of 1581. He had to be protected, it was rumoured, from Flushing
pirates known to be in Leicester's pay. Ralegh's professed adhesion to
Leicester did not prevent his appointment as one of the escort. In the
publication by an anonymous contemporary, called _Leicester's
Commonwealth_, it is related that the vessel containing the returning
escort was chased for several hours: 'Master Ralegh well knoweth it,
being there present.' Anjou himself quitted England in February, 1582,
to assume the sovereignty of the Netherlands. Ralegh again was of the
company sent to introduce the Duke to the Queen's allies. He stayed
behind the rest, and was entrusted by the Prince of Orange with letters
to the Queen. He has recorded that the Prince confided to him a private,
if not very particular, message to her: 'Sub umbra alarum tuarum
protegimur.' Probably that was only a text upon which the Prince's
communications enabled him to enlarge. He was consulted much concerning
Ireland, both by the Council and by the Queen. In March, 1582, articles
were exhibited against Ormond for alleged indulgence in his government
of Munster towards Irish rebels. He was suspected, for example, of
having apprised the Seneschal of Imokelly that 'two choice persons' had
stolen into the Seneschal's camp to murder him. Ralegh was named among
those who were to be called upon to prove the charges. Burleigh himself,
who did not approve of the fierceness of Ralegh's method of dealing with
Irish turbulence, respected his experience. In October, 1582, the Lord
Treasurer is said to have taken careful notes of his advice how to
secure the adhesion of some Munster lords. Lord Grey's reception of a
letter from the Treasurer in the preceding January citing an opinion of
'Mr. Rawley' on the mode of levying Irish taxes for the support of the
English troops, has already been described. Use was made also of his
engineering ability. There are references to reports by him on estimates
for the repair of the fortifications of Portsmouth, and to his
discussion of the question with Burleigh and Sussex in the Queen's
presence. He is even found sitting on a commission with Sir Thomas
Heneage to investigate a complaint against Lord Mayor Pullison, of
having attached, to satisfy a debt to himself, the ransom of a Barbary
captive.
[Sidenote: _The Stannaries and the Guard._]
Not till after a probation of years did he obtain definite official
rank. In 1584 he had been elected one of the members for Devonshire,
with Sir William Courtenay. Apparently in the early part of the same
year he was knighted; for in his colonizing patent of March, 1584, he is
styled 'Mr. Walter Ralegh, Knight.' In 1585 he succeeded the Earl of
Bedford as Warden of the Stannaries. He had as Warden to regulate mining
privileges in Devon and Cornwall, to hold the Stannary Parliament on the
wild heights of Crockern Tor, and judicially to decide disputes on the
customs, which, though written, he has said, in the Stannary of Devon,
were unwritten in Cornwall. Long after his death the rules he had
prescribed prevailed. As Warden he commanded the Cornish militia. He had
a claim, which was resisted by the Earl of Bath, the Lord Lieutenant of
Devonshire, to military powers there also. His prerogatives were
strengthened by his appointment shortly afterwards to the Lieutenancy of
Cornwall, and to the Vice-Admiralty of the two counties. The
Vice-Admiralty was a very convenient office for a dealer in
privateering. He nominated as his deputies in the Vice-Admiralty Lord
Beauchamp for Cornwall, and his eldest half-brother, Sir John Gilbert,
for Devon. Beside his other offices, he is supposed to have held the
post of a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. Later he received a more
signal token than any of royal confidence. He was appointed Captain of
the Yeomen of the Guard. For several years Sir Christopher Hatton had
united the offices of Captain and Vice-Chamberlain. On April 29, 1587,
by a preposterous exercise of royal patronage, he became Lord
Chancellor. He had already ceased to command the Guard, though the
actual date of his retirement is not specified. His immediate successor,
appointed perhaps as a stop-gap, was Sir Henry Goodier. Sir Anthony
Paulett also is sometimes mentioned in connexion with the post. But the
office was permanently filled by the nomination of Ralegh in the early
summer of 1586. The Captain's pay consisted of a yearly uniform. Six
yards of tawney medley at 13_s._ 4_d._ a yard, with a fur of black budge
rated at L10, is the warrant for 1592. The cost in the next reign was
estimated at L14. Ralegh had to fill vacancies in his band of fifty. He
was known to have a sharp eye for suitable recruits, young, tall,
strong, and handsome. The regular duty was to guard the Queen from
weapons and from poison; to watch over her safety by day and night
wherever she went, by land or water. At the Palace the Captain's place
was in the antechamber, where he could almost hear the conversations
between her and her counsellors. To share them he had but to be beckoned
within. Naturally the command seemed to be a stepping-stone to a
Vice-Chamberlainship at least, if not to the Keepership of the Queen's
conscience.
[Sidenote: _Royal Parsimony._]
None of these offices were in themselves lucrative. A maintenance for
the new favourite and the new public servant had otherwise to be found.
His endowment came from the usual sources. Naunton says that, 'though he
gained much at the Court, he took it not out of the Exchequer, or merely
out of the Queen's purse, but by his wit and the help of the
prerogative; for the Queen was never profuse in delivering over her
treasures, but paid most of her servants, part in money, and the rest
with grace.' He adds, it may be hoped, before October 29, 1618: 'Leaving
the arrears of recompense due for their merit to her great successor,
who paid them all with advantage.' Ralegh himself, after a similar
compliment to James, laments in his History the Queen's parsimony to her
'martial men, both by sea and land,' none of whom, he remembers, 'the
Lord Admiral excepted, her eldest and most prosperous commander,' did
she 'either enrich, or otherwise honour, for any service by them
performed.' Notices in official documents of pecuniary grants to himself
are rare. An order in September, 1587, for a payment of L2000 to be
spent according to her Majesty's direction appears to have been for
works at Portsmouth. No meagre substitute was supplied by forfeitures,
by enforced demises of collegiate, capitular, and episcopal estates, by
monopolies, and by letters of marque.
[Sidenote: _Farm of Wines._]
[Sidenote: _Broadcloths._]
To All Souls College, Oxford, belongs the honour of having been the
first to help to make his fortune. In April, 1583, he wrote to Egerton,
then Solicitor-General, mentioning a grant of two beneficial leases of
lands which the Queen had extorted from the college after her manner. On
May 4, 1583, he received a more lucrative gift, the farm of wines. By
his patent every vintner was bound to pay him for his life an annual
retail licence fee of a pound. To save himself trouble, he underlet his
rights to one Richard Browne for seven years at L700, or, according to
another account, L800, a year. Browne promoted a large increase in the
number of licensed taverners. Ralegh had reason to believe that he had
not his fair share of profits. Egerton advised him that the demise was
disadvantageous, but that it might be hard to terminate it without
Browne's concurrence. Ralegh, to compel a surrender from Browne before
the expiration of the term, obtained a revocation of his own patent in
1588. On August 9, 1588, a new patent for thirty-one years was granted.
It does not seem to have freed him wholly from Browne's claims. This
licence again he leased. The lessee was William Sanderson, the husband
of his niece, Margaret Snedale. At a later period he had disputes with
Sanderson also on the profits. By an account of 1592, he estimated them
at a couple of thousand a year. It was never a very popular office to be
chief publican. The year after the original grant, it involved Ralegh in
a troublesome quarrel. He or Browne had licensed a vintner, John Keymer,
at Cambridge, in defiance of the Vice-Chancellor's jurisdiction. The
undergraduates loyally beat the intruder, and they frightened his wife
nearly to death. The Vice-Chancellor sent him to gaol. The University
also invoked the aid of its Chancellor, the Queen's Minister, against
the Queen's favourite. Burleigh procured an opinion of the two Chief
Justices against the licence. Ralegh was obliged in the end to give way
to his assured loving friend the Vice-Chancellor. In the second patent
the privileges of Oxford and Cambridge were expressly saved. In other
respects it was wider. It allowed Ralegh a moiety of the penalties
accruing to the Crown. The controversy with Cambridge may have been due
only to Browne, and his eagerness for fees. In general, Ralegh appears
to have exercised his powers moderately. A grantee who succeeded
commended him for having 'ever had a special care to carry a very tender
hand upon the business for avoiding of noise and clamour, well knowing
it to be a thing extracted from the subject upon a nice point of a
statute law.' A year after the first patent of wines he received a
similar boon. This was a licence in March, 1584, to export for a
twelvemonth woollen broadcloths. A payment to the Crown was reserved. In
1585, 1587, and 1589 the same privilege was conferred and enlarged. One
grant authorized him to export overlengths. Burleigh protested. He
declared the conditions too beneficial to the grantee. Probably they
were. The privilege brought him into collision with several bodies of
merchants. Soon after the earliest of the licences had been granted, in
June, 1584, we read of a petition, backed by Walsingham, for the release
of ships which had infringed his patent. The Queen would not consent
unless upon the terms that the offenders compounded with him. In 1586
the Merchant Adventurers of Exeter obtained a commission of inquiry
whether his officers did not levy excessive fees upon certificates. He
is represented by a local antiquary as less popular in that city than
elsewhere in Devonshire. His patent rights as well as his official
duties caused ill-will between it and him.
[Sidenote: _An Irish Seigniory._]
A gift in appearance much more magnificent, though the gains eventually
were meagre, was the Irish grant of 1586. At last the Earl of Desmond's
insurrection had been quelled, at the cost of the utter devastation of a
province. The curse of God was, it was lamented, so great, and the land
so barren, that whosoever did travel from one end to the other of all
Munster, even from Waterford to Limerick, about six score miles, he
should not meet man, woman, nor child, save in cities or towns, nor yet
see any beast, save foxes and wolves, or other ravening creatures. The
few survivors fed upon weeds and carrion, robbing the graves and gibbets
of their dead. It was determined to repeople the 574,268 forfeited
acres. Ralegh retained his Irish captain's commission. In 1587 his name
occurs at the head of the list. He, Ormond, Hatton, and Fitton were
among the principal Undertakers for the resettlement. By the scheme
nobody was to undertake for more than twelve thousand acres. On each
portion of that size eighty-six families were to be planted. In Ralegh's
favour, by express words and warrant in a special letter from her
Majesty, the Crown rent was fixed at a hundred marks, calculated
subsequently as L60 13_s._ 4_d._; and the limitation of acreage was
relaxed. Seigniories varied in extent from twelve to four thousand
acres. Possibly in order to avoid too gross an appearance of indulgence
to him, Sir John Stowell and Sir John Clyston, according to the
Boyle-Lismore papers, were associated or named with him as joint
undertakers. A Privy Seal warrant in February, 1586, confirmed by
letters patent in the following October, awarded to the three three
seigniories and a half in Waterford, Cork, and perhaps Tipperary. A
certificate of March, 1587, stated that, if the lands assigned to them
and their tenants should not be found to amount to 'three seigniories of
twelve thousand acres apiece, and one seigniory of six thousand acres,
then other lands should be added.' The patronage of the Wardenship of
Our Lady's College of Youghal was added to Ralegh's share with several
other lucrative privileges. Three centuries afterwards the House of
Lords decided that an exclusive salmon fishery in the tidal waters of
the Blackwater was among them. The domain stretched along both banks of
the river from Youghal harbour. The soil was rich; but the royal
commissioners for the survey reported it waste from neglect. Generally
it was overgrown with deep grass, and in most places with heath,
brambles, and furze.
[Sidenote: _English Forfeitures._]
In 1587 he added English estates to his Irish. The Babington conspiracy
had been detected the year before. By a grant which passed the Great
Seal without fee in March, 1587, he acquired much of the principal
plotter's property. He obtained lands in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, and
Notts, together with all goods and personalty, except a curious clock
reserved to the Queen's own use. According to modern taste, the pillage
of confiscated estates is not an honourable basis for a great man's
prosperity. In the reign of Elizabeth it was still the orthodox
foundation. It was give and take, as Ralegh had to experience. That the
unfortunate Babington had rested some hope of life on Ralegh's known
Court influence is but a coincidence. He wrote on the 19th of September,
1586, the day before his execution, of 'Master Rawley having been moved
for him, and been promised a thousand pounds, if he could get his
pardon.' There was a traffic in pardons at Court. Odious and suspicious
as was the practice, and liable to the grossest abuse, the presentation
of money in return did not necessarily mean that the leniency had been
bought. The Sovereign levied fines thus for the benefit of favourites on
men too guilty to be let off scot-free, and not guilty enough to be
capitally punished. Ralegh himself appears in after years to have
received large sums from two pardoned accomplices of Essex, Sir Edward
Bainham and Mr. John Littleton. From Littleton he is said to have had
L10,000. But in the present instance no evidence has been discovered
that Babington's overtures were countenanced in the least by Ralegh, or
that he accepted money for urging them.
[Sidenote: _Luxury and splendour._]
Five years separated the needy Munster Captain from the Lord Warden of
the Stannaries, the magnificent Captain of the Queen's Guard, the owner
of broad lands in England, and Irish seigniories. He had climbed high,
though not so high as the insignificant Hatton. He had progressed fast,
though another was soon to beat him in swiftness of advancement. He had
gathered wealth and power. He was profuse in his application of both.
Much of his gains went in ostentation. He was fond of exquisite armour,
gorgeous raiment, lace, embroideries, furs, diamonds, and great pearls.
As early as 1583 he must have begun to indulge his taste. On April 26 in
that year the Middlesex Registers show that Hugh Pewe, gentleman, was
tried for the theft of 'a jewel worth L80, a hat band of pearls worth
L30, and five yards of damask silk worth L3, goods and chattels of
Walter Rawley, Esq., at Westminster.' Pewe was enough of a gentleman to
read 'like a clerk,' and thus save his neck. Later Ralegh was satirized
by the Jesuit Parsons as the courtier too high in the regard of the
English Cleopatra, who wore in his shoes jewels worth 6600 gold pieces.
Tradition speaks, with exaggeration as obvious, of one court dress which
carried L60,000 worth of jewels. He loved architecture and building,
gardens, pictures, books, furniture, and immense retinues of servants.
In his taste for personal luxury he resembled the entire tribe of
contemporary courtiers. It was a sumptuous age everywhere. England,
which had suddenly begun to be able to gratify a love of splendour,
seemed in haste to make up for lost time. Elizabeth encouraged the
propensity at her Court. Her statesmen, warriors, and favourites
enriched themselves with sinecures, confiscations, and shares in trading
and buccaneering adventures. They spent as rapidly. They were all
extravagant, and mortgaged the future. Almost all were continually
straitened for money. Impecuniosity rendered them rapacious. The Lord
Admiral received, as Ralegh has intimated, enormous gains from the Queen
and from prizes, and was perpetually in need. Robert Cecil had to
supplement his vast legitimate revenues from illicit sources, and died
L38,000 in debt. Essex, whose disinterestedness is eulogized, had
L300,000 from the Queen, in addition to most lucrative offices. The
whole was insufficient for his wants. All alike, old friends and old
foes, fed on one another, when there was nobody else to spoil.
Prodigality and greediness in money matters were, it is to be feared,
common traits of Elizabethan heroes. They were far from perfect; their
defects differed from those of their modern descendants in the ethical
consequences; they did not make offenders ashamed of themselves, and
afraid of being found out; they did not necessarily vitiate the
substance of their characters, and destroy their self-respect.