PATRON AND COURTIER (1583-1590).
[Sidenote: _Hakluyt._]
In social and private as well as public life Ralegh was open-handed and
liberal in kind offices. Those are not unpopular characteristics. He was
a patron of letters. His name may be read in many dedications. Few of
them can have been gratuitous. Martin Bassaniere of Paris inscribed to
him very appropriately his publication of Laudonniere's narrative of the
French expedition to Florida. Richard Hakluyt, junior, during his
residence in France, had lighted upon Laudonniere's manuscript. From him
Bassaniere received it. He translated the volume in 1587, and dedicated
his version to Ralegh. Hakluyt had to thank Ralegh also for material
assistance both with money and with advice in the compilation of his
celebrated collection of voyages. The manuscript, for example, of the
Portuguese narrative of de Gama's voyage in 1541 to the Red Sea had been
bought for L60 by Ralegh, who presented it to him. Ralegh again was 'at
no small charges' towards the production by the French painter, Jacques
Morgues, of a series of coloured illustrations of Florida, whither he
had accompanied Laudonniere. In 1586 the publisher of John Case's
_Praise of Music_ dedicated it to Ralegh, as a virtuoso. In 1588
Churchyard dedicated to him the _Spark of Friendship_. Hooker, the
antiquary, introduced the continuation of the Irish history of Giraldus
Cambrensis with a fervent encomium on the illustrious Warden of the
Stannaries, who was 'rather a servant than a commander to his own
fortune.' A medical treatise was inscribed to him as an expert. A list
which has been preserved of his signs for chemical substances and drugs,
shows that as early as 1592 he had paid attention to medicine. He
appears to have kept amanuenses to copy interesting manuscripts. Thus,
John Peirson who, in 1585, was in trouble in connexion with a tract
entitled _Reasons why the King of Scots is unacceptable to the People of
England_, deposed that he delivered one of the five copies he made to
'Sir Walter Ralegh, my master.'
[Sidenote: _Hariot._]
[Sidenote: _Udal._]
Throughout life he befriended Hariot, the universal philosopher, as he
has been called. Hariot has been credited with the invention of the
system of notation in Algebra. He discovered the solar spots before, and
the satellites of Jupiter almost simultaneously with, Galileo. Hariot,
who numbered Bishops among his admirers, was accused by zealots of
atheism, because his cosmogony was not orthodox. They discerned a
judgment in his death in 1621 from cancer in the lip or nose. His ill
repute for free-thinking was reflected on Ralegh who hired him to teach
him mathematics, and engaged him in his colonizing projects. Ralegh
introduced him to the Earl of Northumberland, who allowed him a liberal
pension. But new ties did not weaken the old. Hariot and he remained
constantly attached. Hariot was the friend whose society he chiefly
craved when he was recovering from his wound in the Tower. During his
long imprisonment Hariot was the faithful companion of his studies.
Hariot brought to his notice another Oxford man, Lawrence Keymis. Keymis
is described by Wood as well read in geography and mathematics. I am
indebted to Professor Jowett for a confirmation from the Register of
Balliol, which Keymis entered in 1579, graduating Master of Arts in
1586, of Wood's statement that he was elected a probationer Fellow in
November, 1582. He was then nineteen years old, and an undergraduate.
Five Bachelors of Arts were elected with him. To him also, of whom there
will be much, too much, hereafter to say, Ralegh was a generous patron.
Ralegh was equally ready to spend his court interest in the service of a
pious theologian like John Udal the Hebraist. Udal in 1590 published of
the Bishops, that they 'cared for nothing but the maintenance of their
dignities, be it the damnation of their own souls, and infinite millions
more.' He was tried for treason, since the Bishops, it was averred,
governed the Church for the Queen. A jury convicted him of authorship of
the book. The Judges iniquitously held that to amount to a conviction of
felony. They therefore sentenced him to death. He prayed Ralegh to
intercede with the Queen to commute his punishment to banishment, 'that
the land might not be charged with his blood.' Ralegh accepted the
office, and Essex combined with him. Retailers of court gossip
conjectured that his kindness was policy. They imagined that he and
Essex were secretly allied, and that Essex was employing him as 'an
instrument from the Puritans to the Queen upon any particular question
of relieving them.' A simpler and more generous motive is the more
probable. He fought for Udal against the same lying spirit of legal
casuistry which was to destroy himself. King James to his honour joined
subsequently in mediating. Among them they saved the enthusiast's neck;
but he died in the Marshalsea, pending a dispute whether he could safely
be permitted to carry his anti-prelatic zeal and immense learning into a
chaplaincy in Guinea.
[Sidenote: _Good Offices._]
Other instances could be mentioned of Ralegh's disposition to pass his
favour on. 'When, Sir Walter,' asked Elizabeth of him, as he came with a
petition from a friend, 'will you cease to be a beggar?' 'When your
gracious Majesty,' was the answer, 'ceases to be a benefactor.' He has
had attributed to him, though obscurely, the project of an institution,
described as an 'office of address,' a species of entrepot at which
either information and useful services, or both, might be exchanged.
Southey interprets it in the former sense, and regards it as an
anticipation of the Royal Society. That was the view of Evelyn, who says
that Ralegh put this 'fountain of communication in practice.' How is not
remembered. At any rate, in the second sense he energetically applied
the principle in his own conduct. Not less from kindness than from the
wish to secure personal adherents, he was generally helpful. Now, his
client was a poor wounded officer, whose arrears of pay he was praying
the Treasury to discharge; partly, for love of him; partly, for honest
consideration. Now, it was some prosperous placeman, his equal, or his
superior in rank. As he boasts, in claiming a return from an Irish law
officer, 'I assure you, on mine honour, I have deserved it at his hands
in places where it may most stead him.' He used like language of the
Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam. Before he rose he had ranked himself among
Leicester's followers. Leicester speedily grew jealous of his
prosperity. Sir Henry Wotton, who imputed the beginning of Ralegh's rise
to Leicester, has stated in his Parallel between Essex and George
Villiers, that the Earl soon found him such an apprentice as knew well
enough how to set up for himself. Ralegh never withheld due marks of
deference from his elder. Churchyard the poet described, or undertook to
describe, a grand Shrovetide show prepared by Ralegh, in which the
gentlemen of the Guard represented the Earl's exploits in Flanders.
Ralegh was ever at pains to remove any specific grievance. On March 29,
1586, he writes to assure Leicester that he had urged the Queen to grant
the request for pioneers in the Netherlands. He seems to have been
accused, as he was to be accused seventeen years later, of intrigues on
behalf of Spain, which he had constantly been attacking. He could not
have had much difficulty in defending himself from the charge, about
which he remarks he had been 'of late very pestilent reported.' It was
not so clear that he recognized the Earl's paramount title as Queen's
favourite. To disarm suspicion on that score he adds a postscript: 'The
Queen is in very good terms with you, and, thank be to God, well
pacified; and you are again her Sweet Robyn.' He cannot have esteemed
Leicester. A stinging epitaph, attributed to him with the usual scarcity
of evidence, may express his real view of the poor-spirited soldier, the
deceitful courtier, the statesman and noble 'that all the world did
hate.' But he was no backbiter. Elizabeth vouched for his claim to
Leicester's friendliness. She bade Walsingham declare to Leicester, upon
her honour, that the gentleman had done good offices for him in the time
of her displeasure.
[Sidenote: _The Earl of Oxford._]
He could be useful to the greatest; whether only great, or great and
deserving too. He had been always solicitous of Burleigh's goodwill. As
a rival at Court of Leicester, he had it. Burleigh loved no Court
favourites. 'Seek not to be Essex; shun to be Ralegh,' was his warning
to his son. Robert Cecil, awkward and deformed, was in no danger.
Favourites represented a side of the Queen's nature which continually
troubled the wise Minister. Their accomplishments were not his. They
were costly. While he cannot have failed to perceive something admirable
in Ralegh, he would not value the majority of his merits. The poetry and
imaginativeness he despised. Still he always preserved amicable
relations. He condescended to use Ralegh's personal influence as well as
Hatton's. In the spring of 1583 he solicited the mediation of both those
favourites with the Queen for his son-in-law, Edward Vere, Earl of
Oxford. Oxford was in disgrace on the charge, not very heavy in those
days as against an Earl, of having slain Long Tom, a retainer of Mr.
Knyvett's. The Queen had rejected Burleigh's own intercession. She
appears to have granted forgiveness at Ralegh's suit. Oxford's arrogance
had provoked Sir Philip Sidney. It had not spared Ralegh, who, Aubrey
says, had been 'a second with him in a duel.' Ralegh pretended no
kindliness for the Earl; he avowed to Burleigh that as a mediator he
acted for the Minister's sake alone: 'I am content to lay the serpent
before the fire, as much as in me lieth, that, having recovered
strength, myself may be more in danger of his poison and sting.'
Eighteen years after, not that he cared, he found the venom was not
exhausted.
[Sidenote: _His Unpopularity._]
[Sidenote: _An Excess of Capability._]
Ralegh did not hoard or keep to himself the wealth and power conferred
upon him. His was an age of patronage. Other successful courtiers had,
like him, their trains of dependants. He was at least as bountiful as
any and as sympathetic. His followers believed in and worshipped him.
Posterity he has captivated. Yet throughout his active career he aroused
bitter hatred, unless in the West, and in his own home circle. The fact
requires to be noted for the purpose of appraising contemporary comments
upon his acts. Apologists and impartial chroniclers are as distinct as
enemies in intimating that he was a constant mark for 'detraction' and
'envyings.' He was unpopular on account alike of his demeanour, of the
Queen's favour, and of the monopolizing energy in the public service by
which to posterity he has justified it. All students recollect Aubrey's
description of him as one whose blemish or 'naeve it was that he was
damnably proud.' In serious illustration of the charge, Aubrey repeats a
tale related by an old attendant, who had seen the Lord High Admiral in
the Privy Garden wipe with his cloak the dust from Ralegh's shoes 'in
compliment.' Aubrey's description of Ralegh is all hearsay; since he was
not born till 1627. He may have been told anecdotes by members of the
family; for his grandfather was a Wiltshire neighbour of Sir Carew
Ralegh, and he was himself a schoolfellow of Sir Carew's grandchildren.
But he was utterly uncritical, and his bare assertion would carry little
weight. The testimony of a sworn foe, like Lord Henry Howard, to
Ralegh's extraordinary haughtiness, may be regarded even with more
suspicion. An old acquaintance, however, and a political ally, the Earl
of Northumberland, similarly describes Ralegh as 'insolent, extremely
heated, a man that desired to seem to be able to sway all men's
courses.' That this was the current opinion, due, as it was, more or
less to misconception, is borne out by a mass of authority. Ralegh must
have profoundly impressed all about him with a sense that he felt
himself better fitted than themselves to regulate their lives. His air
of conscious superiority silenced opposition, but was resented. Neither
a mob, nor Howards and Percies pardoned his assumption of an infinite
superiority of capacity. His gaiety and splendour were treated as proofs
of arrogance. His evident contempt of 'the rascal multitude' added to
the odium which dogged his course. He never condescended to allude to
the subject in writing or in authenticated speech. Though he courted
occasions for renown, he did not seek applause. His position as a
Queen's favourite in any case must have brought aversion upon him.
Tarleton, as he half acted, half improvised, is said to have shuffled a
pack of cards, and pointed at him, standing behind the Queen's chair, an
insolent innuendo: 'See, the knave commands the Queen.' The comedian, if
the story be true, could reckon upon the support of a vast body of
popular malevolence. Still, as a favourite, Ralegh only shared the lot
of his class. The same privileged player is alleged to have proceeded to
satirize Leicester as well. Hatton was a frequent butt for fierce
sarcasms upon royal favouritism. The phenomenon in Ralegh's unpopularity
is that proof absolutely irrefutable of the grandeur of his powers, and
all the evidence of his exploits, should never have won him an amnesty
for the original sin of his sovereign's kindness. Pride itself, it might
have been thought, would have been pardoned at last in the doer of such
deeds. His inexpiable offences really were his restless activity, and
his passion for personal management. He was a born manager of men.
Whatever was in hand, he saw what ought to be done, and was conscious of
ability to arrange for the doing. He could never be connected with an
enterprise which he was not determined to direct. He could endure to be
a subordinate only if his masters would be in leading-strings.