THE REVENGE. (September, 1591).
[Sidenote: _Sir Richard Grenville._]
Long after Ralegh began to be recognized in his new circle as a poet, he
first showed himself a master of prose diction. The occasion came from
his loss of an opportunity for personal distinction of a kind he
preferred to literary laurels. The hope and the disappointment alike
testify that, whatever had been the Queen's demeanour in 1589, she
frowned no longer in 1591. Essex's temporary disgrace, on account of his
marriage with Lady Sidney in 1590, had improved Ralegh's prospects. So
much in favour was he that, in the spring of 1591, he had been
commissioned as Vice-Admiral of a fleet of six Queen's ships, attended
by volunteer vessels and provision boats. Lord Thomas Howard, second son
of the Duke of Norfolk beheaded in 1572, commanded in chief. The object
of the expedition was to intercept the Spanish plate fleet at the
Azores. Ralegh's cousin and friend, the stern and wayward but gallant
Sir Richard Grenville, finally was substituted for him. There is no
evidence that the change was meant for a censure. Much more probably it
was a token of the Queen's personal regard. He sent with the squadron
his ship, the Ark Ralegh, under the command of Captain Thynne, another
of his innumerable connexions in the West. The English had to wait for
the plate galleons so long at the Azores that news was brought to Spain.
A fleet of fifty-three Spanish sail was despatched as convoy. Ralegh was
engaged officially in Devonshire. The Council directed him in May to
send off a pinnace to tell Howard that this great Spanish force had been
descried off Scilly.
[Sidenote: _The Fight._]
The warning arrived too late. The Spaniards surprised the fleet on
September 10, when many of its men were ashore. Grenville in the Revenge
covered the embarkation. Thus he lost the wind. He mustered on board his
flagship scarce a hundred sound men. Soon he was hemmed in. The
Foresight stayed near him for two hours, and battled bravely, but
finally had to retire. For fifteen hours he fought the squadron of
Seville, five great galleons, with ten more to back them. Crippled by
many wounds, he kept the upper deck. Nothing was to be seen but the
naked hull of a ship, and that almost a skeleton. She had received 800
shot of great artillery, some under water. The deck was covered with the
limbs and carcases of forty valiant men. The rest were all wounded and
painted with their own blood. Her masts had been shot overboard. All her
tackle was cut asunder. Her upper works were razed and level with the
water. She was incapable of receiving any direction or motion, except
that given her by the billows. Three Spanish galleons had been burnt.
One had been run aground to save her company. A thousand Spaniards had
been slain or drowned. Grenville wished to blow up his shattered hulk. A
majority of the handful of survivors preferred to accept the Spanish
Admiral's terms. They were that all lives should be spared, the crew be
sent to England, and the better sort be released on payment of ransom.
Grenville was conveyed on board a Spanish galley, where he was
chivalrously treated. He lingered till September 13 or 14 in sore pain,
which he disdained to betray. Jan Huygen van Linschoten, a Dutch
adventurer, who was at the time in the island of Terceira, heard of the
struggle both from the Spaniards and from one of the English prisoners.
He describes it briefly in a diary he kept. He was told how the English
admiral would amaze the Spanish captains by crushing wine-glasses
between his teeth, after he had tossed off the contents. The fragments
he swallowed, while the blood ran out of his mouth. It is Linschoten,
not Ralegh, who has preserved Grenville's dying words: 'Here die I,
Richard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I have ended
my life, as a true soldier ought, that hath fought for his country,
Queen, religion, and honour.'
[Sidenote: _Ralegh's Narrative._]
[Sidenote: _An Indictment of Spain._]
Ralegh might have met Grenville's fate. He took up the pen to celebrate
his kinsman's heroism, and to point the moral for England of the feats
valour like his could accomplish against Spain. His _Report of the Truth
of the Fight about the Isles of Azores_ was first published anonymously
in November, 1591. Hakluyt reprinted it, as 'penned by Sir Walter
Ralegh,' in his Collection of Voyages in 1599. Few finer specimens of
Elizabethan prose diction exist. It is full of grandeur, and of
generosity towards every one but Spaniards. Of the commander-in-chief,
Thomas Howard, he spoke with especial courtesy. Ralegh's relations to
the Howards, though always professionally intimate, were not always very
friendly, either now or hereafter. About the period of Grenville's
death, in particular, there had been some sharp dispute with the High
Admiral. A letter written in the following October by Thomas Phelippes
to Thomas Barnes, alludes to a quarrel and offer of combat between
Ralegh and him. Ralegh was only the more careful on that account to do
justice to a member of the family. Howard, it seems, had been severely
criticised for a supposed abandonment of his comrade. Ralegh vindicated
him from the calumny. The admiral's first impulse had been to return
within the harbour to succour Grenville. It was a happy thing, in
Ralegh's judgment, that he suffered himself to be dissuaded. 'The very
hugeness of the Spanish fleet would have crushed the English ships to
atoms; it had ill sorted with the discretion of a General to commit
himself and his charge to assured destruction.' But the real aim of the
narrative was to preach a crusade against Spanish predominance in the
Old and New Worlds. Towards Grenville personally the behaviour of the
Spaniards, it could not be denied, was magnanimous. Ralegh saw nothing
but perfidy in their conduct otherwise. They broke, he declares, their
engagement to send the captives home. Morrice FitzJohn of Desmond was
allowed to endeavour to induce them to apostatize and enter the service
of their enemy. That was the Spanish system, he exclaims: 'to entertain
basely the traitors and vagabonds of all nations; by all kinds of
devices to gratify covetousness of dominion,' 'as if the Kings of
Castile were the natural heirs of all the world.' Yet 'what good,
honour, or fortune ever man by them achieved, is unheard of or
unwritten.' 'The obedience even of the Turk is easy, and a liberty, in
respect of the slavery and tyranny of Spain. What have they done in
Sicily, Naples, Milan, and the Low Countries?' 'In one only island,
called Hispaniola, they have wasted three millions of the natural
people, beside many millions else in other places of the Indies; a poor
and harmless people, created of God, and might have been won to his
knowledge, as many of them were.' 'Who, therefore, would repose trust in
such a nation of ravenous strangers, and especially in these Spaniards,
who more greedily thirst after English blood than after the lives of any
other people in Europe;' 'whose weakness we have discovered to the
world.' Historians, with whom Ralegh has never been a favourite, treat
as merely dishonest rhetoric the compassion he now and again expressed
for the millions of innocent men, women, and children, branded, roasted,
mangled, ripped alive, by Spaniards, though as free by nature as any
Christians. There is no just reason to think him insincere. The pity
gave dignity and a tone of chivalry to his more local feeling,
Protestant, political, commercial, of hatred and jealousy of Spain.
Spain, he declared, was ever conspiring against us. She had bought the
aid of Denmark, Norway, the French Parliament-towns, the Irish and
Scotch malcontents. She threatened the foundations of English liberty of
thought. She tried to starve the rising English instinct for territorial
expansion. He summoned Englishmen eager for foreign trade to protest
against the Spanish embargo, which everywhere they encountered. He
pointed out to them, as they began to feel the appetite for wealth, the
colonial treasury of Spain glittering in full view before them.
A multitude of Englishmen, especially in Ralegh's own country of the
West, were conscious of all this. Ralegh gave the sentiment a voice in
his story of his cousin's gallant death. Henceforth he never ceased to
consecrate his energies and influence directly to the work of lowering
the flag of Spain, and replacing it by that of England. From the
beginning of his career he had been a labourer in this field. He now
asserted his title to be the champion of his nation. Previously he had
usually striven by deputy. Now he was to display his personal prowess as
a warrior and a great captain. For years he was to be seen battling with
Philip's empire by sea and land, plundering his merchantmen, storming
his strongholds, bursting through his frontiers, and teaching Englishmen
to think that sheer usurpation which for Spaniards was right divine. His
own countrymen did not at first accept his leadership. They affirmed his
principle, but preferred that others than he should have the primary
honour of applying it. Gradually competitors dropped off; and he
remained. Through popular odium, popular curiosity, and, finally,
popular enthusiasm, he grew to be identified with the double idea of
English rivalry with Spain and of English naval supremacy. The act in
which he appears challenging the right to be its representative is about
to open. But previously the curtain has to fall upon the courtier. The
conqueror at Cadiz, the explorer of Guiana, steps from behind a veil of
darkness and disgrace which would have overwhelmed other men utterly,
and served him as a foil.
[Sidenote: _Proposed Expedition to Panama._]
[Sidenote: _Sails and returns._]
Philip replied to Lord Thomas Howard's unfortunate expedition by the
equipment of a fleet of sixty ships. Plymouth was understood to be their
object. Ralegh persuaded the Queen to parry the blow by striking at
Panama, and at the plate fleet which would be gathered in its harbour.
Elizabeth contributed the Garland and Foresight. Ralegh provided the
Roebuck, and his elder brother, Carew Ralegh, the Galleon Ralegh. Two
ships were equipped by the citizens of London. Lord Cumberland had been
arranging for an independent cruise. Ultimately he joined with six
vessels. The Queen also invested L1800 in the adventure, and London
L6000. Ralegh had been named General of the Fleet. He exhausted all his
resources to ensure success. 'I protest,' he wrote, 'both my three
years' pension of the Custom-house, and all I have besides, is in this
journey.' He had borrowed L11,000 at interest; and in addition was
heavily in debt to the Crown. In part discharge of his obligations, he
assigned to the Queen the Ark Ralegh at the price of L5000. Calumny
asserted that the apparent sale was a mere pretext for a present from
the Treasury to him. The preparations were still incomplete in February,
1592. He travelled to the West for additional stores. When all was ready
for departure westerly winds set in. For many weeks the fleet was
weather-bound in the Thames. Some time before it was able to move his
own relation to it was become uncertain. Elizabeth, he was aware, wished
to keep him at Court. He was not unwilling to consent to a compromise.
He wrote to Robert Cecil from Chatham on March 10: 'I have promised her
Majesty, if I can persuade the companies to follow Sir Martin Frobisher,
I will, without fail, return, and bring them but into the sea some fifty
or threescore leagues, though I dare not be known thereof to any
creature.' Certainly he meant to embark. In May he was angrily
complaining of 'this cross weather.' 'I am not able to live to row up
and down with every tide from Gravesend to London.' At length on the 6th
of May, 1592, the fleet was under sail with him on board. On the 7th, he
was overtaken by Frobisher with orders to come back. He was to leave Sir
John Burgh, Borough, or Brough, and Frobisher to command as his
lieutenants. Choosing to construe the orders as optional in date, Ralegh
proceeded as far as Cape Finisterre. Thence, after weathering a terrific
storm on May 11, he himself returned. Before his departure he arranged
the plan of operations. Half the fleet he stationed under Frobisher off
the Spanish coast to distract the attention of the Spaniards. The rest
he sent to watch for the treasure fleet at the Azores. For an attack on
Panama the season was too late.