AT HOME; AND IN PARLIAMENT. (1592-1594).
[Sidenote: _Negotiation for Hayes._]
Ralegh generally could hold his own, even in a bargain with his Queen.
In 1592 his hands were tied. He had to use his prize, as he said
himself, for his ransom; and it effected his purpose. Once more he was a
free man, and he had much to render liberty precious and delightful. He
had a bride beautiful, witty, and devoted; and in 1594 a son was born to
him, whom he named Walter. He had many pursuits, and wealth which should
have been abundant, though all Elizabeth's courtiers were impecunious.
An important addition had been made to his possessions shortly before
his disgrace. For some time after his rise he had intended to fix his
country residence in Devonshire. He is said to have had a house in
Mill-street, Ottery St. Mary. In 1584 he had asked Mr. Duke, of
Otterton, to sell him Hayes. His written request, which Aubrey copied,
with omissions and inaccuracies due to the creases and stains undergone
by the paper through careless handling, is, on uncertain authority, said
to have been at one time preserved at the farmhouse. Subsequently, if
not from the first, it was kept at the residence of the Duke family,
Otterton House, between two and three miles off. Polwhele saw it at
Otterton House shortly before 1793. Afterwards it disappeared. Dr.
Brushfield found the original, as he believes, at Plymouth, in the 1888
collection of Armada and Elizabethan relics. It is the property of Miss
Glubb, of Great Torrington. The letter was written from the Court, on
July 26, 1584, by Mr. Duke's 'very willing frinde in all I shal be able,
W. Ralegh,' and runs as follows: 'Mr Duke--I wrote to Mr Prideux to
move yow for the purchase of hayes a farme som tyme in my fathers
possession. I will most willingly geve yow what so ever in your
conscience yow shall deeme it worth: and if yow shall att any tyme have
occasion to vse mee, yow Shall find mee a thanckfull frind to yow and
yours. I have dealt wth Mr Sprinte for suche things as he hathe at
colliton and ther abouts and he hath promised mee to dept wth the moety
of otertowne vnto yow in consideration of hayes accordinge to the valew,
and yow shall not find mee an ill neighbore vnto yow here after. I am
resolved if I cannot 'ntreat yow, to build att colliton but for the
naturall disposition I have to that place being borne in that howse I
had rather seat my sealf ther then any wher els thus leving the matter
att large unto Mr Sprint I take my leve resting reedy to countervail
all your courteses to the vttermost of my power.'
[Sidenote: _Colaton Ralegh._]
His offer was not accepted, the Dukes, it is conjectured by Polwhele,
not choosing to have so great a man for so near a neighbour. According
to a local tradition, he carried out his alternative project of building
at Colaton Ralegh, on land which he may be presumed to have bought of
his father or eldest brother. In the garden of the Place he is said to
have planted, as elsewhere, the first potatoes grown in England. But
himself he never rooted there, though he was described as 'of Colaton
Ralegh' in a deed of 1588. The royal bounty soon tempted him away; and
he sold any property which had entitled him to that designation. The
estate of Sherborne, which is inseparably connected with his memory,
consisted of an ancient castle and picturesque park, together with
several adjacent manors. It had belonged to the see of Salisbury since
the time of Bishop Osmund, who cursed all who should alienate it, or
profit by its alienation. Ralegh was not deterred by the threat. He is
rumoured to have been impressed by the charms of the domain as he rode
past it on his journeys from Plymouth to London. Towards the close of
1591 the bishopric of Salisbury, which had been vacant for three years,
was filled by the appointment of Dr. Coldwell. Dean Bennett of Windsor,
and Dr. Tobias Matthew, or Matthews, afterwards Bishop of Durham and
Archbishop of York, father to the wit and letter-writer, Sir Toby, had
declined it on account of a condition that the new Bishop must consent
to part with Sherborne. Ralegh subsequently declared that he had given
the Queen a jewel worth, L250 'to make the Bishop.' He not rarely
concerned himself about vacant bishoprics for his own purposes. His
present fit of ecclesiastical zeal was explained by Dr. Coldwell's
execution of a lease to the Crown in January, 1592, of Sherborne and its
dependencies for ninety-nine years. A rent was reserved to the see of
L260, which, according to the Bishop, was not regularly paid. The Queen
at once assigned the lease to Ralegh. The manor of Banwell, which lay
conveniently for the property, belonged to the see of Bath and Wells.
Elizabeth demanded this of Bishop Godwin. The Bishop in his gouty old
age had contracted a marriage which offended the Queen's notions of
propriety, with a rich city widow. This was employed as a lever to
oblige him to one of the forced exchanges for Crown impropriations
which, though not illegal, friends of the Church styled sacrilege. Sir
John Harington, Elizabeth's witty godson, writing in the reign of James,
is fond of the term. He admits that he himself conveyed one of the sharp
messages by which Elizabeth tried to obtain Banwell. Finally a
compromise was effected. Godwin courageously clung to Banwell, but
redeemed it by the grant in Ralegh's favour of a ninety-nine years'
lease of Wilscombe.
[Sidenote: _Sherborne Castle._]
[Sidenote: _Falconry._]
Ralegh found occupation at Sherborne. We know something of his life
there. We know, though not nearly enough, much more of it than when
Gibbon assigned the absence of the 'details of private life' as a
principal reason for the abandonment of his original decision to take
Ralegh for his literary theme. It was varied and animated. He pursued
amusement and business with equal earnestness. In his _Farewell to the
Court_, which foreshadows the sentiment of this period, though probably
written earlier, he mourns for his 'sweet spring spent,' his 'summer
well-nigh done;' but he had energy for other matters than repining at
'joys expired like truthless dreams.' He built. He planted. He diverted
himself with rural pastimes, especially with falconry. Throughout his
career he always was ready for a hawking match or a bargain for falcons.
He once offered the reversion in fee of an Irish leasehold for a
goshawk. An incident of his Munster estate, which doubtless he valued
highly, was his title to half the produce of an eyrie of hawks in the
wood of Mogelly. Amidst the anxieties of his final expedition he found
spirits and strength for a trial of hawks at Cloyne. The leisure and
opportunities of Sherborne stimulated his ardour for the sport. Cecil
kept falcons. In August 1593, Ralegh wrote to him from Gillingham
Forest, of which he and his brother Carew were joint rangers: 'The
Indian falcon is sick of the backworm, and therefore, if you will be so
bountiful to give another falcon, I will provide you a running gelding.'
He chased another sort of game than herons. In April, 1594, he boasted
that he had caught in the Lady Stourton's house a notable stout villain,
with his copes and bulls. 'He calls himself John Mooney; but he is an
Irishman, and, I think, can say much.' Both his wife and he soon grew
fond of Sherborne, 'his fortune's fold,' as he called it alike in verse
and in a letter of 1593 to Cecil. Thither they always gladly returned,
though they were often called elsewhere. The plague dislodged the family
in 1594. It was, he wrote in September, 1594, raging in the town of
Sherborne 'very hot.' 'Our Bess,' he added, 'is one way sent, her son
another way; and I am in great trouble therewith.' Less alarming
occasions were constantly taking him away. He had to be in Devonshire
and Cornwall, discharging the duties of his Wardenship and Lieutenancy.
Every year he went to Bath for the waters. He resorted to Weymouth for
sea bathing for his wife and child. He was much at all seasons in
London.
[Sidenote: _Durham House._]
[Sidenote: _Mile End and Islington._]
Though banished from the Court he went on frequenting its neighbourhood.
He had more than one London residence. As a student of the law, he may
have lived in Lyon's Inn and the Middle Temple. In the early period of
his attendance on the Queen he had been lodged in the Palace, at
Greenwich, Whitehall, Somerset House, St. James, and Richmond. Since
1584 he possessed a London house of his own. The Church supplied him, as
at Sherborne and Lismore. Durham House, strictly called Duresme Place,
was the town house of the see of Durham. It covered nearly the whole
site of Adelphi Terrace, and the streets between this and the Strand. In
the reign of Edward VI the Crown seized it, and granted it successively
to the Princess Elizabeth and to Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. There,
the year after Ralegh's birth, Lady Jane Grey had been wedded to
Dudley's son. Mary restored it to Bishop Tunstall. Elizabeth resumed it.
In 1583 or 1584 she gave the use of a principal part of the spacious
mansion to Ralegh. The remainder she permitted Sir Edward Darcy to
inhabit. At Durham House the famous Dr. Dee, mathematician, astrologer,
and spiritualist, who, in his diary for 1583, mentions him gratefully,
records that he dined with him in October, 1593. There he held on
various occasions his Court as Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and heard
important suits. Aubrey speaks of Ralegh as living there 'when he came
to his greatness.' He knew well his study, in a little turret looking
over the Thames, with a prospect now, as in Aubrey's day, 'as pleasant
perhaps as anything in the world.' Ralegh is reported to have owned
other dwellings also in and about London. Probably he already possessed,
though, till he left Durham House, he is not likely to have occupied, a
house in Broad Street. It may be presumed to have been part of his
wife's share in the Throckmorton property. Several residences have been
put down to him, without sufficient evidence. Ralegh House, at Brixton
Rise, has been assigned to him, in mistake perhaps for his nephew,
Captain George Ralegh, who lived in Lambeth parish. Because he visited
his wife's relatives at Beddington Park, he is alleged to have occupied
the mansion. He is rumoured to have lived at West Horsley, which his
son, Carew Ralegh, first acquired in 1643 from the Carews of Beddington.
On testimony so far more substantial that Lady Ralegh had inherited a
small estate in the parish from her father, he is said to have lived at
Mitcham. The house his wife owned seems to have been Ralegh House, at
the corner of Wykford Lane, though two other houses at Mitcham have
pretended to the honour. More certainly he lived in a villa at Mile End
in 1596. That is known through the entry of the burial at Stepney of a
manservant who died at Mile End in 1596, and from the addresses of two
letters of his dated within two and four months of the same time. Dr.
Brushfield thinks the house may have been hired for a season for the
sake of country air. Mile End is described in 1597 as a common where
penny-royal grew in great abundance. Ralegh would find its vicinity to
Stepney, the general resort of seamen, convenient. The publication of
the Middlesex Registers has corroborated the tradition, which gave him a
suburban abode at Islington, on a site possibly afterwards occupied by
the Pied Bull. For the local belief that he built, or patronized, and
smoked in, the Old Queen's Head, Dr. Brushfield considers there is no
foundation. His choice of any part of Islington for residence would have
been determined by its contiguity to the vast royal chase in which the
Queen delighted to hunt. But his occupancy of a house there commenced
before the days of his grandeur, and probably had ceased before them.
[Sidenote: _In Parliament._]
His dwellings were not more numerous than his avocations. Never was his
activity more various than during this interval of royal disfavour. He
overflowed with public spirit. He had been sitting in the House of
Commons in the spring of 1592. He was a frequent and effective speaker.
His voice is reported to have been small. That would be after sickness,
toil, and imprisonment had enfeebled him. He omitted no opportunity of
proclaiming his hostility to Spain. Before his disgrace he had argued
for a declaration of open war. He knew, he said, of many who held it not
lawful in conscience, as the time was, to take prize from the Spaniards.
Of those weak brethren he was never one. After his liberation from the
Tower, when the House met he again attended. He was not so strangely in
advance of his protectionist age as not to support a Bill for
prohibiting Dutch and German aliens from retailing foreign wares in
England. His view of Dutchmen would have satisfied Canning: 'The nature
of the Dutchman is to fly to no man but for his profit. They are the
people that maintain the King of Spain in his greatness. Were it not for
them he were never able to make out such armies and navies by sea.'
While politically he was attached to Holland, he was persistently
jealous of her commercially. In the next reign he drew up an elaborate
plan for abstracting her lucrative carrying trade. On questions of
liberty of thought he was far beyond his time. He stoutly opposed a
cruel capital measure against the Brownists: 'That law is hard that
taketh life, and sendeth into banishment, when men's intentions shall be
judged by a jury, and they shall be judges what another means.' He
prevailed to have the Bill handed for revision to a Committee of
Members. On the Committee his name stands first. His disgrace had left
him sufficiently prominent to be thought worth libelling by Robert
Parsons the Jesuit, 'Andraeus Philopater.' Parsons described him as
keeping a school of atheism, wherein the Old and New Testaments were
jested at, and scholars taught to spell God backwards.
[Sidenote: _Irish Policy._]
In the shade though he was, he would abide no wrong to his official
authority. In February, 1592, before his disgrace, he had found leisure
in the midst of the preparations for his expedition to reprove the Devon
justices of the peace for the application of their 'foreign authority'
to compel his tinners to contribute to the repair of a private bridge.
Still under a cloud in May, 1594, he was not afraid to protest highly to
Lord Keeper Egerton against an encroachment by the Star Chamber on his
Stannary jurisdiction. A year later the county magistrates do not seem
to have thought his continuing obscuration exonerated them from
defending themselves against the charge of 'intermeddling' with his
prerogatives. He regarded himself as holding a commission to watch and
warn against all danger by sea. In June, 1594, he was informing the Lord
High Admiral that Spain had an armed fleet in the Breton ports. He
prayed the Admiral to ask her Majesty's leave that his 'poor kinsman'
might serve as a volunteer soldier or mariner in an attack upon it.
Apparently he had his wish and was allowed to embark. But his advice had
been followed tardily. He writes from the Foreland on August 25, that
the season was too late. The only hope was that the enemy might approach
the Thames. When he was not at sea he was contracting for the
victualling and equipment of ships of war. That was among his frequent
occupations. At all periods he had his eye upon Ireland. Neither royal
coldness nor bodily ailments could force him to be silent on Irish
affairs. In May, 1593, sick, and 'tumbled down the hill by every
practice,' he would go on exclaiming against the administrative blunders
which had let England be baffled and 'beggared' by a nation without
fortifications, and, for long, without effective arms. 'The beggarly,
the accursed kingdom,' had cost a million not many years since. 'A
better kingdom might have been purchased at a less price, and that same
defended with as many pence, if good order had been taken.' Though he
was not admitted to the Queen's presence, she seems to have read
memorials he drew up on the subject of Ireland. It is impossible not to
reprobate his sentiments on the treatment of the native Irish. His
correspondence with Cecil shows, that he was as willing to connive at
their treacherous murder as other contemporary English statesmen, though
not Burleigh, or perhaps Burleigh's son. But he believed honestly in the
rectitude of his doctrines. He was patriotic in insisting upon their
application for the benefit of a Government which, he thought,
persecuted him. It may even be acknowledged that the resolute and
consistent despotism he advocated might have been more tolerable, as
well as more successful, than the spasmodic and fitful violence which
discredited the Irish policy of the reign. He was indisputably right in
condemning a system under which the island was 'governed neither as a
country conquered nor free.'