THE ZENITH (1601-1603).
[Sidenote: _Lord Oxford._]
From Essex's execution to the death of Elizabeth, on March 24, 1603, is
a period of two years wanting a month. It constitutes another stage in
Ralegh's career. No more fascinating Court favourite, no Leicester,
Essex, or mere Hatton, stood now in his way. If even Elizabeth's
vivacious temperament may have ceased to require attentions as from a
lover, she never grew insensible to wit, grace, versatility, and valour
like his. The jealousy he continued to arouse was a tribute to his
power. To this time belongs the story, contained in Bacon's
_Apophthegms_, of Lord Oxford's insolence. The malicious Earl had
returned, the Mirror of Tuscanismo, from his seven years' self-inflicted
exile at Florence. He had gone thither to spite his father-in-law,
Burleigh, by deserting his wife, and squandering his estate. The Queen
was playing on the virginals before him and another nobleman, while
Ralegh was on duty near at hand. The ledge in front happened to have
been taken away, so that the jacks were seen. Oxford and his companion
smiled and whispered. Elizabeth inquired the reason. They were amused,
answered Oxford, to see that when jacks went up heads went down. The
point of the sarcasm is presumed to have been the connexion of Ralegh's
influence with the decapitation of Essex. That the reference was to
Ralegh might have seemed rather dubious had not Bacon taken it for
granted. The fact of the favour of the Queen is certain.
[Sidenote: _Sully and Biron._]
Courtiers wrote to one another how 'good his credit with the Queen had
lately grown.' He had a multiplicity of Court duties thrown upon him.
His acquaintance with other lands and their languages brought him
forward whenever intercourse had to be held with foreigners. As Sir John
Harington said of him, he was 'especially versed in foreign matters, his
skill therein being always estimable and praiseworthy.' When Prince
Maurice was endeavouring to relieve Ostend, which the Archduke and
Infanta were besieging, Ralegh and Cobham paid his camp a visit. They
were stated by Cecil to have no charge, and to have 'stolen over, having
obtained leave with importunity to see this one action.' The English
envoy wrote to Cecil that the two gallants had been entertained with
much honour and extraordinary respect, but had seen little. Sir Henry
Neville, however, told Winwood their journey was not for curiosity only.
They 'carried some message, which did no harm.' In March, 1601, Ralegh,
by the Queen's order, had been escorting a Spanish envoy, sent to
negotiate a truce, round London. Later, during the Queen's summer
progress to Dover, he, with Cobham and Sidney, received Sully. As
Captain of the Guard he playfully took Sully into custody, and conducted
him to the Queen. The great Minister had been privately sent over by
King Henry, who was at Calais. On September 5, the Duc de Biron arrived,
to announce to Elizabeth the marriage of Mary de Medici to Henry.
Several noblemen had been directed by the Council to provide for the
Marshal's solemn reception in London. By some accident they were absent.
Ralegh, who had not been especially commissioned, happened to be in
town. Apparently Sir Arthur Savage and Sir Arthur Gorges, who spoke
French fluently, came to his help. Among them they amused the Frenchmen
till horses were ready to convey them to Hampshire. The Queen was at
Basing House. Ralegh wrote to Cecil: 'We have carried them to
Westminster to see the monuments; and this Monday we entertained them at
the Bear Garden, which they had great pleasure to see. I sent to and
fro, and have laboured like a mule.' On the Wednesday he rode with the
Marshal and his numerous company to the Vyne. The fair and large house
of Lord Sandys has formed the subject of an interesting volume by its
present owner, Mr. Chaloner Chute. It had been furnished from the royal
apartments at the Tower, Hampton Court, and neighbouring country houses,
for the accommodation of the foreign visitors. The Hampshire gentry lent
seven score beds. Not when Ralegh had seen all housed were his cares
over. He told Cobham, 'The French wear all black, and no kind of bravery
at all.' His wardrobe, plentiful as assuredly it was, had not been
equipped in unison with such demureness. So, 'this Saturday night,
late,' he wrote on September 12 to Cobham from Basing, 'I am now going
to London to provide me a plain taffeta suit, and a plain black saddle.'
Elizabeth rewarded his exertions in rendering the stay of the Frenchmen
agreeable by knighting his brother, Carew Ralegh, on her departure from
Basing House. Mr. Benjamin Tichborne received the same honour.
[Sidenote: _The Mermaid._]
Ralegh was a patron of literature, and had to devote evenings to the
wits. To him has been ascribed the institution, at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, of the Mermaid Tavern meetings in Bread Street,
Shakespeare's, Jonson's, Beaumont's, Fletcher's, Selden's, Cotton's,
Camden's, and Donne's club. It is very likely; so likely that the
intrinsic probability of the fact might be a motive for a fiction.
Whether as founder or guest it is more than likely he would take
occasional part in the wit combats of which Beaumont has sung. We may
lament that there was no Boswell, or even a Drummond, to report an
encounter between Ralegh and Shakespeare. Ralegh abhorred drunkenness.
'It were better,' he has said, 'for a man to be subject to any vice than
to drunkenness.' But teetotalism had not been invented in the days of
Elizabeth. Not wholly unconnected with the social evenings at the
Mermaid may have been the frequent trouble he experienced from bodily
ailments. On September 19, 1601, he pronounced himself too grievously
ill to be able to travel to Bath for his annual cure. His ailments did
not prevent him from warning Cecil of a powerful Spanish fleet held
ready, with 6000 or 7000 soldiers, to descend either upon Ireland or the
Low Countries. Fresh intelligence, which on September 26 he despatched
to Cecil for transmission to the Lord Admiral, led him to believe the
expedition was designed for Cork or Limerick. He inferred from the
presence of many women on board that a 'Plantation' was meant. It was no
false alarm. He announced to Cecil, on October 13, 1601, the landing of
a strong body of Spaniards, and their intrenchment, as he had
prognosticated, outside the town of Kinsale. His readiness to accept
responsibility was met in the same spirit, particularly when Ireland was
concerned. Later, Cecil admitted that Ralegh, though no Privy
Councillor, was often invited to confer with the Council. Only three
months before Elizabeth was seized with her mortal sickness, in 1602,
he, with Cecil, was consulted by her on the treatment of Cormac
McCarthy, Lord of Muskerry. Cecil was for leniency. Ralegh advised that
no mercy should be shown, Cormac McCarthy's country being worth the
Queen's keeping. Elizabeth accepted his frankly selfish advice.
[Sidenote: _In Parliament._]
[Sidenote: _Monopolies._]
He sat as senior member for the County of Cornwall in the Parliament
which met on October 27, 1601. He had been previously a Cornish
representative, as member for Michell, in the House which was elected in
1593. In November, 1601, he obtained the rejection of a Bill to compel
the sowing of hemp for cables and cordage. 'I do not like,' he said, in
a spirit much in advance of his age, 'this constraining of men to manure
or use their ground at our wills; but rather let every man use his
ground to that which it is most fit for, and therein use his own
discretion.' The Tillage Act he held up for a warning. It ordered every
man to plough a third of his land, often to great loss. The land, 'if
unploughed, would have been good pasture for beasts.' Later in the
Session he supported a motion for the repeal of that Statute. He pleaded
for a subsidy. The Queen wanted it urgently, having in vain raised money
by the sale of her own jewels, by loans, and by savings out of her purse
and apparel. He argued for its equal payment by every class. The burden
he acknowledged was not the same to all, as Bacon had contended, _dulcis
tractus pari jugo_. 'Call you this _par jugum_,' cried Ralegh, 'when a
poor man pays as much as a rich, and peradventure his estate is no
better than it is set at, while our estates are L3 or L4 in the Queen's
books, and it is not the hundredth part of our wealth?' But he knew all
must be taxed, in order that the necessary sums might be levied. In his
_Prerogative of Parliaments_ he mentions that he once moved an exemption
'by commandment of Queen Elizabeth, who desired much to spare the common
people.' On calculation, it was found that the exemption reduced the
subsidy to a trifle. He delivered a 'sharp speech' in his own defence,
in a debate against monopolies. The Crown in May, 1599, had arrogated a
right of preemption of tin in the Duchy of Cornwall, and had committed
the management of the business to the Warden of the Stannaries.
Deliverance of the miners from the oppression of the merchants was
alleged as the motive. The real object was popularly believed to be the
increase of Ralegh's emoluments. In Parliament he took the other ground.
Previously, whether tin were 17s. or 50s. a hundred, the workman, he
argued, had only 'two shillings a week, finding himself.' Since the
grant of his patent, every miner, be tin at what price soever, had 4s. a
week truly paid. Yet, if other patents were cancelled, he would, he
said, freely consent to the abrogation of his. A great and uncommon
silence is reported to have followed this speech. Other patentees in the
House were probably not inclined to be as self-denying. He supported a
proposal to prohibit the exportation of ordnance, notwithstanding the
rise, under the existing law, of the duty to L3000 a year. He said: 'I
am sure heretofore one ship of her Majesty's was able to beat ten
Spaniards; but now, by reason of our own ordnance, we are hardly matched
one to one.' He supported the continuance of the tax for the improvement
of Dover harbour. The amount was 1000 marks a year. Mr. Swale objected
that the port was never the better. Ralegh thought it one of the best
and most necessary harbours in England. The debate might have been held
in any of the last dozen Sessions, with as much practical effect. He
obtained the rejection, by 106 to 105, of a Bill against recusants. The
measure was designed to enforce a more regular attendance in Church on
Sundays. Its loss vexed Cecil, who gibed at very flexible consciences.
[Sidenote: _Governorship of Jersey._]
Whatever the work in hand, legislation, public administration, or
private maritime enterprise, he laboured at it as zealously as if it
were his sole business. All his desire was for more and more work. He
was not always disappointed in that pursuit. Though his frequent hopes
of appointment to the Vice-Chamberlainship or a seat at the Privy
Council were constantly foiled, he had been consoled in 1600 with the
Governorship of Jersey. On Sir Anthony Paulett's death, the post was
conferred upon him, with the lordship of St. Germain. Out of the
emoluments he had to pay a rent of L300 to the Crown for the benefit of
Lord Henry Seymour. Seymour had been a rival candidate for the
Governorship. Ralegh's appointment was one of the irritations of Essex,
who befriended another suitor. He speedily visited the island. The
passage from Weymouth took him two days and nights at sea. The islanders
'royally entertained him with joy,' wrote Lady Ralegh in October to
Cecil. He had told her, she said, that he never saw a pleasanter island;
but he protested unfeignedly his post was not in value the very third
part that was reported, or that indeed he believed. Without delay he
undertook the completion of the fort Isabella Bellissima, 'for the name
sake,' he wrote from the island to Cecil on October 15, 1600. He would
not think of 'any penny receipt till that piece of work were past the
recovery of any enemies.' He deprecated the demolition of Mont Orgueil,
'a stately fort of great capacity,' which had cost more than 20,000
marks. He had left, he said, some men in it at his own charge. He
criticised the late Governor's 'immeasurable reckoning' of her Majesty's
moneys. In July, 1602, he went again over, and spent several weeks. He
saw that the castles were defensible enough, and the country reasonably
well provided. The tradition is that he promoted a profitable trade
between Jersey and Newfoundland. With Newfoundland he had a near family
connexion through Humphrey Gilbert. He instituted a register of Jersey
lands, and abolished compulsory service of the inhabitants of the
district in the Mont Orgueil garrison. During his visits he sat as judge
in the island Court. Faculties and energy with him were elastic. He
always had leisure for new labours.
[Sidenote: _Maritime Enterprises._]
Above all, his schemes of colonization were never intermitted. Down to
1603 he went on sending expeditions to Virginia. He was as solicitous
for Guiana. In October, 1596, he had despatched from Limehouse his
pinnace, the Watt, under Captain Leonard Berry. Mr. Thomas Masham's
account of the voyage is in Hakluyt. Berry further explored the country.
He collected fresh evidence of its fertility, salubrity, and riches, and
of the goodwill of the natives towards Englishmen. He returned in June,
1597. His departure from Guiana was accelerated by the importunities of
his Indian friends for an alliance with them against a hostile tribe. He
feared such a league might prove embarrassing on Ralegh's next visit.
Before the Queen's death Ralegh equipped yet another expedition, under
Captain Samuel Mace, to look after both his potential dominions of
Virginia and Guiana. It effected nothing; but the failure was powerless
to impair Ralegh's faith in the value and feasibility of his
discoveries.
[Sidenote: _Irish Pipe Staves._]
[Sidenote: _Sale of Lismore._]
In addition to his many public or semi-public toils, he was busy with a
host of private affairs. Until a short time before the Queen's death he
owned an extensive Irish as well as an English estate. Property was
always for him an incentive to labour. While he had his Irish property
he developed it in every possible way. Lismore Castle, which he rented
from the See and Chapter of Lismore, he rebuilt. In 1589 he had written
to George Carew: 'I pray, if my builders want, supply them.' His factory
employed a couple of hundred men in the fabrication of hogsheads. By his
influence with the Privy Council he often obtained, in favour of ships
which he freighted, a waiver of the restraint of 'the transportation of
pipe staves out of the realm of Ireland into the Islands,' that is, the
Canaries, and to Seville. The thinnings, he said, of his vast woods
sufficed for the supply of materials. He denied that he denuded the land
of timber. Against that wasteful and impoverishing practice he
constantly remonstrated. There had not been taken, he stated to the
Lords of the Council, the hundredth tree. Sir John Pope Hennessy holds a
different view, and asserts that no man cut down more timber, to the
irreparable hurt of the land. His principle of moderation may, it is
possible, have been observed by himself, and not by his agents. Latterly
he founded a company to work the property. With his chief partners,
Bathurst, and a foreign merchant, Veronio Martens, he complained in 1601
to the English Council that the Undertakers were being robbed by the
managing director, Henry Pine or Pyne. A sum of L5000 had, it was
affirmed, been expended. Not half had been returned in profits, though
Ralegh had received no payment for his wood. The Privy Council listened
to the prayer of 'our loving friend, Sir Walter Ralegh,' and instructed
Carew, the President of Munster, to forbid Pine to export more pipe
staves. Ralegh had other disputes with Pine. At one time he even
questioned if Pine had not conspired with his Sherborne bailiff to palm
off a forged lease for a long term of the lands of Mogelly. He was
involved also in endless disputes with other farm tenants, as an
absentee landlord might have expected to be. Ultimately he resolved, by
the advice of Carew and of Cecil, to free himself from the burden. In
December, 1602, he sold his interest in all, except the old castle of
Inchiquin Ralegh. Of that, Katherine, dowager Countess of Desmond,
fabled to have been born in 1464, was, and remained till 1604, tenant
for life. Boyle, since distinguished as the Great Earl of Cork, bought
the rest, lands, castles, and fisheries, with Ralegh's ship Pilgrim
thrown in as a make-weight. The amount paid, according to Boyle's
assertion, fifteen years later, in reply to Lady Ralegh, and thirty
years later, in reply to Carew Ralegh, was a full price for a property
at the time, it is admitted, woefully dilapidated. Boyle declared that
it was not worth nearly the amount he paid. He complained of having been
forced to an expenditure, for which the vendor was liable, of L3700 to
clear the title. So shrewd a man of business would hardly have thus
defrauded himself. He is sure to have had an excellent bargain. But it
does not follow that the arrangement was unfair to a speculative
absentee like Ralegh. In his hands the land was notoriously
unprofitable. Lady Ralegh's estimate of it as worth L2000 a year at the
time cannot be accepted.
[Sidenote: _Sherborne Castle._]
Ralegh never parted with a scheme before he had another ready to occupy
him. Sherborne more than replaced Lismore as an object of affection, and
as a subject of care and anxiety also. He had not spared trouble and
outlay on it since the Queen in the height of his favour first gave him
a foothold as a lessee. We have seen how, to develop his term into the
fee, he created and transplanted Bishops. His assiduity was rewarded in
1598 by Bishop Cotton's accommodating acceptance of a surrender of the
lease, and grant of the fee to the Crown, subject to the old rent of
L260. From the Crown the fee was conveyed to him. The transfer comprised
the lordship of the Hundred of Yetminster, with the manor of Sherborne,
five other manors in Dorset and Somerset, and the Castle, lodge, and
parks of Sherborne and Castleton. Ralegh added to the estate by buying
out leases with his own money, and by the purchase of several adjacent
properties. Then he set himself seriously to the perfecting of the
whole. He did not stint his expenditure. Sir John Harington says that
with less money than he bestowed in building, drawing the river into his
garden, and buying out leases, he might, without offence to Church or
State, have compassed a much better purchase. He had begun by trying to
improve the existing castle. In 1594 he altered his plan, and designed a
new house at some distance. Only the centre of the present Sherborne
Castle, a four-storied edifice with hexagonal towers at the ends, was
erected by him. Aubrey described it as a delicate lodge of brick, not
big, but very convenient for the bigness, a place to retire to from the
Court in summer time, for contemplation. Digby, when he became its
owner, added four wings with a tower to each. Pope visited Lord Bristol
there, and has sketched the place in one of his graceful letters to Miss
Blount. He dwells particularly on the lofty woods clothing the
amphitheatre of hills, the irregular lovely gardens, the masses of
honeysuckle, the ruins of the old fortress, the sequestered
bowling-green, and the grove Ralegh planted, with the stone seat from
which he overlooked the town and minster, and dreamt and smoked. The
spirit of Ralegh still dominates Sherborne, after all the efforts of the
first Lord Bristol to lay it by swelling the lodge into a sumptuous
castle, and of the sixth by turning Capability Brown loose into his
pleasure grounds.
[Sidenote: _Strife with Meere._]
He loved Sherborne, and his wife was perhaps still more attached to it.
In October, 1601, he wrote: 'My wife says that every day this place
amends, and London to her grows worse and worse.' He had his worries
there, as was his self-imposed fate wherever he was. He was premature in
reposing confidence. He has written that he had lost more than he was
worth by trusting dependents with his purse and delaying to take their
account. He was almost excessively resentful of frauds on his
trustfulness when he detected them. He was masterful in small things, as
in great. While in the Tower in August, 1592, he had appointed his 'man,
John Meere,' Bailiff of the manor of Sherborne, with extensive powers of
management. He had invested him with copyhold lands. Several years
later, in 1596, Adrian Gilbert took up his regular abode at Sherborne,
and superintended his brother's improvements, under the title of
Constable of Sherborne Castle. Meere quarrelled with him about the rival
prerogatives of Constable and Bailiff to license the killing of animals
for meat in Lent. Ralegh nominated another Bailiff, but Meere refused to
retire. The family had interest with one of the Howards, Viscount
Bindon, of whose 'extortions' and 'poisoning of his wife' Ralegh takes
merit to himself for not having spoken. Mrs. Meere, too, was a kinswoman
of Lady Essex. Long strife had prejudiced Ralegh so bitterly against
both Meere and Essex that he believed either capable of any monstrosity.
He did the Earl's memory the injustice of fancying that he secretly had
meant to use the Bailiff for a malicious forgery; 'for,' said Ralegh,
'he writes my hand so perfectly as I cannot any way discern the
difference.' Colour is given to the charge against him of the forgery of
an Irish lease, by the fact that Digby afterwards prosecuted him for the
forgery of Ralegh's signature to a conveyance of English lands to
Captain Caufeilde. Meere in August, 1601, arrested the opposition
Bailiff. For this Ralegh put him in the stocks in Sherborne
market-place, and had him bound over to good behaviour by the county
justices. Thereupon Meere served upon Ralegh and others twenty-six
subpoenas. Next year the conflict went on raging. Meere succeeded at
the assizes in sustaining his right to the bailiwick. As Ralegh kept him
out nevertheless, he petitioned the Star Chamber. Ralegh on his part
complained loudly that, through Lord Bindon's influence, Meere, at once
'a notorious cowardly brute, and of a strong villainous spirit,' had
been allowed to sue him, though out of the land in Jersey.
[Sidenote: _Sir Amias Preston's Challenge._]
Yet these vexations only made him cling the more fondly to his Sherborne
home. He hoped to dwell happily and splendidly there himself, to be
buried in its minster, and to leave it to a long line of descendants.
While he had only a ninety-nine years' lease, he had conveyed his term
to trustees for his son Walter. He had done this by two conveyances.
These he revoked in 1598. His motives, he explained later, were several:
'I found my fortune at Court towards the end of her Majesty's reign to
be at a stand, and that I daily expected dangerous employments against
her Majesty's enemies, and had not in the former grants made any
provision for my wife.' He re-settled the property on his son, reserving
L200 a year to Lady Ralegh for her life. After he had acquired the fee,
he conveyed it by deed at Midsummer, 1602, to himself for life, with
successive remainders to his son Walter, to any future sons, and to his
brother Carew Ralegh. The deed had been drawn by Doddridge, afterwards a
judge, many months before it was sealed. The reason of the date chosen
for its formal execution was stated by himself at his trial to have been
a challenge from Sir Amias Preston in the summer of 1602. Preston was
the captain who, being too late to join the Guiana expedition, went off
with Sommers on an independent quest. He had signalized himself at
Cadiz, where Essex knighted him. The challenge may have arisen out of
the Essex feud, for Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Essex's vehement partisan, is
known to have been concerned in it. No duel was fought. Fuller, who errs
in describing Ralegh as a Privy Councillor, says in his _Worthies_: 'Sir
Walter Ralegh declined the challenge without any abatement to his
valour; for having a fair and fixed estate, with wife and children,
being a Privy Councillor, and Lord Warden of the Stannaries, he looked
upon it as an uneven lay to stake himself against Sir Amias, a private
and single person, though of good birth and courage, yet of no
considerable estate.' Fuller's account is not to be rejected because the
ground assigned may not seem very heroic. Duelling was governed by
prosaic laws. Nobody was expected to risk his life on unequal terms.
There had to be a parity of ranks; and the same principle might well
apply to fortunes. Ralegh himself had no such fondness for the
fashionable mode of adjusting quarrels as to waive any orthodox right of
refusal. In his History he denounces 'the audacious, common, and brave,
yet outrageous vanity of duellists.' Men who die in single combat he
styles 'martyrs of the Devil.' He derides the victor's honours, 'where
the hangman gives the garland,' and the folly of the duellist's
principle, that rudeness 'ought to be civilized with death.' In the
essay entitled _Instructions to his Son_, he declares a challenge
justifiable only if the offence proceed from another; it is not, he
says, 'if the offence proceed from thyself, for if thou overcome, thou
art under the cruelty of the law; if thou art overcome, thou art dead or
dishonoured.'
[Sidenote: _Its consequences._]
At any rate, whatever the origin or issue of the dispute, he thought he
was going to fight. In consequence, as he stated subsequently, he
resolved to leave his estate settled. An incident of his preparations,
which seemed trivial at the time, assumed preposterous gravity later on.
He had spread out his loose papers, and among them a book by one Snagge,
which he had borrowed from the dead Lord Burleigh's library. In it the
title of the King of Scots to the succession was contested. Cobham, who
may well have been Ralegh's intended second, happened to see and carry
off the volume. It was found at a critical moment in his possession, and
was traced to Ralegh. That was an affair of the future. For the present
Ralegh probably associated Sir Amias Preston's challenge chiefly with
the definite disposition of his property in a manner consonant with the
creation of an affluent and permanent county family.