Part 23

Walter Raleigh was born in 1552, a year before Mary Tudor ascended the English throne. He was of a Devon house; himself, one of a large and composite family, for his mother, Katharine Champernoun, was his father’s third wife, and was herself a widow with several children when she married him. It must have counted for something for a small boy to have had two such big half-brothers as Humphrey and Adrian Gilbert, both dreamers and idealists, and one of them a by-no-means contemptible man of action to boot. The child was six years old when the great persecution was ended by Elizabeth’s accession, and for the next ten years he had endless opportunities of listening with all his ears to mariners’ tales of Eldorado and of the Spanish Inquisition, and learning at least watermanship if not seamanship. In 1568 he went up to Oxford, at the moment when Alva was goading the Netherlands into open rebellion and France was on the verge of a fresh outbreak of the Huguenot wars. Raleigh’s career as an undergraduate was interrupted. He went off to France as a volunteer, to get his baptism of blood at Jarnac in March, and to be present at Montcontour later in the year.

After that, his career for some while is not easy to trace. It looks as if he had returned to Oxford, for his name was still on the list of undergraduates at Oriel in 1572; but it is also said that he remained in France for five years, and even that he was in Paris at the time of the massacre. In 1575 he entered--_pro forma_--at the Middle Temple; and two or three years later appears to have been in the field again, fighting in the Low Countries under Sir John Norreys. The chances are that he had had some further military practice in the interval between 1569 and 1578, in France or the Netherlands or both, especially as his brother Humphrey Gilbert was in command of the English contingent at Flushing and elsewhere for some while. In 1578 Gilbert sailed on his first colonising venture, and young Walter was one of his captains; but the expedition, after a collision with some Spaniards, was driven back to Plymouth by weather. In 1580, Raleigh emerges definitely as a captain in the army employed for the suppression of Desmond’s rebellion in Ireland--in which capacity he was present at the capture of Smerwick, and had the unsavoury business of superintending the massacre of the garrison.

Raleigh remained in Ireland on duty for something over a year, till the end of 1581. While there he accomplished sundry feats of arms of a brilliant character, all being of the kind in which personal daring and skill, and resourcefulness in emergency, are the leading characteristics--deeds in which he was acting with only some very small escort. It was very much in the nature--_mutatis mutandis_--of police work among hostile frontier tribes in India to-day. The young soldier’s ideas of Irish government were derived from Humphrey Gilbert, who, in all other relations of life, was a noble-hearted generous Christian gentleman, but in this particular relation was as perfectly ruthless as Alva himself might have been. It is one of the puzzles of the period that men who upheld elsewhere the highest standards of chivalry and honour--men such as Sussex, Henry Sidney, Walter Devereux--adopted towards the native Irish the attitude of the primitive Hebrew towards the Canaanites, seeming to account the human population as if they were an irredeemably pernicious species of wild beasts; and Raleigh was no exception to the rule.

Immediately on his return to England he sprang into high favour with Elizabeth, partly through his brilliant abilities, partly through the personal fascination which no one could exercise better when he chose. But this charm was accompanied by an insatiable ambition, pridefulness, and fiery temper, which effectually prevented him from making any attempt to conciliate rivalry or hostility, cut him off from his natural alliance with the court section of the war-party, and rather associated him with Burghley. Favourite as he was, and in some ways influential with the Queen, he was never admitted by her into the Privy Council, though he was knighted so early as 1584, and received numerous and exceedingly substantial marks of the royal goodwill.

In fact, it would seem that his imagination carried his mind away from the current problems of administration and policy to another field. He was less occupied with the question how war with Spain might be precipitated or deferred than with that of setting up a rival empire. If, as is most probable, the conception was primarily that of his brother Humphrey Gilbert, the younger man made it his own; and in these years the attempt to establish a colony in North America absorbed his best energies and enthusiasms. For Burghley, Spain was primarily the European Power which--however interests might clash--was a necessary counterpoise to France; for Walsingham, she was the aggressive enemy of Protestantism; for Raleigh, she was the claimant to the New World, whose rights might be and ought to be successfully challenged by England. Thus, the first desired to avert conflict; the second was at least ready to join issue at once, lest it should be too late; whereas, from Raleigh’s point of view, the time when Spain and England should grapple was a matter of comparative indifference, provided that when it arrived England should be ready. But there was probably no man in England--not Drake himself--in whose political creed fundamental hostility to Spain was a more essential article.

There is, however, a curious story that in 1586 Raleigh was engaged in Spanish negotiations on his own account, which negotiations had as their object that he should take measures to hamper the English preparations for war, himself selling a couple of ships to Spain; and it appears to be implied that he was one of those young gentlemen about the Queen’s person who were going to put through Babington’s plot for her assassination. We may therefore recall the fact that in the Ridolfi days John Hawkins had figured as an enemy of his Queen, only thirsting to betray the fleet to Philip. Hawkins, of course, was really working in collusion with Burghley, and the whole thing was a trick. It need not surprise any one, therefore, if Raleigh played the same game at this time, though on a smaller scale. It would be a matter of course, then, that pains would be taken to give the Spaniards--and their informants in England--the impression that Sir Walter was really disaffected. As for Ballard and Babington, they were so completely in the toils of Walsingham from the outset that Raleigh may very well have actually been the Secretary’s accomplice in tricking them. Patriotism, principle, and consistency apart, no one has ever accused him of lacking intelligence, of which he would stand hopelessly convicted if the suggested allegations were true. Moreover, a man with so many enemies would not have escaped without being incriminated. The only definitely known facts are that he was at this time in communication with Spain, and that the Spaniards had an idea that he was well-affected towards them. The only inference we can quite confidently draw is that he was hoodwinking them, though nothing definite seems to have resulted.

When the Armada was expected, Raleigh was Vice-Admiral of the West, and was also one of the special Defence Commission. It was on the great ship which he had himself designed, the _Ark Raleigh_, that Admiral Howard hoisted his flag; but Raleigh was not one of the commanders in the fleet. He had been largely occupied in organising the defences in the West Country, and had been urgent in pressing the true strategical policy of fighting and beating the Spaniard on the sea--of an offensive naval war as the only true defensive war. But it is not quite certain whether he even had any personal part in the Armada engagements at all; though, on the whole, there is not sufficient ground for discarding the common report that he joined the fleet as a volunteer after the engagement off Portland. At that stage, all fears had passed that the Spaniard might effect a landing in the western division of the channel, where Raleigh was responsible for the arrangements for meeting the invader. Until then, he had been bound to remain at his post on shore. But now, not only did the English fleet know that it was a match for the enemy, but, if chance should enable them to attempt a landing, it would certainly not be in Raleigh’s district. So there is an _a priori_ probability that, being free to join the ships, he would not have missed the opportunity if it offered. There is no doubt, in any case, that he fully understood and appreciated the tactics adopted--a complete innovation in the methods of naval warfare--whether he did or did not take actual part, as a gentleman-volunteer, in the manœuvres.

The great _débâcle_ initiated a new phase in the relations of Spain to England and to Europe generally. The defeat, of course, was not of itself a death-blow, though if victory had gone the other way--if the English fleet had been in effect annihilated--an invasion under Parma would have followed; and Parma was the best general living, while the whole number of Englishmen who had any real experience of military service was small. But hitherto, wherever the Spaniards went, afloat or ashore, they had the prestige of success; now at a single blow the prestige passed from Spain to England--the theory of Spanish invincibility was shattered. The change had no less effect on Spain’s enemies on the Continent than in England, where for years past the seamen at least had been in the habit of taking for granted that they understood the art of fighting on the sea infinitely better than their antagonists. Now, however, the landsmen and the men of peace had had ocular demonstration of what the sailors had long been affirming as the conclusion from their own practical experience. England, hitherto on the defensive, was converted into the attacking power, and was filled with the spirit of aggression.

III

VIRGINIA

Between his seventeenth and his thirtieth years, Raleigh was completing his education as a soldier by his experiences in varied fields from Jarnac to Munster--sandwiching in, as it would appear, some residence at Oxford, and some in London as a nominal student of the law; not actually becoming a courtier but making his first _entrée_ among the associates of the court. In his thirtieth year he returned from Ireland to London, with a reputation as a dashing officer, and immediately made his way into the good graces of the Maiden Queen who, already verging on fifty, was demanding with increased instead of diminished avidity the amorous adulation of those who would find favour in her eyes. Raleigh made love to her on the recognised lines; with distinguished success, also on the recognised lines; to his own profit, and the extreme annoyance of the Leicesters and Hattons. The famous story of the cloak may or may not be true--it rests only on the authority of that chronicler whom every self-respecting author is obliged to refer to as “old Fuller”--but it is one of those traditions which, like King Alfred’s cakes and George Washington’s little hatchet, can never be surrendered. In these years there are tales of Hatton’s jealousy; records of appeals to the favourite to intervene now on behalf of Burghley, now of Leicester, to mitigate the royal displeasure; rumours, such as may have been concocted by spite, of not over-scrupulous methods employed in the pursuit of personal aggrandisement. Beside these stories of court-gossip and intrigue are those of his association with Bohemian literary circles, of his originating the meetings at the Mermaid, of his friendship with Marlowe, and his reputed “atheism”--a quite incredible, if by no means surprising, charge against a man whose speculations were probably as bold and unconventional in the field of religion as in those of political, naval, and military theory. But assuredly the author of the “History of the World” was no atheist.

But during these years, between 1582 and 1588, he was something more than the brilliant courtier, keen-witted humanist, and active member of the Defence Commission--he was the pioneer of colonial expansion.

Humphrey Gilbert was thirteen years older than his half-brother, whose hero he would seem to have been, not undeservedly, in Raleigh’s younger days. Of brilliant attainments, the bravest of the brave, intensely religious, an idealist and dreamer, he was a kind of incarnation of Arthurian knighthood; for the very mercilessness he displayed in Ireland was by no means the outcome of inhumanity but of a fixed belief that the Irish ought to be accounted not as human beings but as beasts of prey. Raleigh himself was hardly more than a boy when his brother was already fixing his thoughts on the colonisation of North America and the discovery of the North West Passage. It cannot therefore be claimed for Sir Walter that he actually originated the Colonial idea, which was Gilbert’s; but he entered into it from the first and made it his own; while Gilbert lived, they worked for it together; and when the Atlantic billows swallowed up Sir Humphrey, it was to Raleigh that his mantle passed undisputed.

About the time that the young man was entered at the Temple, Sir Humphrey was at work on the treatise “to prove a passage by the North West to Cathay and the East Indies,” which was published in 1576 by Gascoign. In 1578 he obtained a charter authorising what he had already been petitioning for four years earlier, an expedition to discover and take possession of unknown lands--the charter extending over six years. We have already noted Raleigh’s participation in the first expedition, which put to sea late in 1579 but was obliged to return to port with nothing accomplished. In 1583 the second expedition sailed; but this time Raleigh, though he had embarked everything he could in the venture, was at the last moment peremptorily forbidden to accompany it in person by his exigent mistress. Quite definitely, the purpose of the expedition was not to hunt for precious metals but to establish a permanent agricultural settlement. Incidentally, it is to be noted that Walsingham was active in furthering the project. The expedition took formal possession of Newfoundland, but this was not its actual destination. Disasters overtook it, and Gilbert finding himself compelled for the time to abandon the design, sailed for England. On the course of the voyage, the little _Squirrel_, in which he was sailing, went down in a storm with all hands on board. Raleigh was left to struggle single-handed for the carrying out of his brother’s conception.

Now begins the story of Raleigh’s persistent effort at the colonisation of Virginia.

A fresh patent was issued to Sir Walter, who had just been knighted, in March 1584--just two years after his first entry into Elizabeth’s court. The first step was taken immediately--an exploring expedition, which found its way to the island of Roanoak on the coast of what is now Carolina, opened friendly intercourse with the natives, took formal possession, and returned to report.

Raleigh was largely interested in the series of Arctic voyages undertaken by John Davis during the three ensuing years: exploration and discovery pure and simple had an attraction for him only less powerful than colonisation; but it was to this that he devoted his keenest energies, and on this that he poured out the wealth he was acquiring. In the spring of 1585 his fleet sailed for Virginia, as the new settlement was called, under the command of his kinsman, Richard Grenville. Raleigh himself the Queen, of course, could not spare. The open breach with Spain and the open alliance with Orange were now approaching rapidly, and Grenville’s voyage seems to have been, in his own eyes, directed more against Spaniards than with a single eye to the colony. In due course, however, Roanoak was reached, and the settlement established with Ralph Lane as governor; and Grenville came home. Unluckily, the original friendly relations with the natives were upset; the quarrel led the colonists into “making an example” of an Indian village; and the Indians resolved to retaliate. Till their opportunity should come, they merely made things as difficult as they could for the Englishman. A relief-expedition had been promised for the following Easter. It did not appear; but Drake did, with the fleet which had just been employed in sacking Cartagena. The settlers resolved to throw up their attempt, and returned to England with Drake. A few days after they had sailed, the delayed relief party under Grenville arrived to find the settlement abandoned. Fifteen volunteers were now left behind, to keep the place in occupation; but when a new band of settlers with a new governor arrived in the following spring (1587), they found that the little garrison had been massacred. The party set about establishing a settlement once more; but under the existing conditions they induced John White, the governor, to return himself to England to bring fresh supplies and reinforcements.

This was the year in which the Armada ought to have sailed against England; but Drake’s successful raid on the harbour of Cadiz deferred the invasion for a year. In the meantime, however, it was a matter of extreme difficulty to get permission for any ship to leave an English port. The demands of the coming duel were paramount. A couple of relief vessels with White were hardly allowed to sail; and these returned without reaching the colony. Again, the next year there was an expedition, but it found Roanoak deserted, and learned that the settlers had taken up fresh quarters. But neither did it discover them, nor did any one of the search expeditions which Raleigh subsequently despatched one after another.

He had spent £40,000--the equivalent of something like five times that sum at the present day. For a dozen years his ships sailed--sometimes with fresh settlers, sometimes with stores only; to meet only with disappointment--often with nothing but reports that the bones of the last party left behind were bleaching in some undiscovered spot. Half of the pioneers themselves were ready to turn back, abandoning the adventure, as soon as they realised that their business was not going to be picking up gold and silver. Men of Grenville’s type enjoyed themselves thoroughly when they were boarding Spanish galleons against immense odds, or engaged in any other form of dare-devilry; a different type was required to settle down to a stubborn fight with Nature, and found rural or commercial communities. The necessary type was forthcoming in course of time, but it had not yet realised the field that was open to it. As yet there were none to experiment, save adventurers who wanted something quite other than North America had to give. At last Raleigh felt that for a time, but only for a time, he was beaten; that to obtain support he must have prospects to suggest, at least, of gold mines and silver mines; and his next great venture was in another region where the golden city of Manoa was fabled to be hidden. But he never lost faith in his own ideal, or recanted his prophecy that the northern Continent would yet be possessed and peopled by men of his own race, that he would live to see Virginia an English nation. His own experiment failed; yet he lived to see the beginnings of fulfilment under other auspices, when again a colony of Virginia received a charter in 1606--this time to establish and maintain herself as the mother of the American people.

IV

AFTER THE ARMADA

The spirit of aggression engendered by the Armada was too strong for Burghley and his mistress to oppose directly. Their object was to give it such an outlet as would satisfy popular sentiment without ruining Spain; and popular sentiment, as they saw, would find satisfaction in a mere extension of the old raiding warfare upon Spanish commerce. The danger, in their eyes, was that the control of operations might fall into the hands of men who not only desired to annihilate Spain but knew how to do it. Drake and Raleigh recognised in Spain the one Power which stood in the way of a complete English dominion of the seas, with everything that would mean: that dominion was already almost won, and could be made good. But if Drake were discredited, Raleigh would be unable to give their policy effect. This was duly brought about by the manipulation from headquarters of the Lisbon expedition, which caused it to fail of accomplishing its immediate object. Thereafter the policy was indeed anti-Spanish, but on the lines advocated by Hawkins and Essex (who may now be said to have taken the place occupied by Leicester till his death in 1588), not by Raleigh and Drake.

The distinction between Raleigh’s political conceptions and those of his contemporaries marks the transition of which he was conscious and they were not. Their eyes were fixed upon Europe. Burghley’s calculations were always directed to the preservation of a balance of power on the Continent; he was afraid of France, and knew the commercial value of the Burgundian alliance. The New World did not appeal to him at all--a rivalry there would hardly have seemed to him desirable. The ordinary Englishman, on the other hand, felt that Spain had proved herself the enemy of his country and his creed, and in the moment of victory his views were roughly summed up in two phrases--_vae victis_; and, _the spoils for the victors_. He had no very definite ideas as to the further results, though he might have the triumph of “the Religion” over Popery in his mind. If he thought of the New World, it was not as a land where he might make himself a new home, but as a Tom Tiddler’s ground for bold adventurers. Raleigh saw the vision of the boundless empire occupied by the men of his own race. There are indications that if Walsingham had lived Raleigh would have stood less alone; but Walsingham died, poor and in disfavour, in 1590.

Roughly speaking, then, for some years after the Armada the war party at large predominated; maintaining the system of persistent warfare on Spanish commerce, varied at intervals with more effective blows such as the attack on the Bretagne forts held by the Spaniards (in league with the Guises), and the great Cadiz expedition. In these moves Raleigh’s voice and hand were heard and felt; but they were isolated moves, not followed up--largely owing to the clever management of the Cecils, in whom the Queen really placed her reliance. The war party itself was ruled in effect by the young Earl of Essex, whose personality was particularly obnoxious to the Cecils, while his policy was comparatively acceptable to them. Essex, being desperately jealous of Raleigh’s general favour with the Queen, Sir Walter was generally on friendly terms with the Cecils; whereas anything but a very temporary show of amity between the two Court rivals was entirely out of the question. And whenever Essex had access to the Queen he had the better of the contest. These controlling conditions make Raleigh’s career at this time intelligible.