follow the profession of the law, and took the orthodox steps CHAP. II. towards initiation into it, having commenced, as was usual, with admission into an Inn of Chancery, the bygone little collection of brick tenements in Newcastle-street. There is no reason to suppose that he was ever called to the Bar.

Court.

In the year following the publication of the Steele Glasse he undoubtedly was living in London, though in a different quarter. William and Richard Paunsford, two servants of his, as appears from the Middlesex Registers edited by Mr. Jeaffreson, were in December, 1577, taken up for defying the watch. They had to be bailed out. In the recognizance for one Ralegh was described as 'Walter Rawley, Esq. of Islington,' and in the other as 'Walter Rawley, Esq. de Curia,' that is About the of the Court. Young men of good family and ambition were in the habit of obtaining an introduction to the Court. They used it as a club, though they might not advance beyond the threshold. Ralegh on his return from France had pursued the regular course. He sought for opportunities of advancement where they most abounded; and, while he waited for them, he enjoyed the pleasures of life. In the use of his leisure he may not always have been more discreet than his riotous dependents. His wife is reported to have remarked of a censure upon their elder son's addiction to equivocal society, that she had heard Ralegh in his youth showed similar tastes. Aubrey, whom nobody believes and everybody quotes, the 'credulous, maggotty-headed, and sometimes little better than crazed' antiquarian, as Wood, his debtor for much curious unsifted gossip, courteously characterizes him, relates how, at a tavern revel, Ralegh quieted a noisy fellow, named Charles Chester. He sealed up his mouth by knotting together the beard and moustache. It is on record that in the February of 1580 he was in trouble for a brawl with Sir Thomas Perrot, who afterwards married the sister of Lord Essex, Lady Dorothy Devereux. Ralegh and Perrot were committed by the Council to the Fleet for six days. The affray is not creditable; but it indicates that Ralegh associated with courtiers.

CHAP. II.

Maritime adventures.

The company he kept was not all of Chester's or of Perrot's kind. His later correspondence proves that at this early period he must have become known to Walsingham and Burleigh, and have found means for allying himself with Leicester. He can have been no absolutely obscure adventurer now, any more than was his family at the time of his birth the utterly fallen stock it has been the fashion to suppose it. Whence he derived the resources for the maintenance of an establishment, and for social extravagances, is not as clear. He may have brought spoil from France; or, more probably, he had already begun to cultivate the West country art of privateering. Assistance would be furnished at need by his helpful half brother, Humphrey, his 'true brother,' as Ralegh called him. When at last the employment Ralegh desired came, the opening was made by Gilbert. Gilbert had in 1577 formed a plan for the capture, without warning, of the foreign ships, especially the Spanish and Portuguese, which resorted to the Newfoundland coast for the fisheries. His prizes he proposed to bring into Dutch ports, where they could be sold. With the proceeds he would have fitted out an expedition sufficiently strong, he hoped, to conquer the chief Spanish possessions in America. A main feature of the scheme was that the Queen's name should not be compromised. The leaders were to represent themselves as servants of the Prince of Orange. The English Government might, in proof of good faith, punish any naval officers who had abetted the project. Mr. St. John, a former biographer of Ralegh, has fancied that Ralegh's hand can be detected in the design as laid in writing before. Elizabeth. Mr. Spedding is inclined to agree, on account of the extraordinary resemblance he traces between it and the Guiana expedition of 1617-18. The parallel is imaginary, as is the supposition that Gilbert's bold and inventive intellect needed inspiration from any one. But undoubtedly, had the Queen's wary counsellors given their sanction, Ralegh would have been among the adventurers. The next year he accepted a command in the expedition Gilbert was equipping for

'Norimbega,' in search, it was said, for the North-West passage CHAP. II. to Cathay. By a Royal charter Gilbert had been authorized for six years from 1578 to discover and occupy heathen territory not actually possessed by any Christian prince or people. The adventure was retarded. A Seville merchant complained of the seizure of his cargo of oranges and lemons at Dartmouth by some of Sir Humphrey's company. At his suit the Privy Council ordered Gilbert and Ralegh to remain until he should be compensated. The County authorities were directed to stop the fleet. How the demand was settled, and whether the embargo were formally taken off, is not recorded. A memorandum in the Privy Council books stating the imposition of fines upon Ralegh and several other West countrymen, and their payment in 1579, may perhaps relate to the injunction, and imply that it was disregarded. At any rate, before the end of 1578 the fleet sailed, though curtailed in strength through quarrels among the adventurers. In an encounter with a Spanish squadron it lost a ship. Ralegh's name is not mentioned in the narrative in Hakluyt. Hooker, however, speaks of him as engaged in a dangerous sea-fight wherein 'many of his company were slain.' Battered and dispirited the expedition returned. From an allusion in Holinshed it would appear that Ralegh held on his course for a time by himself, though finally he too was compelled, early in 1579, to turn back through want of victuals. The year 1579 came and went, and his fortune remained unmade. From Humphrey Gilbert came his second chance of dis- In Ireland. tinction. Sir Humphrey in 1569-70 had been appointed President of Munster. With many noble qualities he was unruly. His friends admitted his liability to 'a little too much warmth and presumption.' He had administered his Irish province with a vigour somewhat in excess even of the taste of his age. Consequently, he had been replaced by Sir John Perrot, father of Ralegh's recent opponent. Sir John acted more leniently to the natives. The collision between his son and Ralegh may have arisen out of controversies on

CHAP. II. the proper policy to be pursued in the island. In any case to Humphrey Gilbert's favour with the Queen, and to his continuing interest in Irish affairs, Ralegh owed his regular entrance into the public service. In 1580 he was commis

sioned as captain of a hundred foot-soldiers raised to fight the insurgents of Munster, and their Spanish and Italian confederates. From July 13, 1580, he drew allowances in that capacity. The appointment was not lucrative. His pay was four shillings a day. Sir Robert Naunton, who rose to be Secretary of State to King James, and was connected with a crisis in Ralegh's fate, compiled some biographical notes, entitled Fragmenta Regalia on Queen Elizabeth's favourite counsellors. Fuller describes the work, which was not published till after the author's death, as a fruit of Naunton's younger years. Allusions to events which occurred after the death of James I prove that part or all was composed, or revised, when he had already risen, and had access to authentic sources of information. Ralegh's career is one of his themes, though he does not continue it nearly to its close. He sketches it with a generosity which contrasts strangely with the subsequent relations of the two men. Of Ralegh's Irish appointment he speaks as 'not leaving him food and raiment, for it was ever very poor.' The employment afforded abundance of hard work. He gathered confidence in himself, if he ever lacked it. An untried, if not wholly unknown, subordinate, he exhibited the spirit and sense of responsibility of 'Thorough.' a viceroy. 'Thorough' was as much his motto as Strafford's, and he acted upon it from the first. Towards American Indians he could be gentle and just. His invariable rule with Irishmen and Anglo-Irishmen of every degree was to crush. A characteristic story is told of the outset of Ralegh's Irish career. A kerne was caught carrying a bundle of withies on the outskirts of the English camp. Ralegh asked their destination. 'To hang up English churls!' 'Well,' retorted Ralegh, 'they will do for an Irishman;' and the prisoner was strung up by them accordingly. It is a savage legend which deserves

to be remembered in justice to the audacity of the nameless CHAP. II. peasant. Probably invented to glorify a renowned Englishman's inflexibility, it illustrates at all events the temper in which the war was waged. Ferocity to Irishmen was accounted policy and steadfastness. Every advantage was taken of the superiority of English steel and ordnance. Writing in 1603 for the information of King James, Ralegh says that, when he was a Captain in Ireland, a hundred foot and a hundred horse would have beaten all the force of the strongest provinces, for 'in those days the Irish had darts.' Towards the end of the Queen's reign they had bought good English arms, and fought on even terms.

One of his first public acts was to join Sir Warham St. Leger in trying and executing at Cork in August, 1580, Sir James Fitzgerald, the Earl of Desmond's brother. Fitzgerald was drawn, hanged, and quartered. His immediate superior was the Earl of Ormond, the Lieutenant of Munster, who showed occasional tenderness to his fellow-countrymen. The Lord Deputy was Lord Grey of Wilton, whose views were generally as stern as Ralegh's. Edmund Spenser was assistant secretary to Grey, and held as austere a theory of Irish government. Ralegh in November, 1580, was with Lord Grey's army. With the assistance of an English fleet under Admiral Winter it blockaded at Smerwick in Kerry a mixed Spanish and Irish garrison. On November 10 the garrison capitulated without The Smerconditions. Thereupon Grey sent in Ralegh and Macworth, who had the ward of the day. They are stated by Hooker, in his continuation of Holinshed, to have made a great slaughter. Four hundred Spaniards and Italians were put to the sword. All the Irishmen and several Irish women were hanged. An Englishman and an Irish priest, who suffered the same doom, had their legs and arms first broken. Only the foreign officers were held to ransom. The act was that of the Deputy. Afterwards it was discovered that the massacre excited general horror through Europe. Attempts were made to repudiate sympathy with it on the Queen's part. Bacon wrote that she

C

wick Massacre.