CHAP. II. was much displeased at the slaughter. Her own letters to Grey comment on the whole proceeding as greatly to her liking. She expresses discontent only that she had not been left free to kill or spare the officers at her discretion. Personally Ralegh cannot be accounted amenable for the atrocity. He is not named in Grey's despatch to the Council. But it would be folly to pretend that he disapproved it. Hooker, his eulogist, claims it for him as an eminent distinction. He cordially sympathized with Grey's ideal of a Mahometan conquest for Ireland.

Feats of
Arms.

His Irish service gave him opportunities of a nobler order. He ventured his life in a score of hazardous feats. On one occasion his horse was desperately wounded. He must have been slain but for the aid of his servant Nicholas Wright, a trusty Yorkshireman. Another time the Seneschal of Imokelly with fifteen horsemen and sixty foot lay in wait for him at a ford between Youghal and Cork. He had crossed in safety when Henry Moile, one of a few Downshire horsemen he had added to his foot soldiers, was thrown in the middle of the stream. Back rode Ralegh, and stood by his comrade in the face of tremendous odds. The Seneschal, though his men outnumbered Ralegh's by twenty to one, was intimidated. He let Ralegh accomplish his purpose, which was the occupation of Barry's Court, the seat of Lord Barry. Barry was one of the Irish nobles whose loyalty was not fixed. Ralegh desired to convince the class of the futility of resistance by sudden blows. His courage in this instance was more apparent than his wisdom. He had with difficulty obtained the Deputy's consent to the enterprise. The result justified Grey's hesitation. Barry had escaped before Ralegh's arrival at his castle. He became, and remained for years, an open enemy. At last he seems to have been reconciled to the Government. 1594 Ralegh was interceding for him against the grant of a favour at his expense to another veteran malcontent, Florence MacCarthy. Ralegh's vigour had fuller success against another suspected noble, Lord Roche, of Bally. Roche's castle, twenty

In

Reward.

miles from Cork, was strong, and his retainers devoted and CHAP. II. many. With a petty detachment Ralegh set off on a dark night. He foiled two bands, one of eight hundred, the other of five hundred, which endeavoured to block his way. During a parley he contrived to introduce first a few and then all his followers. Lord Roche professed much loyalty, and entertained the intruders courteously at dinner. He refused to accompany Ralegh on his return till he was shown that the castle was in the hands of the English soldiers. Reluctantly he yielded, and Ralegh conveyed him and his family across the rugged hills into Cork by night. Roche proved an excellent subject. Ralegh was indefatigable. He shunned no toil or danger. Claim to He did not care if the enemy were five or twenty to one. But he was not a workman who never complains of his tools, or an ox content to be muzzled while treading out the corn. He spoke of his soldiers as such poor and miserable creatures as their captains did not dare lead them into battle. Wellington sometimes was as uncomplimentary to his. He bitterly criticized Ormond. Grey had granted him the custody of Barry's Court. He wrote in February, 1581, to Sir Francis Walsingham, with whom he had established a correspondence. He asked the Secretary to obtain from the Deputy Grey his confirmation in the post. He accused Ormond of compelling so long a delay before Ralegh could enter, that Barry had been able to dismantle the castle. He imputed the blunder either to covetousness, or to unwillingness that any Englishman should have anything. He contrasted the multiplication of traitors in Munster by a thousand in the two years of Ormond's rule with Gilbert's suppression of a previous rising in two months. 'Would God Sir Humphrey Gilbert's behaviour were such in peace it did not make his good service forgotten, and hold him from the preferment he is worthy of!' He was ashamed to receive her Majesty's pay, though but a poor entertainment, and see her so much abused. Walsingham wrote to Grey, and the Lord Deputy assigned to Ralegh the Barry's Court domain from Rostellan Castle to Fota. It

CHAP. II. comprised one side of Cork harbour, with the island now occupied by Queenstown. The Queen, through the influence, it is said, of Burleigh, refused her sanction. Next year Ralegh was writing again to Grey in vehement censure of Ormond. He repudiated any complicity in the defencelessness of the great wood of Conoloathe, and the country between the Dingle and Kilkenny. The commissariat of Cork, he charged, had been recklessly neglected; and Desmond's and Barry's wives were being encouraged to gather help for their traitor lords.

Discontent.

Denunciations of a general by his officer have an evil sound. Ralegh's apology, such as it is, must be sought in his just sense of a masterly capacity. He knew he was right; from the point of view of the prevalent Elizabethan policy towards Ireland, though not from Burleigh's, he was right. He raged at his want of official authority to correct the wrong. He fretted, moreover, at being left in Ireland at all. Ormond quarrelled with Grey, and was recalled in the spring of 1581. The lieutenancy of Munster was assigned jointly to Ralegh, Sir William Morgan, and Captain Piers. Ralegh continued discontented. He sighed for a wider sphere. From his quarters at Lismore he wrote in August, 1581, to Lord Leicester. He desired 'to put the Earl in mind of his affection, having to the world both professed and practised the same.' Incidentally he intimated more than readiness to return to England. 'I have spent,' he writes, 'some time here under the Deputy, in such poor place and charge as, were it not for I knew him to be one of yours, I would disdain it as much as to keep sheep.' His tone implied that he understood he had come on probation for more exalted functions elsewhere, and that he had a claim upon Leicester's patronage. How he had established it is unknown. Probably the intimacy began in London before he received his Irish commission. He was at any rate sufficiently intimate to be able to recommend a man of some eminence, as was Sir Warham St. Leger, to the Earl's protection.

He did not wish to stay in Ireland. The immediate success CHAP. II. of his hardness and resoluteness, when he was given a free hand, would have deprived him of the option, if he had wished it. After Ormond's dismissal the pacification of Munster went rapidly on under him and his fellow lieutenants. Captain John Zouch, an officer as ruthless to Irishmen as himself, who was appointed Governor of the province in August, 1581, worked on the same lines. It became practicable to disband part of the English forces. Ralegh's own company was paid off without apparent dissatisfaction on his part. Being needed no longer in Ireland he was sent home by Grey in December, Return to England. 1581, with despatches. For his expenses he was paid on December 29, at the liberal rate of £20, which may be roughly reckoned as equivalent to £100.

CHAP. III.

Grey.

CHAPTER III.

ROYAL FAVOUR (1581-1582).

THIS visit of Ralegh's to the Court was the turning-point in his career. How it became that has been explained in different ways. According to Naunton a variance between him and Ralegh and Grey drew both over to plead their cause. Naunton goes on to say that Ralegh 'had much the better in telling of his tale; and so much that the Queen and the lords took no slight mark of the man and his parts; for from thence he came to be known, and to have access to the Queen and the lords.' It is natural to suppose that Ralegh's Irish campaigns were concerned with his sudden rise at Court. Thenceforward he was a high authority on Irish policy. His Irish experience continued to be the sheet-anchor of his ascendency with the Queen. Naunton's tale, too, is supported by evidence from the Hatfield and the Irish State papers of Ralegh's disposition to form and push Irish plans of his own, and of Grey's keen jealousy of the habit. Burleigh on January 1, 1582, in a letter to the Lord Deputy, mentioned that Mr. Rawley had informed her Majesty how the charge of five or six hundred soldiers for the garrison of Munster might be shifted from the Queen to the province without umbrage to Ormond, its most powerful land-owner. To this the Lord Deputy speedily replied, vehemently criticising 'the plot delivered by Captain Rawley unto her Majesty.' He condemned it as a plausible fancy, 'affecting credit with profit,' but 'framed upon impossibilities for others to execute.' To Walsingham he complained bitterly of misrepresentations at Court in the same January,