CHAPTER I EARLY YEARS 1552-1579 THE lives of few public men have offered more scope for controversy than has the life of Sir Walter Raleigh, and yet the uncertainty which at many points perplexes the story of his adventurous career cannot be ascribed to any dearth of biographical material. After he had once emerged from respectable obscurity he lived continuously in the fierce light of publicity. No prominent character of an age rich in individuality was more eagerly discussed by contemporaries; of none have the conduct and actions been more curiously investigated by historians. State records, as well as the social and political correspondence of the day, are full of first-hand evidence of his many-sided activity; while no less than one hundred and sixty-five letters from his own hand, bearing on the most important episodes in his chequered fortunes, have come down to us. So that here, if ever, it might seem warrantable to assume that the accumulation of matter should enable the student, after examining the tangled story from every E B side, with the eye of friend and foe, from the official as well as from the private point of view, to form an unprejudiced judgment on the character and merits of this remarkable man. Nevertheless, in spite of the volume of testimony, so much remains unexplained and intangible to subsequent generations that his numerous biographers have for the most part been, perforce, content to state the case, to sum up the evidence, and leave the final judgment unpronounced. Not only was the man himself compounded of many elements and endowed with a versatility which amounted to genius, but his age and environment were peculiarly favourable to complexity of character; and the appreciations of his contemporaries, when not contradictory, are marked by the subtlety and absence of simplicity to which all recorded appreciations tend in a dangerous atmosphere of jealousy and suspicion. It is perhaps difficult in the present day to fully estimate the intricacy of life at a Court where so much depended on caprice, when public opinion was not yet an organised force, and ambition struggled through a sea of intrigue in which only the most dexterous swimmer could keep his head above the wave. Which of all the leading figures that occupy the stage at that period can be credited with motives consistently above suspicion if judged by the sterner standards of to-day? Not one of the counsellors of an autocratic and very feminine mistress, not Walsingham, not even Burghley, least of all the longest in the retention of office, the opportunist Robert Cecil. Even Drake, direct and straightforward by nature, something of a Puritan by inherited tendency, was forced at times to have recourse I DATE OF BIRTH 3 to tortuous methods in order to countermine the eternal intrigues of his opponents. Perhaps the fact that the nobility of Sidney's character so profoundly impressed his contemporaries, in spite of the brevity of his career, may be accepted as evidence of how rare were those qualities which in him commanded their admiration. A question of detail confronts us at the outset. What is the proper spelling to adopt of a name for which there are, perhaps, among his contemporaries more variants than there are for any other well-known name in those days of undetermined orthography? Sir Walter himself was not consistent in his own signatures, though after the year 1584 he appears to have finally adopted Ralegh, which recurs in one hundred and thirty-five of his letters. A deed of the year 1578 exhibits three different spellings, subscribed by his father, his brother, and himself, who sign it Ralegh, Rawlygh, and Rawleyghe respectively. The accepted spelling of Raleigh, if never employed by himself, has the sanction of use by Lady Raleigh and other members of the family, as well as the contemporary Hooker-Hollinshed chronicles, and it has been so universally adopted by posterity that it appears almost pedantic now to employ any other form. Again, the very date of his birth cannot be fixed with absolute certainty. The registers of the church at East Budleigh, where it should be inscribed, do not commence until 1555, three years after the date to which it has been generally assigned; while the inscriptions on two of his portraits by Zucchero would, if correct, rather place it in 1554. Inscriptions on portraits, however, are not very satisfactory evidence. The whole chronology of his early years is uncertain, but it will best accord |