I

SOJOURN IN FRANCE

19

sleeping memories, and carried his thoughts back to the youthful comrade of his first campaign, who, after a career not less rich in adventure than his own, had occupied the weary years of captivity in compiling a History of the World. But these are mere conjectures on lines over which it is pleasant to linger. No letters of Raleigh's are extant belonging to the period of his service in France, and beyond the notice in Camden and three references to this campaign in his own writings there is an entire dearth of biographical material. Nor have we any evidence as to his subsequent movements, when in August of the following year both parties, worn out with the desperate struggle, signed the peace of St. Germains. That he remained for some time in France, in fact that his sojourn there extended over a period of more than five years, is to be inferred from a dedication addressed to him by the younger Hakluyt, who bears witness that Sir Walter's residence in France had been longer than his own, which, as he elsewhere states, had covered five years. A legend, for which there appears to be no authority, has included him among the young Englishmen who, with Philip Sidney, took refuge in the house of the British ambassador, and thus saved their lives on the night of St. Bartholomew. Montgomerie, who had escaped to England, returned the following year, with a squadron equipped in the western counties under Champernoun, to La Rochelle, but was compelled to retreat once more. The co-operation of the Champernouns was now ostensibly, at any rate, disavowed by the Queen, whose tortuous policy towards the French Court and the Huguenots was at this period marked by bewildering inconsistency; and when in 1574

Montgomerie was organising his last fatal expedition from Jersey, the French ambassador in London reported that Elizabeth had taken measures to render the enterprise abortive. Whether or not Raleigh was associated with these later attempts of the Huguenots to retrieve their position in France must remain uncertain. The English sympathisers who joined them did so at their own risk and peril, and were studious to keep their own counsel. He appears, at any rate, to have returned to England not long after the execution of Montgomerie, which took place on June 26th, 1574, and to have taken up his residence in the Middle Temple. His name is found in a register of the members kept since the beginning of the sixteenth century, entered as: "Walter Rawley, late of Lyons Inn, Gent. Son of Walter R. of Budleigh Co. Devon Esq." under the date of February 27th, 157. It seems probable, though it does not necessarily follow from his residence in the Temple, that he intended at this period to devote himself to the study of the law. That he, however, did not carry out his intention is recorded by himself in the protest which fell from his lips during his trial: "If ever I read a word of the law or statute before I was a prisoner in the Tower, God confound me!" Prefacing a satirical volume of verse, The Steele Glass of Robert Gascoigne, which was published in 1576, are some commendatory verses by "Walter Rawely of the Middle Temple." They bear the impress of his style, and the concluding lines have a suggestive prophetic application to their author:

For whoso reaps success above the rest,

With heaps of hate shall surely be oppressed.

I

RETURN TO ENGLAND

21

The doubts which have been expressed as to the identity of this Walter Rawely with the young soldier lately returned from the French wars can be scarcely maintained since the discovery of the entry in the Temple register, and further circumstantial evidence in favour of Raleigh's relations with Gascoigne is afforded by his having afterwards appropriated the motto assumed by the latter, and printed under his portrait in this publication, Tam Marte quam Mercurio. Gascoigne himself, a soldier as well as a poet, had lately returned from the war in the Low Countries, where he had doubtless known the Gilberts, through whom he became acquainted with Raleigh.

Several contemporaries have alluded to Raleigh's services in the Netherlands under Sir John Norris. There is nothing impossible in such a hypothesis, and the fact that Sir Humphrey Gilbert commanded a regiment there lends plausibility to the supposition. It can be shown that he was in England in December, 1577, as well as at some period previous to the publication of The Steele Glass in 1576. But there was ample time between the two dates for a young man of spirit to have won his spurs in the school of the Prince of Orange. It is, however, less probable that he witnessed, as another author has alleged, the famous battle of Rimenant, inasmuch as he was undoubtedly in Devonshire early in 1578, and occupied in the latter part of that year with the equipment of Gilbert's first expedition of discovery, in which his brother had offered him a command. The expedition itself was a failure. Drake's successful. raids had made Philip suspicious. A tall ship was lost in an encounter with the Spaniards, and Raleigh himself

fought a critical action, in which his own vessel was sorely battered. He nevertheless held on for a while at sea, but was compelled to return in 1579, having exhausted his supplies, with nothing achieved. It was the first great disappointment of a life rich in successes and reverses. From boyhood upwards he had been waiting for the day when he, too, might follow the track of the great adventurers into the new world of promise, and now, when he returned undaunted by failure, an attempt to reorganise the expedition was peremptorily checked by the Queen. Sir Humphrey and his brother were forbidden to embark, and an entry to this effect in the registers of the Privy Council marks the first appearance there of Raleigh's name, to which the complaints of the Spanish government had attracted attention. He had already, it would seem from an entry in the Middlesex registers of 1577, been introduced at Court, perhaps in the suite of the Earl of Leicester, with whom, it is clear from a letter which Raleigh addressed to him from Ireland in 1581, he had at some previous period been intimate.

CHAPTER II

RALEIGH IN IRELAND

1580-1581

THE policy of Elizabeth in Ireland, alternating between extreme severity and premature forbearance, between spasmodic energy and parsimonious neglect, was one for which the most zealous enthusiast would find it difficult to suggest plausible justification, and the bloody annals of those grim years remain a "sullen page in human memories." Her natural instincts were undoubtedly in favour of conciliation; her unstatesmanlike opportunism led only to disastrous failure. It is true that had the country been left to itself its fate would probably have been little better; for while the other nations of western Europe had made mighty strides in progress, and had long since realised the conception of national unity and individual evolution, independent of the tyranny of medieval ideals, Ireland still remained abandoned to the savagery of the primeval Celt,-a savagery not less real because it was coloured with the vivid poetry of a gifted and imaginative race. The chieftains of her rival factions maintained their hordes of lawless kernes, whose sole occupations consisted in raids and cattle-lifting,