It has been discovered by modern historians that in 1577 Raleigh was attached in some capacity to Queen Elizabeth’s court, and that he was also “of the Middle Temple,” but whether called to the Bar, or only lodging in the Temple, or “eating his terms,” is not certain. He had reached vigorous manhood, was twenty-five years of age, of cultivated mind, active temperament, enterprising and ambitious. He was familiar with the exploits of Hawkins and Drake, and was probably fired by the romance of the Spanish Indies. His half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had made several voyages to the Gulf of Mexico and the country afterwards called Virginia in honour of Queen Elizabeth, and it has been considered probable that on one or more occasions Walter was his companion. It is known that he was with Gilbert in an unfortunate expedition to the St. Lawrence in 1578. In the following year he was committed to the Fleet prison for a violent difference with another courtier. He was released after a short confinement, however, and in the same year was stopped when in the act of starting on a piratical expedition against Spain.
At the close of 1579 the Spanish Catholics invaded Ireland. The invading expedition, which came from Ferrol, first landed at Dingle, but not feeling so secure there as they desired, they sailed four miles farther west to Senerwick Bay, and built there the Fort del Ore, upon a sandy isthmus, from which the invaders thought they might easily, if pressed, escape to sea. The Earl of Desmond and the Geraldines coalesced with their foreign co-religionists, casting off their allegiance to Elizabeth. Raleigh was sent to take part with the force then in Ireland upholding the queen’s power, and to assist in exterminating the invaders.
Raleigh left London in January 1580, with one hundred foot soldiers. At the Isle of Wight they were transferred into ships of the queen’s fleet. On the 22nd February, Raleigh wrote from Cork to Lord Burghley, giving an account of his voyage. His arrival was welcome, and timely, to his friend Sir Warham Saint Leger, who was holding Cork with great difficulty, with an insufficient garrison of only forty Englishmen.
It does not appear that Raleigh entered at once upon active duty, as his pay only begins July 13, 1580; he probably served, however, irrespective of this circumstance. In August he was associated with Saint Leger, provost-marshal of Munster, in a commission to try the younger brother of the Earl of Desmond, whom they sentenced to be hung.
In August, Lord Grey of Wilton arrived in Dublin, to relieve Pelham of the chief command in Ireland. He had with him the afterwards famous poet, Edmund Spenser, as his secretary. Raleigh remained in Ireland, and thus were brought together two of the most gifted men of their time; they naturally, as they became known to each other, entered into a close friendship.
In the operations for the suppression of the rebellion that followed, Raleigh took an active and influential part, and was for a time practically governor of Munster. There was much hard work in the campaign, and considerable scope for dash and military capability, which Raleigh exhibited in a high degree, but there was little “glory” to be derived from skirmishes, raids, and forays, or from scouring the woods and ravines for hunted rebels, and it must have been a welcome relief to Raleigh when a summons from London, to which he returned in December 1581, put an end to his military service in Ireland. An established reputation for military prowess had preceded him.
Raleigh, as before stated, was attached in some capacity to the court in 1577, but had not then entered into personal relations, or become a favourite, with the queen, who reappointed him a captain to serve in Ireland, but decreed in connection with the appointment,—“That our pleasure is that the said [Irish] land be, in the meantime, till he [Raleigh] repair into that Our realm, delivered to some such as he shall depute to be his lieutenant there.” “For that he is, for some considerations, by Us excused to stay here.” The Duc d’Alençon, who had at this time come from France to woo the queen, was not very favourably spoken of by Her Majesty. He served probably as a foil to manly, handsome Raleigh, who was now about thirty years of age, and described as “having a good presence in a well-compacted person; a strong natural wit, and a better judgment; with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage.” He was “about six feet in height, with dark hair and a high colour, a facial expression of great brightness, personable from the virile force of his figure, and illustrating these attractions by a splendid taste in dress. His clothes were at all times noticeably gorgeous; and to the end of his life his person was commonly bedizened with jewels to his very shoes.” The sprightly soldier-poet never lost his decided Devonshire accent, which his royal mistress liked rather than otherwise. For several years he basked in the almost perfectly unclouded sunshine of her smiles, and received openly many distinguishing marks of the queen’s favour. Old writers give some interesting illustrations of the little passages of wit and gallantry that marked their intercourse. On one occasion, it is related, when the queen, with Raleigh in attendance, had to alight from her carriage into a puddle,—roads were bad in those days,—the gay cavalier whipt off his dainty cloak of silk plush, and spread it out as a foot-cloth to protect her feet from the mud. The sacrifice of the cloak was highly appreciated, and proved to have been—although, perhaps, not so designed on Raleigh’s part—an excellent investment.
The personal intimacy and intercourse between the queen and Raleigh were as close as was permissible between a sovereign and a subject. Had the queen given the Duc d’Alençon half the encouragement she gave to Raleigh, his suit would have ended in a royal wedding. Sir Walter did not dare, probably, to make the queen an offer of his heart and hand, but he did not fail to give her an “inkling” concerning his feelings. On a pane in the window of her boudoir or other apartment, he wrote with his diamond ring—
“Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall.”
His royal inamorata, holding probably that “there is much virtue in an ‘if,’” replied—