But Raleigh was an energetic man of business as well as a poet, a man of action more than of dreams, and, during his residence in Ireland, he did much in various ways to promote the material prosperity of the people. He defended the rights of the merchants of Waterford and Wexford, and encouraged their export trade in barrel staves by putting two of his own ships to a regular service between Waterford and the Canaries. Traces of his beneficent work in Munster still remain. Sir John Pope Hennessy says:—
“The richly perfumed wallflowers that he brought to Ireland from the Azores, and the Affane cherry, are still found where he first planted them by the Blackwater. Some cedars he brought to Cork are to this day growing at a place called Tivoli. He also introduced a number of plants, before unknown in England,—among others, the potato, which has had such an influence—for good or evil—on the destinies of Ireland and many other countries,—and the tobacco plant, which was not much approved by the queen, and which he had to use very privately. The four venerable yew-trees, whose branches have grown and intermingled into a sort of summer-house thatch, are pointed out as having sheltered Raleigh, when he first smoked tobacco in his Youghal garden. In that garden he also planted tobacco.... A few steps farther on, where the town-wall of the thirteenth century bounds the walls of the gardens of the Warden’s house, is the famous spot where the first Irish potato was planted by him. In that garden he gave the tubers to the ancestor of the present Lord Southwell, by whom they were spread throughout the province of Munster.”
Such were some of the precious gifts brought by Raleigh’s wisely-instructed and zealous agents from across the Atlantic, and conferred by the enlightened patriot upon his country—boons of infinitely greater value than the plate and pearls of which the Spaniards were deprived by the early English rovers.
About the end of 1589 Raleigh returned to England, taking Spenser with him, whom he introduced to the queen, and he was instrumental in obtaining for him, as the first poet-laureate, a pension of £50 a year. Spenser’s Faery Queen was published by royal command.
“The supplementary letter and sonnets to Raleigh express Spenser’s generous recognition of the services his friend had performed for him, and appeal to Raleigh, as ‘the Summer Nightingale, thy sovereign goddess’s most dear delight,’ not to delay in publishing his own great poem, the Cynthia. The first of the eulogistic pieces prefixed by friends to the Faery Queen was that noble and justly celebrated sonnet signed W. R., which alone would justify Raleigh in taking a place among the English poets.”—Gosse, p. 49.
In 1591, Raleigh’s first published work appeared, being an account of the battle of the Azores, between the Revenge and an armada of the King of Spain. Raleigh sets forth enthusiastically the valour of his gallant and faithful friend, Sir Richard Grenville, as displayed in this contest, one of the most famous in English history, in which Grenville, with one ship containing one hundred men, stood to his guns against a fleet manned by fifteen thousand Spaniards. He ably vindicated Grenville’s conduct, and following historians are agreed that this action was “memorable even beyond credit, and to the height of some heroical fable.” This report has been highly praised by competent critics as attaining the highest level reached by English narrative prose up to the period at which it was written.
About this time, 1591, Raleigh received another valuable gift from the queen, in a long lease of Sherborne, an estate in Dorsetshire, formerly the possession of the dean and chapter of Salisbury. This was, for the future, Raleigh’s favourite country residence.
An expedition was planned at this time that seemed to promise additional wealth and honours to Raleigh. Its objects were to capture the rich fleet of Indian plate-ships, and to take possession of the pearl fisheries of Panama, or to rifle the pearl treasuries. The queen sanctioned and aided the project, and Raleigh threw his whole fortune into it. He was to be admiral of the fleet of fifteen sail, and the chief adventurer, with Sir Martin Frobisher as second in command. The fleet was ready for sea in February 1592, but when the time for sailing arrived, the capricious queen could not, or would not, part with Raleigh, and the fleet sailed under the command of Sir John Burrough.
The courtship of Raleigh and Miss Elizabeth Throgmorton, afterwards Lady Raleigh, a maid of honour of the queen, greatly exasperated his royal mistress, and he was banished for four years from the queen’s presence.
The privateering expedition before referred to, in which Raleigh was so largely interested, proceeded to the Azores. The queen had contributed two ships and £1800, and the citizens of London had given £6000 in aid, but Raleigh retained by much the largest share. Sir John Burrough divided his fleet, and left Frobisher with part of it on the coast of Spain; with his own portion of the fleet he proceeded to the supposed track of the expected richly-laden carracks, to await their coming. The victims came as expected, and fell an easy prey to the spoilers. The Madre de Dios, the largest of the treasure-laden carracks, carried what was unprecedented in those days, the enormous cargo of 1800 tons, valued at £500,000. The cargo included rubies, pearls, ambergris, frankincense, ebony, sandalwood, cypress, ivory, carpets, silks, sarsenets, cinnamon, nutmegs, and cloves, and stores of the most costly productions of India. The unwieldy carrack offered a feeble resistance to Raleigh’s more nimble and mischievous craft, the Roebuck, which speedily overcame her. There had been considerable leakage in the valuable cargo, which had been freely tapped at every port called at, and before Sir John Burrough could get on board to take personal command, his sailors had made the best possible use of their opportunity to do a little privateering, each man for his own hand. Even after these deductions, the Madre de Dios was a prize of great value. It was, after many trials and troubles from wind and weather, and narrow escapes from foundering, safely brought into Dartmouth on the 2nd September, being, as it happened, the queen’s birthday.