Sir Walter Raleigh and His Time

by Charles Kingsley

Raleigh sails for Guiana. The details of his voyage should be read at length. Everywhere they show the eye of a poet as well as of a man of science. He sees enough to excite his hopes more wildly than ever; he goes hundreds of miles up the Orinoco in an open boat, suffering every misery, but keeping up the hearts of his men, who cry out, ‘Let us go on, we care not how far.’ He makes friendship with the caciques, and enters into alliance with them on behalf of Queen Elizabeth against the Spaniards. Unable to pass the falls of the Caroli, and the rainy season drawing on, he returns, beloved and honoured by all the Indians, boasting that, during the whole time he was there, no woman was the worse for any man of his crew. Altogether, we know few episodes of history so noble, righteous, and merciful as this Guiana voyage. But he has not forgotten the Spaniards. At Trinidad he payed his ships with the asphalt of the famous Pitch-lake, and stood—and with what awe such a man must have stood—beneath the noble forest of Moriche fan-palms on its brink. He then attacked, not, by his own confession, without something too like treachery, the new town of San José, takes Berreo prisoner, and delivers from captivity five caciques, whom Berreo kept bound in one chain, ‘basting their bodies with burning bacon’—an old trick of the Conquistadores—to make them discover their gold. He tells them that he was ‘the servant of a Queen who was the greatest cacique of the north, and a virgin; who had more caciqui under her than there were trees on that island; that she was an enemy of the Castellani (Spaniards) in behalf of their tyranny and oppression, and that she delivered all such nations about her as were by them oppressed, and having freed all the coast of the northern world from their servitude, had sent me to free them also, and withal to defend the country of Guiana from their invasion and conquest.’ After which perfectly true and rational speech, he subjoins (as we think equally honestly and rationally), ‘I showed them her Majesty’s picture, which they so admired and honoured, as it had been easy to have brought them idolaters thereof.’

This is one of the stock charges against Raleigh, at which all biographers (except quiet, sensible Oldys, who, dull as he is, is far more fair and rational than most of his successors) break into virtuous shrieks of ‘flattery,’ ‘meanness,’ ‘adulation,’ ‘courtiership,’ and so forth. One biographer is of opinion that the Indians would have admired far more the picture of a ‘red monkey.’ Sir Robert Schomburgk, unfortunately for the red monkey theory, though he quite agrees that Raleigh’s flattery was very shocking, says that from what he knows—and no man knows more—of Indian taste, they would have far preferred to the portrait which Raleigh showed them—not a red monkey, but—such a picture as that at Hampton Court, in which Elizabeth is represented in a fantastic court dress. Raleigh, it seems, must be made out a rogue at all risks, though by the most opposite charges. The monkey theory is answered, however, by Sir Robert; and Sir Robert is answered, I think, by the plain fact that, of course, Raleigh’s portrait was exactly such a one as Sir Robert says they would have admired; a picture probably in a tawdry frame, representing Queen Bess, just as queens were always painted then, bedizened with ‘browches, pearls, and owches,’ satin and ruff, and probably with crown on head and sceptre in hand, made up, as likely as not, expressly for the purpose for which it was used. In the name of all simplicity and honesty, I ask, why is Raleigh to be accused of saying that the Indians admired Queen Elizabeth’s beauty when he never even hints at it? And why do all commentators deliberately forget the preceding paragraph—Raleigh’s proclamation to the Indians, and the circumstances under which it was spoken? The Indians are being murdered, ravished, sold for slaves, basted with burning fat; and grand white men come like avenging angels, and in one day sweep their tyrants out of the land, restore them to liberty and life, and say to them, ‘A great Queen far across the seas has sent us to do this. Thousands of miles away she has heard of your misery and taken pity on you; and if you will be faithful to her she will love you, and deal justly with you, and protect you against these Spaniards who are devouring you as they have devoured all the Indians round you; and for a token of it—a sign that we tell you truth, and that there is really such a great Queen, who is the Indian’s friend—here is the picture of her.’ What wonder if the poor idolatrous creatures had fallen down and worshipped the picture—just as millions do that of the Virgin Mary without a thousandth part as sound and practical reason—as that of a divine, all-knowing, all-merciful deliverer? As for its being the picture of a beautiful woman or not, they would never think of that. The fair complexion and golden hair would be a sign to them that she belonged to the mighty white people, even if there were no bedizenment of jewels and crowns over and above; and that would be enough for them. When will biographers learn to do common justice to their fellow-men by exerting now and then some small amount of dramatic imagination, just sufficient to put themselves for a moment in the place of those of whom they write?

So ends his voyage, in which, he says, ‘from myself I have deserved no thanks, for I am returned a beggar and withered.’ The only thing which, as far as I can find, he brought home was some of the delicious scaly peaches of the Moriche palm—the Arbol de Vida, or tree of life, which gives sustenance and all else needful to whole tribes of Indians. ‘But I might have bettered my poor estate if I had not only respected her Majesty’s future honour and riches. It became not the former fortune in which I once lived to go journeys of piccory’ (pillage); ‘and it had sorted ill with the offices of honour which, by her Majesty’s grace, I hold this day in England, to run from cape to cape and place to place for the pillage of ordinary prizes.’

So speaks one whom it has been the fashion to consider as little better than a pirate, and that, too, in days when the noblest blood in England thought no shame (as indeed it was no shame) to enrich themselves with Spanish gold. But so it is throughout this man’s life. If there be a nobler word than usual to be spoken, or a more wise word either, if there be a more chivalrous deed to be done, or a more prudent deed either, that word and that deed are pretty sure to be Walter Raleigh’s.

But the blatant beast has been busy at home; and, in spite of Chapman’s heroical verses, he meets with little but cold looks. Never mind. If the world will not help to do the deed, he will do it by himself; and no time must be lost, for the Spaniards on their part will lose none. So, after six months, the faithful Keymis sails again, again helped by the Lord High Admiral and Sir Robert Cecil. It is a hard race for one private man against the whole power and wealth of Spain; and the Spaniard has been beforehand with them, and re-occupied the country. They have fortified themselves at the mouth of the Caroli, so it is impossible to get to the gold mines; they are enslaving the wretched Indians, carrying off their women, intending to transplant some tribes and to expel others, and arming cannibal tribes against the inhabitants. All is misery and rapine; the scattered remnant comes asking piteously why Raleigh does not come over to deliver them? Have the Spaniards slain him, too? Keymis comforts them as he best can; hears of more gold mines; and gets back safe, a little to his own astonishment; for eight-and-twenty ships of war have been sent to Trinidad to guard the entrance to El Dorado, not surely, as Keymis well says, ‘to keep us only from tobacco.’ A colony of 500 persons is expected from Spain. The Spaniard is well aware of the richness of the prize, says Keymis, who all through shows himself a worthy pupil of his master. A careful, observant man he seems to have been, trained by that great example to overlook no fact, even the smallest. He brings home lists of rivers, towns, caciques, poison-herbs, words, what not; he has fresh news of gold, spleen-stones, kidney-stones, and some fresh specimens; but be that as it may, he, ‘without going as far as his eyes can warrant, can promise Brazil-wood, honey, cotton, balsamum, and drugs, to defray charges.’ He would fain copy Raleigh’s style, too, and ‘whence his lamp had oil, borrow light also,’ ‘seasoning his unsavoury speech’ with some of the ‘leaven of Raleigh’s discourse.’ Which, indeed, he does even to little pedantries and attempts at classicality; and after professing that himself and the remnant of his few years he hath bequeathed wholly to Raleana, and his thoughts live only in that action, he rises into something like grandeur when he begins to speak of that ever-fertile subject, the Spanish cruelties to the Indians; ‘Doth not the cry of the poor succourless ascend unto the heavens? Hath God forgotten to be gracious to the work of his own hands. Or shall not his judgments in a day of visitation by the ministry of his chosen servant come upon these bloodthirsty butchers, like rain into a fleece of wool?’ Poor Keymis! To us he is by no means the least beautiful figure in this romance; a faithful, diligent, loving man, unable, as the event proved, to do great deeds by himself, but inspired with a great idea by contact with a mightier spirit, to whom he clings through evil report, and poverty, and prison, careless of self to the last, and ends tragically, ‘faithful unto death’ in the most awful sense.

But here remark two things: first, that Cecil believes in Raleigh’s Guiana scheme; next, that the occupation of Orinoco by the Spaniards, which Raleigh is accused of having concealed from James in 1617, has been ever since 1595 matter of the most public notoriety.

Raleigh has not been idle in the meanwhile. It has been found necessary after all to take the counsel which he gave in vain in 1588, to burn the Spanish fleet in harbour; and the heroes are gone down to Cadiz fight, and in one day of thunder storm the Sevastopol of Spain. Here, as usual, we find Raleigh, though in an inferior command, leading the whole by virtue of superior wisdom. When the good Lord Admiral will needs be cautious, and land the soldiers first, it is Raleigh who persuades him to force his way into the harbour, to the joy of all captains. When hotheaded Essex, casting his hat into the sea for joy, shouts ‘Intramos,’ and will in at once, Raleigh’s time for caution comes, and he persuades them to wait till the next morning, and arrange the order of attack. That, too, Raleigh has to do, and moreover to lead it; and lead it he does. Under the forts are seventeen galleys; the channel is ‘scoured’ with cannon: but on holds Raleigh’s ‘Warspite,’ far ahead of the rest, through the thickest of the fire, answering forts and galleys ‘with a blur of the trumpet to each piece, disdaining to shoot at those esteemed dreadful monsters.’ For there is a nobler enemy ahead. Right in front lie the galleons; and among them the ‘Philip’ and the ‘Andrew,’ two of those who boarded the ‘Revenge.’ This day there shall be a reckoning for the blood of his old friend; he is ‘resolved to be revenged for the “Revenge,”’ Sir Richard Grenvile’s fatal ship, or second her with his own life’; and well he keeps his vow. Three hours pass of desperate valour, during which, so narrow is the passage, only seven English ships, thrusting past each other, all but quarrelling in their noble rivalry, engage the whole Spanish fleet of fifty-seven sail, and destroy it utterly. The ‘Philip’ and ‘Thomas’ burn themselves despairing. The English boats save the ‘Andrew’ and ‘Matthew.’ One passes over the hideous record. ‘If any man,’ says Raleigh, ‘had a desire to see hell itself, it was there most lively figured.’ Keymis’s prayer is answered in part, even while he writes it; and the cry of the Indians has not ascended in vain before the throne of God!

The soldiers are landed; the city stormed and sacked, not without mercies and courtesies, though, to women and unarmed folk, which win the hearts of the vanquished, and live till this day in well-known ballads. The Flemings begin a ‘merciless slaughter.’ Raleigh and the Lord Admiral beat them off. Raleigh is carried on shore with a splinter wound in the leg, which lames him for life: but returns on board in an hour in agony; for there is no admiral left to order the fleet, and all are run headlong to the sack. In vain he attempts to get together sailors the following morning, and attack the Indian fleet in Porto Real Roads; within twenty-four hours it is burnt by the Spaniards themselves; and all Raleigh wins is no booty, a lame leg, and the honour of having been the real author of a victory even more glorious than that of 1588.

So he returns; having written to Cecil the highest praises of Essex, whom he treats with all courtesy and fairness; which those who will may call cunning: we have as good a right to say that he was returning good for evil. There were noble qualities in Essex. All the world gave him credit for them, and far more than he deserved; why should not Raleigh have been just to him; even have conceived, like the rest of the world, high hopes of him, till he himself destroyed these hopes? For now storms are rising fast. On their return Cecil is in power. He has been made Secretary of State instead of Bodley, Essex’s pet, and the spoilt child begins to sulk. On which matter, I am sorry to say, historians talk much unwisdom, about Essex’s being too ‘open and generous, etc., for a courtier,’ and ‘presuming on his mistress’s passion for him’; and representing Elizabeth as desiring to be thought beautiful, and ‘affecting at sixty the sighs, loves, tears, and tastes of a girl of sixteen,’ and so forth. It is really time to get rid of some of this fulsome talk, culled from such triflers as Osborne, if not from the darker and fouler sources of Parsons and the Jesuit slanderers, which I meet with a flat denial. There is simply no proof. She in love with Essex or Cecil? Yes, as a mother with a son. Were they not the children of her dearest and most faithful servants, men who had lived heroic lives for her sake? What wonder if she fancied that she saw the fathers in the sons? They had been trained under her eye. What wonder if she fancied that they could work as their fathers worked before them? And what shame if her childless heart yearned over them with unspeakable affection, and longed in her old age to lay her hands upon the shoulders of those two young men, and say to England, ‘Behold the children which God, and not the flesh, has given me!’ Most strange it is, too, that women, who ought at least to know a woman’s heart, have been especially forward in publishing these scandals, and sullying their pages by retailing pruriences against such a one as Queen Elizabeth.

But to return. Raleigh attaches himself to Cecil; and he has good reason. Cecil is the cleverest man in England, saving himself. He has trusted and helped him, too, in two Guiana voyages; so the connection is one of gratitude as well as prudence. We know not whether he helped him in the third Guiana voyage in the same year, under Captain Berry, a north Devon man, from Grenvile’s country; who found a ‘mighty folk,’ who were ‘something pleasant, having drunk much that day,’ and carried bows with golden handles: but failed in finding the Lake Parima, and so came home.