Henry Talbot, son of Lord Shrewsbury, was given the account of the proceedings, and rode off with them post-haste from Fotheringay along the bad roads to London.
So died Mary, Queen of Scots, and her death was one of the surest, most definite steps that was ever taken towards cutting England off from papal authority. Henceforward, England stood alone. Henceforward, the force of patriotism and of religion were to be combined.
Such things happened in the time of Walter Ralegh. He may have been present. If he were, the memory of it must have come to his mind some thirty years later, when he touched the edge of another axe with his thumb and approved of its sharpness.
CHAPTER VI
THE GREAT ENTERPRISE
Scheme of colonization—Preparation—The sailing—Queen's interest—Death of Sir Humfrey Gilbert—Another charter obtained—King Wingina—Hospitality—Sir Richard Grenville—Difficulties of first colonists—Personal outfit—Misfortune.
Court life, for all its brilliance and excitement, did not monopolize Ralegh's attention. He had gained wealth and position: he was near the Queen. That did not suffice him. He was a man of imagination, who could never rest content with the attainment which, as man of action, he had achieved. Rarely have the two qualities been so often combined as they were in the Elizabethan times, and rarely, even then, were they combined with such force and in so high a degree as they were in great Ralegh. He bent his energies on the scheme for colonization. The old idea was that Paradise lay somewhere on the surface of the world; all through the Middle Ages the dream existed. Columbus thought that the earth was probably shaped like a pear, not spherical but elongated, and "on the summit of the protuberance was situated the earthly Paradise, 'whither no one can go but by God's permission.'"
That dream continued. It came to Marlowe and obsessed him. But Marlowe dreamed of no mediæval Paradise.