The tale goes on to say that the Queen wrote underneath,
‘If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all.’
We hope to be excused for alluding to stories which, if ‘fables,’ are at least characteristic of the times.
In 1583 he appeared before the Privy Council to plead his cause in the matter of a difference that had occurred between him and Lord (Deputy) Grey de Wilton, when they were together in Ireland.
On this occasion, says Sir Robert Naunton, ‘what advantage Raleigh had in the controversy I know not; but he had much the better in the telling of his tale, inasmuch as the Queen and the Lords took no slight mark of the man, for from thenceforth he came to be known, and have access to the Lords,’ etc. etc. Naunton goes on to say, ‘that he does not know if Lord Leicester had recommended him to her Majesty, but true it is, Raleigh had gotten the Queen’s ear at a trice, and she began to be taken with his eloquence, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands, and in truth, she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all.’
Raleigh, whose whole soul was bent on enterprise, made use of his favour at Court to enable him to prosecute his maritime discoveries. In 1583—in a ship he had, however, manned and victualled at his own expense, and named after himself—in company with his brother, he sailed for Newfoundland. But they were again unfortunate; as Gilbert was returning to England he was lost, with two of his ships.
Yet Raleigh’s heart never ‘did fail him,’ and the following year he obtained a grant from Queen and Council, ‘free liberty to discover remote and barbarous lands.’
He proceeded to Florida, discovered and colonised Virginia, and for several years prosecuted his voyages, discoveries, and colonisations, all of which belong to the record of naval history.
In 1584 he was knighted, and honours and dignities of all kinds bestowed on him, together with good estates from the Queen.
At Sherborne, county Dorset, he built ‘a fine house, with gardens and groves of much variety and delight.’ Notwithstanding all the favours he received at her hands, Raleigh never truckled to Elizabeth, and although she often fell out with him, she invariably in the end listened to her loyal but independent subject.