“Her Majesty meeting with a plashy place, made some scruples to go on, when Raleigh (dressed in the gay and genteel habit of those times) presently cast off and spread his new plush cloak on the ground, whereon the Queen trod gently over, rewarding him afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so fair a foot-cloth.”
Walter Raleigh was a handsome young man, six feet tall, with curly brown hair and beard. He had been a soldier in France and an officer in Ireland, and had made several voyages of discovery with his gallant half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
It was the fashion—indeed it seemed necessary then—for men at court to flatter the middle-aged maiden queen, who was foolish enough to believe that she was as lovely as they told her she was. The Earl of Leicester once entertained her at Kenilworth Castle, where he had all the clocks stopped on the moment of her arrival to show that no notice should be taken of the passing of time during her visit there.
So Queen Bess could hardly help feeling flattered when such a gallant and good-looking courtier as Raleigh bowed before her and laid his cloak as a velvet carpet for her to walk upon. Riches, lands, castles, and even happiness go by favor in royal circles. Some time after this, the queen made her favorite a knight, with the title Sir before his name.
One day the queen saw Raleigh taking a diamond ring off his finger and scratching something on a window-pane.
“Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.”
Then she took from her own slim hand a diamond and cut in the glass under what he had written, this rhyme:
“If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all.”
Of course, each reigning favorite of the queen became an object of envy to the rest of the court. Lord Leicester, who was now slighted by her Majesty for this new knight, did all he could to injure Raleigh. The young Earl of Essex did his utmost, later, to turn the queen against Sir Walter. But for a long time Raleigh remained high in favor.