4. Law Tricks, or Who Would Have Thought It? a Comedy, several times acted by the children of the Revels, and printed in 4to. 1608.
5. Parliament of Bees, with their proper characters, or a Bee-Hive furnished with Twelve Honey-Combs, as pleasant as profitable, being an allegorical description of the ancients of good and bad men in those days, printed in 4to. London, 1641.
6. Travels of Three English Brothers, Sir Thomas, Sir Anthony, and Mr. Robert Shirley, a History, played by her Majesty's Servants, printed in 4to. London, 1607, and dedicated to Honour's Favourites and the entire friends of the family of the Shirleys. In the composition of this play our author was assisted by William Rowley, and Mr. George Wilkins; the foundation of it may be read in several English Writers, and Chronicles, and it is particularly set down in Dr. Fuller's Worthies, in his description of Sussex. When our author died cannot be justly ascertained, but Mr. Langbaine has preserved an elegy written on him, by his friend Mr. Tateham, which begins thus:
Don Phoebus now hath lost his light,
And left his rule unto the night;
And Cynthia, she has overcome
The Day, and darkened the sun:
Whereby we now have lost our hope,
Of gaining Day, into horoscope, &c.
In this manner he runs on: like a gentleman in Lincolns Inn, who wrote an ingenious poem upon the transactions between a Landlord and his Tenant Day, who privately departed from him by Night, printed in a single sheet, London, 1684. To shew the parallel, the following lines are sufficient.
How Night and Day conspire a secret flight;
For Day, they say, is gone away by Night.
The Day is past, but landlord where's your rent?
You might have seen, that Day was almost spent.
Day sold, and did put off whate'er he might,
Tho' it was ne'er so dark, Day wou'd be light.
* * * * *
Sir WALTER RALEIGH
Was descended of an ancient family in Devonshire, which was seated in that county before the conquest[1], and was fourth son of Walter Raleigh, esquire, of Fards, in the parish of Cornwood. He was born in the year 1552 at Hayes, a pleasant farm of his father's in the parish of Budley, in that part of Devonshire bordering Eastward upon the Sea, near where the Ottery discharges itself into the British Channel; he was educated at the university of Oxford, where, according to Dr. Fuller, he became a commoner of Oriel College, as well as Christ Church, and displayed in his early years a great vivacity of genius in his application to his studies. Some have said, that after leaving the university, he settled himself in the Middle-Temple, and studied the law, but this opinion must be erroneous, since he declares afterwards on his trial, that he never read a word of law 'till he was prisoner in the Tower. In 1569, when he was not above 17 years of age, he was one of the select troop of a hundred gentlemen voluntiers, whom Queen Elizabeth permitted Henry Champernon to transport into France, for the assistance of protestant Princes there[2], but of what service they were, or what was the consequence of the expedition, we have no account. So great a scene of action as the whole kingdom of France was at that period, gave Raleigh an opportunity of acquiring experience, and reading characters, as well as improving himself in the knowledge of languages and manners, and his own History of the World contains some remarks which he then made of the conduct of some great generals there, of which he had himself been witness. After our author's return from France, he embarked in an expedition to the northern parts of America, with Sir Humphry Gilbert, his brother by the mother's side, that gentleman having obtained the Queen's Patent to plant and inhabit such parts of it as were unpossessed by any Prince with whom she was in alliance; but this attempt proved unsuccessful by means of the division which arose amongst the Voluntiers. The next year, 1580, upon the descent of the Spanish and Italian forces in Ireland under the Pope's banner, for the support of the Desmonds in their rebellion in Munster, he had a captain's commission under the lord Grey of Wilton, to whom at that time the famous Spenser was secretary; but the chief services which, captain Raleigh performed, were under Thomas earl of Ormond, governor of Munster. He surprized the Irish Kerns at Ramile, and having inclosed them, took every rebel upon the spot, who did not fall in the conflict. Among the prisoners there was one laden with Withies, who being asked, what he intended to have done with them? boldly answered, to have hung up the English Charles; upon which Raleigh ordered him to be immediately dispatched in that manner, and the rest of the robbers and murderers to be punished according to their deserts[3]. The earl of Ormond departing for England in the spring of the year 1581, his government of Munster was given to captain Raleigh; in which he behaved with great vigilance and honour, he fought the Arch rebel Barry at Clove, whom he charged with the utmost bravery, and after a hard struggle, put to flight. In the month of August, 1581, captain John Gouch being appointed Governour of Munster by the Lord Deputy, Raleigh attended him in several journies to settle and compose that country; but the chief place of their residence was Cork, and after Gouch had cut off Sir John Desmond, brother to the earl of Desmond, who was at the head of the rebellion, he left the government of that city to Raleigh[4], whose company being not long after disbanded upon the reduction of that earl, the slaughter of his brother, and the submission of Barry, he returned to England. The Lord Deputy Grey having resigned the sword in Ireland towards the end of August, 1582, the dispute between him and Raleigh, upon reasons which are variously assigned by different writers, was brought to a hearing before the council table in England, where the latter supported his cause with such abilities as procured him the good opinion both of her Majesty, and the Lords of the Council, and this, added to the patronage of the earl of Leicester, is supposed to be one considerable occasion of his preferment, though it did not immediately take place, nor could the hopes of it restrain him from a second expedition with his brother Sir Humphry Gilbert to Newfoundland, for which he built a ship of 200 tons called The Bark Raleigh, and furnished it compleatly for the voyage, in which he resolved to attend his brother as his Vice-Admiral. That fleet departed from Plymouth the 11th of June, 1583, but after it had been two or three days at sea, a contagious distemper having seized the whole crew of Raleigh's ship, obliged him to return to that port; however by this accident, he escaped the misfortune of that expedition; for after Sir Humphry had taken possession of Newfoundland, in the right of the crown of England, and assigned lands to every man of his company, and failed three hundred leagues in the voyage home with full hopes of the Queen's assistance to fit out a fleet next year, he unfortunately perished; for venturing rashly in a frigate of but ten tons, he was on the ninth of September that year at midnight swallowed up in an high sea, another vessel suffered the same fate, and even the rest returned not without great hazard and loss[5]: but this ill success could not divert Raleigh from pursuing a scheme of such importance to his country as those discoveries in North America. He drew up an account of the advantage of such a design, and the means of prosecuting it, which he laid before the Queen and Council, who were so well satisfied with the probability of success, that on the 25th of March, 1584, her Majesty granted him letters patent, in favour of his project, containing free liberty to discover such remote heathen and barbarous lands, as were not actually possessed by any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people. Immediately upon this grant, Raleigh chose two able and experienced captains, and furnished them with two vessels fitted out at his own expence, with such expedition that on the 27th of April following they set sail for the West of England, taking their course by the Canary Islands, where they arrived on the 10th of May, towards the West Indies; and that being in those days the best and most frequented rout to America, they passed by the Carribbe Islands in the beginning of June, and reached the Gulph of Florida on the 2d of July, sailing along the shore about one hundred and twenty miles before they could find a convenient harbour. At last they debarked in a very low land, which proved to be an island called Wohoken; and after taking formal possession of the country, they carried on a friendly correspondence with the native Indians, who supplied them with a great variety of fish and venison, and gave them furs, and deerskins in exchange for trifles. Thus encouraged by the natives, eight of the company in a boat, went up the river Occam twenty miles, and next day in the evening they came to an island called Roanah, which was but seven leagues from the place where their ships lay. Here they found the residence of the Indian chief, whose name was Grangamineo, whose house consisted of nine apartments built of Cedar, fortified round with sharp pieces of timber: His wife came out to them, and ordered the people to carry them from the boat on their backs, and shewed them many other civilities. They continued their intercourse with the natives for some time, still viewing the situation of the adjacent country, and after having obtained the best information they could of the number and strength of the Indian nations in that neighbourhood, and of their connexions, alliances, or contests with each other, they returned about the middle of September to England, and made such an advantageous report of the fertility of the soil, and healthiness of the climate, that the Queen favoured the design of settling a colony in that country, to which she was pleased to give the name of Virginia[6].
About two months after, Raleigh was chosen Knight of the Shire for his county of Devon, and made a considerable figure in parliament, where a bill passed in confirmation of his patent for the discovery of foreign countries. During the course of this sessions, he received the honour of knighthood from her Majesty, a distinction the more honourable to him, as the Queen was extreamly cautious in confering titles; and besides the patent for discoveries, she granted him, about the same time, a power to license the vending of wines throughout the kingdom, which was in all probability very lucrative to him; but it engaged him in a dispute with the university of Cambridge, which had opposed one Keymer, whom he had licensed to sell wine there, contrary to the privileges of that university.