CHAPTER IV.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
Walter Raleigh was born in the year 1552 in Devonshire, England, and received a good education, completed by a residence of two years at the University of Oxford. At the age of seventeen, he joined a volunteer corps of English to serve in France in aid of the Protestant cause. Afterwards he served five years in the Netherlands. In 1576, he accompanied his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on an expedition to colonize some part of North America; which expedition was unsuccessful. We next find him commanding a company of the royal troops in Ireland during the rebellion raised by the Earl of Desmond. In consequence of some serious differences which arose between him and his superior officer, he found it necessary to repair to court to justify himself. It was at this time that an incident occurred which recommended him to the notice of Queen Elizabeth, and was the foundation of his fortunes. Raleigh stood in the crowd one day where the queen passed on foot; and when she came to a spot of muddy ground, and hesitated for a moment where to step, he sprang forward, and, throwing from his shoulders his handsome cloak ("his clothes being then," says a quaint old writer, "a considerable part of his estate"), he spread it over the mud, so that the queen passed over dry-shod, doubtless giving an approving look to the handsome and quick-witted young officer. There is another story which is not less probable, because it is not less in character with both the parties. Finding some hopes of the queen's favor glancing on him, he wrote, on a window where it was likely to meet her eye,—
"Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall."
And her majesty, espying it, wrote underneath,—
"If thy heart fail thee, wherefore climb at all?"
His progress in the queen's favor was enhanced by his demeanor when the matter in dispute between him and his superior officer was brought before the privy council, and each party was called upon to plead his own cause. "What advantage he had in the case in controversy," says a contemporary writer, "I know not; but he had much the better in the manner of telling his tale." The result was, that he became a man of "no slight mark;" "he had gotten the queen's ear in a trice;" "she took him for a kind of oracle," and "loved to hear his reasons to her demands," or, in more modern phrase, "his replies to her questions."
The reign of Queen Elizabeth has been called the heroic age of England. And, let us remember, the England of that day is ours as much as theirs who still bear the name of Englishmen. The men whose gallant deeds we now record were our ancestors, and their glory is our inheritance.
The Reformation in religion had awakened all the energies of the human mind. It had roused against England formidable enemies, among which Spain was the most powerful and the most intensely hostile. She fitted out the famous Armada to invade England; and England, on her part, sent various expeditions to annoy the Spaniards in their lately acquired possessions in South America. These expeditions were generally got up by private adventurers; the queen and her great nobles often taking a share in them. When there was nominal peace with Spain, such enterprises were professedly for discovery and colonization, though the adventurers could not always keep their hands off a rich prize of Spanish property that fell in their way; but, for the last fifteen years of Elizabeth's reign, there was open war between the two powers: and then these expeditions had for their first object the annoyance of Spain, and discovery and colonization for their second.