Sir Walter Ralegh Part 10

Ess.e.x was a popular idol. Ralegh, till his fall, never was. A contemporary said that Ess.e.x's reverses endeared him, and Ralegh's successes seemed to deepen the public dislike. The populace deluded itself with the fancy, absolutely groundless, that Ess.e.x's ruin was due to Ralegh, and that Ralegh must have exulted at it. Malignant anecdotes were current of his demeanour at his rival's last moments. He was said to have s.n.a.t.c.hed at the pleasure of conveying to the Lieutenant of the Tower the instructions for the execution. He was described as, on February 25, standing in a window over against the scaffold, and puffing out tobacco smoke in defiance. After his own death, Sir Lewis Stukely alleged him to have said that the great boy died like a calf, and like a craven; to have vaunted to one who asked if in the Islands Voyage the Earl had not brought him to his mercy, that he trusted they were now quits. Against such gross tales Ralegh needs no defence. He could not have behaved like a boorish ruffian to an adversary in the death agony.

He could not have spoken unmannerly words of his dead Cadiz comrade. He had been present at the Earl's trial as Captain of the Guard. In spite of taunts, he had given his evidence with dignity and moderation. As Captain of the Guard he had escorted several of the insurgents, though not Ess.e.x himself, to prison. In his official capacity he carried the order for the execution. In the same character he was present in the Tower. At first he had stood near the scaffold, supposing that Ess.e.x might wish to speak to him. To avoid misconstruction by lookers-on he soon withdrew. He stationed himself in the distant Armoury, where he could see without being seen. Afterwards he was sorry, he said, for it; since he heard that the Earl had inquired for him, desiring to have been reconciled.

[Sidenote: _His Part in the Catastrophe._]

His aspect is reported to have been sad and gloomy, as he was rowed back to Durham House. With his nature, and his gifts of imagination, he could not but have been awed by the consummation he had witnessed of a tragic doom. Later he believed he had always lamented the fate of Ess.e.x as the beginning of a new peril to himself from those who before had needed his support against a powerful rival. He may already have had a presentiment. He could rightly declare that the death was not his work.

Ess.e.x was his own undoer. A time had been at which Ralegh would gladly have become his firm friend. His emphatic concurrence, recorded by Rowland Whyte, with Lady Ralegh's wish that there were 'love and concord amongst all' was not hypocritical. In all sincerity he had written twice in that spirit in the spring of 1600 to Lady Ess.e.x. He had found it of no use; and a period came when he rejoiced in an inveterate enemy's discomfiture. It is fanciful to affirm that he would have been pleased to a.s.sist in turning aside the final shock of ruin. His sentiments towards Ess.e.x at the end, unhappily, are too certain for the precise meaning of his enigmatical undated letter to Cecil, discovered among the Hatfield papers, to be of much consequence. Of its authenticity there is no real doubt, though Mr. Charles Kingsley, whose enthusiasm for Ralegh is delightful and unmixed, chooses to question it on the slender ground that it is signed by initials, and that the style is, to his taste, unlike Ralegh's. Its exact meaning is much more open to dispute. Here it is:--

[Sidenote: _Advice to Cecil._]

'I am not wise enough to give you advice; but if you take it for a good counsel to relent towards this tyrant, you will repent it when it shall be too late. His malice is fixed, and will not evaporate by any your mild courses. For he will ascribe the alteration to her Majesty's pusillanimity, and not to your good nature: knowing that you work but upon her humour, and not out of any love towards him. The less you make him, the less he shall be able to harm you and yours. And if her Majesty's favour fail him, he will again decline to a common person. For after revenges fear them not; for your own father, that was esteemed to be the contriver of Norfolk's ruin, yet his son followeth your father's son and loveth him. Humours of men succeed not, but grow by occasions and accidents of time and power. Somerset made no revenge on the Duke of Northumberland's heirs. Northumberland, that now is, thinks not of Hatton's issue. Kelloway lives that murdered the brother of Horsey; and Horsey let him go by all his lifetime. I could name you a thousand of those; and therefore after-fears are but prophecies, or rather conjectures, from causes remote. Look to the present, and you do wisely.

His son shall be the youngest Earl of England but one, and if his father be now kept down, Will Cecil shall be able to keep as many men at his heels as he, and more too. He may also match in a better house than his; and so that fear is not worth the fearing. But if the father continue, he will be able to break the branches, and pull up the tree, root and all. Lose not your advantage; if you do, I rede your destiny. Yours to the end, W.R. Let the Queen hold Bothwell while she hath him. He will ever be the canker of her estate and safety. Princes are lost by security; and preserved by prevention. I have seen the last of her good days, and all ours, after his liberty.' By Bothwell is meant Ess.e.x. The real Bothwell was a natural son of James V. of Scotland, who had plotted against the reigning king, and been pardoned, and had plotted again.

[Sidenote: _Difficulties of Construction._]

On the date of the letter depends whether it signify doing to death, or grinding into obscurity. It is endorsed in Cecil's hand, 'Sir Walter Ralegh,' and in a later hand, '1601.' That is hardly a possible date.

The civil, ecclesiastical, and legal year in England, by which a secretary at Hatfield is likely to have reckoned, closed on March 24.

Consequently '1601' had not begun when Ess.e.x was already dead. The only question is, when in the legal year 1600 the letter was written. If at the end, when judgment had been p.r.o.nounced, its object would be the accomplishment of the capital sentence. If it were written early in 1600 its more probable purpose would be to induce Cecil to urge the Queen to strip Ess.e.x of all his dignities and offices. Ralegh's apologists can adduce for the less bloodthirsty interpretation the pa.s.sage: 'If her Majesty's favour fail him, he will again decline to a common person.'

The words naturally refer to disgrace, not to death. It has been imagined that the plan was to incapacitate him by law for employment, and to hold him a State prisoner. The remark, 'His son shall be the youngest Earl of England but one,' remains equally puzzling on either construction. Advocates of that which treats the letter as a plea for imprisonment and disqualification for office have to show how he could have been kept a State prisoner for life for offences he had committed before the rising of February, and, moreover, how the imprisoned living father was to make way in his peerage for the son. On the other theory which presumes it to have been an argument for sending Ess.e.x to the scaffold, it is as unintelligible how the father's fate, with its necessary attainder of blood, could legally transmit his dignity.

The inherent inconsistencies of the doc.u.ment are scarcely more perplexing than the circ.u.mstances of its origin. It has been suggested that the idea of the letter was Cecil's, and that he plotted to deceive posterity by inducing Ralegh to hold the pen. In the crude shape, that is an incredible hypothesis. But Cecil was of a nature to discuss questions of policy with his confidants, and extract their views, while he revealed only half his own. Very possibly the letter may have arisen out of a conversation in which the Minister had canva.s.sed the question of acting with prudent magnanimity towards the fallen favourite. He may have requested Ralegh to repeat in writing objections urged orally by him to such a course for the exposition of the case on both its sides.

At all events, it would be convenient for Cecil to have the doc.u.ment if in future it should be doubted which of the confederates had been the more vindictive. Ralegh could easily be drawn to try his hand, between fancy and earnest, at an academic theme on the lines of fas.h.i.+onable Italian state-craft. If the paper be indeed nothing but an exercise in pleading, the author deserves to be applauded for the artistic a.s.sumption of an air of sincerity which chills the reader's blood.

CHAPTER XV.

THE ZENITH (1601-1603).

[Sidenote: _Lord Oxford._]

From Ess.e.x's execution to the death of Elizabeth, on March 24, 1603, is a period of two years wanting a month. It const.i.tutes another stage in Ralegh's career. No more fascinating Court favourite, no Leicester, Ess.e.x, or mere Hatton, stood now in his way. If even Elizabeth's vivacious temperament may have ceased to require attentions as from a lover, she never grew insensible to wit, grace, versatility, and valour like his. The jealousy he continued to arouse was a tribute to his power. To this time belongs the story, contained in Bacon's _Apophthegms_, of Lord Oxford's insolence. The malicious Earl had returned, the Mirror of Tuscanismo, from his seven years' self-inflicted exile at Florence. He had gone thither to spite his father-in-law, Burleigh, by deserting his wife, and squandering his estate. The Queen was playing on the virginals before him and another n.o.bleman, while Ralegh was on duty near at hand. The ledge in front happened to have been taken away, so that the jacks were seen. Oxford and his companion smiled and whispered. Elizabeth inquired the reason. They were amused, answered Oxford, to see that when jacks went up heads went down. The point of the sarcasm is presumed to have been the connexion of Ralegh's influence with the decapitation of Ess.e.x. That the reference was to Ralegh might have seemed rather dubious had not Bacon taken it for granted. The fact of the favour of the Queen is certain.

[Sidenote: _Sully and Biron._]

Courtiers wrote to one another how 'good his credit with the Queen had lately grown.' He had a multiplicity of Court duties thrown upon him.

His acquaintance with other lands and their languages brought him forward whenever intercourse had to be held with foreigners. As Sir John Harington said of him, he was 'especially versed in foreign matters, his skill therein being always estimable and praiseworthy.' When Prince Maurice was endeavouring to relieve Ostend, which the Archduke and Infanta were besieging, Ralegh and Cobham paid his camp a visit. They were stated by Cecil to have no charge, and to have 'stolen over, having obtained leave with importunity to see this one action.' The English envoy wrote to Cecil that the two gallants had been entertained with much honour and extraordinary respect, but had seen little. Sir Henry Neville, however, told Winwood their journey was not for curiosity only.

They 'carried some message, which did no harm.' In March, 1601, Ralegh, by the Queen's order, had been escorting a Spanish envoy, sent to negotiate a truce, round London. Later, during the Queen's summer progress to Dover, he, with Cobham and Sidney, received Sully. As Captain of the Guard he playfully took Sully into custody, and conducted him to the Queen. The great Minister had been privately sent over by King Henry, who was at Calais. On September 5, the Duc de Biron arrived, to announce to Elizabeth the marriage of Mary de Medici to Henry.

Several n.o.blemen had been directed by the Council to provide for the Marshal's solemn reception in London. By some accident they were absent.

Ralegh, who had not been especially commissioned, happened to be in town. Apparently Sir Arthur Savage and Sir Arthur Gorges, who spoke French fluently, came to his help. Among them they amused the Frenchmen till horses were ready to convey them to Hamps.h.i.+re. The Queen was at Basing House. Ralegh wrote to Cecil: 'We have carried them to Westminster to see the monuments; and this Monday we entertained them at the Bear Garden, which they had great pleasure to see. I sent to and fro, and have laboured like a mule.' On the Wednesday he rode with the Marshal and his numerous company to the Vyne. The fair and large house of Lord Sandys has formed the subject of an interesting volume by its present owner, Mr. Chaloner Chute. It had been furnished from the royal apartments at the Tower, Hampton Court, and neighbouring country houses, for the accommodation of the foreign visitors. The Hamps.h.i.+re gentry lent seven score beds. Not when Ralegh had seen all housed were his cares over. He told Cobham, 'The French wear all black, and no kind of bravery at all.' His wardrobe, plentiful as a.s.suredly it was, had not been equipped in unison with such demureness. So, 'this Sat.u.r.day night, late,' he wrote on September 12 to Cobham from Basing, 'I am now going to London to provide me a plain taffeta suit, and a plain black saddle.'

Elizabeth rewarded his exertions in rendering the stay of the Frenchmen agreeable by knighting his brother, Carew Ralegh, on her departure from Basing House. Mr. Benjamin Tichborne received the same honour.

[Sidenote: _The Mermaid._]

Ralegh was a patron of literature, and had to devote evenings to the wits. To him has been ascribed the inst.i.tution, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, of the Mermaid Tavern meetings in Bread Street, Shakespeare's, Jonson's, Beaumont's, Fletcher's, Selden's, Cotton's, Camden's, and Donne's club. It is very likely; so likely that the intrinsic probability of the fact might be a motive for a fiction.

Whether as founder or guest it is more than likely he would take occasional part in the wit combats of which Beaumont has sung. We may lament that there was no Boswell, or even a Drummond, to report an encounter between Ralegh and Shakespeare. Ralegh abhorred drunkenness.

'It were better,' he has said, 'for a man to be subject to any vice than to drunkenness.' But teetotalism had not been invented in the days of Elizabeth. Not wholly unconnected with the social evenings at the Mermaid may have been the frequent trouble he experienced from bodily ailments. On September 19, 1601, he p.r.o.nounced himself too grievously ill to be able to travel to Bath for his annual cure. His ailments did not prevent him from warning Cecil of a powerful Spanish fleet held ready, with 6000 or 7000 soldiers, to descend either upon Ireland or the Low Countries. Fresh intelligence, which on September 26 he despatched to Cecil for transmission to the Lord Admiral, led him to believe the expedition was designed for Cork or Limerick. He inferred from the presence of many women on board that a 'Plantation' was meant. It was no false alarm. He announced to Cecil, on October 13, 1601, the landing of a strong body of Spaniards, and their intrenchment, as he had prognosticated, outside the town of Kinsale. His readiness to accept responsibility was met in the same spirit, particularly when Ireland was concerned. Later, Cecil admitted that Ralegh, though no Privy Councillor, was often invited to confer with the Council. Only three months before Elizabeth was seized with her mortal sickness, in 1602, he, with Cecil, was consulted by her on the treatment of Cormac McCarthy, Lord of Muskerry. Cecil was for leniency. Ralegh advised that no mercy should be shown, Cormac McCarthy's country being worth the Queen's keeping. Elizabeth accepted his frankly selfish advice.

[Sidenote: _In Parliament._]

[Sidenote: _Monopolies._]

He sat as senior member for the County of Cornwall in the Parliament which met on October 27, 1601. He had been previously a Cornish representative, as member for Mich.e.l.l, in the House which was elected in 1593. In November, 1601, he obtained the rejection of a Bill to compel the sowing of hemp for cables and cordage. 'I do not like,' he said, in a spirit much in advance of his age, 'this constraining of men to manure or use their ground at our wills; but rather let every man use his ground to that which it is most fit for, and therein use his own discretion.' The Tillage Act he held up for a warning. It ordered every man to plough a third of his land, often to great loss. The land, 'if unploughed, would have been good pasture for beasts.' Later in the Session he supported a motion for the repeal of that Statute. He pleaded for a subsidy. The Queen wanted it urgently, having in vain raised money by the sale of her own jewels, by loans, and by savings out of her purse and apparel. He argued for its equal payment by every cla.s.s. The burden he acknowledged was not the same to all, as Bacon had contended, _dulcis tractus pari jugo_. 'Call you this _par jugum_,' cried Ralegh, 'when a poor man pays as much as a rich, and peradventure his estate is no better than it is set at, while our estates are 3 or 4 in the Queen's books, and it is not the hundredth part of our wealth?' But he knew all must be taxed, in order that the necessary sums might be levied. In his _Prerogative of Parliaments_ he mentions that he once moved an exemption 'by commandment of Queen Elizabeth, who desired much to spare the common people.' On calculation, it was found that the exemption reduced the subsidy to a trifle. He delivered a 'sharp speech' in his own defence, in a debate against monopolies. The Crown in May, 1599, had arrogated a right of preemption of tin in the Duchy of Cornwall, and had committed the management of the business to the Warden of the Stannaries.

Deliverance of the miners from the oppression of the merchants was alleged as the motive. The real object was popularly believed to be the increase of Ralegh's emoluments. In Parliament he took the other ground.

Previously, whether tin were 17s. or 50s. a hundred, the workman, he argued, had only 'two s.h.i.+llings a week, finding himself.' Since the grant of his patent, every miner, be tin at what price soever, had 4s. a week truly paid. Yet, if other patents were cancelled, he would, he said, freely consent to the abrogation of his. A great and uncommon silence is reported to have followed this speech. Other patentees in the House were probably not inclined to be as self-denying. He supported a proposal to prohibit the exportation of ordnance, notwithstanding the rise, under the existing law, of the duty to 3000 a year. He said: 'I am sure heretofore one s.h.i.+p of her Majesty's was able to beat ten Spaniards; but now, by reason of our own ordnance, we are hardly matched one to one.' He supported the continuance of the tax for the improvement of Dover harbour. The amount was 1000 marks a year. Mr. Swale objected that the port was never the better. Ralegh thought it one of the best and most necessary harbours in England. The debate might have been held in any of the last dozen Sessions, with as much practical effect. He obtained the rejection, by 106 to 105, of a Bill against recusants. The measure was designed to enforce a more regular attendance in Church on Sundays. Its loss vexed Cecil, who gibed at very flexible consciences.

[Sidenote: _Governors.h.i.+p of Jersey._]

Whatever the work in hand, legislation, public administration, or private maritime enterprise, he laboured at it as zealously as if it were his sole business. All his desire was for more and more work. He was not always disappointed in that pursuit. Though his frequent hopes of appointment to the Vice-Chamberlains.h.i.+p or a seat at the Privy Council were constantly foiled, he had been consoled in 1600 with the Governors.h.i.+p of Jersey. On Sir Anthony Paulett's death, the post was conferred upon him, with the lords.h.i.+p of St. Germain. Out of the emoluments he had to pay a rent of 300 to the Crown for the benefit of Lord Henry Seymour. Seymour had been a rival candidate for the Governors.h.i.+p. Ralegh's appointment was one of the irritations of Ess.e.x, who befriended another suitor. He speedily visited the island. The pa.s.sage from Weymouth took him two days and nights at sea. The islanders 'royally entertained him with joy,' wrote Lady Ralegh in October to Cecil. He had told her, she said, that he never saw a pleasanter island; but he protested unfeignedly his post was not in value the very third part that was reported, or that indeed he believed. Without delay he undertook the completion of the fort Isabella Bellissima, 'for the name sake,' he wrote from the island to Cecil on October 15, 1600. He would not think of 'any penny receipt till that piece of work were past the recovery of any enemies.' He deprecated the demolition of Mont Orgueil, 'a stately fort of great capacity,' which had cost more than 20,000 marks. He had left, he said, some men in it at his own charge. He criticised the late Governor's 'immeasurable reckoning' of her Majesty's moneys. In July, 1602, he went again over, and spent several weeks. He saw that the castles were defensible enough, and the country reasonably well provided. The tradition is that he promoted a profitable trade between Jersey and Newfoundland. With Newfoundland he had a near family connexion through Humphrey Gilbert. He inst.i.tuted a register of Jersey lands, and abolished compulsory service of the inhabitants of the district in the Mont Orgueil garrison. During his visits he sat as judge in the island Court. Faculties and energy with him were elastic. He always had leisure for new labours.

[Sidenote: _Maritime Enterprises._]

Above all, his schemes of colonization were never intermitted. Down to 1603 he went on sending expeditions to Virginia. He was as solicitous for Guiana. In October, 1596, he had despatched from Limehouse his pinnace, the Watt, under Captain Leonard Berry. Mr. Thomas Masham's account of the voyage is in Hakluyt. Berry further explored the country.

He collected fresh evidence of its fertility, salubrity, and riches, and of the goodwill of the natives towards Englishmen. He returned in June, 1597. His departure from Guiana was accelerated by the importunities of his Indian friends for an alliance with them against a hostile tribe. He feared such a league might prove embarra.s.sing on Ralegh's next visit.

Before the Queen's death Ralegh equipped yet another expedition, under Captain Samuel Mace, to look after both his potential dominions of Virginia and Guiana. It effected nothing; but the failure was powerless to impair Ralegh's faith in the value and feasibility of his discoveries.

[Sidenote: _Irish Pipe Staves._]

[Sidenote: _Sale of Lismore._]

In addition to his many public or semi-public toils, he was busy with a host of private affairs. Until a short time before the Queen's death he owned an extensive Irish as well as an English estate. Property was always for him an incentive to labour. While he had his Irish property he developed it in every possible way. Lismore Castle, which he rented from the See and Chapter of Lismore, he rebuilt. In 1589 he had written to George Carew: 'I pray, if my builders want, supply them.' His factory employed a couple of hundred men in the fabrication of hogsheads. By his influence with the Privy Council he often obtained, in favour of s.h.i.+ps which he freighted, a waiver of the restraint of 'the transportation of pipe staves out of the realm of Ireland into the Islands,' that is, the Canaries, and to Seville. The thinnings, he said, of his vast woods sufficed for the supply of materials. He denied that he denuded the land of timber. Against that wasteful and impoveris.h.i.+ng practice he constantly remonstrated. There had not been taken, he stated to the Lords of the Council, the hundredth tree. Sir John Pope Hennessy holds a different view, and a.s.serts that no man cut down more timber, to the irreparable hurt of the land. His principle of moderation may, it is possible, have been observed by himself, and not by his agents. Latterly he founded a company to work the property. With his chief partners, Bathurst, and a foreign merchant, Veronio Martens, he complained in 1601 to the English Council that the Undertakers were being robbed by the managing director, Henry Pine or Pyne. A sum of 5000 had, it was affirmed, been expended. Not half had been returned in profits, though Ralegh had received no payment for his wood. The Privy Council listened to the prayer of 'our loving friend, Sir Walter Ralegh,' and instructed Carew, the President of Munster, to forbid Pine to export more pipe staves. Ralegh had other disputes with Pine. At one time he even questioned if Pine had not conspired with his Sherborne bailiff to palm off a forged lease for a long term of the lands of Mogelly. He was involved also in endless disputes with other farm tenants, as an absentee landlord might have expected to be. Ultimately he resolved, by the advice of Carew and of Cecil, to free himself from the burden. In December, 1602, he sold his interest in all, except the old castle of Inchiquin Ralegh. Of that, Katherine, dowager Countess of Desmond, fabled to have been born in 1464, was, and remained till 1604, tenant for life. Boyle, since distinguished as the Great Earl of Cork, bought the rest, lands, castles, and fisheries, with Ralegh's s.h.i.+p Pilgrim thrown in as a make-weight. The amount paid, according to Boyle's a.s.sertion, fifteen years later, in reply to Lady Ralegh, and thirty years later, in reply to Carew Ralegh, was a full price for a property at the time, it is admitted, woefully dilapidated. Boyle declared that it was not worth nearly the amount he paid. He complained of having been forced to an expenditure, for which the vendor was liable, of 3700 to clear the t.i.tle. So shrewd a man of business would hardly have thus defrauded himself. He is sure to have had an excellent bargain. But it does not follow that the arrangement was unfair to a speculative absentee like Ralegh. In his hands the land was notoriously unprofitable. Lady Ralegh's estimate of it as worth 2000 a year at the time cannot be accepted.

[Sidenote: _Sherborne Castle._]

Ralegh never parted with a scheme before he had another ready to occupy him. Sherborne more than replaced Lismore as an object of affection, and as a subject of care and anxiety also. He had not spared trouble and outlay on it since the Queen in the height of his favour first gave him a foothold as a lessee. We have seen how, to develop his term into the fee, he created and transplanted Bishops. His a.s.siduity was rewarded in 1598 by Bishop Cotton's accommodating acceptance of a surrender of the lease, and grant of the fee to the Crown, subject to the old rent of 260. From the Crown the fee was conveyed to him. The transfer comprised the lords.h.i.+p of the Hundred of Yetminster, with the manor of Sherborne, five other manors in Dorset and Somerset, and the Castle, lodge, and parks of Sherborne and Castleton. Ralegh added to the estate by buying out leases with his own money, and by the purchase of several adjacent properties. Then he set himself seriously to the perfecting of the whole. He did not stint his expenditure. Sir John Harington says that with less money than he bestowed in building, drawing the river into his garden, and buying out leases, he might, without offence to Church or State, have compa.s.sed a much better purchase. He had begun by trying to improve the existing castle. In 1594 he altered his plan, and designed a new house at some distance. Only the centre of the present Sherborne Castle, a four-storied edifice with hexagonal towers at the ends, was erected by him. Aubrey described it as a delicate lodge of brick, not big, but very convenient for the bigness, a place to retire to from the Court in summer time, for contemplation. Digby, when he became its owner, added four wings with a tower to each. Pope visited Lord Bristol there, and has sketched the place in one of his graceful letters to Miss Blount. He dwells particularly on the lofty woods clothing the amphitheatre of hills, the irregular lovely gardens, the ma.s.ses of honeysuckle, the ruins of the old fortress, the sequestered bowling-green, and the grove Ralegh planted, with the stone seat from which he overlooked the town and minster, and dreamt and smoked. The spirit of Ralegh still dominates Sherborne, after all the efforts of the first Lord Bristol to lay it by swelling the lodge into a sumptuous castle, and of the sixth by turning Capability Brown loose into his pleasure grounds.

[Sidenote: _Strife with Meere._]

He loved Sherborne, and his wife was perhaps still more attached to it.

In October, 1601, he wrote: 'My wife says that every day this place amends, and London to her grows worse and worse.' He had his worries there, as was his self-imposed fate wherever he was. He was premature in reposing confidence. He has written that he had lost more than he was worth by trusting dependents with his purse and delaying to take their account. He was almost excessively resentful of frauds on his trustfulness when he detected them. He was masterful in small things, as in great. While in the Tower in August, 1592, he had appointed his 'man, John Meere,' Bailiff of the manor of Sherborne, with extensive powers of management. He had invested him with copyhold lands. Several years later, in 1596, Adrian Gilbert took up his regular abode at Sherborne, and superintended his brother's improvements, under the t.i.tle of Constable of Sherborne Castle. Meere quarrelled with him about the rival prerogatives of Constable and Bailiff to license the killing of animals for meat in Lent. Ralegh nominated another Bailiff, but Meere refused to retire. The family had interest with one of the Howards, Viscount Bindon, of whose 'extortions' and 'poisoning of his wife' Ralegh takes merit to himself for not having spoken. Mrs. Meere, too, was a kinswoman of Lady Ess.e.x. Long strife had prejudiced Ralegh so bitterly against both Meere and Ess.e.x that he believed either capable of any monstrosity.

He did the Earl's memory the injustice of fancying that he secretly had meant to use the Bailiff for a malicious forgery; 'for,' said Ralegh, 'he writes my hand so perfectly as I cannot any way discern the difference.' Colour is given to the charge against him of the forgery of an Irish lease, by the fact that Digby afterwards prosecuted him for the forgery of Ralegh's signature to a conveyance of English lands to Captain Caufeilde. Meere in August, 1601, arrested the opposition Bailiff. For this Ralegh put him in the stocks in Sherborne market-place, and had him bound over to good behaviour by the county justices. Thereupon Meere served upon Ralegh and others twenty-six subpoenas. Next year the conflict went on raging. Meere succeeded at the a.s.sizes in sustaining his right to the bailiwick. As Ralegh kept him out nevertheless, he pet.i.tioned the Star Chamber. Ralegh on his part complained loudly that, through Lord Bindon's influence, Meere, at once 'a notorious cowardly brute, and of a strong villainous spirit,' had been allowed to sue him, though out of the land in Jersey.

[Sidenote: _Sir Amias Preston's Challenge._]

Yet these vexations only made him cling the more fondly to his Sherborne home. He hoped to dwell happily and splendidly there himself, to be buried in its minster, and to leave it to a long line of descendants.

While he had only a ninety-nine years' lease, he had conveyed his term to trustees for his son Walter. He had done this by two conveyances.

These he revoked in 1598. His motives, he explained later, were several: 'I found my fortune at Court towards the end of her Majesty's reign to be at a stand, and that I daily expected dangerous employments against her Majesty's enemies, and had not in the former grants made any provision for my wife.' He re-settled the property on his son, reserving 200 a year to Lady Ralegh for her life. After he had acquired the fee, he conveyed it by deed at Midsummer, 1602, to himself for life, with successive remainders to his son Walter, to any future sons, and to his brother Carew Ralegh. The deed had been drawn by Doddridge, afterwards a judge, many months before it was sealed. The reason of the date chosen for its formal execution was stated by himself at his trial to have been a challenge from Sir Amias Preston in the summer of 1602. Preston was the captain who, being too late to join the Guiana expedition, went off with Sommers on an independent quest. He had signalized himself at Cadiz, where Ess.e.x knighted him. The challenge may have arisen out of the Ess.e.x feud, for Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Ess.e.x's vehement partisan, is known to have been concerned in it. No duel was fought. Fuller, who errs in describing Ralegh as a Privy Councillor, says in his _Worthies_: 'Sir Walter Ralegh declined the challenge without any abatement to his valour; for having a fair and fixed estate, with wife and children, being a Privy Councillor, and Lord Warden of the Stannaries, he looked upon it as an uneven lay to stake himself against Sir Amias, a private and single person, though of good birth and courage, yet of no considerable estate.' Fuller's account is not to be rejected because the ground a.s.signed may not seem very heroic. Duelling was governed by prosaic laws. n.o.body was expected to risk his life on unequal terms.

There had to be a parity of ranks; and the same principle might well apply to fortunes. Ralegh himself had no such fondness for the fas.h.i.+onable mode of adjusting quarrels as to waive any orthodox right of refusal. In his History he denounces 'the audacious, common, and brave, yet outrageous vanity of duellists.' Men who die in single combat he styles 'martyrs of the Devil.' He derides the victor's honours, 'where the hangman gives the garland,' and the folly of the duellist's principle, that rudeness 'ought to be civilized with death.' In the essay ent.i.tled _Instructions to his Son_, he declares a challenge justifiable only if the offence proceed from another; it is not, he says, 'if the offence proceed from thyself, for if thou overcome, thou art under the cruelty of the law; if thou art overcome, thou art dead or dishonoured.'

[Sidenote: _Its consequences._]

At any rate, whatever the origin or issue of the dispute, he thought he was going to fight. In consequence, as he stated subsequently, he resolved to leave his estate settled. An incident of his preparations, which seemed trivial at the time, a.s.sumed preposterous gravity later on.

He had spread out his loose papers, and among them a book by one Snagge, which he had borrowed from the dead Lord Burleigh's library. In it the t.i.tle of the King of Scots to the succession was contested. Cobham, who may well have been Ralegh's intended second, happened to see and carry off the volume. It was found at a critical moment in his possession, and was traced to Ralegh. That was an affair of the future. For the present Ralegh probably a.s.sociated Sir Amias Preston's challenge chiefly with the definite disposition of his property in a manner consonant with the creation of an affluent and permanent county family.