Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (24 page)

A crisis in Ireland prompted the final act to this developing tragedy. Events there were going from bad to worse, as Tyrone consolidated his powerbase in Ulster, and as the Dublin administration and the inadequate English garrison first struggled and then entirely failed to cope with the growing unrest. After the defeat of loyalist forces in August 1588 at the Yellow Ford over the Blackwater River in Ulster - a classic exploitation of military surprise to divide and slaughter the major part of a straggling English army - everyone in London realized that Tyrone's threat had to be addressed without delay. The whole island was by now convulsed in savage war. Ralegh's settlements in Munster were simply swept away. Fortunately for him, he had leased the lands to Thomas Southwell of Brancaster, and it was poor Southwell who had to confront the worst financial effects of this turmoil. Of course, such a disaster only confirmed to Ralegh that the lands had limited value.
50

What, though, could be done to restore the situation? In 1598 Ralegh's name was considered in connection with the command of an expeditionary force then being raised to subdue Tyrone. Some even spoke of him as a possible Lord Deputy.
51
 According to Rowland Whyte, Ralegh 'little liked' the idea - which is not surprising given his experiences as an investor in Ireland and the records of recent Deputies - but such rumours, like the ones that put Ralegh in the running for the vacant Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster that summer, indicate his return to the heart of the Court, as a potential participant in bounty.
52
 Ralegh was of course right to hesitate. Courtiers down the years had found that Ireland was best avoided, even in peaceful times. Its governor resided far from the Queen, and was dependent on the English Council for soldiers and supplies, beholden to allies in London, and subject to the inevitable backbiting and gossip that go with positions of authority. Others, however, were less reluctant. Determined to make amends for his actions, caught up by his own guarantees of success, and excited by the gamble, Essex led an army of some 20,000 men against the Irish insurgents in the summer of 1599. He was saluted on his departure by the London mob and by an already well-known playwright, William Shakespeare, as a royal champion embarking on his own version of the triumphant military ventures of King Henry V.

What followed was no Agincourt, no finely-planned campaign of conquest and subjugation. Essex dithered, and failed to seek out his enemy. He spent months parading across southern Ireland, at one point agreeing to a private parlay with Tyrone where the discussions touched, not on submission to Elizabeth's rule, but rather on the ambitions of the two men and the future governance of England as well as Ireland. Alarmed at reports that his enemies were conspiring against him, the Earl was again flirting with treason. A precipitate return to England that autumn led only to house arrest and humiliation. Increasingly paranoid, Essex numbered Ralegh and Cobham among his foes. Listening to his equally frantic supporters, he believed on no particularly good evidence that Ralegh had poisoned the Queen's mind against him at Court.
53
 But Ralegh and Cobham were only confirming the prevailing opinion of his fitness for command. With Elizabeth's goodwill irrevocably lost, it really did not matter anymore what Essex believed, or said, though it is a measure of the man's magnetism that, even in disgrace, he retained the loyalty of so many young nobles and gentlemen, the Earls of Southampton and Rutland among them. If he had in effect purchased earlier loyalty through the indiscriminate bestowal of knighthoods on well-born followers, there was still no obligation on prudent men to follow a patron into open treason. But that is just what many of them eventually did.

The affection of such followers was one thing, but the loss of Elizabeth's regard was quite another. From this point on she was determined to humble her former favourite. 'An unruly horse', the Queen said, 'must be abated of his provender, that he may be the better brought to mannaging.'
54
 Essex was condemned by the Privy Council in 1599, and by commissioners at York House in June 1600. Here was public humiliation, and no one suffered humiliation less patiently than Essex. Ralegh, himself accused by the distracted earl of treason, and, fantastically, of plotting to divert the succession to the Infanta of Spain, was worried enough to spell out his irritation. During the spring of 1600 he warned Cecil to make sure that the stricken favourite did not recover lost ground: 'The less yow make hyme the less he shal be able to harme yow and yours...for after revenges feare them not...His soonn shal be the youngest earle of Ingland butt on[e]...butt if the father continew he wil be able to break the branches and pull up the tree, root and all. Lose not your advantage: if yow do I rede your destiney'. He likened Essex to the Earl of Bothwell, a constant thorn in the side of James VI of Scotland, and it is interesting to see James VI, Essex's longstanding patron, in the minds of both men at this time.
55

That such a letter survives among Cecil's papers testifies to the anger Essex's insinuations had aroused. It testifies as well to Ralegh's political naiveté. This was not the first or the last occasion on which Ralegh set out his realpolitik' approach on paper. In October 1598 he had written robustly to Cecil, apparently suggesting that there was no shame or dishonour in attempting to assassinate Tyrone.
56
 Were these the flaws that Elizabeth noted, and which persuaded her against bringing Ralegh into the Privy Council, despite his repeated hints and requests? That reluctance, according to one contemporary, also dissuaded her from naming Ralegh on the commission to discuss peace with Spain in the Netherlands:'her Majesty, as yt is thought, begins to perceve that if he were one, he wold stand to be made a cownsailor er he went, which she hath no fancy unto.
57
 Of course, in taking her decision Elizabeth may also have reckoned that the victor at Cadiz and Fayal was not an obvious choice for a peace mission. Whatever the reason, she never changed her mind.

Of course Ralegh still had his uses. He retained respect as a specialist on Irish affairs; the particular diligence that he had shown in furthering colonization before the disaster of 1598 - easier perhaps for a man estranged from Court - had been noted and applauded, and he was always in contention for the more active roles. During the great invasion scare of August 1599, when sightings of a Dutch fleet returning from the Canaries and the usual summer speculation over the enemy's intentions once again prompted rumours that a Spanish fleet was descending on the unprotected coasts of England, Ralegh was named vice-admiral of a hastily-assembled royal fleet.
58
 At that point, his clients saw an opportunity: Sir Arthur Throckmorton, writing from his country seat at Paulerspury, sought in the absence of his 'surest solicitor' to have charge of the fifty lances drawn out of Northamptonshire, trusting that his hard work in raising and equipping the county contingent would not be wasted. Loyally inveighing against the threat of church popery, Throckmorton also referred back to his service against Spain at Cadiz.
59

In this competition for second-rank appointments Ralegh enjoyed some more lasting success. During August 1600, the Queen appointed him Governor of Jersey a post Ralegh had openly coveted ever since rumours of the mortal illness suffered by the previous Governor, SirAnthony Paulet, had first surfaced, early in the year.
60
 'Yt shuld seeme', wrote the unsympathetic Rowland Whyte, that Ralegh 'wil be content to make her Majestys profitt there, and to raise a fort upon his own charges.' Acknowledging his master Sir Robert Sidney's hostility to both Cobham and to Ralegh - Sidney and Cobham were local rivals in Kent - Whyte felt compelled to point out the advantages that would accrue through reconciliation. Cobham, who had recently married Frances Howard, the dowager duchess of Kildare and daughter of the Earl of Nottingham, was 'now allied where you receive much kindness', while Ralegh, for his part, seemed to have grown 'very wise and his frends powers great in Court'.
61

An appointment attributed by Whyte to favour and patronage was also founded on logic and pragmatism. Ralegh knew something of France from his early life as a soldier, and may still have spoken passable French. The Channel Islands had a military significance, for they were regarded as a possible base for any new Spanish Armada. Moreover, the appointment of Ralegh provided a dignified means to break an evolving family fiefdom; three successive Paulets had held the Governorship of Jersey over the past fifty years.
62
 Ralegh was delighted to take the post. It gave him status, and compensated somewhat for disappointments elsewhere. Wasting no time, he set out to visit his new command, first setting foot on the island in September 1600. He found the place pleasant enough although, according to the letters he wrote to Bess, it was not worth anything like the figure reported.
63
 Diplomatically, the new Governor appointed Sir Anthony Paulet's son George as his lieutenant, while focusing, during this and a subsequent visit in the summer of 1602, on making improvements to the fortifications.

Ralegh's finances were beginning to look more healthy as well. In 1600 his nephew Sir John Gilbert, eldest son of Sir Humphrey, and a prominent privateer in the last years of Elizabeth's reign, captured a 'Venetian' ship, carrying a valuable cargo of sugar. John Chamberlain, in his letter to Carleton of 29 February 1600, noted that the prize was marked down 'to Sir Wal: Raleighs use', apparently because Ralegh owned or had a substantial share in Gilbert's ship. The value of the sugar was nearly 010,000.
64
 Clearly here was one privateering investment that had paid dividends, even though the captured ship was in fact Dutch, and even though the Dutch authorities complained bitterly, the case attracting the attention of the Privy Council and eventually going to the Commissioners for Causes of Depredation. Not surprisingly, Ralegh was free with his advice to Gilbert on how best to administer his prize.
65
 When the industrious Gilbert repeated the feat in the autumn of 1601, capturing a Brazilian vessel with a profitable cargo of luxury goods, Ralegh was equally liberal with requests, made on behalf of Bess as well as himself, for porcelain, furnishings and 'silk stockinges'.
66
 Stockings and chinaware were the priorities of the moment. For the middle-aged couple in Sherborne, a consumer-driven life of wealth and comfort seemed at last guaranteed.

The accepted model of conduct for English courtiers in the latter part of the sixteenth century was the Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione. Published in Italian in 1528, it was translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby in 1566. It was a model in which poetry flourished. The qualities admired by Castiglione were, above all, mediocrità, meaning 'balance', and sprezzatura, the counterfeiting of graceful ease. The courtier must be flexible, balancing seriousness with wit, and his objective should always be to please the prince.
1
 Steven May has counted thirty-two poets writing at the royal Court under Elizabeth, nearly all of them men, and some of them surprising, like William Cecil, Lord Burghley, not usually seen as a poetic figure.
2
 In The Arte of English Poesie (1589), George Puttenham claimed that following a dearth of poets in the early part of Elizabeth's reign there had 'sprung up an other crew of Courtly makers [poets] Noble men and Gentlemen of her Majesties owne servauntes, who have written excellently well', naming the Earl of Oxford, Lord Buckhurst, Lord Paget, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Fulke Greville, Sir Edward Dyer and Sir Walter Ralegh among their number. 'For ditty and amourous Ode I finde Sir Walter Rawleyghs vayne most loftie, insolent, and passionate.'
3
 At the English Court poems were written to praise the Queen, to express love and devotion, especially towards women, to provide memorials to fellow-courtiers, to accompany the New Year exchanges of gifts and to commemorate special occasions, in particular courtly tournaments.
4

Ralegh's poems present special difficulties for his editors, critics and biographers.
5
 He was reluctant to have his poems known beyond the Court and only four were printed in his lifetime.
6
 This was frustrating both for his contemporaries and for later editors; but it was not unusual. Puttenham complained that 'I know very many notable gentlemen in the court that have written commendably, and suppressed it agayn, or els suffred it to be publisht without their owne names to it, as if it were a discredit for a gentleman, to seeme learned and to shew himself amorous of any good art'.
7
 Most courtier poems were circulated in manuscript and usually survive in collections gathered together by others. Because Ralegh was highly regarded as a poet, and because later editors wanted to increase the size of his output to match his stature as a national hero, his name was often attached to poems without warrant. Many of the attributions made on his behalf are doubtful and some are simply false. His most recent and thorough editor, Michael Rudick, has claimed, perhaps too severely, that only thirteen attributions can be confidently upheld, with a further eight possible. In addition Ralegh made some seventy brief verse translations for The History of the World, mostly from the Latin, whose authorship has not been disputed. Five poems, the so-called 'Cynthia poems', are in Hatfield House and are written in Ralegh's own hand.'
8
 In only a few other cases do we know for certain the authorship of individual poems, the date of their composition or the reliability of variant texts. Nor can we be certain, except in a few cases, of Ralegh's circumstances when they were written. Some attempts have been made by commentators to arrange the poems chronologically, attaching them to particular events in his life.
9
 These cannot be trusted.