Next year, soon after Spenser had returned to Ireland, Raleigh's engagement to Elizabeth Throgmorton brought Raleigh's Marriage and trouble at Court. on him the anger of the Queen. Her father, Sir Nicholas, had served the State under Henry VIII., and had been employed by Queen Elizabeth as an ambassador in France. He died, aged fifty-seven, in February, 1571, full twenty years before Raleigh's attachment to his daughter, who had become a maid of honour to the Queen. She was a faithful wife to Raleigh, who said to her, in the last days of his adversity, "I chose you and I loved you in my happiest times." They were the times clouded, in 1592, by anger of Elizabeth. She sent Raleigh to the Tower, and he was exiled from the Court during the next four years. It is usually assumed that Spenser had Raleigh in mind when he represented the wrath of Belphoebe against Timias for his regard to Amoret; and among the many references to the life of his own day chased on the surface of the poet's allegory, associations of Sir Walter Raleigh with Prince Arthur's squire may be rightly suggested. Raleigh's ment. Raleigh was detained by the Queen, in 1592, from an expedition to which he had been a chief contributor, for the intercepting of the treasure brought to Spain by the carracks of Seville, and for attack upon the Spanish settlement in Panama. The attack on Panama was not made, but one of the richest of the Spanish carracks, the Madre de Dios, was taken by Sir John Borough in Raleigh's ship, The Roebuck, and Robert Cecil reported of it that, "there never was such spoil.” Great difficulties arose over the division of the prize and the dealing with men who had already helped themselves. Raleigh's services were indispensable. There was no other man in whom the sailors had like trust. Whoever profited, he was himself a loser in Dutch, 1596; English, 1598; and Latin, 1599." Tennyson has made this fight the subject of a noble ballad. Sherborne. by the venture. He was not immediately set free, but went to Devonshire in charge of a keeper. By the end of the year, however, he was his own master again, though not admitted to the Court. He went to Sherborne Castle, which had belonged to the Bishops of Raleigh at Sherborne, and of which he had obtained possession earlier in the year. At Sherborne he planted the gardens, added to the buildings, and spent the next two or three years in peace there with his wife, Elizabeth. His arms remain over the central doorway, with the date, 1594. Some local romancer long since established the tradition that a stone seat in the park is that upon which Raleigh sat to smoke tobacco, and that a lower stone beside it was meant as a rest for the pipe-bowl. The Voyage to Guiana. Others The genius of many inventors of travellers' tales, from 1530 downward, had established faith in a bold legend of a country in the heart of Guiana, where there was so much gold that its chief covered his body with glutinous matter and rolled in gold dust, so that he became El Dorado, or the Gilded One. said that all the people of the land were thus gilded, and that the tiles of the houses in their great city of Manoa had been seen from a distance, shining with gold. Thus, the whole land came to be called El Dorado. The Spaniards had been, with much cruelty and many disasters to themselves, on search for the fabled treasure. The legend stirred English imagination. If there was such a land, it must be found by England, not by Spain, and Raleigh boldly planned a boat voyage up the Orinoco, led by himself, as the Queen's Commission said, "to do Us service in offending the King of Spain and his subjects in his dominions to your uttermost power." Raleigh started in 1595, and produced in the next year, 1596, a vivid account of his expedition, in 112 quarto pages with eight preliminary leaves, published by Robert Robinson, as "The Discoverie of the Empyre of Guiana, with a Relation of the Citie of Manoa (which the Spanyards call El Dorado) and of the Provinces of Emeria, Arromaia, Amapaia, etc. Performed in the year 1595.” The tale of peril in a maze of great waters rushing through primeval forests, of resource and perseverance, of strict honour in all dealings with the natives, who gave trust and goodwill to the little body of Englishmen and who told sad tales of the cruelty of rough Spanish adventurers, abounds in evidence of Raleigh's noble spirit. He looked for gold, and brought back good samples of ore, with descriptions of land never before explored, though about ΕΙ Dorado still no more than legends. His desire was to establish here also, upon fresh ground loaded with natural wealth, an English colony. He returned in the autumn of 1595. The boats used for his exploration up the Orinoco found the ships at Trinidad, where they had left them, and the ships as they came home were victualled by forced contributions from Spanish settlements. As soon as he returned, Raleigh fitted out another expedition, under one of his captains, Keymis, who came back in five months. Keymis found the Spaniards gathered in force to stay his passage towards the mines from which Raleigh had brought his pieces of gold ore. Raleigh at Raleigh himself was then preparing to take part in another adventure against Spain-the expedition to Cadiz. The fleet was of four squadrons, led severally by the Earl of Essex, who was in special command of the soldiers; Howard of Effingham, Lord Admiral, who was in special command of the sailors; Sir Walter Raleigh, and Lord Thomas Howard. It sailed on the first of June, 1596, Essex and the Lord Admiral being joined in chief command of the whole enterprise. On the twentieth of June they anchored westward of Cadiz harbour. Essex and the Lord Admiral resolved to land troops and carry the town by assault, before engaging with the ships in the bay, which were protected by the forts. They had begun the landing when Raleigh intervened with better counsel. In deference to his experience the soldiers were re-shipped. Essex threw off Court jealousies, caught Raleigh's enthusiasm for the attack upon the great galleons in harbour, supported Raleigh faithfully, and paid afterwards due honour to his gallantry. Raleigh led the attack at peep of day, and ran his little ship, The Warspright, straight against the greatest of the galleons in the Spanish navythe Saint Philip -anchored with the Saint Andrew under the fort of Puntal. Those great ships, the Philip and the Andrew, had both been engaged at the Azores against Sir Richard Grenville. The Revenge had been boarded from each of them in turn. Raleigh was resolved, he said, "to be revenged for The Revenge, or to second her with mine own life." Raleigh, under orders not to board until the fly-boats came, fought the two great galleons for three hours. Then, impatient that no fly-boats were in sight, he went in a skiff to meet Essex and tell him that he must board, orders or no orders. Essex first counselled caution, then his quick spirit caught Raleigh's enthusiasm, and he said, "I will second you, upon my honour." Raleigh, on returning to his post, found that two other English ships. had got in his way. He forced The Warspright between them, put himself again to the front, and pressed so hard upon the Philip that the great ship was blown up by the Spaniards to save it from capture. But Raleigh captured the Saint Andrew, and also another ship, the Saint Matthew, before they could be blown up, and these two were the only Spanish ships carried to England. Of the rest there was a terrible destruction in the harbour. Raleigh, although seriously wounded, caused himself to be borne in a litter, that he might take part also in the attack upon the town, where he was witness to the gallantry of Essex, about whom he wrote to Cecil, that the Earl hath behaved himself both valiantly and advisedly in the highest degree, without pride, without cruelties, and hath gotten great favour and much love of all." Of the devastation in the harbour, Raleigh wrote, "ourselves spared the lives of all after the victory; but the Flemings, who did little or nothing in the fight, used merciless slaughter till they were, by myself, and afterwards by my Lord Admiral, beaten off." The fortifications of Cadiz were razed. Spain lost, to eight English ships engaged in the attack, thirteen men-of-war and seventeen galleys, besides the whole of the great fleet for the Indies, which was burnt at night by order of the Spanish general, that the English might not have it, and that they might not get the ransom of two million ducats offered for it by the merchants. By the fight in Cadiz Harbour, in June, 1596, Spain lost her power, and England won full recognition for her sailors of the spirit that has made them masters of the sea. |