Once more Queen Elizabeth figures in our pageant. She is passing to her barge amidst a crowd of courtiers, who buzz round her like bees seeking the honey of her smile. Amongst the spectators of her progress you observe a young man, comely of person, handsome of face, and gallant of bearing. Suddenly her Majesty pauses; the ground is miry, and she hesitates to soil her dainty shoes. In a moment the young man has pulled off his rich plush cloak and has thrown it upon the ground for the queen to walk upon. She is flattered by the attention; she smiles graciously on the young man and says, “You have this day spoiled a gay mantle in our behalf. We thank you for your service, though the manner of offering it was unusual and something bold.”

“In a sovereign’s need,” he replies, “it is each liegeman’s duty to be bold.”

“That is well said,” the queen remarks, and at a bound the young man springs into her royal favour. It was afterwards said that the spoiling of his cloak gained him a good many suits.

The young man whose introduction to the queen you have just witnessed is Walter Raleigh, a Devonshire gentleman who has already seen much warlike service, and has shown himself to be possessed of many qualities besides personal bravery and prowess in battle. In sooth he is one of the most heroic and brilliant men of that brilliant and heroic age—explorer, soldier, sailor, poet, prose writer, and true-hearted gentleman—“a spirit without spot,” as Shelley finely calls him. Let us learn something of his career.

Raleigh was not yet thirty when he first attracted the attention of Elizabeth. He was then a tall, well-built man with thick, dark hair, a bright complexion, and an expression full of life. His dress was always magnificent, and he had the faculty of displaying himself and his capacities to the best possible advantage. His speech was bold and plausible; he was fearless and dashing, a man of a stout heart, a sound head, and a strong right hand. Now that Elizabeth had admitted him to her favour, she speedily raised him from the position of a poor gentleman adventurer to one of the most wealthy of her courtiers. He was knighted in 1584, and subsequently sat in Parliament for Devonshire.

Soon, however, he wearied of a life of luxury and busy idleness at the court, and arranged with his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, to join him in his projected voyage to Newfoundland. But Elizabeth positively forbade him to go, and reluctantly he bowed to the royal command. Gilbert never returned from Newfoundland. On the homeward voyage he stuck to his little, unseaworthy vessel, the Squirrel, and declined to take his passage on board the Golden Hind, the larger vessel which convoyed him. To all arguments he had but one reply, “I will not forsake my little company, with whom I have passed through so many storms and perils.” When the ships were to the north of the Azores terrible seas arose, and the Squirrel was well-nigh swamped. Through all the foul weather Sir Humphrey, gallant gentleman that he was, sat on deck, calm and unmoved, reading a book. When they besought him to board the Golden Hind he said, “We are as near to heaven by sea as by land.” During the night of Monday, September 9, 1583, the watchers on the Golden Hind suddenly missed the lights of the Squirrel. She had gone down with all her crew.

Raleigh applied for the patent which Sir Humphrey, his half-brother, had held, and was accorded the royal permission to discover unknown lands, take possession of them in the queen’s name, and hold them to his own profit for six years. At once he fitted out an expedition, which coasted northward from Florida and took possession of Roanoke Island, within the lagoons of what is now North Carolina. His captains returned with a glowing account of the “good land” which they had discovered, and Raleigh took immediate steps to colonize it. He called it Virginia, in honour of the Virgin Queen.

Accordingly, in the year 1585, he sent out Sir Richard Grenville with one hundred and eight men, and on Roanoke Island a little colony was established. Ralph Lane was left in charge of the party, and Grenville sailed for home, hoping for the best but fearing the worst. Unhappily the wrong sort of men had been sent out—soft-handed gentlemen who could not dig, and were ashamed to beg. Before long there were bitter quarrels in the little hive between the drones and the workers, food ran short, and the colonists were on the verge of starvation.

In the next year Drake touched at Roanoke after his attack on Cartagena, and seeing what a helpless, shiftless crew the colonists were, he carried them all back to England save fifteen. The colony had thus proved a costly failure, but the experiment was notable, because it was the first attempt to found a greater Britain beyond the seas. He who writes the history of British expansion must never forget to give Raleigh a foremost place in the roll of Empire-makers.

One of the immediate results of the voyage was the introduction into this country of the potato and the tobacco plant. Raleigh grew potatoes in his garden at Youghal, and thus gave Ireland the staple food of her peasantry. According to an old story, he was the first man to smoke tobacco in England. It is said that his servant, seeing volumes of smoke issuing from his mouth, concluded that he was on fire, and promptly poured a bucket of water over him, thus effectually putting out his pipe.

A second attempt to found a colony on Roanoke Island failed, and Raleigh was terribly disappointed. He could do no more; so in 1589, the year after he helped to repel the Armada, he disposed of his rights to a company of merchants, who made no attempt to found a new colony on the ruins of the old. Thus the sixteenth century came to an end, and England had no colony of any kind in America.

In the year 1592 Raleigh fell into disgrace with his royal mistress. She discovered that the man she had delighted to honour and enrich had actually dared to love one of her maids of honour. An excuse was speedily found by the jealous queen for sending Raleigh and his lady-love, Elizabeth Throgmorton, to the Tower. At length, however, the queen relented and restored Raleigh to liberty, but forbade him the court. The lovers were married and settled at Sherborne, where Raleigh busied himself in erecting a magnificent mansion and laying out its grounds with great taste.

About this time he made acquaintance with the Spanish legend of the fabulous wealth of El Dorado, the city of Manoa, in South America. The story fascinated his romantic nature, and he could not rest until he had attempted its discovery. Yielding to his wife’s entreaties, he refrained from going in search of it himself, and sent his tried and trusty servant, Jacob Whiddon, in his stead. Whiddon returned without having discovered anything, and Raleigh now essayed the adventure himself. With a fleet of five ships he sailed in February 1595, and in the next month arrived at the island of Trinidad. He seized the capital and captured the governor, who confirmed the stories of the richness and wonder of Manoa, and told him of its remarkable inhabitants, the dog-headed men “whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.”

Early in April Raleigh started on the quest with a little flotilla of five boats, a hundred men, and provisions for a month. He entered the Orinoco, but found the labour of rowing against the vast and powerful stream most exhausting. Sometimes his boats did not progress a stone’s-throw in an hour. After struggling onwards for nearly four hundred miles he was obliged to own himself beaten. He brought back with him some pieces of quartz showing grains of gold and the earliest specimens of mahogany ever seen in this country. Subsequently he attacked several Spanish settlements and then returned to England, where his enemies declared that the story of his river voyage was an invention. As a matter of fact, Guiana is rich in gold, and more than one famous mine has been worked in the country which Raleigh endeavoured to explore.

Raleigh lived peacefully at home for nearly two years, and then played a brilliant part in Drake’s daring attack on Cadiz. He commanded the Warspite, the leading ship, and though severely wounded, landed with his men for the storming of the town. His gallantry won him the queen’s forgiveness, and once more he was a familiar figure about the court. Under Essex he commanded a ship in the fleet which sailed for Flores, in the Azores, to lie in wait for Spanish treasure galleons. His disobedience of orders in his capture of Fayal earned for him the enmity of Essex, who now became one of his bitterest enemies. Essex, however, came to the block, but not before he had done Raleigh considerable mischief.

Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, and James the Sixth of Scotland became James the First of England. There were plots to prevent his accession and to put Lady Arabella Stewart, an Englishwoman of the royal house, on the throne. The cowardly Lord Cobham was at the head of the Main Plot, and when arrested he made a lying confession implicating Raleigh, who was tried and found guilty of compassing the death of the king, of endeavouring to set Arabella Stewart on the throne, of receiving bribes from the court of Spain, and of seeking to deliver the country into the hands of its enemy. Raleigh’s execution was ordered, and he wrote a touching farewell to his wife; but on the eve of the fatal day he was reprieved and committed to the Tower with the death sentence hanging over his head. For about twelve years he remained a prisoner. He was treated leniently, and given apartments in the Bloody Tower, where he lived with his wife and son and his attendants. Frequently the young Prince Henry visited him, and the lad grew fond of his gallant and brilliant friend. “No man but my father,” he once said, “would keep such a bird in a cage.”

Raleigh now busied himself in a variety of occupations: he designed a model of a ship, he condensed fresh water from salt, he compounded drugs, he began his “History of the World,” and wrote verses and political pamphlets. About the year 1610 he revived his old project for discovering Manoa. Twenty years had now passed since he had returned from Guiana, but during his long solitude in the Tower his mind returned again and again to the fabulous riches of El Dorado, and he devised plan after plan for securing its wealth. He now made a proposition to certain lords of the Council, and they listened to it. “If I bring them not to a mountain covered with gold and silver ore,” he wrote, “let the commander have commission to cut off my head there.” All he stipulated for was that if half a ton of precious ore should be brought home he should have a free pardon. At length the king was persuaded to agree to the proposal, and in March 1617 the order for his release was signed.

Raleigh and his wife adventured all they had in fitting out the expedition. Ere it sailed the Spanish ambassador intervened. He protested loudly that Guiana belonged to Spain, and that Raleigh’s expedition proposed an invasion of Spanish territory, and was simply a cloak for piracy on a gigantic scale. The ambassador believed that Raleigh had his eye on the Mexican Plate fleet, and as after events proved, he was right. James warned Raleigh that he was not to fight the Spaniards, and on this understanding he was permitted to sail.

Misfortune dogged him from the outset. Foul winds and storms drove him back, and afterwards scattered his fleet and sank one of his vessels. He had difficulty in getting water at the Canaries, and a hurricane drove him from the Cape Verde Islands. For forty days he lay in the doldrums, while his men fell a prey to scurvy and fever and grew mutinous. At length, when the remnant of his ten ships arrived off the mouth of the Orinoco, Raleigh was prostrate with fever, and his men had lost all hope of success. But his courageous spirit was equal to the occasion. “We can make the adventure,” he cried; “and if we perish, it shall be no honour to England or gain to his Majesty to lose one hundred as valiant men as England hath in it.”

While he remained off the mouth of the river, his lieutenant, Thomas Keymis, with five ships and four hundred men, undertook the great quest. For three weeks they battled against the mighty current, but when they approached the proposed landing-place they found a Spanish settlement blocking their path. This they stormed and burnt, Raleigh’s son being killed in the attack. Though the settlement was captured, the Spaniards were still in the woods, and Keymis, having done all that man could do, was forced to retreat. Raleigh met him with a bitter reproach——“You have undone me by your obstinacy.” Keymis said not a word, but betook himself to his cabin, where he ran a dagger through his heart.

Raleigh was now desperate. He proposed to go himself in search of the mine, but his men would not follow him. Then he suggested the capture of the Mexican Plate fleet; but they refused, saying that, even if they succeeded, the king would hang them when they got home. There was no help for it, so Raleigh was obliged to return to England. With angry reproaches to his “rabble of idle rascals,” he set sail, knowing well the fate which awaited him.

In June 1618 he was back at Plymouth, and was at once arrested. James was courting the favour of his “dear brother of Spain,” and the Spanish ambassador had obtained a promise from him that, “if Raleigh returned loaded with gold acquired by an attack on the subjects of the King of Spain, he would surrender it all, and would give up the authors of the crime to be hanged in the public square of Madrid.” Now the Spaniard claimed his victim, and James actually proposed to keep his word; but he dared not do so, for England now regarded Raleigh as a champion of English interests against Spanish tyranny. He was thereupon brought to trial. In the course of it the Attorney-General said, “Sir Walter Raleigh hath been as a star at which the world hath gazed; but stars may fall—nay, they must fall when they trouble the sphere where they abide.” There was a legal difficulty in the way: Raleigh was under sentence of death, and therefore could not be legally tried. The easiest way out of the difficulty was to order his execution on the old charge of treason. This was done. As Raleigh returned to his prison he remarked, “The world itself is but a larger prison, out of which some are daily selected for execution.”

On October 19, 1618, he was brought to the scaffold, which had been erected in Old Palace Yard. He met his fate cheerfully, and jested pleasantly even on the way to the block. He addressed the crowd in a well-known speech, thanking God heartily that He had brought him to die in the light, and not left him to perish obscurely in the dark prison of the Tower. He denied all accusations of treason, and defended himself against other charges. When he had finished he said, “And now I have a long journey to go, and must take my leave.” As he laid his head on the block the executioner bade him turn his head to the east. “What matter,” he answered, “how the head lies, so that the heart be right?” These noble words had hardly fallen from his lips when the axe descended.