Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (5 page)

So far as can be made out from the meagre clues, including one or two asides in his The History of the World, Ralegh served as a volunteer in France from 1569 with the Huguenot armies during the interminable Wars of Religion that blighted French history in the later sixteenth century. According to William Camden's Annals, Ralegh rode as 'a very young man' with his cousin Henry Champernowne's troop of English gentleman volunteers, while John Hooker, who knew Ralegh in youth, records that his friend and patron's early years were full of 'warres and martiall services'.
30
 Ralegh was young - very young - to serve as a soldier, even by the standards of the time. Campaigning took him across northern and south-western France, the barbarities and valour he witnessed making a deep impression. This was civil war, a bitter confessional and regional conflict, short on glory, short on rewards. 'By it', as the old soldier wrote later, 'no nation is bettered.'
31
 Working from other comments in Ralegh's History, many insist that he tasted defeat at the battles of Jarnac and Moncontour. In fact, Ralegh only wrote that the Protestants, to his own knowledge, did 'greatly bewail' the loss of their leader Conde after Jarnac; he does not quite claim that he had been present on the field.
32
 About Moncontour, on 3 October 1569, there is no such ambiguity. Ralegh recalled how Lodowick of Nassau's competent retreat had 'saved the one half of the Protestant Army, then broken and disbanded; of which my self was an eye-witness, and was one of them that had cause to thank him for it'.
33

This was a sharp lesson in the realities of warfare, a lesson never forgotten. It appears that Ralegh returned to England after the Peace of St Germain was concluded in 1570. There are some, taking for absolute truth a flattering dedication written by Richard Hakluyt for his edition of Rene de Laudonniere's history of French expeditions to Florida, who argue that he may have combined a military career in France with his studies in Oxford, commuting back and forth as the pattern of term and vacation permitted. Hakluyt defers to Ralegh's superior experience of France and to his better understanding of the French language, but since he was addressing his remarks to a royal favourite at the height of his career, these effusions need not necessarily be taken at face value.
34

Like so many other details at this stage in his life, the date of Ralegh's matriculation from Oriel College, Oxford remains uncertain. He probably went up to the University in 1572.
35
 The very fact of his admission suggests that he was already marked out as the bright child of the family: perhaps thought was given to a career in the Church, or the Law. Though never the poor scholar, his means were necessarily rather limited, as his parents had other children to consider. At best he would have lived on an allowance, which is never an easy thing for a young man. Aubrey picked up a story told by Thomas Child of Worcestershire that Ralegh, pressed for money, 'borrowed a Gowne of him when he was at Oxford...which he never restored, nor money for it'.
36
 In stories such as this one begins to see an opportunist, persuasive, slightly ruthless nature. Francis Bacon, in his Apophthegms, preserves another nice tale about a timid Oxford student who was also a skilful archer: 'He was abused grossly by another, and moaned himself to Walter Ralegh, then a scholar, and asked his advice; What he should do to repair the wrong had been offered him?' Ralegh, with more than a touch of impatience and sarcasm, suggested that his friend should challenge the abuser to 'a match of shooting'.
37
 This passed for wit in the sixteenth-century University. Ralegh may not have taken a degree away from Oxford, but he retained the Ciceronian prose style then favoured at the Universities all through life, even as it became increasingly outmoded. He was not alone in that. So too did John Milton two generations later.
38

After University came an education in the essentials of English law. This pattern, already well enough established among men of means and ability, was to become ever more common during the next half-century. Ralegh was admitted to the Middle Temple in February 1575.
39
 The administrator and JP, Sir Stephen Powle, an Oxford contemporary, is said to have shared his lodgings.
40
Naunton sees a restlessness in these years, suggesting that Ralegh's forays to Oxford and to the Middle Temple were 'rather excursions than sieges or sitting down'. As a younger son, Naunton argues, Ralegh 'foresaw his own destiny that he was first to roule (through want and disability, to subsist otherwayes) before he could come to a repose, and as the stone doth by long lying, gather mosse'. Certainly this stone seems to have rolled with a purpose, but it was a long traverse. Ralegh's eventual prosperity was not down to birth or luck. Rather, it was hard won, 'per ardua'. Naunton also observed in the Ralegh of more mature years a wit, a judgement, a 'plausable tongue', and a supreme capacity to 'draw vertue out of.'
41
 The few clues suggest that these traits had already developed, early in life.

Now there are initial glimpses of other talents. Ralegh's first published poem appeared in 1576, as a commendatory verse in George Gascoigne's satirical glance into The Steele Glas. It is not particularly good poetry, but everyone has to start somewhere.

In this he is still 'Walter Rawely of the Middle Temple'.
42
 By 1577, however, he has changed lodging, and is living at Islington, 'about a bow's shot on this side the church'.
43
 While various stories again identify several old buildings in that corner of London as Ralegh's house, it is likely that his dwelling, later the Pied Bull public house, was demolished early in the nineteenth century.
44
 Other legends inevitably suggest that he smoked his first pipe here - but Ralegh's biographer encounters many such tales.
45
 At this point his reasons for remaining in the capital become clear. When entering bond for one of his servants summoned to answer charges that December, Ralegh is described as 'de curia' - of the Court.
46
 There is no hint of any attraction to a profession or calling, unless it is to the magnet of political power at Westminster.

If Ralegh was indeed 'of the Court' by 1577, his precise association with that vast, amorphous and rapidly changing organism remains.
47
 The tag reflects both aspiration and reality. His mother's elder sister, Katherine Astley, had been Elizabeth's governess from 1547, and had retained the Queen's particular trust until her death in 1565. This connection may have provided him with an initial introduction - the Queen would hardly have ignored Astley's nephew - but it was perhaps through Humphrey Gilbert's means that Ralegh first met leading courtiers, including the Queen's Secretary Sir Francis Walsingham and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Gilbert seems to have been something of a guiding star or role-model to his younger half-brother. They had in common a quick tongue, a quicker temper and a brisk ambition that attracted and repelled in equal measure. As a Colonel in Munster during the Fitzmaurice rebellion of 1569, Gilbert had captured twenty-three castles, slaughtering all who resisted.
48
 His methods are starkly described by the pamphleteer and poet, Thomas Churchyard. After a battle, Churchyard tells us, Gilbert ordered the heads of all those killed to be cut from their bodies, brought to his encampment and laid on the ground, so that no one could come near without passing through a lane of heads. According to Churchyard, this brought 'greate terrour to the people when they saw the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke and friends, lye on the grounde before their faces'.
49
 Yet Gilbert could shed his bloodlust once out of Ireland. He was learned and intelligent, well read in the classics, and had proposed the foundation of an academy in London for the education of the Queen's wards and other young gentlemen in scientific and practical matters.

Gilbert had also long been interested in Atlantic exploration and had even published a treatise, A Discourse of a discoverie fora new passage to Cataia [Cathay], on the subject. In June 1578, he secured a patent for six years to discover 'such remote, heathen and barbarous landes...not actually possessed of any Christian prince...and to have hould occupie and enjoye them'. Four months later he had assembled a fleet of eleven ships and 500 men. Ralegh sailed in this fleet as captain of the Falcon, a vessel of 100 tons, carrying seven gentlemen and about sixty mariners and soldiers. Simon Fernandez, an experienced Portuguese navigator familiar with the American coastline, set out with him as master mariner, and perhaps in some measure as a 'nunder' too. In this family venture Carew Ralegh also played his part, as captain of another vessel, the Hope of Greneway. Their cousins, Edward Denny and George Carew, were among the volunteers. To this day the precise purpose of Gilbert's expedition remains obscure, but his ambitions were in any case frustrated by the usual Elizabethan blend of storms, mischance, quarrels with a second-in-command and desertions. Then Gilbert himself was sent to guard the Irish coast against a landing by the rebel James Fitzmaurice. As it turned out, Fitzmaurice succeeded in putting ashore on the Dingle Peninsula in south-west Ireland, with important consequences for Ralegh's later.
50

The Falcon, however, pressed on into the Atlantic, braving winter weather in a vain search for plunder and adventure. Precise details of failure are never simple to reconstruct. Hooker, in the extension to Holinshed's Chronicles, tells us that Ralegh,'desirous to doo somewhat worthie of honor tooke his course for the west Indies', but found himself short of victuals when he reached the Cape Verde Islands and was forced to return home. 'In this viage', writes Hooker, 'he passed mane dangerous adventures, as well by tempests as fights on the sea.' Elsewhere Hooker talks of many of the company being slain and the ships being 'battered and disabled'. Despite the upbeat prose, it all seems rather grim and ill-starred. Ralegh eventually 'arrived safelie at Plimouth in the west countrie in Male next following's'
51
 Hooker comments that while this experience might have discouraged another man from any further 'sea attempts', Ralegh 'did not give over'. Be that as it may, he always hesitated thereafter to sail into the open Atlantic.

Soon after Ralegh's return to England, he and Humphrey Gilbert were under investigation by the Privy Council for acts of piracy nearer home. A Spanish ship carrying oranges and lemons had been captured by their associates and taken to Torbay, where the goods were being sold. The incident is obscure and, as so often in Ralegh's early career, the outcome is unknown.
52
 For the rest of 1579 Ralegh disappears from view, evidently spending much of his time in London, probably around the royal Court. He emerges in a dubious light early in 1580 when he received three commands to appear before the Privy Council for brawling, once with Sir Thomas Perrot and then with Edward Wingfield 'besides the tennis courte in Westminster', a common site for brawls and insults. All three men were briefly imprisoned and instructed to give surety for their good behaviour.
53
 This does not seem to have hindered Ralegh's rise at Court, for around that time he was promoted Extraordinary Esquire of the Body to the Queen.
54

In July 1580 came a more active role. He was commissioned by Lord Grey de Wilton, newly appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland to levy one hundred Londoners for service in Ireland.
55
 Some thirty days later they arrived in Cork where Ralegh established his base. His first task was to sit in commission with Warham St Leger, Provost Marshal of Munster, to try the younger brother of the Earl of Desmond, Sir James Fitzgerald, on a charge of treason. Inevitably Sir James was found guilty and in spite of pleading that he should be beheaded was sentenced to hanging, drawing and quartering. It was said that Ralegh's nien played a part in cutting up his body into small pieces. One source reports that Fitzgerald died a fervent Catholic, but Hooker merely comments that 'thus the pestilent hydra hath lost another of his heads'.
56

Ralegh then left Cork to join the force assembled by Grey against renewed rebellion in the south-west. The 'arch traitor', James Fitzmaurice, had brought with him to Ireland two papal proclamations against Elizabeth as well as the distinguished Jesuit theologian, Dr Nicholas Sanders. Fitzmaurice was killed shortly after the landing and Sanders died later of dysentery. Leadership of the revolt was taken over by Sir John of Desmond, brother of the Earl. Matters got worse for the government when rebellion broke out in the Pale, the area under Crown control around Dublin, under the leadership of a young Catholic peer, James Eustace, Viscount Baltinglass; and in September 1580, as we have seen, a force of Spanish, Italian and Irish mercenaries landed at Smerwick, near Dingle, and began to strengthen the earthworks set up earlier by Fitzmaurice. The fort, known as the Dun an Oir or Golden Fort, was not an ideal spot for opening a campaign. Sir William Pelham, the Lord Justice of Ireland, described it as 'a vain toy, and of little importance'. No man, he claimed, could hide from shots fired from the adjoining hills'.
57
 On a fine day this is one of the most beautiful places in the British Isles, its bay ringed by steep cliffs above the sea, with Mount Brandon towering, topped by cloud, across the bay. But in October and November the mercenaries are not likely to have appreciated the scenery. There was only a narrow pass through the mountains to the east, which could easily be blocked by Grey's forces. Without control of the sea the garrison was trapped, crammed into a tiny promontory measuring 26 by 16 metres, joined to the mainland by a narrow and dangerous sheep-track, and lacking a water supply. Even if 300 of the original 600 had already returned to Spain, as reported by Sir Richard Bingham, it is hard to see how they could have stayed within the flimsy turf walls of the fort and defended themselves there.