The little incident is typical, not so much of Ralegh, though it shows his swift vigour, as of the times. Such a thing happening now would be likely to cause a scandal which would be known to most of the civilized world. Then the continents were being discovered which would now join in the outcry of amazement or laughter.
London was small. St. Paul's was the centre of life: Chepeside was the main and fashionable street; the streets were narrow and the houses were chiefly built of wood. The Mermaid Tavern was in Friday Street. There were large residences with gardens in the city, public gardens on Tower Hill, and green graveyards round the churches. The river, crossed by one bridge—London Bridge—was in constant use; and a wall ran round the semicircle of the city. Temple Bar, Holborn Bar, Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Aldersgate, the bar at Smithfield, the bar on the Whitechapel highway—the gates and bars tell the city area, and outside the walls clustered the Liberties, where vagrants had their quarters.
London was becoming crowded. In 1580 the Lord Burghley took measures to stop the expansion of the city, and from his table of births and deaths the population has been estimated at about ninety thousand. That figure is only approximate. There was no actual census until some eighty years later, when John Graunt, of Birchin Lane, at length succeeded in his scheme.
London was lively. Men lived much more in the streets. Merchants met customers there, and lawyers conversed with their clients. "Newgate Market, Cheapeside, Leaden Hall, and Gracechurch Street were unmeasurably pestered with the unimaginable increase and multiplicity of Market folkes, as well by carts as otherwise, to the great vexation of all the inhabitants, annoyance of the streete trouble, and danger to all passengers as well Coaches, Carts, etc. Horses as otherwise," writes Howes, giving the reason why magistrates of the City, in 1615, reduced the rude vast place of Smithfield into comely order for a market, and the citizens began their new pavement of broad free-stone close to their shops, and took down all the high causes in the Strand and Holborn. West Smithfield was called Ruffian's Hall, because there the young men used to fight with sword and buckler. Duelling was prevalent—one of the sincerities of human life which bursts through the thickest quilted formulas, as Carlyle ejaculates. Fighting was as common an amusement and exercise as cricket and football are now. Every serving man, from the base to the best, carried a buckler at his back. Rapier and dagger, however, which began about this time, made fighting less common, for it was far more dangerous than the manner of fighting with buckler and sword. "It was usuall to have Frays, Fightes and Quarrels upon the Sundayes and Holidayes, sometimes twenty, thirty and forty Swords and Bucklers, halfe against halfe, as well by quarrells of appointment as by chance: especially from the midst of Aprill untill the end of October by reason that Smithfield was then free from dirte and plashes. And in the winter season, all the high streetes were much annoyed and troubled with hourely frayes of sword and buckler men who took pleasure in that bragging fight. And although they made great shew of muche furie and fought often, yet seldom any man hurt, for thrusting was not then in use; neither would one in twentie strike beneath the waste by reason that they held it cowardly and beastly."
Pageants and processions enlivened the streets. The Queen and her courtiers could not hold aloof, and did not wish to. The Queen shared her father's liking for being on terms of cheerful repartee with the people. A courtier's arrival was a small event, for he travelled in state with a large retinue. Young gentlemen attached themselves to a great man, and wore his colours. And the great man needed a large number of followers, for his only means of keeping in touch with affairs and with friends was by messenger, and such messengers were necessarily brave and trustworthy men.
Up the Thames came ships loaded, perhaps, with treasure from foreign countries, and their men would land and spread news of battles in the Netherlands or Spain; or they would have strange tales to tell of new lands which they had found, of the manners of strange new peoples, of adventures with bears or morses or Spaniards, tales of marvellous wealth waiting for a daring hand to take, of countries where the sun never set, of seas where meremaiden swam, and where the sound of the cracking ice was loud as the crash of artillery. Small wonder that the poets found inspiration in the London taverns, and that men lived almost in the streets, where at any moment they might meet some fellow with a new tale of the world's wonder that might very likely be true.
London was no place in which a man could easily remain inert. The unexpected constantly occurred on account of the dramatic way that news was inevitably brought. News came like vivid flashes of light on darkness, and these flashes were continual.
Ralegh's energy had always been conspicuous, even in those times. He was no slug, as Aubrey pithily puts it. And now it is that one of the great ideas of his life came to him, perhaps the greatest. We hear of him as connected with Sir Humfrey Gilbert's enterprise for discovering the north-west passage. Sir Humfrey was instigated by his navigator's desire to find a nearer passage to the East. But Ralegh widened in his mind the scope of the scheme, with him it expanded into something immeasurably greater. He saw the overcrowding of London beyond the limits of health and of comfort, and this overcrowding was troubling the level head of the great Burghley, who tried to cope with it by restricting the building of new houses. Ralegh was a man whose nature always was "to turn necessity to glorious gain." He saw the tremendous possibilities of this superabundance of men, how, if they could be placed in these new lands, they would prove of infinite value to the old country which, by their presence, they were annoying. He knew that Spaniards had settled in wild new lands, and lived there for a time like marauders, and returned home with wealth which they had wrung from the natives. But his idea was larger; it was the first proper plan of colonization, for his imagination carried him far on into the future beyond the time of a generation or two, beyond the seizing of immediate wealth. The vastness of the scheme appealed to him; the difficulties he realized to be so great that they were worth a man's while to grapple with.
And the scheme held him by its enthralling interest, not only because he was ambitious (as all men worth anything are), and saw in it a means of furthering his ambitions; not only because he was patriotic, and saw in it a means of furthering his country's good, but primarily for the scheme's own sake. The idea obsessed him as an idea quite apart from its consequences, and whether the result would be good or bad; that would only be proved by the event, and that doubtless added enormously to the interest. But an inventor or a pioneer in any new field, who thinks chiefly of the consequences, does not get far on his journey. That part of any action is more profitably left to his friends and his advisers, and they are never far to seek.
Those were not the days of specialization. Affairs were not so intricate that an expert was needed to work out every branch of a subject. Less was known too; and a man of average intelligence could learn all there was to learn of most things without the standard of knowledge in each making him appear ignorant of all.
In June, 1578, Sir Humfrey Gilbert who, as has been said, had been busily engaged for many years in the discovery of a north-west passage, obtained a royal charter for the greater purpose. "Elizabeth by the grace of God, Queen of England, etc. To all people to whom these presents shall come, greeting. Know that of our especial grace certaine science and mere motion we have given and granted and by these presents for us our heires and successours doe give and grant to our trustie and well beloved servant Sir Humfrey Gilbert of Compton in our Countie of Devonshire knight, and to his heires and assignes for ever free libertie and license from time to time and at all times for ever hereafter to discover, finde, searche out and view such remote heathen and barbarous landes countries and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people, as to him his heires and assignes and to every or anie of them shall seem good: and the same to have hold, occupy and enjoy...." run the letters patent with their royal paraphernalia of phrase.
And in September, 1578, Gilbert had overcome the initial difficulty of collecting provisions sufficient to victual his eleven ships for a year, and of picking the right men for the enterprise, two matters of enormous importance. In the latter he was not successful. Sir Francis Knollys owned some of the ships, and his son went on the expedition. This son sowed dissension where unity was a vital necessity; he insulted Sir Humfrey Gilbert, and at length deserted. Contrary winds delayed the expedition, which became disorganized, and after a fight with the Spaniards was recalled. Ralegh was captain of a ship named the Falcon, and that was in all probability his first engagement at sea.
The expedition was on such a large scale that the Spanish authorities in England clamoured for its recall; and there is ample evidence, as Edwards remarks, to show that Ralegh was as much feared and hated in 1578 by the Spaniards, as ever he was at any later period of his career. They tried always to thwart his great scheme of colonization, the greatness of which they realized, seeing the danger of it to their own possessions, and for a time they succeeded in their aims.
It is in connection with this expedition that Ralegh's name first appears in the Council Book.
CHAPTER IV
THE ARRIVAL
In Ireland—The state of the country—Cruelty of the wars—At Rakele—Illustrative anecdotes—Smerwick—Ralegh's initiative—Lord Grey de Wilton—Exploit at Bally—In touch with the home authorities.
The scene changes to Ireland, where the continual fighting served as a training-ground—with France and the Netherlands—for the energies of the young gentleman of the period. Ireland seemed at this time to popish powers a suitable starting-place from which to overset the rule of the woman Elizabeth, who dared to establish again a Church independent of Rome, and to put her woman's self at the head of it. But the popish powers were mistaken in their choice. It is true that the Irish were devoutly Catholic; they were better pleased however to fight out their own feuds than to join together in any way for any cause. They were lawless and savage; and not even their hatred of the invading English could serve to concentrate them. They were far too impatient for serious warfare. They liked to come upon a foe—a Butler on a Geraldine—like a whirlwind, fight a terrific battle, and make off to their homes to listen to the songs by their bards, chanted in praise of their undying prowess, "as those Bardes and rythmers doe for a little reward or a share of a stolen cow," until the man of prowess praised "waxed most insolent and halfe madde with the love of himself and his own lewd deeds. Of a most notorious thiefe ... one of their Bardes will say, That he was none of the milkesops that was brought up by the fireside, but that most of his dayes he spent in armes and valiant enterprises, that he did never eat his meat until it was won by the sword, that he lay not all night slugging under his mantle but used commonly to keep others waking to defend their lives, and did light his candle at the flames of their houses to bade him in the darknesse ... and finally that he died not bewayled of many, but made many waile when he died, that dearly bought his death."
Such men were not ripe for the burden of a great cause. But one Sanders, an English Jesuit already past middle age, meeting with Fitzmaurice in Spain, formed a capital project of passing over to Ireland, subduing it, and passing from Ireland to England and driving out Elizabeth and her nation of Protestants.
In May, 1579, they landed at Dingle, after having on their voyage taken a small Bristol vessel, the sailors and captain of which they pitched into the sea. The landing at Dingle was impressive as the ceremony, which inaugurated the coming of the true religion, must needs be. "Two friars stepped first on shore; a bishop followed, mitre on head and crosier in hand, then Sanders, with the consecrated banner, and after him Fitzmaurice."
But the expedition did not rise to the level of its inauguration. It served only to stir up a savage rebellion in Munster, and to bring devastation upon the country.
It was to help quell the insurrection that Ralegh came to Ireland as captain of a company of one hundred foot-soldiers at the end of 1579, or the beginning of 1580.
The war—if war it can be called—was carried on with savage cruelty on both sides. Less could not be expected. The times were not gentle, when little girls in London might see men hung and quartered, and limbs stared down from the chief gates of most cities. Nor would mercy be expected from generals who came to Ireland as Pelham came, and as Lord Grey de Wilton came, regarding Ireland as the grave of reputation. To Ralegh, too, the service was itself distasteful. He writes with characteristic vigour of phrase to the Earl of Leicester, "I would disdayn it as mich to keap sheepe. I will not trouble your honor with the busyness of this loste land; for that Sir Warram Sentleger can best of any man deliver unto your lordshipe the good, the bad, the mischief, the means to amende, and all in all of this common welthe or rather common woe."
The English soldiery regarded the Irish as savages who would not live at peace, and must be exterminated, with the exception of the actual tillers of the ground or churls as they were called. And this point of view was encouraged by those in authority, who had neither men nor money to spare for guarding and feeding prisoners. "Death," as Froude says, "was the only gaoler their finances could support." Nothing can extenuate cruelty; but it is well to face the fact that cruelty, and cruelty not greatly less atrocious than this, was an absolute attribute of the Elizabethan age. The one quality, which runs through all the pages of every history of every man and every movement, is vitality—intense, burning vitality; and this vitality illumined the literature, chaotic as much of it is, and beat pulsing through the veins of the nation, explaining its magnificent advance, and enthusiasm and greatness, even as it explains its brutality. England was like a boy who is suddenly conscious of being strong and of being free, with all the capacity of some young Hercules and all his reckless faults.
When Ralegh joined the Irish service, Lord Justice Pelham was in the position of Lord Deputy. Soon after his arrival, however, Pelham was recalled, greatly to his pleasure, and Lord Grey de Wilton, Gascoigne's patron and general in the Netherlands, undertook the command of the forces, and the Earl of Ormond, an Irishman, was made Lieutenant of Munster. These were Ralegh's chiefs; and his criticism of their methods of management first brought him, as will be seen later, under the direct notice of the great Burghley.
As an active soldier, however, his exploits are exciting and adventurous, and they are not hidden in the obscurity which hid his exploits in France. The same Hooker who has been already quoted, records them with pride in his continuation of Holinshed's Chronicles.
Ralegh was once stationed with a troop of cavalry at Rakele under Lord Grey. He was always a well-eyed man and observed that the Irish were in the habit of hurrying down upon an encampment immediately it had been abandoned. Accordingly, he made a plan to surprise them, and the plan was successful. He captured a considerable number of prisoners. One of the Irish carried a bundle of withies, and Ralegh went up to him and asked him why he carried the withies. "To hang English churls with," was the blunt answer. "Is that so?" said Ralegh. "They shall now serve for an Irish kerne." And without more ado he bade his men hang him to the nearest tree. The repartee was prompt and savage. It is typical of the time that it should have happened; and intensely typical that a careful record should have been made in contemporary history.
Another time we read that Ralegh, on a small expedition to a certain Lord Barry, of Barry Court, in a fight against great odds, twice at his own personal peril rescued one Henry Moyle, who twice was caught in the soft bog. "He was unhorsed, and stood with his pistol and quarter-staff, one man against twenty." History does not relate what he said to Henry Moyle on his return to camp. The two stories stand well side by side. At the tragic sacking of Smerwick Ralegh was one of the captains ordered to carry out the last desperate instructions: the siege is illustrative not only of that bad Irish campaign, but also shows what a personal part high officers used to take in battles.
A second band of Papal soldiers, comprised of Italians, Spaniards and Frenchmen, came to Ireland in 1580, and made Smerwick their headquarters, a fort on the shore fully exposed to the Atlantic winds. Here Lord Grey came upon them, but was obliged to wait eight days with his men until Sir William Winter arrived in Ventry harbour with cannon and ammunition, and at length joined Admiral Bingham in Smerwick Bay. Lord Grey galloped down over the sands to welcome Winter. Speedily the cannon were landed and placed in position before the fort, and the bombardment began. The English crept nearer after the first day, until the cannon were within a cable's length of the wall, and Sir William Winter himself taking careful aim, brought down the enemy's chief piece, and a man appeared on the ramparts waving a white hand-kerchief. The firing ceased. Then Signor Jeffrey, an Italian, came to entreat grace from the Lord Deputy, but grace was refused him. "Afterward their Coronnel Don Sebastian came forth to intreate that they might part with their armes like souldiers, at the least with their lives according to the custome of war ... it was strongly denied him and told him by the Lord Deputie himselfe that they could not justly pleade either custome of warre or lawe of nations—for that they were not any lawfull enemies...." The Pope sent them? asked Lord Grey de Wilton, and declared himself surprised, the bitter old enthusiast, that gentlemen should undertake a commission from "a detestable shaveling the right antichrist and patron of the doctrine of devils." He would only agree to wait till morning. So on the morning of the next November day, the garrison, seven hundred men, piled their arms, and with a few women and children stood waiting, while the great Atlantic waves beat coldly, sullenly on the shore. "Then put I in certain bands who fell straight to execution," writes Grey, with grim brevity. Six hundred men in all were slain that November morning, and Grey had the bodies stripped and laid in neat lines upon the shore, and Grey looked at them without emotion, and thought them "as gallant and goodly personages as ever I saw." So he wrote to the Queen, informing her of the victory, and the Queen wrote back thanking him, adding a postscript in her own hand (a special mark of honour) warmly approving of his action: and Camden courteously lies when he says that Grey shed tears and Elizabeth wished the cruelty had been unnecessary. Captain of one of these "certain bands" was Walter Ralegh. Edmund Spenser was at this time secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, and he writes in that scholarly graphic treatise in dialogue form, which has been already quoted, namely the "View of the State of Ireland"—"Whereupon the said Coronell did absolutely yeeld himselfe and the fort, with all therein, and craved only mercy, which it being not thought good to shew them, for danger of them, if, being saved they should afterwards join with the Irish; and also for terrour to the Irish who are much imboldened by those forraigne succours, and also put in hope of more ere long: there was no other way, but to make that short end of them as was made." Thus writes Edmund Spenser, the author of the "Faërie Queen," a man not famous for his ferity.
Praise and blame are easy to dispense: but they are dangerous commodities. They raise too freely the thick white dust of prejudice which even dims eyes which are anxious to observe a neighbour, and effectually blinds eyes that wish to peer into the recesses of a bygone age. Let us be glad if we are more human and more humane, and avoid hugging ourselves too closely on imagined superiority. Violent death stalked down every alley of life; and violent death is not more dreadful than the haggard existence in which millions are nursed to-day. Our cruelty is a little less apparent, and more respectable. That is at any rate something. Let us be thankful for that, and let us by all means subscribe to the Home for Lost Cats.
But Ralegh was not content with the perils and excitement of active service. He possessed initiative. He saw the masses of money that were being spent, and saw that full value was not being obtained. The war in his opinion was being mismanaged. He did not hesitate to write to the authorities at home, stating in round terms what his opinion was. It is not surprising that Lord Grey de Wilton was annoyed by the young man's audacity. "I neither like his carriage," he writes to Walsingham, "nor his company: and therefore other than by direction and commandment, and what his right can require he is not to expect at my hands." Apart from the administration of the war there was little in common between the two men. Lord Grey was a staunch Protestant, unwavering in his religious zeal, and blind in his hatred of Popery. He would have passed through Ireland, had he had his will, with the sword gripped in one hand and the Bible and the English Prayer-book clasped tightly in the other.
Ralegh was not that order of man. There was nothing grim and nothing austere about him. He was a man of address. Lord Grey was stiff and blunt, a Puritan a little before his proper time. Very characteristic is the sentence in his letter to the Queen, telling of the death of young Cheke. "So wrought in him God's spirit, plainly declaring him a child of his; elected to be no less comfort of his good and godly friends than great instruction and manifest motion of every other hearer that stood by, of whom there was a good troop." He was inclined to regard most things from the standpoint of religious experience. He was not addicted to humanity.
The Irish were not only rebels against his country; they were what was far worse—rebels against his own faith, and he sullenly objected to any measures which might serve to bring them into line with English interests. He wished to force his own salvation upon them rather than to make them useful subjects of the Queen.
That must have been where Ralegh chiefly differed from him. And there is an interesting example of this difference and of one of Ralegh's chief powers, to wit his influence over men. For Ralegh was wise and politic. He saw the state of affairs in Ireland and formed in his mind a definite plan of action—to use Irish factions to English purpose, and not to allow them to try and join under the cause of another religion. The most dangerous enemies were the crafty instigators in the background; and one of the most influential of these was an Anglo-Irish chieftain, named Lord Roche, who lived at Bally, some twenty miles from Cork where Ralegh was stationed. Ralegh convinced Lord Grey of the importance of bringing this feeder of revolt as prisoner to Cork, and undertook to do so himself with his small band of followers. And this he did by sheer dexterity and daring in the teeth of overwhelming difficulty. For the Seneschal of Imokelly, one Fitz-Edmonds, had wind of Ralegh's intention, and lay in ambush for him with eight hundred men. But Ralegh outwitted him by his speed and dashed with his small party through the ambuscade. That was not all. Arrived at Bally, he was met by five hundred townsmen and tenantry of Lord Roche. These men he held at bay with the larger part of his band, and himself, with six chosen men, rode on to Lord Roche's castle. At the gate he called out that he desired to speak with Lord Roche, and was answered that he would not be permitted to enter with more than two followers. But while he and the seneschal were parleying, the six of them slipped into the gate, and gained admission for another party which Ralegh had bidden follow him at a short interval, the attention of the warders being engaged by Ralegh, so that before the Irish knew what had happened, they found the castle courtyard full of musketeers, armed and standing to attention. Ralegh meanwhile was in the presence of Lord Roche, who was forced to treat the intruder as a guest, and sturdily maintaining his loyalty to the Queen, ordered his servants to bring in a banquet. Ralegh listened with all courtesy; and said that it was the will of the Lord Deputy of Ireland to hear with his own ears this noble confession of loyalty, and that he must beg leave to escort Lord Roche and his family to Cork. Lord Roche demurred. Ralegh insisted. It is difficult to decide whether the situation appealed more strongly to his sense of humour or to his sense of power. The Irish chieftain at his own table in the banqueting-hall of his own castle, surrounded by his men and the young captain with his two soldiers inside, some dozen in the courtyard and a few more dozen in the town, twenty miles from any assistance! "Desperation begetteth courage but not greater nor so lively as doth assured confidence," he wrote some thirty years later. Now his courage was certainly backed by both.
Gradually Lord Roche came to realize the inflexible determination of the young man; and agreed to what by Ralegh's inevitable personal strength of will became his only possible course. He consented to go to Cork, and went. The story does not end here. Not only did he go to Cork, but from being the Queen's dangerous foe, he became, through Ralegh's influence, the Queen's loyal supporter and staunch friend, and three of his sons actually were slain fighting for the Queen's cause in Ireland. That was one of Ralegh's triumphs. It shows the mettle of the man and his power over others, and more than that it bears out strikingly a distinct line of policy, which he formed then and expressed later, in dealing with the disaffected. Minding these Irish experiences, it is interesting to read what he says of Amilcar's treatment of the mercenaries in revolt. "Against these inconveniences, Mercy and Severity, used with due respect, are the best remedies. In neither of which Amilcar failed. For as long as these his own soldiours were in any way likely to be reclaimed by gentle courses, his humanitie was ready to invite them. But when they were transported with beastly outrage beyond all regard of honesty and shame, he rewarded their villainie with answerable vengeance, casting them unto wilde beasts to be devoured."
Moreover, it is certain that Lord Burghley respected Ralegh's judgment, for there is a remarkable paper extant written in the handwriting of both, which shows that Burghley conferred privately with Ralegh about the Irish rebellion. The document is dated October 25, 1582, and is inscribed with the words, "The opinion of Mr. Rawley upon motions made to hym for the meanes of subduyng the Rebellion in Monster." And in it the point upon which Ralegh chiefly insists is the pressing need to win over the Irish chieftains to the Queen's cause; as he had himself already done conspicuously in the case of Lord Roche.
There is a story that Ralegh owed his first introduction to the Queen's favour by his address in a conference before her, in which he proved his opinion, man to man, against Lord Grey de Wilton, his superior; but whether this story with all its dramatic possibilities is valid or not, it is certain that his conduct in Ireland brought him into great notice: and he was not the man easily to slip from any advantage he had gained. We hear of him joining the Earl of Leicester in a state mission to the Netherlands, and then he bursts into final brilliant prominence as courtier and his Queen's favourite.
CHAPTER V
QUEEN'S FAVOURITE
Court life—The Queen's position—Her character—She takes notice of Ralegh—Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester—Sir Philip Sidney—Burghley, the Lord High Treasurer, and Walsingham—Robert Cecil—The dress of the courtier—The language of the courtier—The other side, and the other Queen—Mary, Queen of Scots—The great intrigue—Its discovery—Death of Queen Mary.
The Court was the brilliant feature of the time. The Court was not confined to ceremonial functions and presentations—it was not a bath in which a man or a woman must be dipped before he or she could lay any real claim to distinguished respectability. The Court had a vivid existence of its own. "It was the centre, not of government alone, but of the fine arts: the exemplar of culture and civilization." The Court held a lien on the gaiety and life of the time. Courtiers and merchants (the two chief classes) were as distinct as a little later were town and gown at the Universities. To be a proper courtier became a cult.
Three great books, extraordinarily typical of the Renaissance, were written in almost identical years, books which pointed to new scope for the State, for the Prince, and for the private man. In 1513 Machiavel completed The Prince, in 1516 Sir Thomas More's Utopia was published, and in the same year Count Baldassare Castiglione finished his Book of the Courtier.
The dream of the Utopia may never be realized; but in some seventy-five years a close example of the Prince and of the Courtier were found in Queen Elizabeth, and in many of the men who surrounded her. The Book of the Courtier was translated into all the languages of Europe, and became the text-book of the cult. Its English translator was Thomas Hoby, and his work, as has been seen, was commended by the judicious Ascham. Castiglione was chaffed for moulding his own conduct precisely on the model of the perfect courtier he portrays in his book; and he could not but confess that the man of his imagination was the man he would choose to be. And, indeed, it would be what every courtier would aspire to be, as Wordsworth's Happy Warrior,
"This is the happy Warrior, this is he
That every man in arms should wish to be."
The Courtier must be gallant in the use of arms, proficient in all exercises of the body, skilled in all exercises of the mind; he must be ready and witty of tongue; he must be well-born and distinguished. But his realm is beyond the mere enterprise of accomplishments and birth. For the book ends with Bembo's great praise of Beauty—that Beauty "which is the origin of all other beawtye, whiche never encreaseth nor diminisheth always bewtifull and of itself ... most simple. This is the beawtye unseperable from the high bountye, whiche with her voyce calleth and draweth to her all thynges...," and an understanding of this Heavenly Beauty must be the final trait of the Perfect Courtier.
And it is well to bear this in mind. For this feeling for beauty existed in the Elizabethan courtier, just as it gave the finishing touch to Castiglione's hero; and existed as really as the more conspicuous qualities of gallantry and strength and intellect. Vitality, as has been said again and again, was the keynote of the age; and it is apparent in this aspiration towards beauty, just as it is apparent in reckless cruelty. The compass of the age was immense. And every instinct, every tendency of brute or god, raged with intense life, and was expressed Nothing lay dormant. The centre of all this life, of all this genius for living was the Court; and the illustrious head of the Court was Queen Elizabeth.
Guy de Maupassant has written a story of a small band of French soldiers who are at the last gasp with hunger and weariness and cold. They cannot march any further. They are content to lie down in the snow and die. But two fugitives come running to them, an old man and his grand-daughter, a young girl. "Allons les camarades," cries the Sergeant Pratique, "faut porter cette demoiselle-là ou bien nous n' sommes pu Français, nom d'un chien." So the worn-out men forget their weariness and carry her; they dare the cold and strip off their overcoats to keep her warm; they find new courage and drive back a party of the enemy, and they reach the French lines in safety. "What's that you're carrying?" asks a soldier. "Aussitôt une petite figure blonde apparut, depeignée et souriante qui répondit, 'C'est moi, monsieur.' Un rire s'éleva parmi les hommes et une joie courut dans leurs c[oe]urs. Alors Pratique agita son képi en vociferant, 'Vive la France.'"
There in little is the exact nature of Elizabeth's influence, and her influence was conscious and acted, not upon the immediate Court alone, but upon England. De Maupassant does not give any details of the girl, nothing of her character, not even her name. They are not relevant to his purpose. She may have as many faults in her small way as Elizabeth had in her great way. He does not mention them.
Such a mass of detail, however, is known about Elizabeth, and her faults have been so relentlessly exposed in the interest of Truth—her meanness, her avarice, her treachery, her wantonness, and what not—that the whole picture of the woman who was learned enough to speak in public impromptu in Latin and could converse in many languages, of the woman who was great enough to cause her own worship to be the fashion, and the sincere fashion, of the woman who was sufficiently beautiful and sufficiently distinguished to shine like a diamond on the forehead of that resplendent age,—is almost lost to view, so clouded with the dust of detraction has that picture become.
She was the very epitome of the time. All the brutality and energy and brilliance of that brutal, vital age found their counterpart in her. And she was a woman, a fitting contemporary of Catherine de Medicis. But she was too much a politician to be a good woman; and too much a woman to be a good politician.
To all the power which a beautiful woman, and a woman strong in body and intellect and passion, always has possessed and always will possess, she added the prestige of being Queen of England. Whereas the passions of her father threw Europe into confusion, the love affairs of Elizabeth, less impetuously managed, often held the balance between nations and brought every royal prince to England as suitor for her hand, and the great English courtiers scowled or laughed at them, but were kept in allegiance by their sovereign.
Wit, birth, and bearing found favour in her sight. There was no room at her Court for a fool. She loved wit as she loved splendour.
The Queen had heard of Humfrey Gilbert's nephew from Humfrey Gilbert's aunt, one of her intimate attendant women; and when Ralegh first came into notice by his exploits in Ireland, she was inclined to favour him. She was interested in his career, as a letter bears witness in which she writes, "... for that our pleasure is to have our Servaunt Walter Rawley treyned some longer tyme in that our realme for his better experience in Martiall affaires, and for the special care we have to doe him good in respect of his kyndred that have served us some of them (as you knowe) neer aboute our Parson: theise are to require youe that the leading of the said bande may be committed to the said Rawley."
Many stories are extant about his first meeting with Elizabeth. Truth hides in all of them. Some say that the Queen was present when Lord Grey de Wilton and young Ralegh were put face to face in a council chamber before Lord Burghley, and that she was struck by the power and skill with which he made good his case, proving the lack of judgment Lord Grey had shown in conducting the affairs of the war. Old Thomas Fuller, that worthiest of his own worthies (he had an eye for romantic effect, steadfast as he was for truth in matters of importance), relates that "Her Majesty, meeting with a plashy place, made some scruple to go on; when Ralegh (dressed in the gay and genteel habit of those times) presently cast off and spread his new plush cloak on the ground, whereon the Queen trod gently over, rewarding him afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so fair a footcloth. Thus an advantageous admission into the notice of a prince is more than half a degree to preferment." Industrious Fuller does not leave it at that; he proceeds to tell how Ralegh wrote on a window in the Queen's presence,
"Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,"
and how the Queen added with more grace than rhythm,
"If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all."
Ralegh's heart did not fail him. He became the Queen's lover; and his influence over the Queen was so recognized that Tarleton, the famous comedian, dared, during a performance, to add point to the words, "See, the knave commands the queen," by stretching out his hand towards Ralegh, who stood by the Queen. And Elizabeth, it is recorded, frowned. Swift was his ascent to fortune, came the first step how it may.
Elizabeth was too clever to try to lay aside her sex, though she was a skilful markswoman, an able horse-woman. Even her staid Archbishop Whitgift she used to tease, saying (as Isaac Walton gravely records as a fair testimony of her piety) that "she would never eat flesh in Lent without obtaining a License from her little black husband: and that she pitied him because she trusted him."
She was so born a Queen that she was able to do and say the most dangerous things without losing her distinction, or lessening her dignity.
And it is small wonder in those days when in England the whole force of the Renaissance turned as it were to a rapture of patriotism that such a Queen should be the visible emblem of the country, and be herself worshipped. Men might rave at her whims, they were driven frantic by them, but in their hearts they cherished her as Queen of themselves and Queen of their country. Fortunately for herself, and fortunately for England, her intellect mastered her passions, though that does not prove that she was passionless: far from it. There is nothing to justify that last scandal of a moral age which would damn her as a feelingless flirt. Lord Bacon, the wise Baron of Verulam, summed the matter up pithily, attaching its right value to the question, which, after all, is a paltry one, when, in writing on the Fortunate Memory, he says: "She suffered herself to be honoured and carressed and celebrated and extolled with the name of Love; and wished it, and continued it beyond the suitability of her age. If you take these things more softly, they may not even be without some admiration, because such things are commonly found in our fabulous narratives of a Queen in the Islands of Bliss, with her hall and her institutes, who receives the administrations of Love, but prohibits its licentiousness. If you judge them more severely, still they have this admirable circumstance, that gratifications of this sort did not much hurt her reputation, and not at all her majesty; nor ever relaxed her government, nor were any notable impediment to her State affairs." And it must be remembered that the times were neither fastidious nor gentle, and that when Bacon says licentiousness (lasciviam is the Latin word he uses) he meant licentiousness. Elizabeth was too sane, and too clever, and too busy to have time to be licentious: just as she could not have retained her control over men and control over herself, seen in the adroit way in which she managed the foreign princes, if she had remained what is called pure.
Masterly was her knowledge and treatment of men. Roughly speaking, they were divided into two classes; those whom she liked, and those whom she valued: but she kept them all imperiously to her will. The great Burghley was her man of business; he and his son Robert Cecil were her chief statesmen, and well she knew their value: capricious and exacting as she might be, she respected their advice and gave way to it. "Burghley," wrote Leicester, at the height of his arrogant power, "could do more with her in an hour than others in seven years." And he wrote concerning some political business. Never, when Leicester had most influence with the Queen, did she ever allow him to control her political actions, or in any way to supplant Cecil.
Robert Dudley, born about the year 1532, made Earl of Leicester in 1564, enjoyed the Queen's good-will more continuously and more to his advantage than any other of her lovers. He was regarded as the chief man in England by the ambassadors of foreign princes: he was for a long time the most magnificent. But Elizabeth kept always to her maxim, that England should be a country with one mistress and no master; much to Leicester's displeasure. His desire was to be master. He suggests a comparison with Milton's Satan, "better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heav'n," when he tried, and tried with conspicuous ill-success, to become King of the Netherlands. By the old nobility, staunch Sussex and proud Norfolk, he was hated. With the Duke of Norfolk, he on one occasion came to blows, when, during a game of tennis, of which the Queen was a spectator, he snatched her pocket-hand-kerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead. They thought him saucy and overweening. To the Queen his insolence was not unpleasant. Cecil disliked him (he does not appear a man to hate any one) and judiciously draws up papers contrasting Leicester and other suitors, especially the Archduke Charles, much to Leicester's disadvantage. But for all his glitter and influence, he was hated by the English people. His name had an ill sound ever since the untoward death of his wife, Amy Robsart. Though the pamphlet Leicester's Commonwealth is wholly unreliable, which among other slanders, states that the Lady Amy was actually murdered at his command, it is most probable that she committed suicide through misery at her neglect. Well enough men knew what was meant when the husband in the Yorkshire Tragedy says, after he has thrown his wife down and slain her:
"The surest way to charm a woman's tongue
Is—break her neck: a politician did it."
They thought of the stone staircase at Cumnor and shuddered. The people did not like his way of cheapening their Queen's good name: they did not like the man who caused scandals to arise round her. In 1560 Anne Dowe of Brentford was imprisoned for asserting that Elizabeth was with child by Robert Dudley; and she was the first of a long line of offenders who were punished for the same assertion.
And just as men hated Dudley for his arrogance, and for his daring to think even of setting himself beside their Queen, so they loved his nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, for the grace which his hand brought to everything which he touched. He fulfilled the ideal of Castiglione's Courtier. He was the antithesis of the rough, unmannered Dudley. In Dudley all the cruelty and ostentation and savage power of the time seem to find expression; whereas in Philip Sidney, all its grace and skill and poetry were manifest. Men vied with one another in his praises, men fought for the right to call him friend, and a woman became immortal by being "Sidney's sister." "Sidney, the Siren of this latter age," writes Barnefield; "divine Sir Philip," Michael Drayton calls him; and Ben Jonson, as though in defiance of the charge of exaggeration utters (you can hear him say it), "the godlike Sidney." Even the ribald Nash lowers his mad voice to the note of reverence, "Apollo hath resigned his Ivory Harpe unto Astrophel and he, like Mercury, must lull you a sleep with his musicke. Sleepe Argus, sleep Ignorance, sleep Impudence, for Mercury hath Io and onely Io Paean belongeth to Astrophel. Deare Astrophel, that in the ashes of thy Love livest againe like the Phoenix; o might thy bodie (as thy name) live againe likewise here amongst us; but the earthe, the mother of mortality hath snacht thee too soone into her chilled cold armes, and will not let thee by any meanes be drawne from her deadly imbrace; and thy divine Soule, carried on an Angels wings to heaven, is installed in Hermes place sole prolocutor to the Gods." His life was a poem, which all the men who lived with him, and all the men who knew his name, were great enough to read and to appreciate; his death is an example for all time. Fame with its common story cannot sully the brightness of the superb sacrifice of that superb self.
Dudley expressed the presumptuous vitality of the Court, and Sidney its vital poetry. A little aloof from the Court, which he was apt to regard with kindly disdain at its frivolity, moved the staid figure of Burghley, the Lord High Treasurer of England, Elizabeth's great man of business, perhaps the finest political intelligence that has ever thought out a way for a country through the most complicated difficulties, at a time when disaster crouched ever ready to spring and involve that country in ruin.
William Cecil had an absolute mastery over every detail; he possessed a genius for arrangement. Nothing escaped his notice. He was a kind of machine which attracted all the wild impulses of the time; they passed into the machine's mouth disordered, unarranged; and they passed out shaped, controlled by his slow inevitable will. As a statesman he appears hardly human in his freedom from all personality; he seems a mask hiding the brain of England, and regulating it to the only end where success could be. Men rose to fame fiercely struggling, and did brilliant acts or mad acts, and sank again or settled as the case might be; but always at the supreme head, always alert, always careful, impassive as some Eastern Buddha, sat the Lord Burghley, managing the affairs of the state, managing even the state's impulsive, whimsical mistress. His impassivity afflicted her at times, so that she played pranks on him, vainly endeavouring to upset his restraint and his dignity; but her pranks were hardly heeded. He was English to the solid backbone, and resisted unequivocally the rage of fashion that went out towards all that was foreign; and yet his foreign policy was unswerving and level-headed; he looked upon war as the last terrible resource of state-craft, in an age in which fighting was regarded as the highroad to glory, and was loved for its own wild sake. Elizabeth showed her knowledge of the right word when she called him her "spirit" and her "oracle"; and the courtiers their discernment of the obvious, when they called him "old fox." Together the two names describe him with some accuracy.