Читать книгу Great Ralegh - Hugh De Sélincourt - Страница 11

MAP OF LONDON

Click here for larger image.

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.