Читать книгу Sir Walter Ralegh: A Biography - W. Stebbing - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Offices and Endowments (1582–1587).

Employment.

His promotion, when it commenced, was liberal; it was not meteoric. He had won his full entry at Court before he gained permanent offices and emoluments. For a time he continued dependent upon the long-suffering Irish Exchequer. In February he received an order for £200 upon the entertainment due to him in Ireland. That, however, seems to have been payment of arrears for previous and actual service. Notwithstanding an angry protest by the Lord Deputy, already alluded to, a fresh commission was issued to him in April, 1582, as Captain of the late Captain Appesley's band of footmen in Ireland. The reason assigned was that he might be required for some time longer in that realm for his better experience in martial affairs. He had leave to appoint a lieutenant, while he was 'for some considerations by Us excused to stay here.' He did not want for employment, though he was given no fixed duties. A system of personal government like that of the Tutors demanded extraordinary services of various degrees of importance. Any and all Ralegh could excellently render. Frequently he acted as the Queen's private secretary. Sometimes he had to escort a foreign envoy. Negotiations were pending for the marriage of Elizabeth to the Duke of Anjou. Leicester was jealous of the Duke and of Simier, his dexterous and personally fascinating agent. Simier was returning to France in the autumn of 1581. He had to be protected, it was rumoured, from Flushing pirates known to be in Leicester's pay. Ralegh's professed adhesion to Leicester did not prevent his appointment as one of the escort. In the publication by an anonymous contemporary, called Leicester's Commonwealth, it is related that the vessel containing the returning escort was chased for several hours: 'Master Ralegh well knoweth it, being there present.' Anjou himself quitted England in February, 1582, to assume the sovereignty of the Netherlands. Ralegh again was of the company sent to introduce the Duke to the Queen's allies. Envoy and Counsellor. He stayed behind the rest, and was entrusted by the Prince of Orange with letters to the Queen. He has recorded that the Prince confided to him a private, if not very particular, message to her: 'Sub umbra alarum tuarum protegimur.' Probably that was only a text upon which the Prince's communications enabled him to enlarge. He was consulted much concerning Ireland, both by the Council and by the Queen. In March, 1582, articles were exhibited against Ormond for alleged indulgence in his government of Munster towards Irish rebels. He was suspected, for example, of having apprised the Seneschal of Imokelly that 'two choice persons' had stolen into the Seneschal's camp to murder him. Ralegh was named among those who were to be called upon to prove the charges. Burleigh himself, who did not approve of the fierceness of Ralegh's method of dealing with Irish turbulence, respected his experience. In October, 1582, the Lord Treasurer is said to have taken careful notes of his advice how to secure the adhesion of some Munster lords. Lord Grey's reception of a letter from the Treasurer in the preceding January citing an opinion of 'Mr. Rawley' on the mode of levying Irish taxes for the support of the English troops, has already been described. Use was made also of his engineering ability. There are references to reports by him on estimates for the repair of the fortifications of Portsmouth, and to his discussion of the question with Burleigh and Sussex in the Queen's presence. He is even found sitting on a commission with Sir Thomas Heneage to investigate a complaint against Lord Mayor Pullison, of having attached, to satisfy a debt to himself, the ransom of a Barbary captive.

Not till after a probation of years did he obtain definite official rank. In 1584 he had been elected one of the members for Devonshire, with Sir William Courtenay. Apparently in the early part of the same year he was knighted; for in his colonizing patent of March, 1584, he is styled 'Mr. The Stannaries

and the Guard. Walter Ralegh, Knight.' In 1585 he succeeded the Earl of Bedford as Warden of the Stannaries. He had as Warden to regulate mining privileges in Devon and Cornwall, to hold the Stannary Parliament on the wild heights of Crockern Tor, and judicially to decide disputes on the customs, which, though written, he has said, in the Stannary of Devon, were unwritten in Cornwall. Long after his death the rules he had prescribed prevailed. As Warden he commanded the Cornish militia. He had a claim, which was resisted by the Earl of Bath, the Lord Lieutenant of Devonshire, to military powers there also. His prerogatives were strengthened by his appointment shortly afterwards to the Lieutenancy of Cornwall, and to the Vice-Admiralty of the two counties. The Vice-Admiralty was a very convenient office for a dealer in privateering. He nominated as his deputies in the Vice-Admiralty Lord Beauchamp for Cornwall, and his eldest half-brother, Sir John Gilbert, for Devon. Beside his other offices, he is supposed to have held the post of a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber. Later he received a more signal token than any of royal confidence. He was appointed Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard. For several years Sir Christopher Hatton had united the offices of Captain and Vice-Chamberlain. On April 29, 1587, by a preposterous exercise of royal patronage, he became Lord Chancellor. He had already ceased to command the Guard, though the actual date of his retirement is not specified. His immediate successor, appointed perhaps as a stop-gap, was Sir Henry Goodier. Sir Anthony Paulett also is sometimes mentioned in connexion with the post. But the office was permanently filled by the nomination of Ralegh in the early summer of 1586. The Captain's pay consisted of a yearly uniform. Six yards of tawney medley at 13s. 4d. a yard, with a fur of black budge rated at £10, is the warrant for 1592. The cost in the next reign was estimated at £14. Ralegh had to fill vacancies in his band of fifty. He was known to have a sharp eye for suitable recruits, young, tall, strong, and handsome. The regular duty was to guard the Queen from weapons and from poison; to watch over her safety by day and night wherever she went, by land or water. At the Palace the Captain's place was in the antechamber, where he could almost hear the conversations between her and her counsellors. To share them he had but to be beckoned within. Naturally the command seemed to be a stepping-stone to a Vice-Chamberlainship at least, if not to the Keepership of the Queen's conscience.

Royal Parsimony.

None of these offices were in themselves lucrative. A maintenance for the new favourite and the new public servant had otherwise to be found. His endowment came from the usual sources. Naunton says that, 'though he gained much at the Court, he took it not out of the Exchequer, or merely out of the Queen's purse, but by his wit and the help of the prerogative; for the Queen was never profuse in delivering over her treasures, but paid most of her servants, part in money, and the rest with grace.' He adds, it may be hoped, before October 29, 1618: 'Leaving the arrears of recompense due for their merit to her great successor, who paid them all with advantage.' Ralegh himself, after a similar compliment to James, laments in his History the Queen's parsimony to her 'martial men, both by sea and land,' none of whom, he remembers, 'the Lord Admiral excepted, her eldest and most prosperous commander,' did she 'either enrich, or otherwise honour, for any service by them performed.' Notices in official documents of pecuniary grants to himself are rare. An order in September, 1587, for a payment of £2000 to be spent according to her Majesty's direction appears to have been for works at Portsmouth. No meagre substitute was supplied by forfeitures, by enforced demises of collegiate, capitular, and episcopal estates, by monopolies, and by letters of marque.

To All Souls College, Oxford, belongs the honour of having been the first to help to make his fortune. In April, 1583, he wrote to Egerton, then Solicitor-General, mentioning a grant of two beneficial leases of lands which the Queen had extorted from the college after her manner. On May 4, Farm of Wines. 1583, he received a more lucrative gift, the farm of wines. By his patent every vintner was bound to pay him for his life an annual retail licence fee of a pound. To save himself trouble, he underlet his rights to one Richard Browne for seven years at £700, or, according to another account, £800, a year. Browne promoted a large increase in the number of licensed taverners. Ralegh had reason to believe that he had not his fair share of profits. Egerton advised him that the demise was disadvantageous, but that it might be hard to terminate it without Browne's concurrence. Ralegh, to compel a surrender from Browne before the expiration of the term, obtained a revocation of his own patent in 1588. On August 9, 1588, a new patent for thirty-one years was granted. It does not seem to have freed him wholly from Browne's claims. This licence again he leased. The lessee was William Sanderson, the husband of his niece, Margaret Snedale. At a later period he had disputes with Sanderson also on the profits. By an account of 1592, he estimated them at a couple of thousand a year. It was never a very popular office to be chief publican. The year after the original grant, it involved Ralegh in a troublesome quarrel. He or Browne had licensed a vintner, John Keymer, at Cambridge, in defiance of the Vice-Chancellor's jurisdiction. The undergraduates loyally beat the intruder, and they frightened his wife nearly to death. The Vice-Chancellor sent him to gaol. The University also invoked the aid of its Chancellor, the Queen's Minister, against the Queen's favourite. Burleigh procured an opinion of the two Chief Justices against the licence. Ralegh was obliged in the end to give way to his assured loving friend the Vice-Chancellor. In the second patent the privileges of Oxford and Cambridge were expressly saved. In other respects it was wider. It allowed Ralegh a moiety of the penalties accruing to the Crown. The controversy with Cambridge may have been due only to Browne, and his eagerness for fees. In general, Ralegh appears to have exercised his powers moderately. A grantee who succeeded commended him for having 'ever had a special care to carry a very tender hand upon the business for avoiding of noise and clamour, well knowing it to be a thing extracted from the subject upon a nice point of a statute law.' A year after the first patent of wines he received Broadcloths. a similar boon. This was a licence in March, 1584, to export for a twelvemonth woollen broadcloths. A payment to the Crown was reserved. In 1585, 1587, and 1589 the same privilege was conferred and enlarged. One grant authorized him to export overlengths. Burleigh protested. He declared the conditions too beneficial to the grantee. Probably they were. The privilege brought him into collision with several bodies of merchants. Soon after the earliest of the licences had been granted, in June, 1584, we read of a petition, backed by Walsingham, for the release of ships which had infringed his patent. The Queen would not consent unless upon the terms that the offenders compounded with him. In 1586 the Merchant Adventurers of Exeter obtained a commission of inquiry whether his officers did not levy excessive fees upon certificates. He is represented by a local antiquary as less popular in that city than elsewhere in Devonshire. His patent rights as well as his official duties caused ill-will between it and him.

A gift in appearance much more magnificent, though the gains eventually were meagre, was the Irish grant of 1586. At last the Earl of Desmond's insurrection had been quelled, at the cost of the utter devastation of a province. The curse of God was, it was lamented, so great, and the land so barren, that whosoever did travel from one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to Limerick, about six score miles, he should not meet man, woman, nor child, save in cities or towns, nor yet see any beast, save foxes and wolves, or other ravening creatures. The few survivors fed upon weeds and carrion, robbing the graves and gibbets of their dead. It was determined to repeople the 574,268 forfeited acres. Ralegh retained his Irish captain's commission. In 1587 his name occurs at the head of the list. He, Ormond, Hatton, and Fitton were among the principal Undertakers for the resettlement. By the scheme nobody was to An Irish Seigniory. undertake for more than twelve thousand acres. On each portion of that size eighty-six families were to be planted. In Ralegh's favour, by express words and warrant in a special letter from her Majesty, the Crown rent was fixed at a hundred marks, calculated subsequently as £60 13s. 4d.; and the limitation of acreage was relaxed. Seigniories varied in extent from twelve to four thousand acres. Possibly in order to avoid too gross an appearance of indulgence to him, Sir John Stowell and Sir John Clyston, according to the Boyle-Lismore papers, were associated or named with him as joint undertakers. A Privy Seal warrant in February, 1586, confirmed by letters patent in the following October, awarded to the three three seigniories and a half in Waterford, Cork, and perhaps Tipperary. A certificate of March, 1587, stated that, if the lands assigned to them and their tenants should not be found to amount to 'three seigniories of twelve thousand acres apiece, and one seigniory of six thousand acres, then other lands should be added.' The patronage of the Wardenship of Our Lady's College of Youghal was added to Ralegh's share with several other lucrative privileges. Three centuries afterwards the House of Lords decided that an exclusive salmon fishery in the tidal waters of the Blackwater was among them. The domain stretched along both banks of the river from Youghal harbour. The soil was rich; but the royal commissioners for the survey reported it waste from neglect. Generally it was overgrown with deep grass, and in most places with heath, brambles, and furze.

English Forfeitures.

In 1587 he added English estates to his Irish. The Babington conspiracy had been detected the year before. By a grant which passed the Great Seal without fee in March, 1587, he acquired much of the principal plotter's property. He obtained lands in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, and Notts, together with all goods and personalty, except a curious clock reserved to the Queen's own use. According to modern taste, the pillage of confiscated estates is not an honourable basis for a great man's prosperity. In the reign of Elizabeth it was still the orthodox foundation. It was give and take, as Ralegh had to experience. That the unfortunate Babington had rested some hope of life on Ralegh's known Court influence is but a coincidence. He wrote on the 19th of September, 1586, the day before his execution, of 'Master Rawley having been moved for him, and been promised a thousand pounds, if he could get his pardon.' There was a traffic in pardons at Court. Odious and suspicious as was the practice, and liable to the grossest abuse, the presentation of money in return did not necessarily mean that the leniency had been bought. The Sovereign levied fines thus for the benefit of favourites on men too guilty to be let off scot-free, and not guilty enough to be capitally punished. Ralegh himself appears in after years to have received large sums from two pardoned accomplices of Essex, Sir Edward Bainham and Mr. John Littleton. From Littleton he is said to have had £10,000. But in the present instance no evidence has been discovered that Babington's overtures were countenanced in the least by Ralegh, or that he accepted money for urging them.

Five years separated the needy Munster Captain from the Lord Warden of the Stannaries, the magnificent Captain of the Queen's Guard, the owner of broad lands in England, and Irish seigniories. He had climbed high, though not so high as the insignificant Hatton. He had progressed fast, though another was soon to beat him in swiftness of advancement. He had gathered wealth and power. He was profuse in his application of both. Much of his gains went in ostentation. He was fond of exquisite armour, gorgeous Luxury and splendour. raiment, lace, embroideries, furs, diamonds, and great pearls. As early as 1583 he must have begun to indulge his taste. On April 26 in that year the Middlesex Registers show that Hugh Pewe, gentleman, was tried for the theft of 'a jewel worth £80, a hat band of pearls worth £30, and five yards of damask silk worth £3, goods and chattels of Walter Rawley, Esq., at Westminster.' Pewe was enough of a gentleman to read 'like a clerk,' and thus save his neck. Later Ralegh was satirized by the Jesuit Parsons as the courtier too high in the regard of the English Cleopatra, who wore in his shoes jewels worth 6600 gold pieces. Tradition speaks, with exaggeration as obvious, of one court dress which carried £60,000 worth of jewels. He loved architecture and building, gardens, pictures, books, furniture, and immense retinues of servants. In his taste for personal luxury he resembled the entire tribe of contemporary courtiers. It was a sumptuous age everywhere. England, which had suddenly begun to be able to gratify a love of splendour, seemed in haste to make up for lost time. Elizabeth encouraged the propensity at her Court. Her statesmen, warriors, and favourites enriched themselves with sinecures, confiscations, and shares in trading and buccaneering adventures. They spent as rapidly. They were all extravagant, and mortgaged the future. Almost all were continually straitened for money. Impecuniosity rendered them rapacious. The Lord Admiral received, as Ralegh has intimated, enormous gains from the Queen and from prizes, and was perpetually in need. Robert Cecil had to supplement his vast legitimate revenues from illicit sources, and died £38,000 in debt. Essex, whose disinterestedness is eulogized, had £300,000 from the Queen, in addition to most lucrative offices. The whole was insufficient for his wants. All alike, old friends and old foes, fed on one another, when there was nobody else to spoil. Prodigality and greediness in money matters were, it is to be feared, common traits of Elizabethan heroes. They were far from perfect; their defects differed from those of their modern descendants in the ethical consequences; they did not make offenders ashamed of themselves, and afraid of being found out; they did not necessarily vitiate the substance of their characters, and destroy their self-respect.