by James Horn
The English were at peace with Spain during these years and had not attempted to plant settlements in America or mount privateering expeditions. In 1562 John Hawkins, a wealthy merchant of Plymouth, had begun transporting slaves to the West Indies, which Spanish planters were eager to buy. Yet in spite of local demand, Hawkins’s trade was tantamount to smuggling in the eyes of the Spanish crown. Foreigners were not allowed to trade in Spanish America without permission from authorities in the islands, which Hawkins did not obtain.
Hawkins enjoyed two lucrative voyages to the West Indies, but his third was a disaster. In 1568, at San Juan de Ulúa, the port town of Vera Cruz, Mexico, Hawkins’s fleet was treacherously cut to pieces, or so the English claimed, by shore batteries and Spanish warships after negotiating a truce to carry out repairs. Hawkins lost five of his seven ships during the battle and limped back to England with only a fraction of his original force. The loss of several hundred of Hawkins’s men inflamed anti-Spanish feelings in England, while for those who had taken part in the “sorrowful voyage” (including Hawkins’s cousin, Francis Drake) the Spanish betrayal would be long remembered.
The attack at San Juan de Ulúa and deteriorating relations between England and Spain caused by commercial disputes and allegations of cruelties inflicted on English sailors by the Spanish encouraged growing numbers of privateers to descend on Spanish America in the 1570s. The queen and her ministers turned a blind eye to Francis Drake and others who raided shipping and towns in the West Indies and along the Spanish Main (the coast of South America).
Drake was one of the most successful privateers (the Spanish called them pirates). In 1573 he and his men joined forces with local cimarrones (bands of runaway slaves hostile to the Spanish) and a group of French privateers to ambush a mule train laden with Peruvian silver near Nombre de Dios, on the Panama Isthmus, amassing a small fortune in booty.
Philip II’s struggle against pirates and heretics swiftly evolved into a sea war fought in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific. On the strength of their successes in the West Indies, Drake and a number of West Country (Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall) privateers, including Richard Grenville and John Hawkins, began drawing up ambitious plans to plant colonies south of the River Plate (near present-day Buenos Aires). They aimed to establish bases from which they could plunder treasure ships off the coast of Peru after entering the Pacific through the Straits of Magellan. Elizabeth would not permit the establishment of colonies in South America, which she considered unrealistic, but she was persuaded to permit an expedition led by Drake to reconnoiter the west coasts of North and South America.11
It was against this background of raids on Spanish America that Sir Humphrey Gilbert, recently knighted for his services in Ireland put forward his own grand strategy to undermine Philip II’s power. To what extent Ralegh was involved is uncertain, but given his close association with Gilbert at the time and his subsequent involvement in the venture, it is likely he played an important role in the planning.
Sir Humphrey presented his proposal to the queen in early November 1577. War with Spain was inevitable, he argued, because Philip was wholly addicted to Catholicism and would sooner or later declare war on England, the last major obstacle in his struggle to eradicate heresy. Elizabeth was the leading Protestant monarch in Europe and, as she and her ministers knew well, Spain represented the greatest threat to the security of her realm. How could she withstand so great a prince? Gilbert insisted that it would be necessary to preempt Spanish aggression by striking a blow so damaging that Philip would quickly sue for peace.
Gilbert’s plan called for an assault on two fronts. First, to protect the crown from diplomatic reprisals, Gilbert would fit out a fleet and sail to the Newfoundland fishing banks where, under the cloak of piracy, he would capture French, Spanish, and Portuguese ships. He would carry off the best as prizes to the Netherlands or England, and burn the rest. The raid would devastate the Spanish cod fishery off Newfoundland, which was an extremely valuable component of Spain’s trade in the North Atlantic.
The profits from selling the captured ships and fish would be used to finance the second part of the plan, in which the English would occupy Cuba and Hispaniola, the two largest islands in the Caribbean. Gilbert believed this could be easily done because both were sparsely populated. Once the English were in possession of the islands, they would entrench themselves so effectively that no power would be able to remove them. They would draw upon the natural wealth of the islands and develop heavily fortified bases from which to harass Spanish treasure fleets on their way through the Caribbean to the Atlantic and Spain. The smallest loss to King Philip II in the Indies, Gilbert assured the queen, would be “more grievous to him than any loss that can happen to him elsewhere.”12
The following summer Elizabeth gave Gilbert formal permission to proceed. In the vague language of the royal grant she awarded him in June 1578, he was given exclusive rights to explore and to plant a colony somewhere in North America unclaimed by other European powers. Should he discover and possess new lands, he could hold them forever, but he was required to make a discovery within six years, or he would forfeit all rights to the grant.13
Gilbert wasted little time in organizing an expedition and by September 1578 was ready to depart from Dartmouth, with a fleet of eleven ships carrying some 500 men. Ralegh was given command of the royal ship Falcon, a token of the queen’s blessing of the voyage. The fleet’s destination was kept a close secret. It was too late in the year to sail to Newfoundland, and Gilbert likely decided to make for the Caribbean, possibly to plunder Spanish shipping, possibly to plant a colony somewhere on the southern mainland of North America, or both.
Whatever Gilbert’s intentions, the expedition was a fiasco. Bickering between Gilbert’s captains and bad weather sapped morale and led to three of the ships of deserting the expedition even before the fleet set out for America. Gilbert eventually managed to leave port in mid-November with the remainder of his fleet and headed for Ireland to take on extra supplies. He may have spent a couple of months on the Irish coast before adverse winds finally forced him back to England early in the new year. Ralegh did not return, however, and left Gilbert’s fleet to head southward, apparently intending to make his own voyage to the West Indies. A few months later, after suffering heavy casualties in a sea fight with the Spanish off the Cape Verde Islands near the coast of Africa, his ship limped back to Plymouth in May 1579, battered and bloody.14
The ignominious outcome was a severe blow to Gilbert’s prestige and purse. He had invested much of his (and his wife’s) personal fortune in the voyage and struggled over the next few years to pay off his debts. For his part, Ralegh had set out with high hopes, expecting to distinguish himself in fighting and ransacking Spanish shipping, just as his cousin Francis Drake had done in his raids on the Caribbean and Spanish Main. Ralegh might have anticipated taking a prize or two and returning home a rich man. As it was, he returned to London and spent the next couple of years on the fringes of Elizabeth’s court, competing for the queen’s attention among a crowd of other young hopefuls. Services to Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s leading advisor on foreign and domestic affairs, earned him the relatively minor position of Esquire of the Body Extraordinary, but that was not enough for Ralegh, who like Gilbert a decade before, decided to leave the city and seek his fortune soldiering in Ireland.
Ralegh arrived in Ireland in the summer of 1580 and spent eighteen months in Munster. He participated in the brutal suppression of a rebellion against English rule and took part in the slaughter at Smerwick Fort of hundreds of Italian and Spanish mercenaries sent by the papacy and Spain to invade Ireland. But he soon tired of the war and, highly critical of his superiors, who he thought were too lenient in dealing with the rebels, returned to Elizabeth’s court in the winter of 1581-1582 to offer advice in person on how to subdue the Irish. His purpose was probably little more than to leverage his expert knowledge in the hope that he be given a diplomatic mi
ssion or perhaps a position in Walsingham’s service.15
Ralegh was twenty-eight when he arrived back at court and quickly attracted Elizabeth’s attention. He was in the prime of his life and presented a striking figure. A contemporary de-scribed him as a “handsome and well compacted person, a strong natural wit and a better judgment, with a bold and plausible tongue.” He stood six feet tall, a head taller than most men, and was of slim and muscular build. A high forehead framed by curly auburn hair gave him an imperious look, while his eyes revealed a keen intelligence.
1.3 This portrait shows Sir Walter Ralegh as Captain of the Guard, responsible for Queen Elizabeth’s safety. He was appointed to the office in April 1587, five years after he first came to her attention following his return from Ireland.
It was not only Ralegh’s good looks that attracted the queen. His acute analysis of complex issues and forceful opinions, tempered by deference to his superiors, made an instant impression on her. She enjoyed listening to his carefully reasoned answers to questions, delivered in his thick Devonshire accent, and paid close attention to his opinions because it was said she “took him for a kind of oracle.” Some at court, especially his rivals, viewed him as little more than the queen’s latest flirtation, but he took his role seriously and saw himself as a trusted advisor as well as a close companion.16
Ralegh was the ideal courtier. “What is our life?” he wrote, but “[t]he play of passion.” As befitted his station, he was scrupulously courteous and by turns serious and playful. He extolled Elizabeth’s eyes, her hair, and “those dainty hands which conquered my desire,” and raised adoration of the queen to new heights:
Praised be Diana’s fair and harmless light,
Praised be the dews, wherewith she moists the ground,
Praised be her beams, the glory of the night,
Praised be her power, by which all powers abound.
She was a perfect foil to his earnestness, calling him “Water” (close to how he pronounced his name) and claiming she died of thirst whenever he left her presence. The word games they played—his love poems slipped discreetly into her hands, secret riddles passed between them—were a testament to the mutual respect they had for each other’s intelligence. “‘Fain would I climb, yet I fear to fall,” Ralegh was said to have scratched upon a lattice window pane one day with a diamond ring, to which she replied archly using the same ring, “If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all.”17
But perhaps the most important factor in their relationship was timing. In the spring of 1582 Ralegh and Elizabeth were at a crossroads in their lives, at a point when both were looking for a fresh beginning. The previous few years had been a disappointment to him: his half-brother’s New World venture had fallen through, his initial forays into court life had brought only limited returns, and though he had risen to senior command in Munster, little tangible reward had come from it.
The queen was approaching fifty when he came to her notice. She continued to enjoy the company of handsome young men, all of whom were expected to be hopelessly in love with her. They served as an adoring chorus, who would sing her praises but whose love would never be requited. She was their virgin goddess, Diana or Cynthia, the chaste deity renowned for her strength, beauty, and hunting prowess. Yet the charade was beginning to wear thin. Although she remained a good-looking woman and carried herself well, the advancing years had taken their toll. Lines around her eyes and mouth had deepened, her nose was sharper, and she relied increasingly on cosmetics to hide the inevitable imperfections of age.
As she grew older, Elizabeth probably realized that it was increasingly unlikely she would marry. Ever since ascending the throne as a young woman of twenty-five, she had used her sex and the prospect of marriage to keep her political enemies abroad off balance and her admirers at home enamored. Her recent courtship of the Duke of Anjou, brother of the French king, Henry III, and heir presumptive to the French throne, whom she had fawned over for a couple of years and lovingly dubbed her “frog,” was her final wooing. He was hardly a great catch—he was very short and was described by contemporaries as having a large nose and a face scarred by pockmarks—but the queen was more interested in a union that would tie France to her side and end England’s diplomatic isolation. When the serious possibility of a match arose in early 1579, there was even talk of Elizabeth producing an heir. Contrary to the expectations of her ministers, Elizabeth appeared to blossom in the company of the youthful Anjou and was bitterly disappointed when negotiations eventually broke off and he left England in February 1582, never to return. “I grieve and dare not show my discontent,” she wrote upon his departure.18
The queen was strongly attracted to Ralegh’s good looks and unswerving loyalty. As she had with Anjou, Elizabeth came alive in Ralegh’s company, but unlike the French prince, Ralegh was careful not to press his attentions too hard. In the aftermath of her affair with Anjou, Ralegh was an ideal companion, attentive and devoted, someone who would perhaps stand by her as she looked to a future without a husband or family of her own.
To Ralegh, the queen’s favor offered a world of possibilities: wealth and power and a means of fulfilling his boundless ambition. No one had risen so quickly in her favor since the early years of her reign, when she had been inseparable from Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, who was rumored to be her lover and, his rivals had feared, would soon come to rule all. Elizabeth had eventually put Leicester in his place, telling him she would not be ruled by any man. But as Ralegh’s fortunes rose, he may have wondered whether he would not only supplant the queen’s other favorites but also become an important figure in her governing councils. Ralegh aimed to make his mark and play a leading role in the direction of policy.19
1.4 Durham House, to the right of center, was Ralegh’s residence in London for twenty years. The mansion was situated on the Strand, the main thoroughfare leading to Fleet Street and the ancient City of London.
Ralegh benefited greatly from Elizabeth’s generosity. He was showered with gifts, offices, and honors, which transformed him within a few months from a mere country gentleman into an enormously wealthy grandee. The queen rewarded him with lucrative estates in Kent and Hampshire and a license to charge every vintner in England £1 a year for the right to sell wine, which brought him £700 annually (approximately $150,000- $200,000 in present-day value). As befitted his new status, he dressed lavishly in the high fashion of the day. His clothes and footwear were strewn with gems and pearls, he wore a great lace ruff at his neck and a jeweled dagger at his side, and he perfumed his long hair with musk. One of his hatbands alone was worth more than a common laborer was likely to earn in several years. He was insufferably proud and had few qualms about flaunting his newfound wealth and position whenever the opportunity arose.20
Early in 1583 Elizabeth granted Ralegh the use of Durham House, a “noble palace” on the Thames, formerly the London residence of the bishops of Durham. Dating to the reign of Edward I, the house had been rebuilt in the fourteenth century and was among the oldest of grand mansions that fronted the river between the City of London and Westminster. It included gardens, an orchard, two courtyards with outbuildings that accommodated up to forty servants, stables on the Strand, and a water gate, which gave Ralegh easy access by boat to Elizabeth’s London residence at Whitehall. He was now at the epicenter of power, close to the royal palace and residences of the principal officers of state.
He adored Durham, soon known as Ralegh House, and renovated his quarters on the upper floors at huge expense. “I have heard it credibly reported,” an observer who had visited the house on several occasions reported, “that Master Rawley hath spent within this half year above 3,000 pounds.” His bed was covered with green velvet decorated with plumes of white feathers, his table was laid with silver engraved with his coat of arms, and he was attended by thirty men in expensive livery, some wearing chains of gold. For all the splendor of his newly furnished rooms, however, his favorite spot was his study, located in a small tu
rret overlooking the Thames.21
From this vantage point he could see over the densely packed houses, shops, and churches far downriver to old St. Paul’s Cathedral, still without a steeple (it had been destroyed by lightning twenty years earlier), and beyond to the fantastic Nonesuch House, with its towers and cupolas built entirely of wood, sitting astride London Bridge. Upriver was Whitehall, adorned by a beautiful gatehouse, gallery, tennis courts, bowling alleys, and a cockpit built by Henry VIII. A little farther off was Westminster Hall, where the queen’s courts were held, and the ancient abbey (founded in Saxon times) where English monarchs had been crowned from time immemorial. Across the Thames the open fields of Lambeth Marsh were clearly visible, and to the east were the thickly populated suburbs of Southwark; almost the size of a city and already notorious for their poverty and squalor.
Everywhere were the hustle and bustle of a great city: crowded streets and markets, animals and carts jostling for space along the busy thoroughfares, the raucous cries of men and women selling their wares, and the jests exchanged by watermen as they plied the Thames. Looking down from his little turret, Ralegh could have been forgiven for thinking all of London was at his feet.22
RALEGH’S DRAMATIC change in fortune gave him the opportunity once again to involve himself in his brother’s schemes to establish a colony in North America. Following the disaster of the 1578 voyage, Gilbert had realized that another expedition would have to be planned more carefully. In March 1580 he had dispatched a small frigate on a reconnaissance mission to the North American coast under the command of an Azorean (Portuguese) master mariner, Simon Fernandes. After a swift crossing, Fernandes made landfall somewhere between New England and the mid-Atlantic seaboard, returning to England by the early summer. Although encouraged by the outcome, Gilbert was not in a position to finance and organize a full-scale expedition, and plans for another American voyage languished for the next two years.23