Hero Tales from History — Sir Walter Raleigh, The Favorite of Good Queen Bess

SIR WALTER RALEIGH, THE FAVORITE OF GOOD QUEEN BESS

A gay company was waiting before the old palace at Greenwich, beside the River Thames below the City of London, on a summer afternoon in the days of Elizabeth.

They were watching for the queen and her intimates to come down the broad steps in front of the palace.

There had been a shower, and the trees, grass, and bright flowers glistened in the sunshine.

“Here comes Her Majesty!

” exclaimed some in the waiting throng as a woman in middle life descended the steps, attended by the Earl of Leicester and other nobles and knights whose names are well-known to history.

The queen was slender, with her light auburn hair dressed up from her high, pale brow.

Her chief mark of beauty was her small, delicate hands with long, taper fingers, of which she was rather vain.

She was richly dressed in a heavy silk brocade, and a collar of costly lace stood up from her shoulders behind her slender neck like an open fan.

[Illustration: THE BOYHOOD OF RALEIGH.

AS HE LISTENS TO THE SAILOR’S

TALE OF THE LAND BEYOND THE SEA, RALEIGH RESOLVES TO WIN IT FOR ENGLAND WHEN HE IS A MAN.

_From the painting by J. E.

Millais_] The court, after receiving her gracious greetings, followed the queen in a grand promenade through the park.

Elizabeth soon came to a spot where the recent shower had left a shallow pool of water.

A quaint writer describes this scene: “Her Majesty meeting with a plashy place, made some scruples to go on, when Raleigh (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 foot-cloth.

” Walter Raleigh was a handsome young man, six feet tall, with curly brown hair and beard.

He had been a soldier in France and an officer in Ireland, and had made several voyages of discovery with his gallant half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

It was the fashion--indeed it seemed necessary then--for men at court to flatter the middle-aged maiden queen, who was foolish enough to believe that she was as lovely as they told her she was.

The Earl of Leicester once entertained her at Kenilworth Castle, where he had all the clocks stopped on the moment of her arrival to show that no notice should be taken of the passing of time during her visit there.

So Queen Bess could hardly help feeling flattered when such a gallant and good-looking courtier as Raleigh bowed before her and laid his cloak as a velvet carpet for her to walk upon.

Riches, lands, castles, and even happiness go by favor in royal circles.

Some time after this, the queen made her favorite a knight, with the title Sir before his name.

One day the queen saw Raleigh taking a diamond ring off his finger and scratching something on a window-pane.

“Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

” Then she took from her own slim hand a diamond and cut in the glass under what he had written, this rhyme: “If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all.

” Of course, each reigning favorite of the queen became an object of envy to the rest of the court.

Lord Leicester, who was now slighted by her Majesty for this new knight, did all he could to injure Raleigh.

The young Earl of Essex did his utmost, later, to turn the queen against Sir Walter.

But for a long time Raleigh remained high in favor.

Raleigh was the first Englishman to attempt to plant a colony in the New World.

By way of compliment to the maiden queen, he named the whole region which he was trying to settle, Virginia.

Returning from an early voyage, he introduced into Ireland the potato, first found in South America.

He also discovered the pineapple (so named because it is shaped like a pine cone) and imported it to England.

Another thing Raleigh is said to have introduced into England was tobacco, which the American Indians raised and “drank,” as they called smoking, in pipes of copper and clay.

Raleigh had a silver pipe made for his own use.

One day when he was smoking in his library, a manservant came in with a pot of ale, and, thinking his master was on fire, yelled with fright as he poured the ale over him!

It is said that the queen asked Sir Walter to smoke in her presence; but when she tried to learn to use tobacco in that way, she stopped because it made her ill.

Sir Walter Raleigh was in active command of a number of English ships in the fleet which defeated the Invincible Armada, sent against England by King Philip the Second of Spain.

For her favorite’s part in that great adventure, the queen made him an admiral.

Later, he was wounded in a naval battle near Cadiz, Spain.

When asked what had been done for him on account of his heroic services there, Admiral Raleigh sadly replied, “What the generals have got I know least.

For my own part, I have got a lame leg and deformed.

I have not wanted good words, and exceeding kind and regardful usage; but I have possession of nought but poverty and pain.

” Some one must have told the queen of this speech, for she called Raleigh back to the palace and appointed him once more her captain of the guard.

When Queen Elizabeth died, James Stuart, king of Scotland, became king.

James’s mind had been poisoned against Raleigh, whose enemies told the new king that Raleigh plotted to place James’s cousin, Arabella Stuart, upon the throne of England.

So Sir Walter was imprisoned in the Tower of London.

He was confined there for twelve years, though he proved that the things his enemies had said against him were untrue.

One wicked creature who had accused him confessed that his story about Raleigh was made up out of spite.

During the long years of his imprisonment, Sir Walter wrote his “History of the World,” and experimented in a rude chemical laboratory which he had fixed up in his prison.

He also wrote beautiful poems and many letters to his friends.

For some time Lady Raleigh was allowed to visit him with their son, Carew.

The older son, Walter, had been killed in an encounter while on a voyage with his father, seeking El Dorado, or the City of Gold, supposed to lie hidden in northern South America.

At last word came from King James that if Raleigh would go and find those fabled gold mines for his benefit, his high treason would be forgiven.

So the white-haired knight, lame from a wound he had received in loyal service of England, started out on another voyage of adventure, to fight the Spaniard to the bitter end.

But Sir Walter was only hoping against hope, for there was no such mine there, and the expedition proved an utter failure.

Instead of escaping to another country as he might well have done, he went back and bravely told King James that the “El Dorado” story was only a Spanish lie.

So the disappointed king ordered Raleigh back to prison, and a corrupt judge pronounced him guilty of high treason.

For that crime, the Raleigh’s beautiful home estate might legally become the property of the crown, and Raleigh himself condemned to death.

Raleigh made the best even of this terrible experience.

He cheered his wife by telling her he was ready and glad to go where she could come too--where they could be happy together always.

On his way to execution, Raleigh noticed a man with a bald head and no hat.

Taking off his own cap he tossed it down to the old man with-- “You need this, my friend, more than I do.

” On the scaffold he made a patriotic speech to the assembled crowd.

Then he asked to see the axe.

He smiled as he tried the edge of it with his thumb, and remarked to the executioner who stood before him, dressed, as was the custom, in black velvet tights, with a black mask over his face, “This gives me no fear.

It is a sharp and fair medicine to cure me of all my troubles.

”