degradation, 'I am not so simple to think that any other motive than wealth will ever erect in the New World a commonwealth, or draw a company from their ease and humour at home to settle [in colonial plantations].'

The popular play called Eastward Ho! published early in the seventeenth century, revived at the close of the epoch of the English Renaissance all the prevailing incitements to colonial expansion. The language is curiously reminiscent of a passage in Sir Thomas More's Utopia, and illustrates the permanence of the hold that idealism in the sphere of colonial experiment maintained in the face of all challenges over the mind of sixteenth-century Englishmen.

In the play an ironical estimate was given of the wealth that was expected to lie at the disposal of all-comers to the New World. Infinite treasure was stated to lie at the feet of any one who cared to come and pick it up. Gold was alleged by the dramatist to be more plentiful in America than copper in Europe; the natives used household utensils of pure gold; the chains which hung on the posts in the streets were of massive gold; prisoners were fettered in gold; and for rubies and diamonds,' declares the satiric playwright, the Americans go forth on holidays and gather them by the seashore, to hang on their children's coats, and stick in their caps, as commonly as our children in England wear saffron gilt brooches and groats with holes in them.'

At the same time the dramatist recognised that the passion for moral perfection remained an efficient factor in colonisMoral ing enterprise. He claimed for the new country ideals. that public morality had reached there a pitch never known in England. No office was procurable except through merit; corruption in high places was unheard of. The New World offered infinite scope for the realisation of perfection in human affairs.

III

any

Elizabethan

The mingled motive of sixteenth-century colonial enterprise is best capable of realisation in the career of a typical Elizabethan-Sir Walter Ralegh. The character Ralegh a and achievements of Ralegh, alike in their defects type of and merits, sound more forcibly than those of versatility. other the whole gamut of Renaissance feeling and aspiration in Elizabethan England. His versatile exploits in action and in contemplation-in life and literature are a microcosm of the virtues and the vices which the Renaissance bred in the Elizabethan mind and heart.

He was a

Sir

Sir Francis

Ralegh as a boy was an enthusiast for the sea. native of Devonshire, whence many sailors have come. Francis Drake, the greatest of Elizabethan maritime explorers, was also a Devonshire man. It Drake. was he who first reached the Isthmus of Panama, and, first of Englishmen to look on the Pacific Sea beyond, besought Almighty God of His kindness to give him life and leave to sail an English ship once in that sea. That hope he realised six years later when he crossed the Pacific, touched at Java, and came home by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Drake's circumnavigation of the globe was the mightiest exploit of any English explorer of the Elizabethan era.

Ralegh's

Only second to Drake as a maritime explorer was Sir Humphrey Gilbert, also a Devonshire man, who in 1583 in the name of Queen Elizabeth took possession of Newfoundland, the oldest British colony.. This halfSir Humphrey Gilbert was Ralegh's elder half-brother, brother, for they were sons of the same mother, Humphrey who married twice. Her first husband, Sir Humphrey's father, was Otho Gilbert, who lived near Dartmouth. Her second husband, who was Ralegh's father, was a country

Sir

Gilbert.

Infancy and Education.

gentleman living near Budleigh Salterton, where Ralegh was born about 1552, some two years before Sir Philip Sidney. Gilbert was Ralegh's senior by thirteen years, and like him Ralegh obtained his first knowledge of the sea on the beach of his native place. The broad Devonshire accent, in which he always spoke, he probably learnt from Devonshire sailors. His intellect was from youth exceptionally alert. Vigorous as Vigorous as was always his love of outdoor life, it never absorbed him. With it there went a passion for books, an admirable combination, the worth of which was never better illustrated than in the life and letters of the Renaissance.

After spending a little time at Oxford, and also studying law in London-study that did not serve him in life very profitably-Ralegh followed the fashion among young Elizabethans and went abroad to enjoy experience of military

service.

The rivalry

IV

Englishmen were then of a more aggressive temper than they think themselves to be now. The new Protestant religion, which rejected the ancient domination of with Spain. the Papacy, had created a militant spiritual energy in the country. That spiritual energy, combining with the new physical and intellectual activity bred of the general awakening of the Renaissance, made it almost a point of conscience for a young Elizabethan Protestant in vigorous health to measure swords with the rival Catholic power of Spain. As Sir Philip Sidney realised, Spain and England had divided interests at every point. Spain had been first in the field in the exploration of the New World, and was resolved to spend its energy in maintaining exclusive mastery of its new dominion. Spain was the foremost champion of the

religious ideals of Rome. Pacific persuasion and argument were not among the proselytising weapons in her religious armoury. She was bent on crushing Protestantism by force of arms. She lent her aid to the French Government to destroy the Protestant movement in France which the Huguenots had organised there. She embarked on a Spain and long and costly struggle in her own territory of the Low Countries in Holland to suppress the Dutch champions of the Reformed religion, whose zeal for active resistance was scarcely ever equalled by a Protestant people.

Holland.

France.

Naturally Ralegh at an early age sought an opportunity of engaging in the fray. He found his earliest military experiences in fighting in the ranks of the Hugue- Ralegh in nots in France. Then he crossed the French territory on the North to offer his sword to the Dutch Protestants, who were struggling to free themselves from Spanish tyranny and Spanish superstition in the Low Countries.

His first

conflict

with Spain.

But it was in the New World that Spain was making the most imposing advance. Spanish pretensions in Europe could only be effectually checked if the tide of Spanish colonisation of the New World were promptly stemmed. Ralegh was filled to overflowing with the national jealousy of Spain, and with contempt for what he deemed her religious obscurantism. His curiosity was stirred by rumours of the wonders across the seas, where Spain claimed sole dominion. Consequently his eager gaze was soon fixed on the New Continent.

At twenty-six, after gaining experience of both peace and war in Europe, he joined his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in a first expedition at sea, on a voyage of discovery. He went as far as the West Indies. With the Spaniards who had already settled there inevitable blows were exchanged. But Ralegh's first conflict with the arch enemy

was a drawn battle. He was merely prospecting the ground, and the venture bore no immediate fruit.

In Ireland.

During a succeeding season he exhausted some of his superabundant energy in a conflict nearer home. In Ireland, England was engaged in her unending struggle with the native population. On Ralegh's return. from the West Indies he enlisted, with a view to filling an idle hour, in the Irish wars. The situation was not exhilarating, and his mind was too busy with larger projects to lead him to grapple with it seriously. Ireland appeared to him to be a lost land,' ' a common woe, rather than a commonwealth.' But its regeneration seemed no work for his own hand. He gained, however, a great material advantage from his casual intervention in the affairs of the country. There was granted to him a great tract of confiscated land in the South of Ireland, some forty thousand acres in what are now the counties Waterford and Cork. The princely estate stretched for many miles inland from the coast at Youghal along the picturesque banks on both sides of the river Blackwater in Munster.

The soil was for the most part wild land overgrown with long grass and brambles, but Ralegh acquired with the demesne a famous house and garden near Youghal which was known as Myrtle Grove, and he afterwards built a larger mansion at Lismore. There he spent much leisure later, and both houses are of high biographic interest. It was, however, not the puzzling problems of Irish politics which occupied Ralegh's attention, while he dwelt on Irish soil. He formed no opinions of his own on Irish questions. He accepted the conventional English view. For the native population he cherished the English planters' customary scorn. He did not hesitate to recommend their removal by means of 'practices,' which were indistinguishable from plots of assassination.