Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (10 page)

The extent of Sanderson's financial backing is now not at all clear, but it was certainly considerable. While Ralegh's credit was, in his heyday, watertight, and while Sanderson also obliged other leading courtiers in their search for ready cash, there must surely have been an element of trust and family obligation behind support on such a scale. With the inevitability that goes with high-stakes partnerships, this relationship eventually soured, the two men parting angrily during the mid-1590s. But at the height of Ralegh's court career Sanderson's money sustained that commitment to speculation, ostentation and patronage so necessary among all those close to the Queen.
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Cash was needed to impress friends and acquaintances as well as the Queen and rivals. Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, ten years Ralegh's junior, fell increasingly under his spell. The Earl's household accounts begin to record the payment of gaming debts to Ralegh from around 1587. On 26 March 1588, for example, Northumberland lost forty shillings to his friend, perhaps at 'tictac' or at cards, while a month later he lost another pound while gambling at Durham.
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 At about the same time Northumberland generously rewarded 'Sir Walter Rawley his man, that brought your Lordship a shert of maile', and, on another occasion, 'the man that brought Sir Walter Rawleys pictor'.
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 A martial gift, and a constant reminder of one's face; Ralegh had gauged the temper and the interests of a moody, difficult young man. Mounts and saddles followed, the Earl splashing out on a horse and equipage, a perfect pair for those presented to Ralegh.
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 They could now ride out together in fashionable harmony.

These were strategic gifts in a strategic friendship; what friendship at Court was not strategic? Northumberland made the acquaintance of a charismatic, knowledgeable, influential man of the world, while Ralegh courted a member of that increasingly rare breed in late Elizabethan England, a wealthy earl descended from an ancient family. Any immediate benefit lay perhaps with Northumberland; the Percy family may have been well established, and it may have been noble, but the name had a tainted, even dangerous resonance at Elizabeth's court. Northumberland's uncle, the seventh Earl, had been beheaded at York for his part in the Northern Rebellion of 1569, while his father, the eighth Earl - a Catholic like his predecessor - had committed suicide in the Tower of London in 1585, when imprisoned under suspicion of complicity in the Throckmorton Conspiracy. Nevertheless, there was more to this than policy; the shared interests and outlook are already clear enough. Their mutual interest in science and exploration, for example, prompted both men to patronize the fascinating and brilliant Thomas Harriot. Here is a friendship nurtured for the future as well as for the present, a friendship that endures. Ralegh's young son is presented by the Earl with a fine feather for his cap in the late 1590s. In January 1600 Rowland Whyte confides to Sir Robert Sidney that Ralegh and Northumberland busy themselves at cards and other diversions, one sure way of passing the long hours of attendance at Court.
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 Playing the courtier could be wearisome work.

At that point the Earl needed a sympathetic ear, for his estranged wife, Essex's sister, was in London complaining of his behaviour. She had every justification. Northumberland's eccentricities, his remoteness accentuated by advancing deafness, frustrated an essentially affectionate relationship. In 1604 Toby Matthew wrote to Dudley Carleton, then in the Earl's service, commenting on illness, shyness, or - perhaps - a series of idiosyncratic moodswings: Northumberland, he wrote, 'is so unlike any body elce, that it were pitty he should not be like himselfe'.
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By the beginning of 1583,Walter Ralegh's older half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was completing his plans for another expedition across the Atlantic. One obstacle remained: Elizabeth required him to stay at home 'as a man noted of not good happ by sea', a perceptive comment that he would have been wise to heed. At this point Ralegh stepped into the picture. His role was limited but significant, smoothing Gilbert's path at Court and providing some funding. Ralegh evidently helped to win over the Queen, for in sending her 'token' to Gilbert in March that year he noted that:

Her Highness willed mee to send yow worde that she wished as great good hap and safty to your ship as if her sealf were ther in parson, desiring yow to have care of your sealf as of that which she tendereth, and therefore for her sace [sake] yow must provide for hit accordingly.
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In May Nicholas Faunt, one of Walsingham's secretaries, wrote to Antony Bacon from Court that 'Mr Rawley our newe favorite hath made an Adventure of 2000 li [£2,000] in a shippe and furniture therto'. This was a large sum and no doubt Ralegh hoped for a good return on his investment. He had no intention of sailing himself, perhaps discouraged by his unhappy experiences earlier in the Falcon.
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The expedition set out on 11 June 1583 with five ships: the Delight (120 tons), the flagship, owned by Sir John Gilbert and William Winter, the son of Elizabeth's admiral, captained by Winter; the Golden Hind (40 tons), owned and captained by Edward Hayes, who later wrote a vivid narrative of the journey; Ralegh's ship, the Barke Ralcgh (200 tons), captained by M. Butler, with Robert Davis of Bristol as master; the Swallow (40 tons); and the Squirrel (8 tons).
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Two days after their departure, the Barke Ralegh deserted the fleet. Gilbert wrote angrily to Sir George Peckham that the ship, the largest of them all, 'ran from me in faire and cleere weather'. He asked Peckham to 'solicit' Sir Walter to make an example of the crew.
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After the crossing, illness hit the fleet when it was anchored off St John's, Newfoundland, and Gilbert sent the Swallow, back to England with the sick. Then, off Cape Breton Island, the Delight hit a shoal and sank with eighty of her one hundred men. With only the Golden Hind and the tiny Squirrel left, Gilbert decided to abandon the voyage and set off for England with his two remaining ships. Edward Hayes tells the end of the story. In spite of protests from his colleagues Gilbert insisted on sailing in the Squirrel, although it was heavily overloaded. 'I will not', he said, 'forsake my little company going homeward, with whom I passed so many stormes and perils.' (His half-brother Walter Ralegh had a better sense of his own survival.) By the time the ships had passed the Azores, they hit heavy storms. Here, 'the Generall sitting abaft with a booke in his hand, cried out unto us in the Hind..."We are as neere to heaven by sea as by land". Reiterating the same speech, well beseeming a souldier, resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testifie he was.' About midnight on 9 September 1583 the Squirrel's lights went out and she was swallowed by the waves.
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Ralegh was the man best placed to take over the mission to explore and colonize North America, but he was not the only one seeking to try. Sir George Peckham, a prominent Buckinghamshire Catholic, proposed to provide persecuted recusants with a home across the Atlantic where they could live freely while practising their own religion. After encountering opposition to this from the Spanish ambassador, Don Bernardino de Mendoza, and from English Catholic exiles loyal to Spain, he redirected his appeal to include Protestant noblemen and gentlemen 'who doe chiefly seeke a temperate climate, wholesome ayre, fertile soile, and a strong place by nature whereupon they may fortifie'. Gilbert had granted Peckham and his associates, who included Philip Sidney, 8,500,000 acres out of his own concession from Elizabeth.
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 However, Sidney was forbidden to leave England, Peckham was imprisoned for his religion, and the plan lapsed, never to be revived.

Very different were the proposals of another group, headed by Captain Christopher Carleill. Where Peckham had envisaged a colony of landed estates, Carleill appealed to commercial interests. His father, Alexander Carleill, was a successful City merchant whose wife married Sir Francis Walsingham after her first husband's death. Christopher, like Walsingham a strong Protestant, fought at sea and on land, with the Dutch Sea Beggars in the English Channel, with the Prince of Orange in the Netherlands and the Prince of Conde in France. His father had had useful contacts with the great London trading companies and his stepfather gave him an entry to the royal Court. In 1583 he negotiated with a group of Bristol traders and with the Muscovy Company for a joint venture to America, writing in its support 'A briefe and summary discourse upon the intended voyage to the hithermost parts of America'. This is a hard-headed document, spelling out the initial outlay required and the commercial return to be expected. The scheme was far more realistic than Gilbert's or Peckham's and as we shall see it was probably more realistic than Ralegh's. Had it developed it would have had the advantages of merchant capital and business acumen. But for some reason, not now apparent, it faded and Carleill went off instead on Drake's great West Indian raid of 1585. Eight years later he died in poverty.

The field was clear for Ralegh. Although he had few inherited advantages - no large accumulation of landed estates and no extended family of noble kinsmen and kinswomen from whom he could draw support - he had relatives more modestly placed who could be of active help: Raleghs, Champernownes, Gilberts and others. But even so, he had to rely largely upon his personal qualities. One of his earliest intellectual contacts, through Humphrey Gilbert, was with that extraordinary wizard, cosmographer and magus, Dr John Dee, thought to be the first man to use the phrase 'British Empire'.
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 Then there was Thomas Harriot, astronomer, linguist and ethnographer; the two Richard Hackluyts supplied Ralegh with publicity and geographical information; and men like William Sanderson and John Watts brought in City contacts. The beautiful sketches of John White provided the earliest visual record of the people of North America. Ralegh was an inspiring military leader who could call upon the services of such officers as Sir Richard Grenville and Ralph Lane. Finally, there was the Court, essential for political backing: the Queen herself, though she did not like Ralegh to leave her side; Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State, a strong supporter of the western enterprise; and Robert Cecil, who succeeded Walsingham as Secretary. We shall meet them all in the course of the narrative.

Ralegh's first step was to gain authority from the Queen for occupying the lands he hoped to discover. With Gilbert's grant due to expire in June 1584, Ralegh moved quickly to obtain letters patent. Importantly, his grant, sealed on 25 March, was not limited in time. He was allowed to hold the lands he discovered and occupied for himself and his heirs for ever, provided that they were not already possessed by any Christian prince or inhabited by any Christian people.
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In April of the same year a voyage of reconnaissance set out in two ships, led by two members of Ralegh's household: Philip Amadas, a Plymouth man, and Arthur Barlow. Simon Fernandez, an experienced but difficult and controversial seaman, sailed with them as pilot. It is likely, though we cannot be certain, that Thomas Harriot and the artist John White were also on the voyage. On his return in September Barlow wrote a description of the land they had found and sent it to Ralegh,'at whose charge and direction, the said voyage was set foorth'. The purpose was presumably to encourage support for the enterprise generally and to smooth the passage through Parliament of a bill confirming Ralegh's grant.
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Barlow's description of the land is a lyrical piece of promotional literature, possibly helped by Ralegh himself or by Richard Hakluyt the younger, or possibly even by Harriot. Barlow is vague, perhaps deliberately so, about the exact location of his landing. (It is not clear whether they approached Roanoke from the north or the south.) He extols the fertility of the soil, emphasizing the height and beauty of the trees: 'the earth bringeth foorth all things in aboundance, as in the first creation, without toile or labour.' However, most of his attention is given to the natives, who entertained them lavishly. 'We found the people', he writes, 'most gentle, louing, and faithfull, void of all guile, and treason, and such as lined after the manner of the golden age.'
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 However, this commendation is weakened by his account of a massacre perpetrated by a local King upon Wingina, King of Wingandacoa, where Barlow and his men had been staying. For the return journey, Barlow took back to England with him two Indians,Wanchese and Manteo.