Sir Walter Ralegh: A Biography. W. Stebbing
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