appears to have been for
works at Portsmouth. No meagre substitute was supplied by forfeitures,
by enforced demises of collegiate, capitular, and episcopal estates, by
monopolies, and by letters of marque.

[Sidenote: _Farm of Wines._]

[Sidenote: _Broadcloths._]

To All Souls College, Oxford, belongs the honour of having been the
first to help to make his fortune. In April, 1583, he wrote to Egerton,
then Solicitor-General, mentioning a grant of two beneficial leases of
lands which the Queen had extorted from the college after her manner. On
May 4, 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 L700, or, according to
another account, L800, 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
acc