uraged 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 vast legitimate revenues from illicit sources, and died
L38,000 in debt. Essex, whose disinterestedness is eulogized, had
L300,000 from the Queen, in addition to most lucrative offices. The
whole was insufficient for his wants. All alike, old friends and old
foes, fed on one another, when there was nobody else to spoil.
Prodigality and greediness in money matters were, it is to be feared,
common traits of Elizabethan heroes. They were far from perfect; their
defects differed from those of their modern descendants in the ethical
consequences; they did not make offenders ashamed of themselves, and
afraid of being found out; they did not necessarily vitiate the
substance of their characters, and destroy their self-respect.

CHAPTER V.

VIRGINIA (1583-1587).

[Sidenote: _Gilbert and Ralegh._]

Ralegh was not freer from the faults of his class than the rest. Beyond
the rest, he showed public spirit in his expenditure. By arguments, by
his influence, by his example, he fanned the rising flame of national
enterprise. From the first he devoted a large part of his sudden
opulence to the promotion of the maritime prosperity of the nation.
Among his earliest subjects of outlay was the construction in 1583 of
the Ark Ralegh. It was, according to a probable account, of two hundred
tons burden, and cost L2000. Mr. Payne Collier gives its burden as eight
hundred tons, and its worth as L5000. None understood better than Ralegh
the ship-building art. Ten years of prison, it will be hereafter
noticed, did not deaden his instinct. Humphrey Gilbert was again
preparing for a voyage to 'the Unknown Goal.' Two-thirds of the six
years of his patent for discoveries had run out. He was anxious to
utilize the residue. Ralegh would gladly have accepted his invitation to
accompany him as vice-admiral. The Queen had tried to hold back Gilbert
'of her especial care, as a man noted of no good hap by sea.' By earnest
representations that he ha