7 as a common where
penny-royal grew in great abundance. Ralegh would find its vicinity to
Stepney, the general resort of seamen, convenient. The publication of
the Middlesex Registers has corroborated the tradition, which gave him a
suburban abode at Islington, on a site possibly afterwards occupied by
the Pied Bull. For the local belief that he built, or patronized, and
smoked in, the Old Queen's Head, Dr. Brushfield considers there is no
foundation. His choice of any part of Islington for residence would have
been determined by its contiguity to the vast royal chase in which the
Queen delighted to hunt. But his occupancy of a house there commenced
before the days of his grandeur, and probably had ceased before them.

[Sidenote: _In Parliament._]

His dwellings were not more numerous than his avocations. Never was his
activity more various than during this interval of royal disfavour. He
overflowed with public spirit. He had been sitting in the House of
Commons in the spring of 1592. He was a frequent and effective speaker.
His voice is reported to have been small. That would be after sickness,
toil, and imprisonment had enfeebled him. He omitted no opportunity of
proclaiming his hostility to Spain. Before his disgrace he had argued
for a declaration of open war. He knew, he said, of many who held it not
lawful in conscience, as the time was, to take prize from the Spaniards.
Of those weak brethren he was never one. After his liberation from the
Tower, when the House met he again attended. He was not so strangely in
advance of his protectionist age as not to support a Bill for
prohibiting Dutch and German aliens from retailing foreign wares in
England. His view of Dutchmen would have satisfied Canning: 'The nature
of the Dutchman is to fly to no man but for his profit. They are the
people that maintain the King of Spain in his greatness. Were it not for
them he were never able to make out such armies and navies by sea.'
While politically he was attached to Holland, he was persistently
jealous of her commercially. In the next reign he drew up an elaborate
plan for abstracting her lucrative carrying trade. On questions of
liberty of thought he was far beyond his time. He stoutly opposed a
cruel capital measure against the Brownists: 'That law is hard that
taketh life, and sendeth into banishment, when men's intentions shall be
judged by a jury, and they shall be judges what another means.' He
prevailed to have the Bill