, she seems to have read
memorials he drew up on the subject of Ireland. It is impossible not to
reprobate his sentiments on the treatment of the native Irish. His
correspondence with Cecil shows, that he was as willing to connive at
their treacherous murder as other contemporary English statesmen, though
not Burleigh, or perhaps Burleigh's son. But he believed honestly in the
rectitude of his doctrines. He was patriotic in insisting upon their
application for the benefit of a Government which, he thought,
persecuted him. It may even be acknowledged that the resolute and
consistent despotism he advocated might have been more tolerable, as
well as more successful, than the spasmodic and fitful violence which
discredited the Irish policy of the reign. He was indisputably right in
condemning a system under which the island was 'governed neither as a
country conquered nor free.'

CHAPTER XII.

GUIANA (1594-1595).

[Sidenote: _Continuance of Disgrace._]

[Sidenote: _A Project, and its Motive._]

Had not history preserved the memory of Ralegh's exile from Court, his
public life was so animated that the displeasure of the Queen need
hardly have been remarked. To himself the blight on his prospects was
always and dismally visible. The Queen had raised him from obscurity,
and afforded his genius scope for shining. Well as he understood the
value of his powers, he knew they derived still from her, as ten or a
dozen years before, their opportunity of exercise. He was not blind to
the jealousy of competitors, or to popular odium. As by an instinct of
life, of the working life which alone he prized, he was continually
striving to retrieve his fall by the ordinary devices of courtiers, and
not without gleams of hope. Nicholas Faunt had been private secretary to
Walsingham, and was therefore naturally of the Essex faction. He wrote
to Anthony Bacon in January, 1594, that Ralegh was expecting to be
nominated a Privy Councillor: 'And it is now feared of all honest men
that he shall presently come to the Court; yet it is well withstood. God
grant him some further resistance!' The further resistance came, whether
from rivals, or from the rankling anger in Elizabeth's breast. Nowhere
does it appear that he had speech of her. He continued to be forbidden
to perform in person the duties of Captain of the Guard. Between 1592
and 1597 they seem to have been discharged by John Best, described as
Champion of England. His disappoint