the establishment of a
'commonwealth.' His object, he is said to have explained, was to save
Englishmen from being subject to a needy, beggarly nation like the
Scotch. Neither story rests on any foundation, except some possible
light taunt of his. His name was not appended to the Proclamation, as he
was not a Privy Councillor; but he was present at a meeting in the
evening, when a loyal letter of welcome to the King was drawn up, and he
signed it. Immediately afterwards he started, like many others,
northwards, and met the King at Burleigh House. Cecil had taken credit
for having stayed, he said, the journey of the Captain of the Guard, who
was conducting many suitors to James. Ralegh did not suffer himself to
be stopped either by Cecil's advice or by a Proclamation against the
resort to the King of persons holding public offices, to the injury of
public business. He assigned as the cause of his arrival the need of a
royal letter to authorize the continuance of legal process in the Duchy
of Cornwall, and to check the waste of royal woods and parks within it.
Unmannerly James is said by Aubrey to have received him with a poor rude
pun on his name: 'Rawly! Rawly! true enough, for I think of thee very
rawly, mon.' Isaac D'Israeli credits the story. He superfluously thinks
it settles, as without better authority than the King's broad Scotch it
certainly could not, the proper pronunciation of the name. In itself it
may be rather more plausible than Aubrey's tale of Ralegh's reply to the
King's boast that he could have won the succession by force: 'Would
God,' cried Ralegh, 'that had been put to the trial!' 'Why?' asked
James. 'Because,' was the oracular answer--'never,' says Aubrey,
'forgotten or forgiven'--'your Majesty would then have known your
friends from your foes.' It is much easier to agree with the apparent
meaning of Aubrey's interrupted general reflection on the first meeting
of King and subject: 'Sir Walter Ralegh had that awfulness and
ascendency in his aspect over other mortals that the K---- '. At all
events, the King ordered the speedy delivery of the authorization, that
Ralegh might have no excuse for delay. The unwelcome guest took the
hint. Acting-Secretary Sir Thomas Lake reported to Cecil that he was
gone, having 'to my seeming taken no great root here.'

[Sidenote: _Odium._]

At a council held by James at Cecil's seat of Theobald's, monopolies
granted by Elizabeth were called in. The measure was based