ld him from the preferment he is worthy of!' He was ashamed to
receive her Majesty's pay, though but a poor entertainment, and see her
so much abused. Walsingham wrote to Grey, and the Lord Deputy assigned
to Ralegh the Barry's Court domain from Rostellan Castle to Fota. It
comprised one side of Cork harbour, with the island now occupied by
Queenstown. The Queen, through the influence, it is said, of Burleigh,
refused her sanction. Next year Ralegh was writing again to Grey in
vehement censure of Ormond. He repudiated any complicity in the
defencelessness of the great wood of Conoloathe, and the country between
the Dingle and Kilkenny. The commissariat of Cork, he charged, had been
recklessly neglected; and Desmond's and Barry's wives were being
encouraged to gather help for their traitor lords.

[Sidenote: _Discontent._]

Denunciations of a general by his officer have an evil sound. Ralegh's
apology, such as it is, must be sought in his just sense of a masterly
capacity. He knew he was right; from the point of view of the prevalent
Elizabethan policy towards Ireland, though not from Burleigh's, he was
right. He raged at his want of official authority to correct the wrong.
He fretted, moreover, at being left in Ireland at all. Ormond quarrelled
with Grey, and was recalled in the spring of 1581. The lieutenancy of
Munster was assigned jointly to Ralegh, Sir William Morgan, and Captain
Piers. Ralegh continued discontented. He sighed for a wider sphere. From
his quarters at Lismore he wrote in August, 1581, to Lord Leicester. He
desired 'to put the Earl in mind of his affection, having to the world
both professed and practised the same.' Incidentally he intimated more
than readiness to return to England. 'I have spent,' he writes, 'some
time here under the Deputy, in such poor place and charge as, were it
not for I knew him to be one of yours, I would disdain it as much as to
keep sheep.' His tone implied that he understood he had come on
probation for more exalted functions elsewhere, and that he had a claim
upon Leicester's patronage. How he had established it is unknown.
Probably the intimacy began in London before he received his Irish
commission. He was at any rate sufficiently intimate to be able to
recommend a man of some eminence, as was Sir Warham St. Leger, to the
Earl's protection.

[Sidenote: _Return to England._]

He did not wish to stay in Ireland. The immediate success of his
hardness and resoluteness, w