he Frenchmen; he
added, that in three or four days the visit would be over, and he and
Cobham could go back to Bath together. The letters of Raleigh display an
intimate friendship between Lord Cobham and himself which is not to be
overlooked in the light of coming events. The French were all dressed in
black, a colour Raleigh did not possess in his copious wardrobe, so that
he had to order the making of a black taffeta suit in a hurry, to fetch
which from London he started back late on Saturday night after bringing
the Duke safe down to Basing. It was on the next day, if the French
ambassador said true, that he had the astounding conversation with
Elizabeth about Essex, at the end of which, after railing against her
dead favourite, she opened a casket and produced the very skull of
Essex. The subject of the fall of favourites was one in which Biron
should have taken the keenest interest. Ten months later he himself,
abandoned by his king, came to that frantic death in front of the
Bastille which Chapman presented to English readers in the most majestic
of his tragedies. The visit to Elizabeth occupies the third act of
_Byron's Conspiracy_, which, published in 1608, contains of course no
reference to Raleigh's part on that occasion.

It may be that in the autumn of 1601, James of Scotland first became
actively cognisant of Raleigh's existence. Spain was once more giving
Elizabeth anxiety, and threatening an invasion which actually took
place on September 21, at Kinsale. By means of the spies which he kept
in the Channel, Raleigh saw the Spanish fleet advancing, and warned the
Government, though his warnings were a little too positive in pointing
out Cork and Limerick as the points of attack. Meanwhile, he wrote out
for the Queen's perusal a State paper on _The Dangers of a Spanish
Faction in Scotland_. This paper has not been preserved, but the rumour
of its contents is supposed to have frightened James in his
correspondence with Rome, and to have made him judge it prudent to offer
Elizabeth three thousand Scotch troops against the invader. Raleigh's
casual remarks with regard to Irish affairs at this critical time, as we
find them in his letters to Cecil, are not sympathetic or even humane,
and there is at least one passage which looks very much like a licensing
of assassination; yet it is certain that Raleigh, surveying from his
remote Sherborne that Munster which he knew so well, took in the salient
features of the po