ut, and with a kind of an affected frown asked the lady
carver who he was? She answered, she knew him not; insomuch that enquiry
was made from one to another who he might be, till at length it was told
the queen that he was brother to the lord William Mountjoy. This
inquisition, with the eye of majesty fixed upon him, (as she was wont
to do to daunt men she knew not,) stirred the blood of this young
gentleman, insomuch as his colour went and came; which the queen
observing called him unto her, and gave him her hand to kiss,
encouraging him with gracious words and new looks; and so diverting her
speech to the lords and ladies, she said, that she no sooner observed
him but that she knew there was in him some noble blood, with some other
expressions of pity towards his house. And then again, demanding his
name, she said, 'Fail you not to come to the court, and I will bethink
myself how to do you good.' And this was his inlet, and the beginning of
his grace." It does not appear what boon the queen immediately bestowed
upon her new courtier; but he deserted the profession of the law, sat in
the parliaments of 1585 and 1586 as the representative of two different
Cornish boroughs, received in the latter year the honor of knighthood,
and soon after his present expedition appeared considerable enough at
court to provoke the hostility of the earl of Essex himself. Raleigh,
now high in favor, and invested with the offices of captain of the
queen's guard and her lieutenant for Cornwall, had been actively engaged
since the last year in training to arms the militia of that county. He
had also been employed, as a member of the council of war, in concerting
the general plan of national defence: but his ardent and adventurous
valor prompted him to aid his country in her hour of trial on both
elements, and with hand as well as head: throwing himself therefore into
a vessel of his own which waited his orders, he hastened to share in
the discomfiture of her insulting foe.

But it would be endless to enumerate all who spontaneously came forward
to partake the perils and the glory of this ever-memorable contest; and
the naval commanders of principal eminence have higher claims to our
notice.

The dignity of lord-high-admiral,--customarily conferred on mere men of
rank, in whom not the slightest tincture of professional knowledge was
required or expected,--at this critical juncture belonged to Charles
second lord Howard of Effingham, of whom