Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III INTRODUCTION TO COURT, RISE, AND CHARACTER OF RALEIGH The arrival of Raleigh in charge of Lord Grey's despatches, and the first-hand evidence he was able to give as to the position of affairs in Ireland would alone have sufficed to attract the attention of the Court to a young soldier who had won a reputation for gallantry during his service in Munster, and had already attracted the notice of Walsingham by his vigorous and outspoken correspondence. It may be that he was indebted to Leicester, whom he accompanied, two months later, on a mission to the Netherlands, for a special recommendation to the notice of a Queen ever ready to welcome and advance young gentlemen of good parts and pleasant exterior. It is equally possible, as other biographers have maintained, that the Earl of Sussex, now Leicester's most formidable rival, had taken him under protection, with the intention of securing a promising recruit to his faction. But Raleigh himself was not without interest at Court, and it is more natural to assume that his present favourable reception, as well as his original nomination to a captaincy of infantry, Was due to hisfamily connection with the influential wife of Henry Ashley, a former favourite of Anne Boleyn, who sat in Parliament for the county of Dorset, and had received the honour of knighthood at the coronation of Queen Mary. Katherine Ashley, who had acted as governess to Elizabeth, remained in her service as Woman of the Bedchamber, and long exercised a powerful influence over the mind of her royal mistress. A daughter of Sir John Basset of Umberleigh, she claimed as greatgrandfather on the mother's side Otho Gilbert of Compton, whose grandson, Sir Otho Gilbert, was the first husband of Raleigh's mother and father of his half- brothers John, Humphrey... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.