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 1582-1588 Life at court—The Queen's favour1te—Rapid advancement—Captain of the Guard—Exploring and colonising expeditions—The Earl of Essex's rise and Raleigh's decline. IT may be that when Raleigh quitted Ireland he expected his absence from the scene of action to be of short duration. If so he was mistaken. It was in a very different environment that the next years of his life were to be spent. He had been a soldier in France, a soldier in Ireland ; he was now to fill the post of reigning favourite at Elizabeth's court. When or how he first entered into personal relations with the Queen it would be difficult to determine. Of any actual intercourse between the two there is no trace previous to his return from the Irish campaign. As to the manner in which Elizabeth's attention was first directed towards the man who was to play so important a part in her surroundings we are also left in doubt; but though there is no positive evidence to support AT COURT 35 the familiar stories, first told by Fuller, of the magnificent cloak laid on the ground in order that the Queen might walk dry-shod across the mire, or of the lines scratched upon the window-pane, neither is there any intrinsic reason why they should be dismissed as false. Raleigh's wit was bold and shrewd, and he may well have fashioned or turned to account such opportunities of bringing himself into notice. But in any case he would have been likely enough, on his return from Ireland, to be admitted to her presence. Fresh from the seat of war, an eye-witness of the events of the past two years, and eager and ready to offer advice as to the methods by which the struggle might best be brought to a successful conclusion, it is not probable that Elizabeth kept him long waiting for an audience, and once...