terprets it in the former sense, and regards it as an
anticipation of the Royal Society. That was the view of Evelyn, who says
that Ralegh put this 'fountain of communication in practice.' How is not
remembered. At any rate, in the second sense he energetically applied
the principle in his own conduct. Not less from kindness than from the
wish to secure personal adherents, he was generally helpful. Now, his
client was a poor wounded officer, whose arrears of pay he was praying
the Treasury to discharge; partly, for love of him; partly, for honest
consideration. Now, it was some prosperous placeman, his equal, or his
superior in rank. As he boasts, in claiming a return from an Irish law
officer, 'I assure you, on mine honour, I have deserved it at his hands
in places where it may most stead him.' He used like language of the
Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam. Before he rose he had ranked himself among
Leicester's followers. Leicester speedily grew jealous of his
prosperity. Sir Henry Wotton, who imputed the beginning of Ralegh's rise
to Leicester, has stated in his Parallel between Essex and George
Villiers, that the Earl soon found him such an apprentice as knew well
enough how to set up for himself. Ralegh never withheld due marks of
deference from his elder. Churchyard the poet described, or undertook to
describe, a grand Shrovetide show prepared by Ralegh, in which the
gentlemen of the Guard represented the Earl's exploits in Flanders.
Ralegh was ever at pains to remove any specific grievance. On March 29,
1586, he writes to assure Leicester that he had urged the Queen to grant
the request for pioneers in the Netherlands. He seems to have been
accused, as he was to be accused seventeen years later, of intrigues on
behalf of Spain, which he had constantly been attacking. He could not
have had much difficulty in defending himself from the charge, about
which he remarks he had been 'of late very pestilent reported.' It was
not so clear that he recognized the Earl's paramount title as Queen's
favourite. To disarm suspicion on that score he adds a postscript: 'The
Queen is in very good terms with you, and, thank be to God, well
pacified; and you are again her Sweet Robyn.' He cannot have esteemed
Leicester. A stinging epitaph, attributed to him with the usual scarcity
of evidence, may express his real view of the poor-spirited soldier, the
deceitful courtier, the statesman and noble 'that all the world did
hate.' But he was no backbi