irst published anonymously
in November, 1591. Hakluyt reprinted it, as 'penned by Sir Walter
Ralegh,' in his Collection of Voyages in 1599. Few finer specimens of
Elizabethan prose diction exist. It is full of grandeur, and of
generosity towards every one but Spaniards. Of the commander-in-chief,
Thomas Howard, he spoke with especial courtesy. Ralegh's relations to
the Howards, though always professionally intimate, were not always very
friendly, either now or hereafter. About the period of Grenville's
death, in particular, there had been some sharp dispute with the High
Admiral. A letter written in the following October by Thomas Phelippes
to Thomas Barnes, alludes to a quarrel and offer of combat between
Ralegh and him. Ralegh was only the more careful on that account to do
justice to a member of the family. Howard, it seems, had been severely
criticised for a supposed abandonment of his comrade. Ralegh vindicated
him from the calumny. The admiral's first impulse had been to return
within the harbour to succour Grenville. It was a happy thing, in
Ralegh's judgment, that he suffered himself to be dissuaded. 'The very
hugeness of the Spanish fleet would have crushed the English ships to
atoms; it had ill sorted with the discretion of a General to commit
himself and his charge to assured destruction.' But the real aim of the
narrative was to preach a crusade against Spanish predominance in the
Old and New Worlds. Towards Grenville personally the behaviour of the
Spaniards, it could not be denied, was magnanimous. Ralegh saw nothing
but perfidy in their conduct otherwise. They broke, he declares, their
engagement to send the captives home. Morrice FitzJohn of Desmond was
allowed to endeavour to induce them to apostatize and enter the service
of their enemy. That was the Spanish system, he exclaims: 'to entertain
basely the traitors and vagabonds of all nations; by all kinds of
devices to gratify covetousness of dominion,' 'as if the Kings of
Castile were the natural heirs of all the world.' Yet 'what good,
honour, or fortune ever man by them achieved, is unheard of or
unwritten.' 'The obedience even of the Turk is easy, and a liberty, in
respect of the slavery and tyranny of Spain. What have they done in
Sicily, Naples, Milan, and the Low Countries?' 'In one only island,
called Hispaniola, they have wasted three millions of the natural
people, beside many millions else in other places of the Indies; a poor
and harmless peo