f Ralegh's has furnished his biographers with a pet puzzle. 'I
acquainted the Lord General,' wrote Ralegh to Cecil on July 6, 1597,
'with your kind acceptance of your entertainment; he was also wonderful
merry at your conceit of Richard the Second. I hope it shall never
alter, and whereof I shall be most glad of, as the true way to all our
good, quiet, and advancement, and most of all for Her sake, whose
affairs shall thereby find better progression.' Commentators have been
tempted to discern some shadow before of the fatality four years later,
when the patronage by Essex and his partisans of the play of _Henry IV_
at the Globe Theatre became an article of indictment. The passage forms
a conundrum to which the clue has not yet been found. If the reference
be to Shakespeare's drama which Essex, Cecil, and Ralegh may have seen
acted in this July, it constitutes the only ascertained association of
the hand which could do all and the brain which could conceive all.

[Sidenote: _The Islands Voyage._]

Evidence of the amity of the three was afforded by the liberal scale of
the expedition, which started on July 10. A fleet of 120 vessels sailed
from Plymouth. Twenty were Queen's ships. Ten were contributed by the
Low Countries. The rest were volunteers. Essex commanded in chief, as
lieutenant-general and admiral. Lord Thomas Howard was vice-admiral.
Ralegh was rear-admiral. Lord Mountjoy was lieutenant of the land
forces. Vere was marshal, and George Carew master of the ordnance. The
serjeant-major was Sir Ferdinand Gorges. Sir Arthur Gorges was captain
of Ralegh's flagship. Essex feared that Vere and Ralegh might harbour a
mutual grudge on account of the strife over the Cadiz spoil. He
persuaded them to shake hands at Weymouth. 'This,' chronicles Vere, 'we
both did, the more willingly because there had nothing passed between us
that might blemish reputation.' Ralegh, in the _History of the World_,
has spoken in the same spirit of Vere, as constituting with Sir John
Norris 'the most famous' pair of captains by land, and is indignant that
he should have left behind him neither title nor estate.

[Sidenote: _Weather-bound._]

The object of the expedition was to destroy the navy a Ferrol, and
capture the Indian treasure ships. It was intended also to take and
garrison Terceira, and any others of the Azores. Hence it has been known
as the Islands or Island Voyage. The enterprise commenced ill. Four days
of storm drove the armam