face of Ralegh's
words. At all events, nothing else of any kind is remembered of the pair;
or could reasonably be expected to have been remembered. History has told
much more of them than of most country gentlemen and their wives.

CHAPTER II.

IN SEARCH OF A CAREER (1552-1581).

[Sidenote: _Ralegh's Birthplace._]

Walter, the second son by the third marriage of Walter Ralegh of Fardell
and Hayes, was born in the reign of Edward VI, it has been supposed, in
1552. The exact date is not beyond doubt; for the registration of
baptisms at East Budleigh was not begun till two or three years later.
If the inscription on the National Portrait Gallery picture, '1588,
aetatis suae 34,' and that on Zucchero's in the Dublin Gallery, 'aet.
44, 1598,' be correct, his birth must have been not in 1552, but about
1554. A similar, or nearly similar, inference may be drawn from the
statement, on a miniature of him at Belvoir Castle, of his age as
sixty-five in 1618. One local writer, R. Izacke, has claimed the honour
of his birthplace for a house in Exeter, adjoining the Palace-gate.
Probably the rumour points, as I have intimated, to its occupation at
some time or other by his parents. Another author asserts that he was
born at Fardell. His own testimony, 'being born in that house,' is
decisive in favour of his father's Budleigh home, a lonely, one-storied,
thatched, late Tudor farmhouse, not a manor-house, of moderate size,
with gabled wings, and a projecting central porch. Tradition has marked
out the particular room in which he was born, as on the upper floor at
the west end, facing southwards. The house, which is a mile west of East
Budleigh church, and six from Exmouth, with the exception of some change
at the end of the east wing, probably retains its original character. It
was restored in 1627 by 'R.D.' For a century past it has been
denominated Hayes Barton, or simply Hayes. Previously it had been
called, after successive landlords, Poerhayes or Power's Hayes, and
Dukes-hayes. The hollow in which it lies, among low hills, is on the
verge of a tract of moorland; and Hayes Wood rises close at hand.
Through the oak wood to Budleigh Salterton Bay is two miles and a half.

[Sidenote: _At Oxford._]

In this quiet spot Ralegh spent his boyhood, in circumstances not very
unlike those of more eminent county families with which his was
connected. During the earlier half of the sixteenth century the majority
of the gentry we