nd, Grey is not
known to have returned from Ireland till August, 1582; and the Council
Register contains no reference to a personal controversy between Ralegh
and him. But Ralegh may well have privately expounded to the Queen and
some Privy Councillors his views, which would then have been transmitted
to Grey to answer. Naunton's mistake in confronting the Deputy and the
self-confident Captain directly at the Council board does not seriously
affect the value otherwise of his statement. Still, the account of
Ralegh's admittance to the Queen's favour, with its particular
circumstances, rests, it must be remembered, on Naunton's own not
unimpeachable authority. Other authors who tell the same story, have
simply and unsuspiciously borrowed it from him. Students of Ralegh's
history have to accustom themselves to the use by successive biographers
of the same hypothetical facts with as much boldness as if they had been
the fruit of each writer's independent research.

[Sidenote: _Fuller's Tale._]

Another account attributes to Leicester Ralegh's sudden favour on his
return from Ireland. A few months before he was, we have seen,
soliciting the Earl for a change of employment. His introduction at
Court may have been the answer. Sir Henry Wotton, adopting the view,
cynically surmised that Leicester wished to 'bestow handsomely upon
another some part of the pains, and perhaps of the envy, to which long
indulgent fortune is obnoxious.' By others, whom Scott has partly
followed, the Earl of Sussex has been credited with the elevation of
Ralegh, as a counterpoise to Leicester. Neither the one noble nor the
other, it was supposed, could have patriotically desired to enrol in the
public service the most effective of recruits. Amongst all the subtle
solutions of the mystery of Ralegh's leap into prominence, Fuller's
well-worn story, which is now Scott's, commends itself for comparative
simplicity. Everybody has heard how her Majesty, meeting with a plashy
place, made some scruple to go on; when Ralegh, dressed in the gay and
genteel habit of those times, presently cast off and spread his new
plush cloak on the ground, whereon the Queen trod gently over, rewarding
him afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of
so fair a footcloth. Fuller, again, it is who vouches for the sequel of
the incident. Ralegh, he says, having thus attracted notice, wrote on a
window, which Elizabeth was to pass--

Fain would I cli