g lodger in some portion of the Middle
Temple in 1576. On October 7, 1577, Gascoigne died prematurely and
deprived us of a picturesque pen which might have gossiped of Raleigh's
early career.

I am happy, through the courtesy of Mr. J. Cordy Jeaffreson, in being
able for the first time to prove that Walter Raleigh was admitted to the
Court as early as 1577. So much has been suspected, from his language to
Leicester in a later letter from Ireland, but there has hitherto been
no evidence of the fact. In examining the Middlesex records, Mr.
Jeaffreson has discovered that on the night of December 16, 1577, a
party of merry roisterers broke the peace at Hornsey. Their ringleaders
were a certain Richard Paunsford and his brother, who are described in
the recognisances taken next day before the magistrate Jasper Fisher as
the servants of 'Walter Rawley, of Islington, Esq.,' and two days later
as yeoman in the service of Walter Rawley, Esq., 'of the Court (_de
curia_).'

It is very important to find him thus early officially described as of
the Court. As Raleigh afterwards said, the education of his youth was a
training in the arts of a gentleman and a soldier. But it extended
further than this--it embraced an extraordinary knowledge of the sea,
and in particular of naval warfare. It is tantalising that we have but
the slenderest evidence of the mode in which this particular schooling
was obtained. The western ocean was, all through the youth of Raleigh,
the most fascinating and mysterious of the new fields which were being
thrown open to English enterprise. He was a babe when Tonson came back
with the first wonderful legend of the hidden treasure-house of the
Spaniard in the West Indies. He was at Oxford when England thrilled with
the news of Hawkins' tragical third voyage. He came back from France
just in time to share the general satisfaction at Drake's revenge for
San Juan de Ulloa. All through his early days the splendour and perilous
romance of the Spanish Indies hung before him, inflaming his fancy,
rousing his ambition. In his own family, Sir Humphrey Gilbert
represented a milder and more generous class of adventurers than Drake
and Hawkins, a race more set on discovery and colonisation than on mere
brutal rapine, the race of which Raleigh was ultimately to become the
most illustrious example. If we possessed minute accounts of the various
expeditions in which Gilbert took part, we should probably find that his
young