of the Spanish Armada had marked the close of
an epoch at Court. In September 1588 Leicester died, in April 1590
Walsingham, in September 1591 Sir Christopher Hatton, three men in
whose presence, however apt Raleigh might be to vaunt his influence, he
could never have felt absolutely master. New men were coming on, but for
the moment the most violent and aggressive of his rivals, Essex, was
disposed to wave a flag of truce. Both Raleigh and Essex saw one thing
more clearly than the Queen herself, namely, that the loyalty of the
Puritans, whom Elizabeth disliked, was the great safeguard of the nation
against Catholic encroachment, and they united their forces in trying to
protect the interests of men like John Udall against the Queen's
turbulent prejudices. In March 1591 we find it absolutely recorded that
the Earl of Essex and Raleigh have joined 'as instruments from the
Puritans to the Queen upon any particular occasion of relieving them.'
With Essex, some sort of genuine Protestant fervour seems to have acted;
Raleigh, according to all evidence, was a man without religious
interests, but far before his age in tolerance for the opinions of
others, and he was swayed, no doubt, in this as in other cases, by his
dislike of persecution on the one hand, and his implacable enmity to
Spain on the other.

In May 1591, Raleigh was hurriedly sent down the Channel in a pinnace to
warn Lord Thomas Howard that Spanish ships had been seen near the Scilly
Islands. There was a project for sending a fleet of twenty ships to
Spain, and Raleigh was to be second in command, but the scheme was
altered. In November 1591 he first came before the public as an author
with a tract in which he celebrated the prowess of one of his best
friends and truest servants, Sir Richard Grenville, in a contest with
the Spaniard which is one of the most famous in English history.
Raleigh's little volume is entitled: _A Report of the Truth of the Fight
about the Iles of the Acores this last Sommer betwixt the 'Reuenge' and
an Armada of the King of Spaine_. The fight had taken place on the
preceding 10th of September; the odds against the 'Revenge' were so
excessive that Grenville was freely blamed for needless foolhardiness,
in facing 15,000 Spaniards with only 100 men. Raleigh wrote his _Report_
to justify the memory of his friend, and doubtless hastened its
publication that it might be received as evidence before Sir R.
Beville's commission, which was to m