o a condemnation to celibacy. The vanity of Belphoebe
would admit no rival among high or low, and the least divergence from
the devotion justly due to her own imperial loveliness was a mortal sin.
What is less easy to forgive in Raleigh than that at the age of forty
he should have rebelled at last against this tyranny, is that he seems,
in the crisis of his embarrassment, to have abandoned the woman to whom
he could write long afterwards, 'I chose you and I loved you in my
happiest times.' After this brief dereliction, however, he returned to
his duty, and for the rest of his life was eminently faithful to the
wife whom he had taken under such painful circumstances.

There is a lacuna in the evidence as to what actually happened early in
1592; the late Mr. J. P. Collier filled up this gap with a convenient
letter, which has found its way into the histories of Raleigh, but the
original of which has never been seen by other eyes than the
transcriber's. What is certain is that Raleigh contrived to conceal the
state of things from the Queen, and to steal away to sea on the pretext
that he was merely accompanying Sir Martin Frobisher to the mouth of the
Channel. He says himself that on May 13, 1592, he was 'about forty
leagues off the Cape Finisterre.' It was reported that the Queen sent a
ship after him to insist on his return, but such a messenger would have
had little chance of finding him when once he had reached the latitude
of Portugal, and it is more reasonable to suppose that after straying
away as far as he dared, he came back again of his own accord. On June 8
he was still living unmolested in Durham House, and dealing, as a person
in authority, with certain questions of international navigation. Three
weeks later the Queen seems to have discovered, what everyone about her
knew already, the nature of Raleigh's relations with Elizabeth
Throckmorton. On July 28 Sir Edward Stafford wrote to Anthony Bacon:
'If you have anything to do with Sir Walter Raleigh, or any love to make
to Mrs. Throckmorton, at the Tower to-morrow you may speak with them.'
It was four years before Raleigh was admitted again to the presence of
his enraged Belphoebe.

Needless prominence has been given to this imprisonment of Raleigh's,
which lasted something less than two months. He was exceedingly restive
under constraint, however, and filled the air with the picturesque
clamour of his distress. His first idea was to soften the Queen's heart
b