was in Cornwall; afterwards in London, and about the 19th he crossed over to Ireland in company with Sir Richard Grenville (State Papers, Dom. ccxv. 64, ccxvi. 28, Ireland, 14 Sept.; Sir Thomas Heneage to Carew, 19 Sept., Carew MSS.) By December he was again at court, and came into conflict with the queen's new favourite, Essex. The latter strove to drive Ralegh from court, and on some unknown pretext sent him a challenge, which the lords of the council prevented his accepting, wishing the whole business ‘to be repressed and to be buried in silence that it may not be known to her Majesty’ (State Papers, Dom. ccxix. 33) [see Devereux, Robert, second Earl of Essex]. The statement that in the early summer of 1589 Ralegh took part in the expedition to Portugal under Drake and Norris (Oldys, p. 119) is virtually contradicted by the full and authoritative documents relating to the expedition (cf. State Papers, Dom. ccxxii. 90, 97, 98, ccxxiii. 35, 55). In May 1589 Ralegh was in Ireland (ib. Ireland, cxliv. 27, 28), and possibly continued there during the summer; he was certainly there in August and September (Cal. Carew MSS. 5, 24 Aug.). To this period may be referred his intimacy with Edmund Spenser [q. v.], who bestowed on him in his poems the picturesque appellation of ‘The Shepherd of the Ocean.’ Ralegh returned to court in October, and, taking Spenser with him, secured for the poet a warm welcome from the queen. Ralegh's stay at court was short. His departure was apparently due to some jealousy of Sir William Fitzwilliam, lord deputy of Ireland, a friend of Essex, with whom he had quarrelled in Ireland. On 28 Dec. he wrote to Carew, ‘My retreat from the court was upon good cause. … When Sir William Fitzwilliam shall be in England, I take myself for his better by the honourable offices I hold, as also by that nearness to her Majesty which still I enjoy’ (Cal. Carew MSS.; cf. Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. iv. 3).
Court intrigues, his duties in Cornwall, the equipment of the various privateers in which he had an interest, seem to have occupied him through 1590. In the beginning of 1591 he was appointed to command in the second post, under Lord Thomas Howard, a strong squadron of queen's ships and others, to look out for the Spanish plate fleet from the West Indies. Ultimately, however, the queen refused to let him go, and his place afloat was taken by his cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, whose death he celebrated in ‘A Report of the Truth of the Fight about the Isles of the Açores this last Sommer, betwixt the Revenge, one of her Majesties Shippes, and an Armada of the King of Spaine.’ This, published anonymously in the autumn of 1591, was afterwards acknowledged in Hakluyt's ‘Principal Navigations,’ and forms the basis of a contemporary ballad by Gervase Markham [q. v.] and of Tennyson's well-known poem.
In the following year (1592) a still stronger squadron was fitted out, mainly at the cost of Ralegh, who ventured all the money he could raise, amounting to about 34,000l.; the Earl of Cumberland also contributed largely, and the queen supplied two ships, the Foresight and Garland. It was intended that Ralegh should command it in person, though the queen had expressed herself opposed to the plan, and as early as 10 March he wrote to Cecil, ‘I have promised her Majesty that, if I can persuade the companies to follow Sir Martin Frobiser, I will without fail return, and bring them but into the sea some fifty or three-score leagues; which to do, her Majesty many times, with great grace, bade me remember’ (Edwards, ii. 45). But in the early days of May, as the fleet put to sea, Ralegh received an order to resign the command to Frobiser and return immediately. He conceived himself warranted in going as far as Cape Finisterre. There dividing the fleet, he sent one part, under Frobiser, to threaten the coast of Portugal so as to prevent the Spanish fleet putting to sea; the other, under Sir John Burgh, to the Azores, where it captured the Madre de Dios, the great carrack, homeward bound from the East Indies with a cargo of the estimated value of upwards of half a million sterling. By the beginning of June Ralegh had arrived in London, and although on 8 June he was staying at his own residence, Durham House in the Strand, the ancient London house of the bishops of Durham, which he held since 1584 on a grant from the crown (ib. ii. 252 seq.), he was in July sent to the Tower.
His recall and imprisonment were due to the queen's wrath on discovering that the man whom she had delighted to honour and enrich, who had been professing a lover's devotion to her, had been carrying on an intrigue with one of her maids of honour, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton [q. v.], who, baptised at Beddington 16 April 1565, was 27 years old. In March it was rumoured that Ralegh had married the lady, but this, in a letter to Robert Cecil on 10 March 1592, Ralegh had denounced as a ‘malicious report.’ According to Camden, Ralegh seduced the lady some months before, an assertion which J. P. Collier needlessly attempted to corroborate by printing a forged
