Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America by Giles Milton Read Free Book Online

delighted in coarse jokes. She was playful, theatrical even, and was never one to fight shy of melodrama. When she learned that her physician was involved in a plot to take her life, she “tore open her garment, exposing her breasts, exclaiming that she had no weapon to defend herself, but was only a weak female.” But while she could scream abuse at the Spanish ambassador and duff her groom of the Chamber about the ears, she was dutifully conscientious about matters of state, and read even the small print of official documents. She was cultivated as well. She spoke French and Italian, read Greek tolerably well, and was confident in Latin. In her later years, she astonished her court by berating the Polish ambassador with a torrent of Latin, after which she chuckled with laughter. “God’s death, my Lords! I have been forced this day to scour up my old Latin!”
     
    Walter Ralegh spent vast sums on clothes and accessories. At his first meeting with Queen Elizabeth, he cast his cloak over a puddle to save her shoes. Ralegh’s son Wat (right) was killed in Guiana in 1617
    Into Elizabeth’s magnificent court walked the youthful Walter Ralegh. He cut an imposing figure, especially among the older generation, who paid scant regard to their dress and even less to their hair. Some still sported the old “Christ cut” or pudding basin, which gave them the look of “an old Holland cheese.” Ralegh, by contrast, wore his locks “long at the ears and curled” and perfumed them with civit, musk, or camphor. His customary cartwheel ruff was his most extravagant gesture to foppishness, spreading peacocklike from his neck in dentilated lace. It was a perfect complement to his satin pinked vest and gauche doublet cut from finely flowered velvet and embroidered with pearls. The most shocking element of his dress was the accessories: he wore a dagger with a jewelled pommel, a black feather hat held at a jaunty angle by a ruby-and-pearl drop, and buff shoes tied with white ribbons. The expense of such attire was truly staggering. In 1584, a certain Hugh Pugh was charged with stealing items from Ralegh’s wardrobe which included a jewel worth £80, a hatband of pearls worth £30, and five yards of silk worth £3. The total was more than the yearly cost of a household, including servants.
    Queen Elizabeth was enchanted by Ralegh and his risque flirtatiousness. At one of his earliest audiences, he had removed his diamond ring and scratched a half-finished couplet into one of the palace’s latticed windows: “Fain would I climb, yet I fear to fall.” Quick as a trice, the queen took the ring and rejoined: “If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all.”
    But Ralegh had no intention of halting his climb. An accomplished poet, he began writing sonnets to his queen, creating a whole new language of devotion as he struggled to describe his feelings towards her. She was Gloriana, emanating light and beauty; Diana, the chaste goddess of the moon; and Venus, “her pure cheek like a nymph.”
    Elizabeth’s less eloquent courtiers despised this West Country genius with his faux airs and graces. They found him so “damnable proud” that they hit back with their own rhyming couplets that contained puns on his name: “The enemie of the stomach [i.e., raw] and the word of disgrace [i.e., lie] / Is the name of the gentleman with the bold face [i.e., Ralegh].” It was a poor attempt at a jest and the queen was not amused. She preferred to tease him about his West Country accent, jestingly calling him “Water.” When she was at her most coquettish, she would joke that she was thirsting for “Water.”
    She soon began showering her young favourite with gifts, beginning, in 1583, with the lease of two estates belonging to All Souls, Oxford. She also granted him the right to charge every vintner in the country one pound a year for the privilege of selling wine. This was the foundation of Ralegh’s enormous fortune, gaining him a huge income