of the reason why they have been brought together in the name of a man
long dead. Therefore I shall endeavour, in the short space of time
allotted to me, not so much to eulogise as to explain and to define what
Sir Walter Raleigh was and represents.

I suggest, therefore, before we touch upon any of the details of his
career and character, that the central feature of Raleigh, as he appears
to us after three hundred years, is his unflinching determination to see
the name of England written across the forehead of the world. Others
before him had been patriots of the purest order, but Raleigh was the
first man who laid it down, as a formula, that "England shall by the
favour of God resist, repel and confound all whatsoever attempts
against her sacred kingdom." He had no political sense nor skill in
statecraft. For that we go to the Burghleys or the Cecils, crafty men of
experience and judgment. But he understood that England had enemies and
that those enemies must be humbled and confounded. He understood that
the road of England's greatness, which was more to him than all other
good things, lay across the sea. The time was ripe for the assertion of
English liberty, of English ascendancy, too; and the opportunity of the
moment lay in "those happy hands which the Holy Ghost hath guided," the
fortunate adventurers. Of these Raleigh was the most eminent as he was
also, in a sense, the most unfortunate.

A heavy shadow lay all over the Western world, the shadow of a fierce
bird of prey hovering over its victim. Ever since Ferdinand expelled the
Moors out of Granada, Spain had been nursing insensate dreams of
universal empire. She was endeavouring to destroy the infant system of
European civilisation by every means of brutality and intrigue which the
activity of her arrogance could devise. The Kings of Spain, in their
ruthless ambition, encouraged their people in a dream of Spanish