We have evidence that he did so his whole life long.

He is tired of Ireland at last: nothing goes right there:- When has
it? Nothing is to be done there. That which is crooked cannot be
made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. He
comes to London and to court. But how? By spreading his cloak over
a muddy place for Queen Elizabeth to step on? It is very likely to
be a true story; but biographers have slurred over a few facts in
their hurry to carry out their theory of 'favourites,' and to prove
that Elizabeth took up Raleigh on the same grounds that a boarding-
school miss might have done. Not that I deny the cloak story to be a
very pretty story; perhaps it justifies, taken alone, Elizabeth's
fondness for him. There may have been self-interest in it; we are
bound, as 'men of the world,' to impute the dirtiest motive that we
can find; but how many self-interested men do we know who would have
had quickness and daring to do such a thing? Men who are thinking
about themselves are not generally either so quick-witted, or so
inclined to throw away a good cloak, when by much scraping and saving
they have got one. I never met a cunning, selfish, ambitious man who
would have done such a thing. The reader may; but even if he has, we
must ask him, for Queen Elizabeth's sake, to consider that this young
Quixote is the close relation of three of the finest public men then
living, Champernoun, Gilbert, and Carew. That he is a friend of
Sidney, a pet of Leicester; that he has left behind him at Oxford,
and brought with him from Ireland, the reputation of being a rara
avis, a new star in the firmament; that he had been a soldier in her
Majesty's service (and in one in which she has a peculiar private
interest) for twelve years; that he has held her commission as one of
the triumvirate for governing Munster, and has been the commander of
the garrison at Cork; and that it is possible that she may have heard