Violets among dry leaves peered sedately at the pageant of
spring. In the royal hunting forest of Richmond, venerable trees
unfolded from their tiny buds canopies like the fairy pavilion of
Paribanou.
Philip Armadas and Arthur Barlowe, coming up from Kingston, beheld all
this April beauty with the wistful pleasure of those who bid farewell to
a dearly beloved land. Within a fortnight Sir Walter Ralegh's two ships,
which they commanded, would be out upon the gray Atlantic. The Queen
would lie at Richmond this night, and the two young captains had been
bidden to court that she might see what manner of men they were.[1]
Armadas, though born in Hull, was the son of a Huguenot refugee. Barlowe
was English to the back-bone. Both knew more of the ways of ships than
the ways of courts. Yet for all her magnificence and her tempers
Elizabeth had a way with her in dealing with practical men. She welcomed
merchants, builders, captains and soldiers as frankly as she did Italian
scholars or French gallants. Her attention was as keen when she was
framing a letter to the Grand Turk securing trade privileges to London
or Bristol, as when she listened to the graceful flatteries of Spenser
or Lyly. In this year 1584 she had granted a patent to Ralegh for
further explorations of the lands north of Florida discovered half a
century since by Sebastian Cabot.
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