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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III COURT FAVOUR POWER AND FORTUNE RALEGH'S COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE SPANIARDS Ralegh was now about to enter upon his splendid career as a courtier and statesman. He was thirty years of age, six feet high, his hair and beard dark, bushy, and naturally curling, his eyes steel grey, and very bright, though, to judge from his portraits, rather too close together. ' He had, ' Says Naunton, ' a good presence in a handsome and well compacted person, a strong natural wit, and a better judgment; with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage.' Probably his persuasive eloquence was one of his greatest gifts, and his personal fascination must have been marvellous; for when he chose, which in his arrogance he rarely did, he could bring even those who hated him to his side. He took no care, however, to be popular, for he always scorned and contemned the people, and on the death of Elizabeth he was probably the best hated man in Engl?nd. A good instance of this occurs in aletter from Dudley Carleton to Chamberlain, giving an account of the condemnation of Ralegh to death for treason at Winchester in 1603. He says that the two men who first took the news to the King were Roger Ashton and a Scotsman, ' whereof one affirmed that never man spake so well in times past, nor would do in the world to come; and the other said that, whereas, when he first saw him he was so led with the common hatred that he would have gone a hundred miles to have seen him hanged, he would, ere he parted, have gone a thousand to have saved his life. In one word, never was a man so hated and so popular in so short a time.' What was true of the matured genius in the moment of his adversity was equally true of the almost unknown young captain who came with dispatches...

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