Raleigh the Peacemaker (1586)

 

A copy, in All Saints' Church East Budleigh, of one of the best known portraits of Sir Walter formerly attributed to Zuccaro but now to the monogrammist 'H' (? Hubbard) and dated 1588. It shows Raleigh in court dress at the height of his favour with Queen Elizabeth I. Raleigh had been appointed Captain of the Guard in 1587  

Raleigh does not have a reputation as a peacemaker. Courtier, poet, soldier, explorer, historian he certainly was, and for most of his life, an enemy of Spain. In 1618, after his disastrous second voyage to Guiana resulted in the reinstatement of the death sentence there was jubilation at the Spanish court.  

 

Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar, a title awarded by King Philip III of Spain in 1617. Image credit: Wikipedia

Such was the hatred he inspired there that Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador in London, demanded that Raleigh and his crew be hanged in Madrid.   

The 2007 film Elizabeth – The Golden Age, directed by Shekhar Kapur, starred Cate Blanchett in the title role. Image credit: www.moviemeter.nl

Queen Elizabeth I, for whom Raleigh was a favourite courtier, was equally hated by the Spanish government which viewed her as a heretic. Her speech at Tilbury in August 1588 on the eve of the Spanish Armada led to her becoming immortalised for posterity as a warrior queen. 

For a twenty-year period leading up to that event she had refused to condemn the English privateers who had looted Spanish ships and ports with impunity. In 1585 she pledged English support for the Dutch who were fighting for independence from Spain, agreeing to send 5,000 foot soldiers and 1000 cavalry to the Netherlands.  

 

Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder. Image credit: Wikipedia

Yet even in that year, Elizabeth wanted peace and advised her diplomats in Madrid to pursue this goal. Portraits of the Queen at this time use symbols to emphasise the message. This painting, attributed to the Flemish Protestant Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, is sometimes known as the Peace portrait and has been dated to between 1580 and 1585. In her right hand the Queen holds an olive branch; at her feet lies a sword but it is sheathed.

The Ermine Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, variously attributed to William Segar or George Gower, is in the collection of Hatfield House. Image credit: Wikipedia

Another painting, known as the Ermine Portrait and dated 1585, again shows her with those two symbols of peace. The ermine or stoat symbolises purity and royalty.

Early in 1586, King Philip II instructed his admiral the Marquis of Santa Cruz to submit plans for an invasion of England.  He had been encouraged in his plans by news of the refitting of a fleet of Portuguese galleons.

At around the same time, seemingly with the aim of reaching an agreement with the Spanish, Elizabeth initiated talks with Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, Governor of the Netherlands. 

When, later that year, Raleigh was presented with an important Spanish nobleman as his prisoner he must have felt that the scene was set perfectly for him to take on the role of diplomat and bring about that very peace that the Queen was seeking.

 

A bronze relief with the bust of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. Image credit: Wikipedia

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, was the founder and governor of the Spanish settlement in Patagonia, South America. Explorer, author, historian, mathematician, and astronomer, he is known today mainly for his History of the Incas, which contains extremely detailed descriptions of Inca history and mythology but remained in manuscript for centuries until it was published in 1906. An English translation was published by Sir Clements Markham the following year.

Sarmiento had been captured in September 1586 by the crews of the Serpent and the Mary Sparke under the command of Captain Jacob Whiddon. Both ships, belonging to Raleigh, were on their way back to Plymouth from a voyage to the Azores. Along with Sarmiento they had captured the Governor of the Isle of São Miguel, the largest island in the Azores, and seized booty which included ‘sugars, elephants teeth, waxe, rice’ along with ‘sumacke and other commodities’.  

Leaving Plymouth the ships sailed with their prizes to Southampton where the crews were rewarded with their shares by Raleigh himself.

 

The title pages of Raleigh’s History of the World, published in 1614

Born in 1532, Sarmiento was older than Raleigh by about twenty years but the two men evidently developed a rapport. Much later, Raleigh would remember Sarmiento as ‘a worthy gentleman’ as he wrote in his History of the World.

Like Raleigh he can be described as a Renaissance figure for the breadth of his interests and talents – ‘un hombre multidisciplinar que encarnaba a la perfección el ideal del hombre renacentista de su tiempo’ – as a recent biographer has written.

Like Raleigh he had encountered difficulties with the religious authorities. While in Peru, in his twenties he was accused by the Inquisition in Lima of possessing two magic rings and some magic ink and of following the precepts of Moses.

‘The School of the Night’ by Ronnie Heeps, 2006. © the artist. Photo credit: Jersey Heritage

Similarly, Raleigh, who was a relatively freethinking man for his age, would be accused of atheism. A commission was set up in 1594 at Cerne Abbas, close to his home at Sherborne Castle, to deal with accusations that Raleigh and his circle of intellectuals, known to some as ‘The School of Night’, had denied the reality of heaven and hell.  He would be acquitted, but the accusation of atheism would again be raised at his trial for treason in 1603. It is likely that such accusations contributed to the guilty verdict reached by the court, a verdict which would prove fatal after the failed 1617 expedition to Guiana.  

So well did the two men get on that Sarmiento agreed to share his maps with English cartographers, despite Spain's official policy of keeping all navigational information secret. He is also said to have discussed with Raleigh the existence of the supposed city of El Dorado.

It did not take long for Raleigh to realise Sarmiento’s potential value in discussing peace negotiations with Spain. On 28 November the Venetian Ambassador in Paris reported that the Queen had summoned Sarmiento to Windsor, where he had conversed with her and with all the principal members of the Council, and how ‘they are treating him with much distinction’.  Elizabeth and Sarmiento apparently conversed in Latin for as much as two hours.

The Spaniard left London on October 30, 1586, crossed to Calais, and then passed through Paris, where he met with Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador to France.

Spanish diplomats in London seemingly had high hopes of successful peace negotiations, given the character and reputation of Sarmiento. A letter written by them to Bernardino de Mendoza and dated 10 November 1586 urged that Sarmiento should be the Spanish king’s choice to conduct negotiations. It recommended that he should be sent back to London for this purpose because of his evident empathy towards the English. ‘He is a person of much worth who really understands these people as if he had lived ten years amongst them, a man of decision, an excellent scholar and a person who will speak to them with all fitting plainness.’

After three days in Paris, Sarmiento set out on 5 December for the long journey to Madrid. Among the items he carried was a precious Letter of Peace from Queen Elizabeth with which he had been entrusted to deliver to King Philip of Spain.

He had been warned to make the journey by sea since the south of France was in turmoil because of the Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants, known as Huguenots. Fatefully he chose to go by land.

Perhaps he trusted too much in the protection of the Protestant Queen of England. The Venetian ambassador in Paris reported in December that Sarmiento, ‘a Spanish gentleman of great importance’ had reached the French capital having been a prisoner for four months in England. ‘They say he had long audiences of the Queen, and is armed with her passport, as he has to travel through Huguenot country; that he is charged by her to speak for the peace,’ wrote the ambassador.

On the journey south, near Bordeaux, he encountered Huguenot forces who seized his belongings along with the letters he was carrying and imprisoned him at Mont de Marsan.

 

© CHRISTIE'S 2022

Did Elizabeth seriously believe that peace was possible? The above document signed by her at Greenwich was a passport for a diplomatic party including Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby and William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham and Lord Warden of the Cinq Ports. The party was appointed by the Queen to 'depart into the Lowe Contreys in speciall Comission and Ambassade from us', and were to be allowed to pass with all their train and baggage, and were to be furnished with horses, carts or any other necessary form of carriage by sea or land. ‘Whereof fayle ye not, as ye tender our pleasure,’ concluded the document.

Portrait of Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma by the Flemish painter Otto van Veen (1556-1629). Image credit: Wikipedia

The party's 'special commission' was to negotiate a peace treaty with Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, which would end the war with Spain. Just months later, in July 1588, the Spanish Armada set sail.

As for poor Sarmiento, he spent three years in prison before being liberated, despite the efforts of the Queen and Raleigh to have him released.

Apparently his name became a byword for misfortune. Spanish people would say, glibly, "So and so has the luck of Pedro de Sarmiento"'.

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa spent the rest of his life dedicating himself to his writings and worked as an editor of poetry. On his last naval mission in the service of the king he was made Admiral of an armada of galleons en route to the Indies. He died on board ship in 1592, off the coast of Lisbon.

Did any Huguenot soldiers bother to read the documents that Sarmiento was carrying? Was Elizabeth being sincere? Was Raleigh?

Not everyone believed him, including many historians. ‘An ingenious plot’ and ‘this extraordinary ploy’ is how author Raleigh Trevelyan describes the way in which Sarmiento and ambassador Bernardino de Mendoza were ‘duped’ by Elizabeth’s favourite. Mendoza, for example, had accepted Raleigh’s assurance that he was ‘much more desirous of sending to Spain his own two ships for sale, than to use them for robbery’. King Philip and his councillors were not so easily bamboozled by Raleigh’s promises, wrote Trevelyan in his 2002 book Sir Walter Raleigh. ‘They were rightly suspicious, and at once refused, bringing to an end Raleigh’s first attempt at international intrigue.’

Some historians nonetheless like to ponder the ‘What if?’ question. If Sarmiento had made it, and if King Philip had read that Letter of Peace, might the Spanish Armada not have set out? War might have been averted, the course of history in Europe and in Latin America would have been changed. 

And Sir Walter Raleigh might have been known to posterity not just as a pirate but as a peacemaker.  

 

The Woburn Abbey Armada portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, by an unknown English artist (formerly attributed to George Gower). It depicts the Queen surrounded by symbols of royal majesty against a backdrop representing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Image credit: Wikipedia