RALEGH OR ESSEX?
SIR,—Christopher Hill contends that Sir Walter Ralegh 'is the most forward-looking of the Elizabethans' (June 24). But, as I have argued ('Essex and Liberalism,' in PQ 1945; and again in TLS Dec. 31, 1954), the Earl of Essex was really the leader of the forward group. It was this earl, though in disgrace, who was asked in 1600 to be the 'honorable patron' of the new East India Company. Linked with trade was science, and here, too. the Earl was sought out: for example in 1597 William Barlow dedicated his Navigation to Essex One of Essex's secretaries, Sir Henry Wotton, watched Kepler at his experi- ments. In 1588 Essex, not yet of age, was the choice of the 'Puritan party' as chancellor of Oxford University; in 1591 he was the choice of the majority of the faculty. In 1598—his appointment was urged by Archbishop Whitgift — he was appointed chancellor of the forward-looking Cambridge University. A pioneer in religious toleration, Sir Edwin Sandys was in the Essex circle.
Even in death Essex was the leader of overseas experiments. His close companion, the Earl of Southampton, former patron of Shakespeare, became secretary of the Virginia Company; and many of Essex's 'knights' (he is still hounded for the creation) were founders of the first permanent settlement :11 Virginia—De La Warr, knighted in Ireland in 1599, became the first governor of the colony .)1 Virginia; and Sir Thomas Gates, knighted at Cadiz in 1596, heads the list of grantees in the charter of 1601 to Virginia and Plymouth Companies.—Yours faithfully,
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