Sir Walter Raleigh had succeeded Leicester in Elizabeth's esteem, and of course excited the bitter jealousy of the deposed favorite. Raleigh was the younger son of a country gentleman of small fortune. He was a soldier, seaman, statesman, poet, philosopher, and wit. His grace and beauty rendered him particularly attractive to Elizabeth, who never could bear a homely person among her attendants. One day her majesty went out for a walk after a heavy rain; arriving at a muddy gutter she stopped to consider how to get across, when Sir-Walter, with courteous presence of mind, pulled off a handsome plush cloak that he wore for the first time, and spread it on the ground for the queen to walk over. She accepted the attention with pleasure, and rewarded the gentleman with several new cloaks in place of the one he had ruined for her sake. It is to Sir Walter Raleigh that England is indebted for her first possession in America, which, in compliment to his queen's unmarried state, he named Virginia; and it was he who introduced tobacco into England from the newly discovered coast. On one occasion he was enjoying the weed himself, when his servant entered with a tankard of ale. Seeing his master enveloped in smoke, that proceeded from his lips, the simple fellow supposed that some internal fire was destroying his vitals, so he dashed the contents of the tankard full into Sir Walter's face, and then ran down stairs to alarm the family before the smoker should be reduced to ashes. It was Raleigh who first presented the poet Spenser to the queen, and she was so charmed with his poetic genius that she gave him a thousand pounds. In return, he made {095} [Illustration: 0101] {097}her the heroine of several poems, and personified her in three different characters in his celebrated work, entitled the "Faerie Queen." [[A.D. 1586.]] Another plot to assassinate the queen was laid at Mary Stuart's door, and the councillors repeated their demands for her execution. But Elizabeth shrank from appearing directly to bring an anointed sovereign to the block, though she did not hesitate to subject her to every species of quiet cruelty. Mary was kept in damp, unhealthy apartments, deprived of exercise, and on several occasions compelled to rise from a sick-bed to travel, in the depth of winter, from one prison to another. Her health became seriously impaired, but that had no effect on Elizabeth; and an insulting letter addressed to her by the royal prisoner did not tend to soften her heart. At last Mary was induced by spies, who pretended to-be her friends, to write to the French and Spanish ambassadors requesting aid from their governments. These letters were intercepted and shown to the queen. Many of Mary's partisans were arrested; and Walsingham, one of the ministers, published a full account of the preparations France and Spain were making to invade England--where, upon landing, their troops would be joined by all the papists of the realm.