I remember one night at the turn of the year he was absent unexpectedly and Lady Ralegh was worried for him. He returned in early morning, and told that all yesterday he and the Lord Lieutenant of Dorset with a group of servants had been hunting a Jesuit priest. In the night they had caught him and now he was where he could do no more harm.
One knew and averted one’s thoughts from the later processes of the Law; but Sir Walter was restless all day and the following night was absent again. When he returned it seemed that he had obtained permission to see the priest in his cell and so having spent one night hunting him, he now had spent all the next arguing with him on religion and listening too.
I heard him say to Keymis: “Such men have to be stepped on, stamped out they would betray England, assassinate the Queen but I found his beliefs vastly interesting. This is the other end of the scale from the Brownists whom I spoke for in Parliament recently … Whence comes the certitude, the morbid infallibility of such men, each convinced of a passionate dogma that allows no compromise, each believing in the same God but ready to perpetrate all injury upon the other for a set of interpretations! It confounds me. I believe intolerance to be one of the cardinal sins! “
Hariot was at the table but he did not speak then, a quiet plump man with a bland pasty face and eyes screwed up as if unaccustomed to the light; but that night a great debate developed, first at the supper table and then later in the green drawing chamber.
It began on the nature of the soul and ranged over all the quarters of the mind, passing this way and that with the quickness of a ball between tennis players. Ralegh asserted that there were three divisions of the soul, which consisted of the animal, the reasonable and the spiritual. The souls of beasts rose only to reason and consciousness through the perception of what was before their eyes; man achieved a closer kinship with God by perceiving, though dimly, the reality beyond the material world. Christ, he said, was of the same substance as God, as far spiritualized beyond man as man was beyond the animals. Through Christ only could man begin to apprehend the wisdom and the purchase of God, for God by His nature was pure and eternal and therefore never to be wholly discovered.
“How do we know what we may or may not discover, Walter? ” Harlot said suddenly in his soft cushiony voice. “Where are the limits of human reason set except by the human himself? Except by his sense of unworthiness, except by prohibition of the church or state, except by his own lack of reason. We are yet at the birth of knowledge. If there is a God, then, as sceptics, we are all agreed that He is Transcendent, above the universe, beyond human experience. But he may well not be beyond knowledge.”
“I don’t deny the value of what knowledge we may get, Tom,” said Sir Walter. “But I don’t fret myself at its limitations. I don’t believe we can ever measure the infinite, plumb the bottomless, adapt our conception of the nature of time to the beginning or end of the universe. We are joined to the earth, compounded of the earth, and we live on it. The heavens are high and far off. Eternal grace can only come by revelation.”
“But how do you define eternal grace, Walter?” asked the Earl of Northumberland, a thin, younger man with sharp brown eyes like a thrush. “I’m with Tom on this, though we seldom see eye to eye on philosophical matters. Where does human aspiration end and divine grace begin? If by observing Tycho’s great star we may foretell the second coming of Christ, are we not reaching to a knowledge beyond the normal limits of our powers; if by studying the aqueous sign of Pisces we may calculate and predict the excessive rain which has fallen on this land in the last three years, are these not “
“Yes,” said Sir Walter, “we’re reaching to a knowledge beyond the normal limits of our powers, and often failing, as we shall always fail. There has been no second coming of Christ yet. When He comes I do not think we shall have to study the heavens to be forewarned. God is above nature. We may accept His existence or deny it, but we shall not get nearer Him by an excessive marshalling of fact or an excessive exercise of reason.”
Thomas Hariot filled his pipe. “We are all groping, friends; Henry here most of all. To him the horoscope and the telescope are equal servants of philosophy and as worthy of trust. It’s a common view. Even Johann Kepler appears to hold it, alas for him. I do not hold it. Until a firmer line is taken we shall make no sure progress. Once the division has been made I believe there is no limit to what we may know and what we may do. The capacity of men to reason differs as much as their sensibility to material things. But because knowledge may be stored, each pioneer may leave his discoveries behind him like a ladder leading to the next loft, waiting for another to climb. In the world of science there should be no need of prediction which is a form of guesswork only of speculation which can be susceptible of proof. That is true science, and it is the true destiny of man.”
“I think,” said Sir Walter, “there cannot be a true destiny of man which rests on intellectual pride.”
“Ah, but it is not personal pride. As men we are insignificant, temporary we carry, a few of us only, the bricks of knowledge one or two rungs higher. If there is pride, then it is pride of species, that in this great universe where God seems increasingly remote we ask nothing of ourselves but to be worthy of our reason and worthy of our place. Mortality, that is certain; immortality, that is the gift of God.”
Towards the end of the year Lord Northumberland married Lady Perrot, the widow of Sir Thomas Perrot. Lady Perrot had in her maidenhood been Lady Dorothy Devereux and was the sister of the Earl of Essex. As soon as they were married Northumberland brought her to the house and reconciled her with Sir Walter.
Fifteen years ago, I was told, before either of them was married, Sir Walter had had a quarrel with Sir Thomas Perrot which had resulted in a duel and in their both spending six weeks in the Fleet as a punishment. But the swordplay had not let the bad blood, and there had never been any reconciliation. When Lady Dorothy married Sir Thomas she had done so without the permission of the Queen, so had been banished from Court. She had taken up her husband’s attitude towards Ralegh; so a year or so later when she had come secretly into the Queen’s presence at Lady Warwick’s hoping for forgiveness, Ralegh had drawn Her Majesty’s attention to her and she had again been summarily banished. This had led to the first great quarrel between Sir Walter and Lord Essex, when Essex had violently denounced Ralegh to the Queen while Ralegh was within earshot.
Sir Walter, though quick to take offenceand quicker to give it, was never one to remember a grievance beyond the next sunset; and the new Countess of Northumberland seemed ready enough to be his friend. However, what Henry Percy was really angling for was bigger fish. He wanted a reconciliation between Ralegh and his new brotherin-law. Changing in all speed, as the rest of this strange circle seemed able to do, from philosophy and necromancy to hard politics, he argued that there was now nothing but old memories dividing the two great men. Essex, I heard or rather overheard him say, had suffered several recent defeats at the hands of Robert Cecil; his standing with the Queen was not so secure as it had been a year ago; and above all he was for a forward policy against Spain as Ralegh was. Cecil wanted negotiation and peace. On his own Cecil was stronger than either of them. United they could outweigh him. Also Sir Walter wanted more than anything a return of the Queen’s favour. If his forthcoming book should fail to gain it Essex’s friendship might turn the scale.
“The only obstacle,” said Northumberland, fingering the goblet he held, “is in the essential similarity between you and Robert little as you may think so, Walter. Y’are both proud, both quick of temper, impatient of others less able than yourselves. You’ve both got the energies of three men. And you’re both warm-hearted under your arrogance. Once come together and you may likely become the closest of friends.”