Few men have turned necessity to gain (that is the quality of the warrior in life) so greatly as Ralegh, such constricting necessity to such glorious gain. By sheer will power he kept in touch with the life, from which he was excluded. He wrote pamphlets on questions that were paramount in interest. His treatise on _The Prerogative of Parliaments_ shows him in the vanguard of the fighters for liberty of thought, before that movement developed into a baser servitude. He wrote arguments against an alliance by marriage with Spain. He wrote at Prince Henry's request a treatise on the building and management of ships. In every sphere his presence was felt. Ladies were eager to use his lotions for the preservation of beauty. His medicine was famous. The Queen sent an urgent messenger to the Tower when the Prince was dying, thinking to save her son's life by its means. But it was too late. The medicine only served to alleviate the agony of his last moments.
So Ralegh gradually came to arrange his life according to its new limitations. And it came about that those years in the Tower were far from being the unhappiest in his life. Ralegh, like his friend Spenser who had died tragically a few years before his imprisonment, knew well the value of Court life; and though he was not cut off from intelligent society as completely in the Tower as Spenser was in Ireland; yet he was cut off from much that had no attraction to Spenser. But in spite of his disgrace, and in spite of the work he desired to do, he must surely have found something of the same peace that comforted Spenser among the savage Irish, before their outbreak took from him his wife and home and all that was dear to him on earth. There is a strange analogy in what life offered to the two men. Lady Ralegh was allowed to visit and stay with her husband, until she offended Waad, who had become governor, by driving into the courtyard of the Tower in her carriage. Then the privilege was curtailed. Ralegh had many visitors. Men who had returned from travels came to tell him their experiences; men who were starting on some voyage, came to ask his advice and listen to his counsel. Ben Jonson visited him, and other scholars and poets. Certainly gossiping cheery Coryat, who amused himself by walking through all countries of the world, would come and recount his experiences. The Odcombian leg stretcher, as he liked to call himself, was hail-fellow-well-met with every man in London and in the principal cities of Europe. A sort of standing amiable joke was Tom of Odcombe. "There is no man but to enjoy his company would neglect anything but business."