Sir Arthur GORGES

Poet and translator, was associated with Sir Walter Raleigh as one of the volunteers against the Spanish invasion. In the late 1570s Raleigh moved in the circles of the Catholic courtiers, a group which included, besides the three already mentioned, the Lords Windsor and Compton, Charles and Thomas Howard, George Gifford, Francis Southwell, Henry Noel, Arthur Gorges, William Tresham, and William Cornwallis, among others, most of them practising Roman Catholics, as well as others who came less often to Court, like the Earls of Northumberland and Southampton, Thomas Lord Paget, and Phillip Howard, the Duke of Norfolk’s son and heir. Perhaps Raleigh was introduced to the Howard circle by his cousin Arthur Gorges, who was also Charles Arundell’s cousin. Gorges had married Douglas Howard, the heiress of the insane Henry, second Lord Bindon, brother of Thomas, the third Viscount. Some of the courtier group. however, like young Arthur Gorges and Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford, managed to come free of their early associations and make respectable careers in conformity with the Elizabethan religious laws.

In 1597 he commanded the 'War-Spite', the ship in which Raleigh sailed as Vice Admiral under Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, on the Islands Voyage. Gorges was one of the 9 Knights made on 29 Oct 1597.

ABT 1611, with Sir Walter Cope, was instrumental in starting a central office, for the transaction and registration of the sale of lands, tenements, and goods, and also mercantile and other businesses, called 'The Publicke Register for Generall Commerce'.

He was Member of Parliament for five Constituencies between 1584 and 1601. For one of Gorges' works, "Lucans Pharsalia" Raleigh wrote a preface in poetry. (DNB, p. 145)

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