At about this time, he petitioned William Cecil, Queen Elizabeth's principal secretary, for a recall to England, citing "for the recovery of my eyes", but his ambitions still rested in Ireland and particularly in the southern province of Munster.

[6][7] In the summer of 1569, Gilbert was eager to participate, pushing westward with his forces across the River Blackwater and joined up with his kinsman to defeat Sir Edmund Butler, the Earl of Ormond's younger brother.

Soldier and author Thomas Churchyard described an intimidation tactic implemented by Gilbert during the campaign: The heddes of all those (of who sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies and brought to the place where he incamped at night, and should there bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie ledying into his owne tente so that none could come into his tente for any cause but commonly he muste passe through a lane of heddes which he used ad terrorem... [It brought] greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kindsfolke, and freinds...[8] After the campaign, Gilbert retroactively justified his policy of attacking non-combatants by arguing that "The men of war could not be maintained without their churls and calliackes, old women and those women who milked their Creaghts (cows) and provided their victuals and other necessaries.

In December 1569, after one of the chief rebels had surrendered, Gilbert was knighted at the hands of Sidney in the ruined FitzMaurice camp, reputedly amid heaps of dead gallowglass warriors.

[citation needed] By 1572, Gilbert had turned his attention to the Spanish Netherlands, where he fought an unsuccessful campaign in support of the Dutch Sea beggars at the head of a force of 1,500 men, many of whom had deserted from Smith's aborted plantation in the Ards of Ulster.

Gilbert also helped to set up the Society of the New Art with William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, both of whom maintained an alchemical laboratory in Limehouse.

[citation needed] In the summer of 1579, William Drury, Lord Deputy of Ireland, commissioned Gilbert and Raleigh to attack James FitzMaurice Fitzgerald again by sea and land and to intercept a fleet expected to arrive from Spain with aid for the Irish.

[citation needed] Gilbert set sail in June 1579 after a spell of bad weather and promptly got lost in the fog and heavy rain off Land's End, Cornwall, an incident which caused the Queen to doubt his seafaring ability.

[citation needed] Gilbert became one of the leading advocates for the then-mythical Northwest Passage to Cathay (China), a country written up in great detail by Marco Polo in the 13th century for its abundance of riches.

[citation needed] During the winter of 1566 he and a personal adversary of his, Anthony Jenkinson (who had sailed to Russia and crossed that country down to the Caspian Sea), argued the pivotal question of polar routes before Queen Elizabeth.

[citation needed] By logic and reason a north-west passage was assumed to exist, and Columbus had discovered America with far less evidence; it was imperative for England to catch up, to settle in new lands, and thus to challenge the Iberian powers.

At this time Gilbert was a member of parliament for Queenborough, Kent, but his attention was again drawn to North America, where he hoped to seize territory on behalf of the English crown.

[13] The six-year exploration license Gilbert had secured by letters patent from the crown in 1578 was on the point of expiring, when he succeeded in 1583 in raising significant sums from English Catholic investors.

The investors were constrained by penal laws in their own country, and loath to go into exile in hostile parts of Europe; the prospect of American settlement appealed to them, especially as Gilbert was proposing to seize some nine million acres (36,000 km2) around the river Norumbega, to be parcelled out under his authority (although to be held ultimately by the Crown).

However, the Privy Council insisted that the investors pay recusancy fines before departing, and Catholic clergy and Spanish agents worked to dissuade them from interfering in America.

Owing to his obstinacy and disregard for the views of superior mariners, the ship Delight ran aground and sank with the loss of all but sixteen of its crew on one of the sandbars of Sable Island.

Gilbert had stepped on a nail on the Squirrel and on 2 September went aboard Golden Hind to have his foot bandaged and to discuss means of keeping the two little ships together on their Atlantic crossing.

It is thought Gilbert's reading material was the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, which contains the following passage: "He that hathe no grave is covered with the skye: and, the way to heaven out of all places is of like length and distance.

He was passionate and impulsive, a nature liable to violence and cruelty – as came out in his savage repression of rebels in Ireland – but also intellectual and visionary, a questing and original mind, with the personal magnetism that went with it.

Perhaps of more significance was the issuance of a royal charter to Raleigh in 1584,[18] based in part from Gilbert's earlier patent; with this backing, he undertook the Roanoke expeditions, the first sustained attempt by the English crown to establish colonies in North America.