Sir Walter Raleigh - Early Life, The New World, Ireland, Later life, Poetry, Raleigh in culture

Courtier, explorer, soldier, and writer, born in Hayes Barton, Devon, SW England, UK. He studied at Oxford before serving in the Huguenot army in France (1569). A rival of the Earl of Essex for the queen's favours, he served (1580) in Elizabeth's army in Ireland, distinguishing himself by his ruthlessness at the siege of Smerwick and by the plantation of English and Scots Protestants in Munster. Elizabeth rewarded him with a large estate in Ireland, knighted him (1585), and gave him trade privileges and the right to colonize America.

In 1587 he explored from N Carolina to present-day Florida, naming the region Virginia in honour of Elizabeth, the ‘Virgin Queen’. In 1587 Raleigh sent an ill-fated second expedition of colonists to Roanoake. In 1588 he took part in the victory over the Spanish Armada. He led other raids against Spanish possessions and returned with much booty. Raleigh forfeited Elizabeth's favour by his courtship of and subsequent marriage to one of her maids-of-honour, Bessy Throckmorton, and he was committed to the Tower (1592). Hoping, on his release, to recover his position, he led an abortive expedition to Guiana to search for El Dorado, a legendary land of gold. Instead, he helped to introduce the potato plant and tobacco use in England and Ireland.

Elizabeth's successor, James I, distrusted and feared Raleigh, charged him with treason and condemned him to death, but commuted the sentence to imprisonment in the Tower (1603). There Raleigh lived with his wife and servants, and wrote his History of the World (1614). He was released in 1616 to search for gold in South America. Against the king's undertaking to the Spanish, he invaded and pillaged Spanish territory, was forced to return to England without booty, and was arrested on the orders of the king. His original death sentence for treason was invoked, and he was executed at Westminster. A gifted poet, writer, and scholar, many of his poems and writings were destroyed. A pioneer of the Italian sonnet-form in English, he was a patron of the arts, notably of Edmund Spenser in his composition of The Faerie Queene (1589–96).

Not to be confused with Walter Raleigh (professor).

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552 or 1554 – 29 October 1618) is a famed English writer, poet, courtier and explorer.

Early Life

Raleigh was born in 1552 in the house of Hayes Barton, not far from Budleigh Salterton in Devon. He was a half brother of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and had a full brother named Carew Raleigh. Raleigh's family was strongly Protestant in religious orientation and experienced a number of near-escapes during the reign of the Catholic queen Mary I of England. Thus during his childhood, Raleigh developed a hatred of Catholicism, proving himself quick to express it after the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558.

The New World

Raleigh's plan for colonization in "Virginia" (which included the present-day states of North Carolina and Virginia) in North America ended in failure at Roanoke Island, but paved the way for subsequent colonies. (Subsequent colonization attempts in the early seventeenth century were made under the joint-stock Virginia Company which was able to pull together the capital necessary to create successful colonies.)

Raleigh put together several voyages to travel to, explore and colonize the New World. The first English colony in the new world was established by Raleigh and located at Roanoke Island.

In 1587, Raleigh attempted a second expedition again establishing a settlement on Roanoke Island.

Walter Raleigh has been taught by US history classes as the main reason certain voyages to the New World were financed and carried out.

Ireland

Between 1579 and 1583, Raleigh took part in the suppression of the Desmond Rebellions in Ireland and benefited from the subsequent seizure and distribution of land.

For the seventeen years he was an Irish landlord, Youghal became Raleigh's occasional home. of the time his servant, having never before seen the smoking of tobacco, throwing a bucket of water over Raleigh in the belief he had been set alight.

Amongst Raleigh's acquaintances in the area was another Englishman granted land in Munster, the poet Edmund Spenser. In the 1590s, he and Raleigh travelled together from Ireland to the court at London, where he presented part of his allegorical poem, the Faerie Queene, to Elizabeth I. Raleigh's Irish estates ran in to difficulties, which contributed to a decline in his fortunes and, in 1602, he sold the lands to Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork. Boyle subsequently prospered under kings James I and Charles I, such that following Raleigh's death, Raleigh family members approached him for compensation on the basis that Raleigh had struck an improvident bargain.

Later life

In 1591, Raleigh was secretly married to Elizabeth ("Bess") Throckmorton, eleven years his junior, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting and pregnant for the third time. When, during the following year, the unauthorised marriage was discovered, the Queen ordered Raleigh imprisoned and Bess dismissed from court.

From 1600 to 1603, Raleigh was the Governor of the Channel Island of Jersey, and he was responsible for modernising the defenses of the island. Elizabeth died in 1603, and later that year, on 17 November, Raleigh was tried in the converted Great Hall of Winchester Castle for treason due to his supposed involvement in the Main Plot. During the initial attack on the town, Raleigh's son Walter was struck by a bullet and killed. On Raleigh's return to England, the outraged Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, the Spanish ambassador, demanded that King James reinstate Raleigh's death sentence.

Poetry

Walter Raleigh is generally considered one of the foremost poets of the Elizabethan era. Lewis considered Raleigh one of the era's "silver poets," a group of writers who resisted the Italian Renaissance influence of dense classical reference and elaborate poetic devices. In poems such as "What is Our Life" and "The Lie" Raleigh expresses a contemptus mundi attitude more characteristic of the Middle Ages than of the dawning era of humanistic optimism.

Raleigh in culture

The 1955 film, The Virgin Queen, starring Bette Davis, Richard Todd, and Joan Collins, dramatizes the relationships between Queen Elizabeth, Raleigh, and his wife. Raleigh's name is quoted in The Beatles' White Album song I'm So Tired, where John Lennon calls him a "stupid get", commonly misheard as "stupid git" (following on from the line "Although I'm so tired, I'll have another cigarette.") Raleigh, North Carolina, takes its name from Sir Walter. There are other cities and towns in the New World named "Raleigh", and a misspelling of it in Rolla, Missouri Raleigh County in southern West Virginia is named for Sir Walter Raleigh. There is a noted brand of American pipe tobacco called "Sir Walter Raleigh". The name "Sir Walter Raleigh" is sometimes used in the odd Prince Albert in a can joke. The title of the comedy History of the World, Part I by Mel Brooks is a reference to Raleigh having finished only the first volume of his Historie of the World at the time he was executed. Raleigh plays an important part in Anthony Burgess's novel A Dead Man in Deptford in which he is suggested as one of the persons who might have been responsible for the murder of Christopher Marlowe. In the second series of the television program Blackadder, Lord Blackadder tells Queen Elizabeth that he'll sail around the Cape of Good Hope to show up, as Blackadder calls him, Walter "Ooh What A Big Ship I've Got" Raleigh. Blackadder also refers to him as "Sir Walter Rather-a-Wally Raleigh". One of Bob Newhart's stand-up comedy routines depicts one side of a telephone conversation between a sceptical businessman in London (played by Newhart) and "Nutty Walt" Raleigh who tries unsuccessfully to convince him of the merits of tobacco. Raleigh's relationship with Bess Throckmorton and Elizabeth I is the subject of a forthcoming film, The Golden Age starring Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I, and Clive Owen as Raleigh. Raleigh is the subject of a chapter in William Carlos Williams' historicist

essay titled In the American Grain (1925).

Texts by Raleigh

Works by Walter Raleigh at Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg edition of The Discovery of Guiana Worldly Wisdom from The Historie of the World

Political Offices
Preceded by: The Earl of Bedford	Lord Warden of the Stannaries 1584–1603	Succeeded by: The Earl of Pembroke
Preceded by: John Best	Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard 1597–1603	Succeeded by: Sir Thomas Erskine
Preceded by: Sir Anthony Paulet	Governor of Jersey 1600–1603	Succeeded by: Sir John Peyton