Walter Raleigh

Alternatively, Professor Walter Raleigh was a scholar and author circa 1900.

Later life

In 1591, Raleigh was secretly married to Elizabeth ("Bess") Throckmorton, one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, and eleven years his junior, who was pregnant for the third time. When the unauthorised marriage was discovered the next year, the Queen ordered Raleigh imprisoned and Bess dismissed from court. It was several years before Raleigh returned to favour. The couple remained devoted to each other, and during Raleigh's absences she proved a capable manager of the family's fortunes and reputation. Two sons, Wat and Carew, survived them.

Related Topics:
1591 - Elizabeth ("Bess") Throckmorton - Ladies-in-waiting

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Raleigh was Governor of Jersey 1600-1603, responsible for modernising the defences of the island. He named the new fortress protecting the approaches to Saint Helier Fort Isabella Bellissima, known thereafter in English as Elizabeth Castle.

Related Topics:
Jersey - 1600 - 1603 - Saint Helier

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Royal favour did not last, however. On November 17, 1603, after Elizabeth's death, Raleigh went on trial for treason in the converted Great hall of Winchester Castle for supposed involvement in the Main Plot. His involvement in the Main Plot seems to have been confined to meeting with Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham and no more, but Raleigh was in disfavor at that point. He languished in the Tower of London until 1616. While imprisoned he wrote a book about ancient history (of Greece and Rome): A Historie of the World, also known as A History of the World.

Related Topics:
November 17 - 1603 - Treason - Winchester Castle - Main Plot - Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham - Tower of London - 1616 - A Historie of the World

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Raleigh was released from the Tower in 1616 to conduct a second expedition to the Orinoco in search of El Dorado, in the course of which his men, under the command of Lawrence Keymis, sacked the Spanish outpost of San Thome. Raleigh's son Wat was struck by a bullet and killed instantly in the initial attack on the town. On Raleigh's return to England, the outraged Spanish Ambassador demanded that King James reinstate Raleigh's death sentence.

Related Topics:
Orinoco - El Dorado - Lawrence Keymis - Spanish Ambassador - King James

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Raleigh was beheaded at Whitehall on October 29, 1618. Although his popularity had waned considerably since his Elizabethan heydey, his execution was seen by many to be unnecessary and unjust, and is judged by some historians to have hastened the demise of the Stuart dynasty.

Related Topics:
October 29 - 1618

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