Life
of piracy, power and imprisonment
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THE SIR WALTER RALEIGH statue in East Budleigh. Ref: 06-06-8946sSH |
SIR
WALTER Raleigh was one of the most enigmatic figures of England’s golden
age.
Soldier, poet, philanderer, philosopher, explorer, adventurer, conspirator;
take your pick – he was one of the Renaissance’s larger than life characters
– but he certainly did more than introduce Britain to the potato and pipe
smoking.
Loved by women, envied by men and positively hated by his rivals,
he was born in Hayes Barton in 1552 during the reign of “Bloody Mary”,
Mary Tudor, and church records show that he was a regular at East Budleigh Church.
Something
of an archetypal English anti-hero, he started studying as a lawyer before, in
1578, deciding to earn some money - and therefore influence - by joining his half
brother, Sir Humphrey Gilhar, in a spot of piracy; pillaging and looting Spanish
galleons and ports.
This got him noticed – and not just because at six-foot
he was unusually tall and cut an intimidating figure - and in 1580 he become a
captain of the Army of Ireland and brutally suppressed a rebellion.
For
this he received a personal invitation to the court of young Queen Elizabeth I
and the dashing-crashing Raleigh quickly fell into the Queen’s favour. It
was during this period the myth of Walter Raleigh began to grow and he supposedly
laid his cloak over a mud puddle “to prevent the queen being dirtied”
and that famous cloak became part of his coat of arms.
By 1590 he was at the
height of his power and, after leading expeditions to both North and Latin America
and establishing England’s colonies on Roanoke Island he was knighted.
The
impoverished Royal treasury thought the world of him too; he used his ill-gotten
funds to privately commission a brand-new state-of-the-art warship, The Ark Royal,
to help fend off the impending Spanish Armada.
His star ascended to new
heights and he was named Captain of the Guard and it was because of Sir Walter
the “Babington” conspiracy – aimed at replacing the queen with
Mary Queen of Scots – was foiled and led to the execution of Elizabeth’s
traitorous cousin.
This earned him a 42,000-acre estate in Ireland, more evidence
of the Queen’s reverence for him.
But that affection was fickle and
as easily as he won favour he lost it and, when the handsome Sir Walter married
one of the Queen’s maids of honour, Bessie Throckmonkton, Elizabeth had him
thrown into the Tower of London.
In 1603 things got even worse. The Queen
died and a new king, James Stewart, was crowned and he charged Sir Walter with
treason.
After the king locked him up in the tower for 12 years the aging
Sir Walter – he was 63 - finally convinced the king to set him free by promising
him gold from Spain.
The king ordered him not to engage the Spanish in
a fight; but when Raleigh’s son attacked a Spanish village and was killed,
he returned to England and in 1618 was beheaded – but faced his fate bravely.
He
joked with the executioner “This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician
for all diseases”, and even gave the signal for the axe to fall…after
all he was a Renaissance man.
In a macabre tribute to her beloved husband,
his wife Bess was rumoured to have carried Sir Walter’s embalmed head around
with her until she died - at the age of 82 – before his head was buried with
the rest of his body. 16-2-2006
EAST Budleigh’s most famous son was given a right royal welcome
when he finally came home, more than 400 years after leaving. Villagers young
and old were out in force to witness the unveiling of the long-awaited Sir Walter
Raleigh statue. Some said it was a day they would never forget. MORE>> |
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