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c. 1554-1618
Walter Ralegh (also spelled 'Raleigh') was one of the most colourful men of his day – a poet, courtier, soldier, mariner and intriguer. Born to the West Country seafaring clan of families, he studied law, though he was already more interested in poetry. Like his half-brother Humphrey Gilbert, he was inspired by the idea that there were new worlds to be discovered and, in 1578, attempted a (failed) voyage to North America, organised by Gilbert, with some pirate activity against the Spanish along the way.
After service in Ireland, Ralegh found favour at court. Elizabeth knighted him and granted him lucrative offices, trade monopolies and lands. But she was not keen on his colonial ambitions. In 1583, she forbade him to go on a voyage he had sponsored with Gilbert: Gilbert sailed to Newfoundland alone and went down in his ship on the way back. Then, in 1585, Ralegh organised a voyage to take 300 colonists to Roanoke Island (off the coast of what is now North Carolina), but again Elizabeth intervened and Sir Richard Grenville led the expedition. The colonists landed but returned to England within months when their stores ran out. A second group, sent to Roanoke Island by Ralegh in 1587, simply disappeared without a trace.
Ralegh was in charge of Cornwall's defences during the Armada, but did not sail with the fleet. Afterwards, quarrels at court drove him to Ireland again: here he exchanged poems with Edmund Spenser and helped get Spenser's The Faerie Queene published.
In 1592, Ralegh married one of Elizabeth's maids of honour without her permission and was briefly sent to the Tower. In 1595, he tried to restore his fortunes with a trip to South America, to find the fabled golden city of El Dorado. Returning empty-handed, he was accused of never having made the voyage; in answer, he wrote The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana, which became a bestseller. However, it failed to impress the queen. Abandoning his colonial ambitions, Ralegh fell back on sponsoring piracy. In 1596, he was one of the leaders (with the queen's new favourite, the Earl of Essex) of the sack of the Spanish port of Cadiz.
When James I came to the throne, he banned privateering and took away some of Ralegh's offices. Ralegh became embroiled in a conspiracy against James; when it was discovered, James held a show trial, and though Ralegh protested that he had been acting as agent provocateur, he was convicted of treason. He spent the next 13 years in the Tower, with a death sentence hanging over him. He used the time to start writing his History of the World.
In 1616, he was released to lead a second gold-hunting expedition to Guiana. The voyage was a disaster; his second-in-command attacked a Spanish town and half of the expedition died in the battle, including Ralegh's eldest son. James was trying to negotiate peace with Spain. When Ralegh returned, he was tried for maliciously infringing the friendship between the two nations and beheaded. Hundreds turned out at Whitehall to watch him die, and he made a beautiful speech from the scaffold.
The pirates
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