Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody. Before we get started with this episode, we
have one last live show to announce for We will
be in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the National World War
Two Museum on Tuesday, November six. Okay, we know that
selection day, but we don't want coming to our show
to keep you from the polls. We are both going
to vote early before we leave for New Orleans, and
(00:20):
Louisiana offers early voting as well, so we encourage you
to do so. You can find out more about this
show and get a link to buy tickets at missed
in History dot com slash tour. Welcome to Stuff You
Missed in History class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
(00:44):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and
I'm Holly Fry. As folks, probably no. I grew up
in North Carolina and it's capital, Raleigh is named after
Sir Walter Raleigh. And aside from that fact, here are
the things I could have told you about Sir Walter
Raleigh before researching to this podcast. Number one, he wrote
(01:05):
some poems. I probably could not name any of them.
There's actually a reason for that. He on purpose didn't
publish most of them during his lifetime. He tried to
keep his name out of it, but any anyway, I
knew he wrote some poems, couldn't really say which ones.
Number two he was Queen Elizabeth the first favorite. And
this one time he put a cloak down over a
(01:26):
puddle so she wouldn't get her feet wet. That's probably
not even true, and it never made sense to me
as a child, because I was like, cloaks are not waterproof.
She's just gonna step on that and her feet are
still going to get wet, and his cloak is ruined.
So I'm gonna get a little nerdy with you right
now because a lot of times the textile weaves at
that time we're really tight compared to what we would
(01:46):
have today. So for at least a moment, it would
have prevented water from seeping through. Awesome. It would not
have been waterproof, no, but for as long as it
took her delicate little feet to cross over the offending puddle,
she probably would have been covered. Thank you for resolving
that question I've had since I was maybe five. Uh,
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but anyway, that's probably not even true. We're gonna get
to that later. And the number three is sort of
like blah blah something Roanoke Colony Like, I just had
a very vague understanding of Sir Walter Raleigh, even though
I grew up in a place whose capital is named
after him. Among other things, Sir Walter Raleigh was a
courtier and an explorer, and a historian and a member
of parliaments, which we're not going to even get into
(02:32):
that part today really at all. Also a soldier, he
was part of England's defense against the Spanish Armada as
well as the Tutor conquest of Ireland, some of which
was truly horrifying. Very conveniently, since this episode is coming
out in October, according to some people, he's a ghost now,
and we are also coming up on the fourth anniversary
of his beheading, which is why he's making an appearance
(02:55):
on the show today. He's a scary, headless ghost. Is
Walter Raleigh was born about fifteen fifty four in Devonshire, England,
and some sources put that day as January twenty second,
but the year remains a little murky. His parents were
Walter and Catherine Raleigh, and the younger Walter was the
third of their surviving children. He also had half siblings
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from his parents previous marriages. Walter was the youngest boy
of all of these siblings and half siblings. Their family
was part of the Protestant gentry, and they weren't particularly
well off or prominent, but they had been in Devonshire
for a very long time and they had a lot
of connections to people who were more well off and
more well known. We don't know much at all about
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Walter's childhood or youth, but he eventually went to Oriel College, Oxford.
He didn't finish his studies though. In fifteen sixty nine
he went to France with the Devon Volunteers to fight
on the side of the Huguenots in the French Wars
of Religion. He served for about five years, seeing two
major battles and surviving the St. Bartholomew's day A massacre
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in fifteen seventy two. In fifteen seventy six, Raleigh was
back in London and he was enrolled at the Middle Temple,
which was one of the four ends of Court. But
it doesn't seem like he was really studying law while
he was there, which would have been a normal thing
to be doing at the Middle Temple. He was more,
treating it kind of like a gentleman's club. Even though
(04:22):
he never seems to have finished a course of study
at Oxford or at the Middle Temple, he would go
on to really develop a reputation for being very highly educated.
Maybe he was just good at pr I'm super smart.
You guys have studied a bunch. You get a drink. Uh.
Raleigh published his first poem in the fifteen seventies as well.
It was printed in the preface to The Steel Glass
(04:44):
by George Gascoigne, and the poem appears under the heading
Walter Raleigh of the Middle Temple in Commendation of the
Steel Glass, with Raleigh spelled r A w l e y.
This is one of no joke seventy dif n spellings
of Walter Raleigh's name in the historical record, and as
a side note, the common spelling of r A l
(05:06):
e I g h is not one that he used himself.
He never signed his name with an eye in it.
Raleigh is also pronounced slightly differently depending on where you
are from. I will tell you I struggle with it
because we have a cat named Raleigh. I see it
that way all the time, even though he is in
fact named after imagineer Rolely Crump, but saying it really
(05:27):
just doesn't feel right with the cat. I don't know
why well, and an odd thing that I discovered. Even
though a lot of search technologies are good at interpreting
your different spellings to give you results that are what
you're looking for, there are meaningfully different responses for Walter
Raleigh spelled r a l e i g H and
(05:50):
Walter Raleigh spelled r A l e g H with
no eye in it, which meant that I got to
redo all of my searching part way through this. It's like,
why didn't I find this paper before? Because I had
an eye in it? In Raleigh and his half brother
Sir Humphrey Gilbert went on an expedition, possibly to try
(06:13):
to find the Northwest Passage, but this expedition was largely
a failure. Storms forced their little fleet of ships back
to Plymouth almost immediately after they left, and then they
turned to what multiple writers described as unauthorized privateering against
Spanish ships. I'm not sure who decided to call it
(06:33):
unauthorized privateering. That's just piracy. This unauthorized privateering brought them
a lot of casualties and very little reward, so their
reception wasn't particularly favorable when they got back to England. Plus, Raleigh,
who had already had a reputation for being stubborn and hotheaded,
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kept getting in trouble for disturbing the peace and dueling.
He wound up spending time in both Fleet Marshal Sya
prisons for brawling. Possibly to try to keep him out
of all this trouble, some of Raleigh's friends secured a
commission for him as a captain in the army, and
he was sent to Ireland. The Tutor Conquest of Ireland
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was going on. It had started long before Queen Elizabeth
ascended to the throne. In part of Ireland was solely
under English control, and the English part of Ireland, which
was mostly around Dublin, was known as the Pale, So
the Tutor Conquest was meant to expand the Pale and
also to solidify English rule within the Pale. Side note.
(07:36):
A lot of people believe that the phrase beyond the
Pale is a specific reference to this part of Ireland
and the areas beyond it, but according to the Oxford
English Dictionary, that is not supported by historical evidence. It
is probably an association that people made later. During the
Tutor Conquest, the province of Munster in the southwest of
Ireland saw two major rebellions against English rule, and they
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were known as the Desmond Rebellions. The first one took
place from fifteen sixty nine to fifteen seventy three, and
Raleigh's half brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was knighted for his
service and that rebellion. The Second Desmond Rebellion started in
fifteen seventy nine, and it was fueled both by resistance
to English rule and by the Catholic counter Reformation. Gerald Fitzgerald,
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the Earl of Desmond, had gotten the support of the
Pope and of King Philip the Second of Spain in
this uprising. Raleigh served with the English army during several
engagements and the Second Desmond Rebellion, but the most notorious
of these engagement was the Siege of Smerwick. Troops from
Spain and Italy who were aiding the FitzGeralds were being
garrisoned at Smerwick, and Queen Elizabeth had sent English troops
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to put down this rebellion, including dealing with these troops.
When the Spanish and Italian forces stood down. Lord Arthur Gray,
the Lord Deputy of Ireland, ordered for all of them
to be massacred. This was one percent how England dealt
with rebels at the time. Had England been at war
with Spain or Italy, the soldiers would have been offered
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some protection under the rules of war, but they weren't.
In the Crown's view. They were helping royal subjects rebel
against their monarch, so they needed to be dealt with quickly,
efficiently and decisively seriously. Tutor England's treatment of Irish rebels
could be extremely brutal, and the first Desmond Rebellions their
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Humphrey Gilbert was known to decapitate civilians who supported the
rebels and then display their heads on pikes along the
path to his tent. Two companies totaling about one d
eighty men were tasked with killing the enemy soldiers at Smerwick.
Walter Raleigh was one of the two captains in charge.
The English army massacred about six hundred people after this siege,
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About a hundred of them were women and children. Raleigh
was also one of the English officers granted lands in
Ireland after the end of the Second Desman rebellion. His
allotment was actually the largest of any of the ones
that were anted out of the Munster lands that were
claimed after all of this was over. He also helped
govern the province of Munster after this, and when he
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went back to London, he positioned himself as an expert
in Irish affairs, which might have been part of what
got him into such close confidence with Queen Elizabeth. And
we're going to talk about that a little bit more
after we first paused for a little sponsor break. Like
(10:28):
we said at the top of the show, the Raleigh
family wasn't all that prominent, but they did have some
pretty high up connections. One of these connections was Katherine Astley.
She was Walter's aunt on his mother's side, and she
had been Queen Elizabeth's governess back when she was still
a princess, starting before Walter was born. After Elizabeth became Queen,
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Astley became the Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber and
then the Chief Gentlewoman of the bed Chamber. And it
might have been Katherine Astley who introduced Walter Raleigh to
Queen Elizabeth. The introduction also have been a byproduct of
Raleigh's military service. After the massacre at Smerwick, Raleigh and
his men searched through the bodies of the soldiers and
(11:08):
collected letters and other documents to deliver to London. Raleigh
was the one who carried them there, which he did
in December of eight Regardless of exactly how Raleigh made
his first connection to Queen Elizabeth, he quickly became a favorite.
He was very tall and handsome, flamboyant, and quite the flatterer.
Soon Elizabeth just didn't want him to leave her side.
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In two Sir Humphrey Gilbert put together a scheme to
resettle English Catholics in North America, and Raleigh invested some
money in it, but the Queen forbade him from personally
going on the voyage. When she sent him on a
mission to the Low Countries later that year, she told
him to write to her every day. Through the fifteen eighties,
Raleigh continued to get more and more recognition and favors
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from the Queen. He was knighted on February six five.
He was also made Warden of the standardis Or coal
mining districts in Devon and Cornwall. He was also named
Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall and Vice Admiral of the West.
On top of all that, the Queen granted Raleigh multiple
estates in England and Ireland, including Durham Place on the Strand,
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which was one of her favorite residences. She also gave
him a monopoly on a sale of wine licenses and
on the export of broadcloth, and a lot of this
was very lucrative, I mean, fabric and wine. And he's
got this thing covered um in the middle of all
of this since September three, Sir Humphrey Gilbert drowned in
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a shipwreck. He had recently claimed Newfoundland for England, and
he had a royal charter to try to colonize it.
After his death, Raleigh was granted a charter to explore
and colonize North America. He was given quote free liberty
and license from time to time and at all times
forever hereafter to discover, search, find out, and view such
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remote he and barbarous lands, countries and territories not actually
possessed of any Christian prince nor inhabited by Christian people.
This was England's first meaningful attempt to establish a colony
in North America. Yes, half brother had been kind of
dabbling at this idea of colonizing Newfoundland, and there had
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of course been lots of voyages back and forth between
Europe and North America, but in terms of England attempting
to establish a colony, this was the first serious effort.
So Raleigh first mounted a reconnaissance expedition in fifteen eighty
four and that landed on the outer banks of what's
now in North Carolina. This reconnaissance expedition returned with at
least two indigenous men, known as Manteo and Wanches. They
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stayed at one of Raleigh's residences when they arrived in England.
Manteo and wan She's were two of the first Indigenous
Americans to be brought to England, and they each obviously
have their own stories outside the scope of Walter Raleigh's.
Both of them returned to North America with Raleigh's next
voyage in fifteen five five. Voyage was intended to establish
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a colony, but this colony failed. The indigenous peoples in
the area were divided in their opinions of the colonists,
and this was also true of Manteo and Wanchese. Manteo
stayed with the colony to work as an interpreter and
a guide, but Lanche's left and warned his people that
the English should not be trusted. Aside from this division
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and their relationships with the indigenous people in the area,
the colony was also struck by illness and a lack
of planning and supplies. When Sir Francis Drake coincidentally passed
through the area on his way back from the Caribbean,
most of the colonists took the opportunity to go back
to England with him. Manteo returned to England with Sir
Francis Drake. Also, Raleigh planned one more expedition to North
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America and Mantio traveled on that expedition. These colonists arrived
in August of seven and became the famous lost Colony
of Roanoke. The colony's governor, John White, was sent back
to England for more supp lies, but England was at
war with Spain by the time that he got there,
and when White finally got back to North America in
fifteen ninety, the colony was gone, with the word Croatoan
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carved into a post as the only evidence that anyone
had ever been there. Archaeologists tried to work out exactly
what happened, and this comes up from time to time
on on Earth. It's one of every history buff's favorite mysteries.
M uh, partly to bring tourists see an outdoor drama
and to launch an entire TV series. So these expeditions
(15:36):
are why Walter Raleigh is often incorrectly credited with introducing
potatoes and tobacco to England and Ireland specifically, or to
Europe in general. But number one, he didn't go on
any of these personally, the Queen did not want him
to go. But potatoes were introduced to Spain more than
a decade before these voyages took place, and Ireland had
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also a published trade with Spain before Raleigh's voyages, so
it's entirely possible that there were potatoes in Ireland before
ships from Raleigh's expeditions arrived there with potatoes on board,
and there were definitely potatoes elsewhere in Europe for sure,
way before any of this happened. Tobacco was also introduced
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to Europe long before Raleigh's voyages and had been grown
in England for more than ten years before his first
ships left for North America. Raleigh probably did help popularize
its use in England, though so, like I said earlier,
Walter Raleigh didn't go on any of these actual voyages,
and even though they weren't particularly successful, his position continued
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to rise at court while he stayed behind. In six
or fifteen eighties seven, Raleigh was made captain of the
Queen's personal Guard. The Anglo Spanish War started just before
that happened in five, and Raleigh served on the War Council.
He also helped organize the Devon Militia to fight against
the Spanish armada in He also commissioned a ship called
(17:06):
the Ark Raleigh that he gave to the Queen, who
renamed the Ark Royal and made it the flagship of
the British naval fleet. Throughout all of this, Raleigh was
making friends and enemies at and outside of court. He
was friends with poet Edmund Spencer and introduced him to
Queen Elizabeth. Spencer was later named Poet Laureate, and he
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wrote The Fairy Queen, one of the great epic poems
in English, in part as an allegory about Queen Elizabeth
the First and the Tutors. Raleigh also wrote a couple
of commendatory sonnets for the Fairy Queen, and he makes
a number of appearances in Spencer's work, and as a
side note, Spencer also served England during the Desmond Rebellion
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as Lord Gray's secretary. If you had to read The
Fairy Queen just hypothetically when you were studying literature in
college and you didn't find it a particularly enjoyable experience,
you could just blame Walter Raleigh having it all that possible,
and I do so. On the other end of this
spectrum was Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, who was sometimes
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Raleigh's friend and sometimes really his adversary, and always his
rival for the Queen's attention. The disputes that Raleigh started
having with Essex almost led them to a duel, And
then there was the relationship that caused Raleigh to fall
out of the Queen's favor almost for good. He started
a secret relationship with Elizabeth Throckmorton, known as Best, one
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of the Queen's maids of honor. She wasn't supposed to
marry without the Queen's approval, but when she became pregnant
with Raleigh's child, they got married in secret, and Bess
left the court to give birth. Best delivered a son
named day Marie We're not sure on that pronunciation on March,
and this was during the better part of Raleigh's relationship
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with the Earl of Essex, who was the baby's godfather.
Best came back to court in April and she and
Walter are both trying to keep their marriage and baby
secret from the Queen. Of course, that idea was doomed
to failure. Walter and Bess apologized to the Queen after
she found out that they were secretly married and had
a secret baby, but neither of them seemed all that
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sincere about their apology, and that just made things worse,
so Queen Elizabeth had them imprisoned in separate quarters in
the Tower of London. Walter was released from the tower
after one of his ships returned to port with a
massive Portuguese ship in tow the Madre di Dios. There
were concerns that Raleigh's crew was going to mutiny, so
he was released to go down to the docks and
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try to keep everything in order, and once the Queen
took most of the treasure, she finally released both Walter
and Best from the tower, although she banished Walter from
court and stripped him of all his estates and privileges.
The Rallies went back to his home of Devonshire, and
sadly day Marie Raleigh died while still a baby. While
banished from court, Walter Raleigh spent some time hanging out
(20:02):
with some of the most notable literary figures of the time,
including William Shakespeare and Ben Johnson. Although he was banned
from court until fifte Raleigh figured out a way he
might win back the Queen's good graces in and we're
going to get to that after we take another little
pause for a sponsor break. In February of Walter Raleigh
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got the Queen's permission to go on an expedition on
the Orinoca River and what's now Venezuela, which at the
time was known as Guiana. He was searching for the
fabled city of El Dorado, and Robert Devreaux, Earl of Essex,
went on this expedition as well. This is one of
the times that they were getting along. They did not
find a city of gold Dough, but Raleigh did write
(20:55):
a book called The Discovery of Guiana, which came out
in fift This book was extremely popular and it was
reprinted four times that year. He also seems to have
brought an indigenous boy of about ten or twelve back
with him, who he might have adopted. The Anglo Spanish
War was still ongoing, and Raleigh and Essex were both
(21:15):
part of a raid on the Spanish port of Cadiz
in fifteen ninety six, which destroyed more than thirty Spanish ships.
Raleigh was seriously wounded in the thigh, which never fully healed,
but this was a victory for England and a somewhat
lucrative one, so he did start to win back some
of the Queen's affections. She eventually allowed him back to
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court and restored him to his position as the Captain
of the Queen's Guard. With things starting to turn around
after this Orinoco expedition and the raid on Cadiz, soon
Elizabeth's was starting to bestow more favors on Walter Raleigh again,
including making him the governor of the Isle of Jersey
and six, and she granted him a monopoly on playing
(21:58):
cards as well. I'm telling you, with the fabric and
the wine and the playing cards, he really had the
entertainment market cornered. Um Then in sixteen o one, the
Earl of Essex rebelled against the Queen, and Raleigh helped
put down that rebellion. Essex was executed for treason. The
Queen was devastated, but this meant that Raleigh's chief rival
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at court was dead. Raleigh was widely reported as gloating
over Essex's execution, but in reality he seems to have
been a little more conflicted over it. The two men
had really been close earlier on in their lives, and
Raleigh didn't attend the execution, even though he was expected
to as captain of the Queen's guard. But Raleigh's return
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to relative favor at court was pretty short lived because
Queen Elizabeth died in sixteen o three, James the first
of England and sixth of Scotland became king, and James
didn't particularly like Raleigh. Raleigh also had a lot of
enemies at court, some of whom had convinced the King
that Raleigh was ready to back a rival claimant to
(23:04):
the throne. This rumor was not particularly realistic. It involved
a Spanish claimant to this throne, and Raley had spent
much of his military career fighting against Spain. He was
also against the idea of England ending the ongoing Anglo
Spanish War, and he even wrote a treatise about it.
So the idea that he would support a Spanish monarch
(23:25):
while also advocating continuing the war with Spain just doesn't
make much sense. But soon Raleigh had way bigger problems
than these rumors. In November of three, he was charged
with treason and a plot to overthrow King James. This
plot was known as the Main Plot m A I N.
It got its name because of its relationship to a lesser,
(23:48):
weirder plot known as the by plot. And that's by
leg bye by like yes. It cracks me up that
the names that they settled on for these two plots
are solely about their relationship to one another, and neither
of them is about what the plot was actually meant
to involve. The by plot was discovered first, and it
(24:10):
was a conspiracy among Catholic priests and lay people to
kidnap the king in the spring of sixteen o three.
Their goal was to force him to grant religious tolerance
to Catholics and Puritans, and to place Catholics in office.
On July eighteen, sixteen oh three, George Brooke was giving
testimony about this plot, and as he was doing so,
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he revealed that his brother, Henry Brooke, Lord Cobham, was
involved in a whole different plot, which was to kidnap
the King, murder him, and replace him with Lady Arbella Stewart.
There were no real connections between the main plot and
the by plot, except for the fact that George and
Henry Brooke were brothers and each of them was involved
in one of these plots, and that the authorities found
(24:53):
out about the main plot while investigating the by plot
because of the connection between the brothers Brook. This is
a of those things that if you wrote it in
a forest, people would be like, too far. The whole
thing is so weird and convoluted. During months of interrogations,
Cobbam made and retracted a whole huge string of ever
changing confessions and accusations against Raleigh. The most consistent and
(25:18):
possibly believable charge was that Raleigh sought out a pension
from Spain in exchange for providing information about British activities
in the Low Countries or the Indies. After Queen Elizabeth died,
Raleigh had once again lost most of his estates and
monopolies and other favors. He needed money, and it's possible
that he needed it badly enough to be willing to
(25:39):
exchange information for it, even to the Spanish. Raleigh was
arrested based on Cobbam's accusations. I mean, even though they
kept changing and he kept recanting them and then having
a completely different story. The fact that he was implicating
himself while making these accusations made people believe it more
so Raleigh was arrested. He was imprisoned the tower on
(26:00):
July three. About a week later, he tried to stab
himself with a table knife, but he struck a rib
and didn't do a lot of lasting damage. When Raleigh
and the rest of the co conspirators were put on trial,
he spoke in his own defense, including answering some questions
about his actions back in the siege of Smerwick in
eight His response to these questions about whether he had
(26:22):
acted appropriately was basically that he was following his commander's orders.
On November seventeen, Raleigh and the co conspirators in the
main plot were found guilty and sentenced to death. About
two weeks later, Cobbham once again retracted a lot of
the accusations that he had made against Raleigh, So it's
not really clear whether Raleigh had any involvement at all
(26:45):
in the main plot, even this whole question about whether
he was trying to get a pension from Spain. But
regardless of that question, he was definitely guilty of treason
under the terms of the law at the time, because
the Trees in Act of fifteen thirty one included in
its definition of treason this quote, when a man doth
compass or imagine the death of our Lord the King,
(27:08):
that was treason. Raleigh had definitely been really vocal about
his dislike of King James and his general ill wishing
of the monarch, So even though his definitely real imagining
of the death of the King was basically just a
bunch of idle griping among his friends, it's still counted
as treason under the law. On December night three, Walter
(27:31):
Raleigh and the other condemned men were taken out to
the Scaffold one at a time to be executed, but
each one was given a last minute stay and sentenced
to imprisonment instead. Raleigh was sentenced to life in the
Tower of London. He spent the next thirteen years in
prison in the Tower, but honestly, this was a pretty
luxurious incarceration. He had a large apartment suite with living
(27:54):
servants and a laboratory and a library, and daily visits
from his wife and their son, Walter, who had been
born in fifteen They had a second son in sixteen
o five while Raleigh was still incarcerated, and the rest
of the family moved into a home on Tower Hill
to be closer to the incarcerated Walter and make it
easier for all these daily visits to happen. Raleigh spent
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a lot of this time writing while in the Tower.
He wrote a morality book for boys called Instructions to
his son, and he also wrote The History of the World,
which started with creation and went to the Second Macedonian
War in one b c e. He dedicated it to
James's son, Henry, who he also tutored while imprisoned. Henry
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advocated for Raleigh's release, but died in sixteen twelve before
he had secured it. Yeah. This, uh, This History of
the World was five volumes, something like a million words long,
and was clearly meant to be the first in a
series that was going to then go on to cover
the rest of the history of the world after one
b C. Finally, in Steen sixteen, Raleigh convinced King James
(29:02):
to let him out of prison. James needed money, and
Raleigh made it sound like he could locate riches in
South America based on his previous voyage along the Orinoca River.
He was given leave to do this on one condition
that he not attacked Spain in any way. The Anglo
Spanish War was finally over and James did not want
(29:24):
to do anything to start it up again. Plus, Spain
had insisted that if Raleigh did cause any trouble to
its subjects that he would be sent to Madrid for trial.
Raley was released from the tower on March nineteenth of
sixteen sixteen, at the age of about sixty two. But
this voyage went terribly. Raleigh was on board as a
civilian and his friend Lawrence Chemis, who you'll also see
(29:47):
spelled chemes with no eye in it, was the one
in charge. I like, how just not leaving the eye in.
There is a running theme in names in the side.
Chemis attacked the Spanish colonial town of Santo Tomay, killing
its governor, which was literally the thing. They were not
supposed to do. The younger Walter Raleigh was also with
them on this expedition, and he was killed in the battle. Also,
(30:11):
they didn't find the gold mine that had inspired them
to go on this expedition in the first place. Raleigh
berated Chemis so incessantly about the death of his son
and the failure to find a mine that he took
his own life. Raleigh wrote a massive apology for this
whole incident on the way home, and once he got
there he tried to use his illness to buy himself
(30:32):
some more time, but Spain demanded retribution for what had
happened on this voyage, and ultimately Raleigh's death sentence from
the main plot back in S three was reinstated. He
was taken to the scaffold outside the Palace of Westminster
on October eighteen. He gave a speech before being executed,
which was typical, but he didn't admit any guilt or
(30:55):
asked for the King's forgiveness, which was not typical. Instead,
according to newsletter writer John Pory, the speech began quote,
I give God thanks. I am come to die in
the light and not in the darkness, and then he
went on to justify what he had done and forgive
his accusers, but also to deny his own guilt. For
a total of about forty five minutes. It went on
(31:17):
to be a very dramatic and theatrical execution. Raleigh refused
to warm himself by the fire that was there specifically
for that purpose. Reportedly, he also asked to see the
executioner's acts, and then after looking at it, he said,
this is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician
for all diseases and miseries. He comforted the executioner before
(31:40):
placing his head on the stand, and then when the
executioner didn't immediately began the whole beheading process, Raleigh said
something along the lines of strike, man, strike. Then it
took two blows to decapitate him. A bystander reportedly said, quote,
we have not such another head to be cut off again.
In the words of John Poory, quote every man that
(32:01):
saw Sir Walter Raleigh die said it was impossible for
any man to show more decorum, courage, or piety, and
that his death will do more hurt to the faction
that sought it than ever his life could have done.
Raleigh's body, minus the head, was buried at the church
of St Margaret's, Westminster. His head was placed in a
(32:21):
red leather bag and given to his widow Bess, who
reportedly kept it for the rest of her life, which
was twenty nine more years. Often, this head is described
as having been embalmed, and there are reports that she
might have kept it in a glass case and not
in a bag. There's like this is one of those
stories where I kind of go for real, that seems
a little fishy to me and maybe apocryphal. But their
(32:45):
son Carrow took possession of this head, reportedly after his
mother's death, and then had it buried with him when
he died in sixteen sixty six. At least that is
one possibility for the location of Sir Walter Raleigh's head. St.
Mary and West Horseley has also said it is the
resting place of Sir Walter Raleigh's head because Carew had
(33:06):
it buried there when his own sons died during a plague.
So it is unclear, but there are multiple sources that
say his head stayed separate from his body and got
carried around for a couple or three decades. I'm a
little lost in thought over what one would do with
a head of your beloved um, like do you look
(33:26):
at it? Do you just leave it in in the bag
and pretend it's not there? But no, it's there, Like
I don't. There's a lot of debts, there's a lot
of debunking about various things about Sir Walter Raleigh's life,
but this head I did not find any debunking. Today,
Sir Walter Raleigh is one of the ghosts purportedly haunting
the Tower of London. He also reportedly haunts Beddington in
(33:48):
South London, where he owned land and where his wife
had requested to be buried after the execution. There were
also rumors that he was actually buried there in secret.
During his life, Raleigh had not been particular early beloved
by the public at large, but his execution, as indicated
by some of the quotes we read earlier, really earned
him a lot of sympathy. So much sympathy that the
(34:11):
Crown commissioned its own right up of the execution, which
made him sound arrogant and combative instead of gallant and poetic.
This didn't really work out, though, and public opinion grew
that Walter Raleigh had been unfairly sacrificed to appease Spain,
and that England had lost a worthy gentleman by executing him.
His popularity really grew after his death, partly because he
(34:33):
was so emblematic of this idea of a Renaissance man
and an Elizabethan knight. He was handsome and valiant and chivalrous,
and he was a writer and a statesman in addition
to being an explorer. So he kind of had this whole,
very romanticized package, especially if you overlook some of the
other parts of his life, like the massacre that he
(34:53):
helped work straight and all that brawling. I'm still back
on Brawley Raleigh um, which brings us to that story.
It is probably apocryphal, but it has really stuck around,
and it's often repeated as fact. I know I heard
it like as part of a lesson in elementary school
on how to remember who he was. I found it
in very reputable websites as like a real thing that happened.
(35:17):
And a big part of that is because, based on
Raleigh's personality and everything we've talked about today, you can think, yeah,
but he would probably be the type of guy who
would do something kind of uh not just chivalrous, but
also a little showy that way, like that's kind of
a show body move to be like, no, no, walk
on my beautiful clothes. And this cloak story, the earliest
(35:37):
record of it we have is from History of the
Worthies of England, written by Thomas Fuller in sixteen sixty two.
Since it's such an iconic story, it seems like a
good way to end today's show. So here is how
Thomas Fuller recounts it. Quote, This Captain Raleigh, coming out
of Ireland to the English court in good habit, his
(35:58):
clothes being then a considerable part of his estate, found
the Queen walking till meeting with a plashy place. She
seemed to scruple going there on. Presently, Raleigh cast and
spread his new plush cloak on the ground, where on
the Queen trod gently, rewarding him afterwards with many suits
for his so free and sasonable tender of so fair
(36:21):
a footcloth. Thus, an advantageous admission into the first notice
of a prince is more than half a degree to
perform it. Do you also have listener mail that may
or may not involve beheading? It doesn't involve any beheading
that would be extremely sad based on what this email
is going to be about. Oh fooy, I ruined it.
(36:45):
Uh No, this is one of those emails that I
got and it was just such a delightful email that
it completely brightened my day and I wanted to share
with everyone because it made me that happy. And the
subject line of it is my dog, the Historian Hound,
and it's from Rachel, and Rachel says, so I just
had to email you, guys, because I have discovered the
(37:05):
greatest thing. First Off, I love your show so much.
I've always loved learning about a wide range of things
in Your podcast has so many topics, and you too,
make it so easy to listen to. But that is
not the real reason I am writing. You are my
dog's favorite podcast. We got our dog, Momo, in May,
and originally she didn't mind baths, but as we have
gotten into a rainy and rather muddy fall, she has
(37:28):
started to hate getting in the tub. I almost always
listened to podcast when I bathe her, just to make
it less of a chore for me. But the craziest
thing has started to happen. Whenever I put stuff you
missed in history class on, she will actually willingly go
into the bathroom instead of hiding under the table or
in the closet. Not only that, but when I turned
the water on, she just sits down and is fine.
(37:49):
Normally she's shaking and trying to escape the whole time,
even with other podcasts on. I have to put it
down to you two. You must be dog whisperers. Either
that or my dog is a major history buff. Whatever
the reason, I so excited to have discovered a way
to give her a bath that isn't stressful for either
of us. Thank you, thank you, Thank you, Rachel and Momo. PS.
Momo would appreciate it if you did more episodes on
(38:09):
dogs or the history of some famous pooches PPS. I've
also included some pictures of a freshly bathed dog as proof,
and it is followed by an adorable picture of Momo
the dog who is wearing like a little doggy jacket
with little dragon scales down the back. And I love it,
and I love Momo. Momo is the best dog. Momo
is a good girl. I was definitely like, Momo is
(38:31):
the best. I'm not even really a dog person, but
I was so delighted by this whole situation. That I
was like, look at Momo. Momo was the best girl.
I hope Momo is listening to this right now and
being really excited. Yeah, I am a dog person, and
I Momo is painfully cute. Painfully cute. I would go
so Elmira Duff on that dog. The Momo would be like,
(38:51):
no more History, lady. Thank you so much, Rachel for
sharing this story with us and for sending the picture
of moment really did absolutely measurably brighten my day a
whole lot, and obviously I am still delighted. So if
you would like to send us pictures of your dog
or stories about your dogs having baths, or any other
(39:12):
pet pictures or other animal stories, we are at History
Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and then we're
all over social media at miss in History. That is
where you will find our Facebook and our Twitter, and
our Pinterest and our Instagram. You can come to our website,
which is missed in History dot com and you will
find show notes for all the episodes that Holly and
I have ever done together and a searchable archive of
(39:34):
every episode ever, and you can subscribe to our show
wherever it is that you're listening to this podcast for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is It
How stuff Works dot com