On 29th October 1618 Sir Walter Raleigh met his
end on the executioner’s block, having been the favourite of one monarch but
intensely disliked by her successor.
He had been a swashbuckling adventurer during the reign of
Queen Elizabeth I, making discoveries in the Americas, founding the colony of
Virginia (named after the Virgin Queen) and being a constant thorn in the side
of England’s arch-rival and enemy, Spain.
When in England he had been popular not only with the Queen
but also with many of the ladies of the Court, one of whom was Elizabeth
Throckmorton, one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting. The couple married in
secret, probably because she was pregnant by him, but this meant that they had
acted contrary to the Queen’s wishes, as she would have had to sanction any
such marriage of a close personal servant. The couple spent a short spell in
the Tower of London for this misdemeanour.
However, that was not what sent Sir Walter to the block.
When Queen Elizabeth died in 1603 and was succeeded by her distant cousin King
James VI of Scotland, Raleigh was soon implicated (almost certainly falsely) in
a plot to overthrow King James, who had him returned to the Tower, this time
for a much longer period.
It was only in 1616 that Raleigh was freed, this being for
the sole purpose of leading an expedition to South America in search of the
fabled land of gold named El Dorado. One of the conditions of Raleigh’s release
was that no Spanish possessions were to be attacked, since James was anxious to
repair the damage caused to Anglo-Spanish relations during his predecessor’s
reign.
However, Raleigh was taken ill during the voyage and had to
send the expedition on without him. His deputy disobeyed Raleigh’s orders and
sacked a Spanish-held town, and it was for this misdeed that the Spanish
ambassador demanded that Raleigh be executed. King James was only too happy to
oblige.
After the axe fell, Raleigh’s head was, somewhat bizarrely,
placed in a red leather bag and given to his devoted wife, Lady Raleigh. Even
more bizarrely, she treasured this relic of her husband for the rest of her
life and proudly showed it to anyone who called at her house. Presumably the
numbers who did so were not all that great!
© John Welford
No comments:
Post a Comment