Queen_Elizabeth's_Explorer__Sir_Walter_Ralegh

Many explorers searched the world seeking new adventures or wanting riches like gold, land, and power. This paper will be focusing on the English explorer Sir Walter Ralegh [1], whose life “was as dramatic and complex as a Shakespearian play” (Aronson, jacket). The first part will talk about Ralegh’s early life from the time of his birth to his education in Oxford. The second part will focus on his sometimes successful and sometimes unsuccessful voyages. It will also contain his relationship with Queen Elizabeth I,usually corresponding to the successfulness of his explorations. Ralegh was born in 1554 in Devon, a county of sheepherding and farming in southwest England that borders the English channel. The Raleghs had lived in or around Devon since William of Normandy conquered England in 1066. Some of Ralegh’s ancestors were either judges, bishops, or knights who served William(Aronson, 13). When Walter Ralegh came along, the Raleghs were neither wealthy nor titled. In fact , the family was in a low state of living. Ralegh was born in a two-story thatched farmhouse called Hayes Barton,which his father had gotten permission to use from the Duke of Otterton. Walter’s father, soon after, started his growing business and eventually owned a big piece of land(Smith, Part 1). Walter didn’t have many advantages as he was growing up except being introduced, by his father, to important people that could help him along his way to adulthood. Having lost two wives, Walter’s father married a third time to try to recover the family’s title and fortune. Through these three marriages, Walter was linked, or related, to important families like the Drakes and the Gilberts. These families were both interested and involved in exploration. Since the beginning, the Raleghs were devout Protestants; this first hurt them but eventually helped them. An example of their conviction is when Walter’s father complained about a local women praying with her rosary beads. Pro-Catholic townspeople trapped him in a church and threatened to kill him. Walter’s father also helped a cousin escape who tried to stir up a rebellion against the Catholics. In 1569, when he was just fifteen years of age, Ralegh rode to France to fight for the Protestant cause on the side of the Huguenots against the Catholics.[2] There was a peace treaty the next year, but two years later, the bloodshed began again. In the end, a total of # about 13,000 people were killed throughout France. When he returned to England after the fighting was over, he attended Oriele University,Oxford where he studied philosophy and oratory. Later, he caught the eye of Queen Elizabeth who admired Ralegh’s chivalry. Ralegh’s closeness to Queen Elizabeth had a big effect in his explorations. In the year 1585, Ralegh made a seal with the motto: “amore et virtue”(“by love and courage.”) The love was definitely for his queen. According to Thomas Fuller, an English churchman and historian, when Ralegh got the queen’s attention with his chivalrous behavior, he wanted to get her full attention. To do this he carved out a message in a glass window pane with his diamond ring stating: “Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall” (Aronson, 26). Ralegh got her attention. On September 26, 1578, Ralegh set out with ten ships and 365 men to set out from Plymouth. Forced to go back because of bad weather, the only ship to make it through the fierce storm was the Falcon with Ralegh as the captain. The Falcon, later on, was forced to go back to England when the crew encountered hostile Spanish ships. Instead of sailing back to England, Ralegh and his men decided to go to Ireland where they could create plantations. “Plantations” in this sense meant “creating a settlement in a new land.” Their plan was to drive out the Irish Catholic people off their land and bring in Protestantism, civility, and connection to their homeland. Ralegh was one of many of men who really hated Catholicism. After fighting in Ireland and taking a dangerous enemy captive almost single-handedly, Ralegh’s name started to spread around England. He was made captain of the guards and received a quarter of Ireland as a reward. In 1583, Elizabeth gave Ralegh access to a palace home in London and control of two estates. These numerous grand gifts from the Queen mostly enlarged his ambitions(Aronson, 50). In 1584, ships set sail to the New World from England captained by two unimportant men heading north to explore, but Ralegh’s men were smart enough not to go north for fear of not having the resources for the cold. They could not go south too far where they would possibly confront the Spanish, so they headed towards the middle around North Carolina. One of Ralegh’s men, Simon Fernandez, who claimed to know the waters near North Carolina, led Ralegh’s men to what is now known as the Outer Banks of North Carolina. In July 13 of the same year, they finally landed at a sandy # beach uninhabited and named it Port Ferdinando in honor of Simon Fernandez(Aronson, 62). What Ralegh’s men saw was new land that was exceedingly fruitful and fertile and almost untouched. They were unexpectedly treated very well by the natives who lived around there. When they returned to England with two of the natives, Ralegh decided to call the land Virginia in dedication to Elizabeth I, who was known as the Virgin Queen, because she never married. In the same year, Ralegh was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. In the late 1580’s, while Ralegh was in England, he received news concerning problems in America. This only made him more determined to establish a new settlement with his own name. He, with two other men, studied maps to see where the best site would be to settle. They concluded that the area of the Chesapeake Bay was the best because it offered a deep harbor where big ships could land that was mostly barren.(Aronson, 78) Back in Ireland, there were still disputes over land. The English defeated and executed the Earl of Desmond and throughout the big county of Munster, castles, churches, towns, and homes were destroyed. It was concluded that Walter Ralegh was perfectly suited to oversee the land and make it whole again with English folks. In 1587, Ralegh received great wealth and was granted 42,000 acres of good land in the counties of Cork and Waterford. February of the same year, Ralegh was appointed captain of the guard. Throughout his time at court, Ralegh spent many hours with Queen Elizabeth talking of his explorations and events that were currently happening. Around this time, Ralegh began too see the queen as a possible wife. Then in 1584, Robert Devereux, the 2nd earl of Essex, immediately caught the queen’s eyes. Ralegh and Essex immediately argued of who was the better person for Queen Elizabeth (Smith,Pt. 7). Essex’s qualities were opposite to that of Ralegh’s. Ralegh was a man who had risen on his wit and charm and had to rise in aristocracy to be noticed, but Essex was already of ancient royal lineage. The biggest difference, though, is that Ralegh fought seriously when in battle but Essex was full of boyish though glamorous pranks and activities. Still people feared Essex because of his impetuous actions and influential verbage. By now, the queen was in her late forties and early fifties. In 1591, Ralegh and Elizabeth Throckmorton,one of the queen’s ladies, fell madly in love. In the summer, Throckmorton discovered that she was pregnant, so she and # Ralegh secretly married. Eventually, Queen Elizabeth found out about this marriage and had Ralegh immediately put in prison. The couple refused to give up their marriage. Ralegh had fallen into five years of disgrace not being the queen’s favorite any more. This made Ralegh bitter but not ruined. He still owned a castle and a palace home. Finally, about a year later, Queen Elizabeth graciously released Ralegh, and he and his wife started a new life together. The first child most likely died but Ralegh’s wife was soon pregnant and gave birth to a son named Wat. Ralegh settled down in Sherborne where he built a grand new house(Smith, Part 11). Some years later, Ralegh and about thirty men sailed to go look for El Dorado which was thought of as a mythical country with a chief who covered himself with gold dust, near the Oronico River in South America. The search was not successful and many of the men died of diseases and others died in a skirmish against the Spanish.(Aronson, This did not help him gain favor with the queen. He eventually returned to England limping because of injuries from being stabbed near the leg by the Spanish, in front of the queen. From 1595 to 1599 were terrible years for many. Four summers of non-stop rain rotted the harvest, and people throughout the land died of starvation(Smith,Part 13). When Queen Elizabeth died, King James I took the throne. When James’s advisors falsely accused Ralegh of planning to kill the king, James had Ralegh arrested, convicted of treason, and sent to the Tower of London.(Wagner, 254) Then, in 1616, after convincing James’s advisors to lead a last expedition to the Orinoco River, Ralegh was freed from the Tower. Ralegh had to raise 30,000 pounds in order to start sailing. The next year, Ralegh’s men set sail for El Dorado, which was his last voyage. This voyage proved the myth of El Dorado. During the trip there, Ralegh fell ill and left the job of leading the men up river to Wat and Keymis, Wat’s loyal friend. Even though he was told not to attack the Spanish, Wat soon attacked a Spanish fort and was immediately killed, and with him some Spanish, which made it worse for Ralegh and his men. Later, when Keymis returned to tell what happened, Ralegh could not stand to hear that his son was killed because he violated the terms. Ralegh scolded Keymis so harshly that Keymis, soon after, committed suicide(Smith,Part 18). When Ralegh wrote to tell his wife of the disaster, he couldn’t find words. He wrote: “My brains are broken, and so it is a torment for me to write”(Aronson,183). He expected his death to come soon when he returned to England. In order to escape from # having a trial and death, Ralegh borrowed a false beard and boarded a small boat that could take him to France, but his small boat was being shadowed by a much bigger vessel with the king’s men. There was no escape for Ralegh. The king’s men had set it up that Ralegh would try to escape. He was tried and convicted on charges brought against him years earlier. On Friday, October 29, 1618, Ralegh’s execution took place. When he was alone with the executioner, he asked to see the axe. Calmly and theatrically, he ran his finger along the blade and stated: “This is sharp medicine,” he joked, “but it is a sure cure for all diseases.”(Aronson, 185) When he had his head on the block, he was asked to move it another way, Ralegh replied with his last words, “What matter how the head lie, so the heart be right'”(Saari, 717) In truth, Sir Walter Ralegh’s life was “as dramatic and complex as a Shakespearian play.”(Aronson, jacket) Many events in his life were painful, exhausting, and frustrating and his life ended in tragedy. Through his life, Ralegh showed that he was ambitious,courageous, and affectionate. He was ambitious by “climbing” at court to have a title in Parliament. He was courageous by making daring voyages to the New World and South America in order to explore placed beyond England and Europe. He could attribute his successes to his connection with Queen Elizabeth I who, according to Ralegh, represented England perfectly. If it wasn’t for Walter Ralegh, there probably wouldn’t be a connection or a “bridge” between the Old World and the New.