BRIDGEMANThe last
Elizabethan
At his death, Sir Walter Ralegh was
considered the last of the Elizabethans.
The Spanish envoy described him as
the only surviving pirate of a “deceased
virago”. Sellar and Yeatman, in that most
perceptive of modern histories, 1066
and All That, suggested that he was
executed for being left over from the
previous reign.
But even if such a creature ever
existed, was Ralegh a typical Elizabe-
than? Many myths need debunking here.
Ralegh did not introduce tobacco or
potatoes into England or Ireland. He
played no significant part in defeating
the Spanish Armada. Far from being
a ‘sea dog’ he was something of a
‘Jonah’, unlucky with winds and tides,
and frequently seasick.
A hypochondriac, weak in the legs,
self-obsessed, full of self-pity, he never
stopped imagining that his health was
precarious. Just the same, elements in
his character are close to what a later
age regards as Elizabethan. At times
furiously energetic and combative, he
was, as John Aubrey suggests, “no slug”.
Ralegh was the typical younger son,
the self-made man out to establish his
dynasty amid the landed elite, proud of
his achievements and – in a society
tuned to deferential hierarchies – decried
for them, too.
We struggle to do justice to the
complexity of his character. Ralegh was,
indeed, a renaissance man. He was
a soldier, a courtier, a sea captain and
a chemist. He was a religious sceptic,
ready to challenge Christian orthodoxies,
though always careful to emphasise his
belief in God and providence. He was
also a patron of science, supporting for
many years the great mathematician
and astronomer Thomas Harriot. An
advocate of colonial expansion, he
attempted to found the first English
colony in America, and he gives his name
to the state capital of North Carolina.
An eloquent poet in the 1590s, the
best work in the small Ralegh canon is
touched with pathos, power and beauty
in equal measure. He had an individual
poetic voice, still much admired. The
History of the World is a work of great
power, a synthesis of knowledge from
a Tower prisoner, written in the English
of Shakespeare. Small wonder that the
book was read and admired by so many,
Cromwell, Milton, Hume and Gibbon
among them – it was an opinionated
Englishman’s history.
Ralegh’s gift for words is perhaps his
most lasting legacy. In this, as in much
else, he characterised the sometimes
colourful, sometimes troubled court at
which he once flourished.Elizabethans and the world / Walter Ralegh