of Europe. Historians know little of his ca-
reer as a soldier, however.
By 1575 Raleigh was living in London
but keeping family ties in Devon, which
was becoming a center of English efforts
to explore and colonize the New World.
He joined his half brother, Sir Humphrey
Gilbert, on an expedition against the Span-
ish. This voyage ended in failure, however,
and Raleigh made efforts to secure an ap-
pointment at the court of Elizabeth I. In
1579, he helped to put down a rebellion in
Ireland, where he dealt ruthlessly with
Irish Catholics and ordered a massacre of
several hundred enemy mercenaries. For
his service he was rewarded with towns
and estates in County Munster, where he
promoted English settlement in Ireland as
a way of keeping the rebellious island un-
der English control.
Raleigh returned to England in 1581
and received lucrative patents, or licenses,
from the queen. He was granted a knight-
hood in 1584 and in the next year became
a warden of productive tin mines in west-
ern England. After Elizabeth granted him
forty thousand acres in Ireland, Raleigh
brought in English farmers and introduced
cultivation of tobacco and the potato.
Seeking to establish lucrative settlements
in North America, he promoted an expe-
dition to Newfoundland in 1583 and in
1584 a voyage that reached the Atlantic
coast of North Carolina. He became a
member of Parliament in the same year,
and in 1585 sent out a company of settlers
under the leadership of Sir Richard Gren-
ville. This group settled on Roanoke Is-
land, but the small colony soon ran afoul
of the surrounding Indian tribes and aban-
doned their homes. As an individual, Ra-
leigh was unable to sustain an entire colo-
nial enterprise on his own, and the effort
to colonize Virginia would pass to a joint-
stock company that was able to raise
money for the venture from several wealthy
investors.
On returning to Ireland, Raleigh again
took up the cause of English settlement on
the island, and became acquainted with
the poet Edmund Spenser, whom he
helped to win a royal pension and to pub-
lish the first three books of his epic poem
The Faerie Queene. He was losing favor at
Elizabeth’s court, however, and was pre-
vented several times from taking part in
expeditions against the Spanish. On re-
turning from one aborted voyage, he was
arrested and thrown into the Tower of
London for seducing and secretly marry-
ing Elizabeth Throgmorton, one of the
queen’s maids. Raleigh retired from the
royal court and, finding himself short of
money, voyaged to South America in 1594
in search of the legendary gold mines of
El Dorado. Failing in this purpose, he re-
turned to England, where he published an
account of his voyage,The Discovery of
Guiana. He returned to the queen’s favor
after an expedition against the Spanish
port of Cadiz in 1596. When the Earl of
Essex, the queen’s favorite, brought Ra-
leigh along on a voyage to the Azores, the
two men quarreled. After returning to En-
gland, Essex was accused of conspiring
against Elizabeth and was executed under
Raleigh’s supervision.
Raleigh was appointed governor of the
island of Jersey in 1600. But the death of
Elizabeth in 1603 and the accession of
King James I proved disastrous, as Raleigh
found himself out of favor for his political
and religious views and had already been
forced to sell his Irish estates in order to
raise money. He was accused of conspiracy
against the king, arrested, put on trial, and
sentenced to death. He languished in the
Tower of London for thirteen years, work-
ing on aHistory of the World,aswellases-
says and poetry that earned him a reputa-Raleigh, Sir Walter