The Dangerous Book of Heroes (46 page)

Ralegh sent colonists out in 1585, but they ran into trouble and had to be rescued by Drake, who was cheerfully raiding Spanish settlements in that part of the world. Drake lent them a ship to get home, and only fifteen men stayed behind to keep the colony alive. All fifteen were murdered by natives by the time Ralegh sent new colonists to relieve them. In that group, the first Christian baby was born in America, a little girl appropriately named Virginia.

The constant war with Spain was intensifying, and Ralegh had enormous trouble getting ships to support his Virginia colony. He sent two ships only to see them turned back by French pirates. He had practically bankrupted himself in the venture and was forced to turn over the queen's patent to a company of London merchants with funds to continue the work. Even then it was a failure. The Native Americans killed everyone there. Later he wrote: “I shall live yet to see it an English nation.” He did live to see a permanent English
colony established in 1607. His name is remembered there, and in 1792 the seat of government in North Carolina was named Raleigh. As with Shakespeare, his name has always been spelled in different ways.

Though the exact truth cannot be known, Ralegh is often credited with having brought potatoes to England. Tobacco was already known, but with a long silver pipe and gold tobacco box, Ralegh also made smoking fashionable in London. It became a widespread luxury and later a major source of national revenue. He also made fortunes by growing potatoes from the New World on his Irish estates. However, though he made the wealth he wanted, Queen Elizabeth never saw him as a military commander. When the great fleet known as the Spanish Armada sailed to invade England in 1588, Ralegh was not chosen to command.

The Armada was first sighted off Cornwall on July 19. It would have come earlier, but Drake had been sent by the queen to “distress” Spanish shipping and disrupt the invasion plan. He had succeeded brilliantly, destroying or disabling more than thirty ships in Cadiz. He later referred to this as merely “singeing the King of Spain's beard,” but it delayed the Armada for a full year. Philip of Spain put a reward on his head of twenty thousand ducats, the equivalent of millions of dollars today.

Famously, Drake was playing bowls with Lord Howard on Plymouth Hoe when the news of the Armada reached them. Tradition has it that Drake replied to the messenger with the words: “There is time to finish the game and beat the Spaniards too.” He was correct, in that the tide was against him at that moment and he could not sail for another three hours. By noon the following day, Lord Howard and Drake were out at sea. Howard had the fleet's flagship, the
Ark Royal,
while Drake, as his vice admiral, commanded the
Revenge.
At the start, they had 80 ships against the Spanish force of 127. The Spanish had come in a great crescent down the English Channel and brought more than eighteen thousand men to invade. The stakes were at their highest. Not until Napoléon and Hitler threatened invasions in later centuries would England be in such direct peril again.

Drake and Howard engaged the Armada, alarming the Spanish officers with the agility of their ships. They skirmished with the Spanish for two whole days, preventing a landing. By chance, one enemy ship blew up and caused chaos in the crescent as they dropped sail to pick up casualties. Even so, they reached the Isle of Wight by July 24. The English captains knew those waters better than any others on earth and maneuvered to drive the Spanish onto rocks. The enemy ships barely avoided the trap and tacked toward Calais. By then, every English ship had joined Drake and Howard, so that they had a fleet of 197 under sail. Howard sent fireships among the Spanish, causing some to scatter east into the North Sea without reaching a safe haven in France. At the same time, Drake engaged the Spanish flagship, firing into her.

The Spanish managed to re-form north of Calais, but they were under constant fire and forced to retreat still farther. It was then that a squall hit and blew the fleets away from each other. By then, the Spanish had lost their taste for the fight and intended to head north and around Scotland to make their way home. Drake's captains harried and fought them all the way up the east coast, still fearing a landing in force. He and Howard pursued the Spanish right up to the Firth of Forth before they turned back.

The surviving Spanish fleet limped past Scotland. Many were lost on rocks around the Irish coast in waters they did not know well. Some of them were washed ashore in Ireland and killed on the beaches. Of the 130 ships that had set out, 63 were lost in the attack. Protestant England had been saved from Catholic Spain.

Flushed with success, Drake organized a raiding fleet the following year. It was not successful, however, and he lost his investors, the queen among them, a small fortune. From hero and savior, he saw his star fall quickly and retired to Devon to tend his estates. His last voyage took place in 1595, to the Spanish Main. He raided Panama and other settlements, though he had been so successful in the past that there were few riches to be plundered. There he became ill with dysentery and donned his armor for the last time, determined to die as a soldier. He died on January 28, 1596, at the age of only fifty-five. He
was buried at sea. Famously, the drum from his ship was returned to England and remains at Buckland Abbey, his home. It is said that whenever England is in peril, the drum sounds across the land, summoning men in her defense. The Spanish poet and contemporary Juan de Miramontes Zuázola wrote:

 

This realm inconstant, changeable in faith
Has raised a captain whose glittering memory
Will last undimmed through future centuries.

 

Ralegh's fall from grace was more tragic. It began in 1587 with the arrival at court of Lord Essex, a youth of such unusually handsome figure that he captured the queen's attention, at Ralegh's expense. Ralegh and Essex quarreled bitterly over the queen's favor, each jealous of the other. After the Armada had been sent home, the two men arranged a duel, but the queen forbade it, rather than lose one or both of her favorite men. Essex used his influence with Queen Elizabeth to have Ralegh sent to his estates in Ireland for a time.

In Ireland, Ralegh wrote poetry with Edmund Spenser, at the same time as that man created his masterwork,
The Faerie Queene.
Both were around thirty-seven and at the peak of their powers. Sadly, only a small part of Ralegh's poetry and prose survives.

Ralegh found favor with Elizabeth for a time in the reflected glory of
The Faerie Queene
's publication. It also helped that Essex had married without telling Queen Elizabeth, who preferred her handsome admirers to remain single and devoted to her.

However, in 1591, Ralegh made a serious error. He fell in love with one of the queen's maids of honor and married in secret, just as Essex had done. Elizabeth regarded it as a betrayal. She had both husband and wife sent to the Tower of London. By happy chance around this time, an expedition he had organized captured the
Madre de Dios,
the greatest Spanish treasure ship ever taken. Queen Elizabeth took the lion's share of the riches, and Ralegh and his wife were released. A son, also named Walter, was born shortly afterward, in 1594.

Free, Ralegh returned to his life as a privateer for the Crown, mounting an expedition to seek out El Dorado, a legendary place of fabulous wealth somewhere in South America. Ralegh spoke both Spanish and French fluently and spent many months reading everything he could find on the subject. He was granted the right to search for it by Queen Elizabeth and sailed in 1595. He and his crew explored Guiana on the northeast coast of the continent but found no fabled cities. He considered Guiana to be a worthy possession for England even so, but the lack of gold meant his entreaties fell on deaf ears at court. The era of the great English pirates was ending, and the queen herself was aging and growing weary. Ralegh spent fortunes on other expeditions to Guiana, but the queen had other concerns and remained unmoved.

Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

In 1596 a huge fleet of ships was gathered to attack Cadiz in Spain, then one of the richest cities in the world. Ralegh commanded a squadron and was badly wounded in the fighting, so that he had to be carried back to his ship, the
Warspite.
The victory came quickly, and Cadiz was taken and sacked. Unusually for the times, the English crews were forbidden violence, and the Spanish king later commended them for their conduct. Ralegh won great goodwill for his conspicuous bravery, and in 1597 he was allowed at last to return to court.

The next five years were relatively tranquil. Ralegh was back in the queen's favor as well as being wealthy and famous. He still had enemies at court and perhaps relied too heavily on the queen's shadow to protect him. Essex had fallen from her favor to the point
of raging arguments and Elizabeth walloping him around the ears. She sent Essex to suppress a rebellion in Ireland, but he negotiated instead of crushing the rebels as Elizabeth wanted. When Essex returned, he was arrested, though she later relented and canceled his trial in 1600.

Essex became an enemy of the queen and conspired to remove her from the throne. Ralegh was one of those who fought against the plot, which involved a few hundred armed men riding through London. Essex had hoped to create a mass rebellion in the English, but they quite liked Elizabeth and merely looked at him in astonishment. Essex was beheaded in 1601, aged only thirty-six.

When Elizabeth died in 1603, James I, king of Scotland, was the next in line for the throne. He was no friend to Sir Walter Ralegh and distrusted anyone who had risen so high under the queen who had executed his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. He also desired peace with Spain, and Ralegh was the last of the raiding captains known and hated by the Spanish king. King Philip of Spain demanded that Ralegh be executed. To appease him, James convicted Ralegh of treason. Ironically, the charges involved passing information to the king of Spain in return for huge sums of money. That part is almost certainly true and a clear trap laid for Ralegh. He was locked up in the Tower of London for the second time in his life. Abandoned by friends and supporters, Ralegh would remain there for fifteen years. He was allowed to live in a suite of well-appointed rooms but not to leave. Alone, he wrote poetry and books and experimented with chemistry.

Ralegh was allowed out in 1616 at the age of sixty-two on the promise to King James that he would bring back a shipful of gold from Guiana. When the Spanish ambassador heard, he wrote to the king of Spain to advise that all ships travel only in convoy. Such was their alarm at the prospect of Ralegh back on the high seas. Ralegh was aware that he was being used as a pawn, but he had no choice. He remained youthfully optimistic that he could win back his place, fame, and fortune. Sadly, the odds were stacked against him, not least because King James gave all the secret plans to the Spanish ambassador.

The expedition was doomed before it began, though Ralegh reached Guiana and began looking for gold mines. As he searched, Spanish soldiers harassed his men and Ralegh's son was killed in the fighting. No gold was found. Ralegh was distraught and wrote at the time: “What shall become of me now I know not. I am unpardoned in England, and my poor estate consumed.”

He wanted to press on, but his men mutinied and deserted him. He returned in only one ship to Plymouth in 1618, ready to face his king. He was put under house arrest shortly afterward. His argument that Guiana was not Spanish territory held no weight with a monarch determined to be rid of him. Ralegh considered escaping to France, but a servant betrayed the plan and Ralegh was taken to the tower for the third time in his life. He was already under sentence of death for his previous conviction of treason, and James merely had to lift the temporary reprieve that had allowed Ralegh his last trip to Guiana.

The king of Spain took a keen interest once more and wrote to James to demand Ralegh's execution. All appeals at home failed, and Ralegh prepared for death with great courage and calm.

On October 29, 1618, Ralegh walked out into the Palace Yard, Westminster, and addressed the gathered crowd. He talked of his innocence and his loyalty to the king, then added: “So I take my leave of you all, making my peace with God. I have a long journey to make, and must bid the company farewell.” He was asked if he wanted a blindfold, and he scorned it, saying: “Think you I fear the shadow of the axe, when I fear not the axe itself?” He prayed for a time, and then, when the executioner hesitated, Ralegh snapped: “What dost thou fear? Strike, man, strike!” Moments later, he was dead.

His body was buried in Saint Margaret's Church, Westminster, though his head was embalmed and kept by his wife until her death, when it was finally buried. Ralegh was much loved by the people of England, and his passing caused enormous resentment toward the Stuart dynasty. They had killed the last of the great captains, just to appease Spain. It has been said that Ralegh's execution began the
unrest that ended with the execution of Charles I, which took place only a quarter of a mile from the site of Ralegh's final moments.