he held the position of secretary to the Oriel College junior common room, albeit briefly. He was renowned for the witticisms he would add to open meeting minutes. Raleigh proceeded to finish his education in the Inns of Court. In 1575, he was admitted to the Middle Temple, having previously been a member of Lyon's Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery. At his trial in 1603, he stated that he had never studied law. His life is uncertain between 1569 and 1575, but in his History of the World he claimed to have been an eyewitness at the Battle of Moncontour (3 October 1569) in France. In 1575 or 1576, Raleigh returned to England. Ireland See Plantations of Ireland Between 1579 and 1583, Raleigh took part in the suppression of the Desmond Rebellions. He was present at the siege of Smerwick, where he led the party that beheaded some 600 Spanish and Italian soldiers. Raleigh received (approximately 0.2% of Ireland) upon the seizure and distribution of land following the attainders arising from the rebellion, including the coastal walled town of Youghal and, further up the Blackwater River, the village of Lismore. This made him one of the principal landowners and colonists in Munster, but he had limited success inducing English tenants to settle on his estates. Raleigh made the town of Youghal his occasional home during his 17 years as an Irish landlord, frequently being domiciled at Killua Castle, Clonmellon, County Westmeath. He was mayor there from 1588 to 1589. His town mansion of Myrtle Grove is assumed to be the setting for the story that his servant doused him with a bucket of water after seeing clouds of smoke coming from Raleigh's pipe, in the belief that he had been set alight. But this story is also told of other places associated with Raleigh: the Virginia Ash Inn in Henstridge near Sherborne, Sherborne Castle, and South Wraxall Manor in Wiltshire, home of Raleigh's friend Sir Walter Long. Amongst Raleigh's acquaintances in Munster was another Englishman who had been granted land in the Irish colonies, poet Edmund Spenser. In the 1590s, he and Raleigh travelled together from Ireland to the court at London, where Spenser presented part of his allegorical poem The Faerie Queene to Elizabeth I. Raleigh's management of his Irish estates ran into difficulties which contributed to a decline in his fortunes. In 1602, he sold the