title: Sir Walter Raleigh: Being a True and Vivid Account of the Life and Times of the Explorer, Soldier, Scholar, Poet, and Courtier--The Controversial Hero of the Elizabethian Age
author:  Raleigh Trevelyan 
description: Trevelyan (The Fortress; Rome '44), a direct descendant of Sir Walter Raleigh, has written an exhaustive, indeed overlong, and at times too reverential biography of his legendary ancestor. Raleigh (1554-1618) was the prototypical Renaissance man: he explored the Americas, he was a poet and historian, an Elizabethan courtier, a soldier who fought the Spanish and an effective government administrator. Raleigh was also, notes Trevelyan, extremely ambitious and proud, thus making powerful enemies. Raleigh came from humble beginnings and made his first mark as a soldier. Trevelyan cites at length from Raleigh's poetry, which he wrote to flatter Queen Elizabeth. In 1584, Raleigh sponsored a voyage to the territory known as Virginia, where he founded the first American colony, the ill-fated Roanoke settlement. He also helped defend England against the 1588 Spanish Armada. In 1591, Raleigh made the mistake of secretly marrying one of the queen's servants. A jealous Elizabeth had him and his wife thrown into the Tower. After his release, he explored Guiana, and Trevelyan does an excellent job recreating the journey using Raleigh's writings. His enemies, especially Robert Cecil, were smearing him to the future King James I, who, when he took the throne in 1603, put Raleigh on trial for treason; he was found guilty. Trevelyan convincingly asserts that the charges were trumped up, a mere pretext for eliminating a political rival. King James let Raleigh live, but he spent 13 years in the Tower and was finally beheaded in 1618. Trevelyan's meticulously researched narrative will be informative for anyone looking to learn more about Elizabethan England and one of its most influential characters. 16 pages of b&amp;w photos, maps. <br />Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  Sir Walter Raleigh and his Times  
    
  
  
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  # Sir Walter Raleigh and his Times
  
  
  ### Charles Kingsley
  
  
  
  
  
  SIR WALTER RALEIGH AND HIS TIME {1}
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  'Truth is stranger than fiction.' A trite remark. We all say it
  
  
  again and again: but how few of us believe it! How few of us, when
  
  
  we read the history of heroical times and heroical men, take the
  
  
  story simply as it stands! On the contrary, we try to explain it
  
  
  away; to prove it all not to have been so very wonderful; to impute
  
  
  accident, circumstance, mean and commonplace motives; to lower every
  
  
  story down to the level of our own littleness, or what we (unjustly
  
  
  to ourselves and to the God who is near us all) choose to consider
  
  
  our level; to rationalise away all the wonders, till we make them at
  
  
  last impossible, and give up caring to believe them; and prove to our
  
  