THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER RALEGH. CHAPTER I. Different families of the name.....Seat of Sir Walter's family.....Hooker allies it to the kings of England. . - . Sir Walter's parentage....Sale of estates....Birthplace....When born...-Educated at Oxford.... Anecdote of his youth....Did not study the law, as has been supposed....State of politics....His expedition to France....Reception and improvement - - - Return to England. - - -Juvenile poetry ----Expedition to the Netherlands....Embarks for America....A captain in Ireland. - - - Anecdote. ---Siege of Fort del Ore...Spenser the poet....Adventures in Ireland. ... Ralegh dissatisfied....His letter to Leicester. RALEGH with variations in the orthography of it, is a very ancient name in this kingdom. There are towns and villages so called particularly in the west Few names vary so much in the manner of writing it. Sir Robert Naunton and Lord Bacon write Rawleigh-Rale and Ralega are to be found in old deeds, concerning families of the name; while Raleigh is adopted by King James, Sir Walter's b ern counties, some of which formerly belonged to с noble lords of the name, Two parishes in Devonshire derived their names from the very family of Sir Walter and the Devonshire Raleghs having been settled in that county before the conquest, and being certainly the ancestors of the Warwickshire Raleghs, it has been supposed that their namesakes in other counties proceeded likewise from them. Yet, as we find in the reign of Edward III, five knights of this name at one time settled in different parts of Devonshire, and as three great families, of the same name with Sir Walter, but quartering dissimilar arms, were contemporary with his forefathers in that county, these families were probably f son Carew, (see Harleian Miscellany, vol. iii.) John Hooker, and many respectable writers of the 16th and 17th centuries. His original letters, however, in the Harleian, and other collections, prove that Sir Walter himself, wherever his signature has been preserved, wrote Ralegh; which did not escape the attention of Oldys and Dr. Birch; and on which account the name is thus printed in the present work. b As Ralegh in the parish of Pilton near Barnstaple; Streetralegh in the parish of Ailsbeer near Exeter; Comb-ralegh near Honiton; Widdycomb-ralegh and Coliton-ralegh, all in Devonshire. Nettlecomb-ralegh in Somersetshire; Ralegh, a market town in Essex, thought to be that called Reganeia in Doomsday-book, &c. c Camden's Britannia, Devon. d Coliton-ralegh and Widdycomb-ralegh. See Prince's Danmonii Orientales Illustres, fol. 1701, p. 531. e Dugdale's Warwickshire, by Thomas, fol. 1730, p. 529. f Prince, p. 517. not all of one lineage; and perhaps we owe to the eminence of Sir Walter, the pains which the antiquaries and genealogists of his time have bestowed on the several houses of the name, at a period when all of them, excepting his, were nearly extinct. Smalridge, in the parish of Axminster, in the county of Devon, was one of the most ancient seats of Sir Walter Ralegh's family. According to Sir William Pole, an ancestor of his in a direct line removed thither from Nettlecomb-ralegh in Somersetshire, in the fourteenth year of Henry III. To him succeeded Sir Wimond,' Sir Hugh, Sir John, Sir Peter, two more Sir Johns, and then other successors, all of whom could boast the same rank of knighthood, or married into families so distinguished, down to Wimond, the grandfather of Sir Walter.* John Hooker' was related to, and acquainted with Sir Walter Ralegh; from which circumstance, and n Pole's Collections toward a Description of Devon, 4t. 1791, Smalridge. i In a visitation book, made anno 1623, of the counties of Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset, there is a pedigree of Sir Walter's family from the reign of King John. This Wimond, in the time of Henry III, is therein called Lord of Coliton and Nettlecomb. Whence it should seem, the Somersetshire estate was a later acquisition to the family, and that in Devonshire the more ancient seat; or that the removal was made to the former, rather than to the latter county.-Oldys. * Prince, 530; and Pole, Fardell. 1 Alias VOWELL. He was the first chamberlain of Exeter; and twice member of parliament for that city. Camden says of him, Vir eruditus, et de antiquitatis studio optime meritus. that of his addressing the knight in his days of celebrity with an account of his genealogy, he appears entitled to peculiar credit. He informs us, that Smalridge was in the possession of the Raleghs before the Norman conquest; and that one of the family who had been made a prisoner by the Gauls, and obtained his freedom on St. Leonard's day, consecrated a chapel there to that saint on his return, and suspended his target therein as an offering of gratitude." The records of this foundation are said to have been afterward given to Sir Walter Ralegh" as their rightful owner, by a priest of Axminster. Hooker not only asserts Sir Walter's alliance to the Courtneys, earls of Devon, and other illustrious houses, but even traces the stream of consanguinity up to the kings of England, while Pole was of opinion, that it was another family of the Raleghs which was thus royally descended; and several ancient manuscript pedigrees of the family by the heraldic visitors and antiquaries of the west, also differ not only from Hooker, but in some points from Pole, and from one another. Thus the inquiry only tends to convince us of the difficulty of reconciling these several opinions. Walter Ralegh, Esq. of Fardel, in the parish of Cornwood, near Plymouth, the father of Sir Walter, Hooker's Synopsis Chorographica, or Historical record of Devonshire; never printed, but quoted by Prince, p. 530. "Risdon's Description of Devonshire, Axminster. was three times married. By his first wife Joan, daughter of John Drake, Esq. of Exmouth, he had issue George and John; the latter of whom married Ann, daughter of Sir Bartholomew Fortescue, of Filley, in Devonshire, and relict of Gaicrick, of Ford; and had issue. His second wife, was daughter of Darell, of London; by whom he had Mary' afterward married to Hugh Snedale, Esq. of Hilling in Cornwall; who also had issue. By his third wife Catharine, daughter of Sir Philip Champernon, of Modbury, and relict of Otho Gilbert, Esq. of Compton, in Devonshire, he had issue, Carew, Walter, and Margaret. Carew, afterward knighted, and of Wiltshire, married Dorothy, daughter of Sir William Wroughton, and relict of Sir John Thynn; by whom he had issue. Walter the fourth son, is the celebrated subject of these memoirs, and thus appears to have been maternal half ૧ P The Visitation of Devonshire, ann. 1564, by William Her. vey, Esq. clarencieux, a MS. in the Herald's office. Ralegh's respectable parentage proves, how improperly the terms Jack and Upstart were applied to him when he was first distinguished by Queen Elizabeth. Lord Bacon has preserved the following bon-mot, which I quote in his own words.-When Queen Elizabeth had advanced Ralegh, she was one day playing on the virginals, and my lord of Oxford, and another nobleman, staod by. It fell out so, that the ledge before the jacks was taken away, so as the jacks were seen; my lord of Oxford and the other nobleman smiled, and a little whispered. The queen marked it, and would needs know what the matter was. My lord of Oxford answered, that they smiled to see, that when jacks went up, heads went down.-Apophthegms, No. 182. |