Ralegh (Raleigh), Sir Walter

(1552-1618)

   The military and naval commander and adventurer was born near Budleigh Salterton, South Devon. In 1569 he fought on the Huguenot side in the Wars of Religion in France and was later at Oriel College, Oxford (1572), and at the Middle Temple law college (1575). In 1580 he fought against the Irish in Munster, for which he was awarded vast estates there. He was in and out of favor with Queen Elizabeth; he was knighted in 1585 but committed to the Tower of London by the jealous queen in 1592 because he had secretly married one of the her maids of honor. He was governor of Jersey in the Channel Islands in 1600, imprisoned in 1603 by James I for suspected treason, released in 1616 to search for gold in South America-which failedand was again arrested and died by execution. Some of his poems: "A Description of Love," "As Yee Came From the Holye Land," "But True Love is a Durable Fire," "My Body in the Walls Captived," "On the Cards and Dice," "The Advice," "The Arte of English Poesie," "The Excuse," "The Lie."

   Sources: A New Canon of English Poetry. James Reeves and Martin Seymour-Smith, eds. Barnes and Noble, 1967. Bishop Percy's Folio Ms: Ballads and Romances, Volume 3. John W. Hales and Frederick J. Furnivall, eds. N. Trübner and Co., 1868. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Silver Poets of the Sixteenth Century. Gerald Bullett, ed. J.M. Dent, 1947. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New Penguin Book of English Verse. Paul Keegan, ed. Penguin Books, 2000. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh (Rudick Edition). Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999 (http://www.asu.edu/clas/acmrs).