Walter Raleigh

Walter Raleigh was a Devon soldier, courtier, explorer and poet, Elizabeth’s favourite until he secretly married her maid of honour, who planted the failed colony at Roanoke and sailed up the Orinoco in 1595 in search of El Dorado. The Discovery of Guiana is his account of that voyage, written to win the queen’s favour back with the promise of gold. Under James he was condemned for treason and spent thirteen years in the Tower writing a History of the World, was released for a second Guiana voyage, failed, and was beheaded on the old sentence in 1618. He is said to have felt the axe and called it a sharp medicine.