Raleigh the Peacemaker (1586)

 

A copy, in All Saints' Church East Budleigh, of one of the best known portraits of Sir Walter formerly attributed to Zuccaro but now to the monogrammist 'H' (? Hubbard) and dated 1588. It shows Raleigh in court dress at the height of his favour with Queen Elizabeth I. Raleigh had been appointed Captain of the Guard in 1587  

Raleigh does not have a reputation as a peacemaker. Courtier, poet, soldier, explorer, historian he certainly was, and for most of his life, an enemy of Spain. In 1618, after his disastrous second voyage to Guiana resulted in the reinstatement of the death sentence there was jubilation at the Spanish court.  

 

Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar, a title awarded by King Philip III of Spain in 1617. Image credit: Wikipedia

Such was the hatred he inspired there that Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador in London, demanded that Raleigh and his crew be hanged in Madrid.   

The 2007 film Elizabeth – The Golden Age, directed by Shekhar Kapur, starred Cate Blanchett in the title role. Image credit: www.moviemeter.nl

Queen Elizabeth I, for whom Raleigh was a favourite courtier, was equally hated by the Spanish government which viewed her as a heretic. Her speech at Tilbury in August 1588 on the eve of the Spanish Armada led to her becoming immortalised for posterity as a warrior queen. 

For a twenty-year period leading up to that event she had refused to condemn the English privateers who had looted Spanish ships and ports with impunity. In 1585 she pledged English support for the Dutch who were fighting for independence from Spain, agreeing to send 5,000 foot soldiers and 1000 cavalry to the Netherlands.  

 

Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder. Image credit: Wikipedia

Yet even in that year, Elizabeth wanted peace and advised her diplomats in Madrid to pursue this goal. Portraits of the Queen at this time use symbols to emphasise the message. This painting, attributed to the Flemish Protestant Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, is sometimes known as the Peace portrait and has been dated to between 1580 and 1585. In her right hand the Queen holds an olive branch; at her feet lies a sword but it is sheathed.

The Ermine Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, variously attributed to William Segar or George Gower, is in the collection of Hatfield House. Image credit: Wikipedia

Another painting, known as the Ermine Portrait and dated 1585, again shows her with those two symbols of peace. The ermine or stoat symbolises purity and royalty.

Early in 1586, King Philip II instructed his admiral the Marquis of Santa Cruz to submit plans for an invasion of England.  He had been encouraged in his plans by news of the refitting of a fleet of Portuguese galleons.

At around the same time, seemingly with the aim of reaching an agreement with the Spanish, Elizabeth initiated talks with Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, Governor of the Netherlands. 

When, later that year, Raleigh was presented with an important Spanish nobleman as his prisoner he must have felt that the scene was set perfectly for him to take on the role of diplomat and bring about that very peace that the Queen was seeking.

 

A bronze relief with the bust of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. Image credit: Wikipedia

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, was the founder and governor of the Spanish settlement in Patagonia, South America. Explorer, author, historian, mathematician, and astronomer, he is known today mainly for his History of the Incas, which contains extremely detailed descriptions of Inca history and mythology but remained in manuscript for centuries until it was published in 1906. An English translation was published by Sir Clements Markham the following year.

Sarmiento had been captured in September 1586 by the crews of the Serpent and the Mary Sparke under the command of Captain Jacob Whiddon. Both ships, belonging to Raleigh, were on their way back to Plymouth from a voyage to the Azores. Along with Sarmiento they had captured the Governor of the Isle of São Miguel, the largest island in the Azores, and seized booty which included ‘sugars, elephants teeth, waxe, rice’ along with ‘sumacke and other commodities’.  

Leaving Plymouth the ships sailed with their prizes to Southampton where the crews were rewarded with their shares by Raleigh himself.

 

The title pages of Raleigh’s History of the World, published in 1614

Born in 1532, Sarmiento was older than Raleigh by about twenty years but the two men evidently developed a rapport. Much later, Raleigh would remember Sarmiento as ‘a worthy gentleman’ as he wrote in his History of the World.

Like Raleigh he can be described as a Renaissance figure for the breadth of his interests and talents – ‘un hombre multidisciplinar que encarnaba a la perfección el ideal del hombre renacentista de su tiempo’ – as a recent biographer has written.

Like Raleigh he had encountered difficulties with the religious authorities. While in Peru, in his twenties he was accused by the Inquisition in Lima of possessing two magic rings and some magic ink and of following the precepts of Moses.

‘The School of the Night’ by Ronnie Heeps, 2006. © the artist. Photo credit: Jersey Heritage

Similarly, Raleigh, who was a relatively freethinking man for his age, would be accused of atheism. A commission was set up in 1594 at Cerne Abbas, close to his home at Sherborne Castle, to deal with accusations that Raleigh and his circle of intellectuals, known to some as ‘The School of Night’, had denied the reality of heaven and hell.  He would be acquitted, but the accusation of atheism would again be raised at his trial for treason in 1603. It is likely that such accusations contributed to the guilty verdict reached by the court, a verdict which would prove fatal after the failed 1617 expedition to Guiana.  

So well did the two men get on that Sarmiento agreed to share his maps with English cartographers, despite Spain's official policy of keeping all navigational information secret. He is also said to have discussed with Raleigh the existence of the supposed city of El Dorado.

It did not take long for Raleigh to realise Sarmiento’s potential value in discussing peace negotiations with Spain. On 28 November the Venetian Ambassador in Paris reported that the Queen had summoned Sarmiento to Windsor, where he had conversed with her and with all the principal members of the Council, and how ‘they are treating him with much distinction’.  Elizabeth and Sarmiento apparently conversed in Latin for as much as two hours.

The Spaniard left London on October 30, 1586, crossed to Calais, and then passed through Paris, where he met with Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador to France.

Spanish diplomats in London seemingly had high hopes of successful peace negotiations, given the character and reputation of Sarmiento. A letter written by them to Bernardino de Mendoza and dated 10 November 1586 urged that Sarmiento should be the Spanish king’s choice to conduct negotiations. It recommended that he should be sent back to London for this purpose because of his evident empathy towards the English. ‘He is a person of much worth who really understands these people as if he had lived ten years amongst them, a man of decision, an excellent scholar and a person who will speak to them with all fitting plainness.’

After three days in Paris, Sarmiento set out on 5 December for the long journey to Madrid. Among the items he carried was a precious Letter of Peace from Queen Elizabeth with which he had been entrusted to deliver to King Philip of Spain.

He had been warned to make the journey by sea since the south of France was in turmoil because of the Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants, known as Huguenots. Fatefully he chose to go by land.

Perhaps he trusted too much in the protection of the Protestant Queen of England. The Venetian ambassador in Paris reported in December that Sarmiento, ‘a Spanish gentleman of great importance’ had reached the French capital having been a prisoner for four months in England. ‘They say he had long audiences of the Queen, and is armed with her passport, as he has to travel through Huguenot country; that he is charged by her to speak for the peace,’ wrote the ambassador.

On the journey south, near Bordeaux, he encountered Huguenot forces who seized his belongings along with the letters he was carrying and imprisoned him at Mont de Marsan.

 

© CHRISTIE'S 2022

Did Elizabeth seriously believe that peace was possible? The above document signed by her at Greenwich was a passport for a diplomatic party including Henry Stanley, 4th Earl of Derby and William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham and Lord Warden of the Cinq Ports. The party was appointed by the Queen to 'depart into the Lowe Contreys in speciall Comission and Ambassade from us', and were to be allowed to pass with all their train and baggage, and were to be furnished with horses, carts or any other necessary form of carriage by sea or land. ‘Whereof fayle ye not, as ye tender our pleasure,’ concluded the document.

Portrait of Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma by the Flemish painter Otto van Veen (1556-1629). Image credit: Wikipedia

The party's 'special commission' was to negotiate a peace treaty with Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, which would end the war with Spain. Just months later, in July 1588, the Spanish Armada set sail.

As for poor Sarmiento, he spent three years in prison before being liberated, despite the efforts of the Queen and Raleigh to have him released.

Apparently his name became a byword for misfortune. Spanish people would say, glibly, "So and so has the luck of Pedro de Sarmiento"'.

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa spent the rest of his life dedicating himself to his writings and worked as an editor of poetry. On his last naval mission in the service of the king he was made Admiral of an armada of galleons en route to the Indies. He died on board ship in 1592, off the coast of Lisbon.

Did any Huguenot soldiers bother to read the documents that Sarmiento was carrying? Was Elizabeth being sincere? Was Raleigh?

Not everyone believed him, including many historians. ‘An ingenious plot’ and ‘this extraordinary ploy’ is how author Raleigh Trevelyan describes the way in which Sarmiento and ambassador Bernardino de Mendoza were ‘duped’ by Elizabeth’s favourite. Mendoza, for example, had accepted Raleigh’s assurance that he was ‘much more desirous of sending to Spain his own two ships for sale, than to use them for robbery’. King Philip and his councillors were not so easily bamboozled by Raleigh’s promises, wrote Trevelyan in his 2002 book Sir Walter Raleigh. ‘They were rightly suspicious, and at once refused, bringing to an end Raleigh’s first attempt at international intrigue.’

Some historians nonetheless like to ponder the ‘What if?’ question. If Sarmiento had made it, and if King Philip had read that Letter of Peace, might the Spanish Armada not have set out? War might have been averted, the course of history in Europe and in Latin America would have been changed. 

And Sir Walter Raleigh might have been known to posterity not just as a pirate but as a peacemaker.  

 

The Woburn Abbey Armada portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, by an unknown English artist (formerly attributed to George Gower). It depicts the Queen surrounded by symbols of royal majesty against a backdrop representing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Image credit: Wikipedia

 

Radical Ralegh

The point about Sir Walter Ralegh: historian Anna Beer with Millais’ celebrated 1870 painting at Fairlynch Museum.  Dr Beer’s visit coincided with her talk about her book Patriot or Traitor: The Life and Death of Sir Walter Ralegh at Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival on 19 September 2018

To mark 400 years since the execution of Sir Walter Ralegh, on 31 October 2018 the House of Lords Works of Art Panel hosted a talk by Dr Anna Beer. Its theme was the hidden and surprising truth about East Devon’s best known local hero - a swashbuckling soldier, sailor, courtier, poet and explorer who was also a political prisoner turned radical parliamentarian.  

It’s quite a leap from the traditional ‘spuds and ciggies’ jokiness inspired by Sir Walter’s colourful life to consider him as a pioneer of the parliamentary democracy that we enjoy today. Yet for those radical thinkers who revolted against antiquated concepts such as the Divine Right of Kings, Ralegh became something of a hero in the centuries after his death.

The title page of Ralegh’s History of the World.  A first edition of the work was one of the rare items on display in Fairlynch’s Ralegh 400 exhibition

By all accounts he was a conscientious MP for the Cornish borough of Mitchell.  But it was during his time as one of the Tower of London’s longest-serving prisoners that Ralegh’s political reputation was established. Confined by order of King James, he nonetheless enjoyed access to his extensive library. In 1614, his million-word History of the World was published. The book, with its criticism of bad rulers, infuriated King James, who famously described it as ‘too saucy towards princes’ and tried unsuccessfully to ban it.  

Ralegh followed his History with an equally provocative piece of writing entitled A Dialogue between a Counsellor of State and a Justice of the Peace, described by Anna Beer as a foray into the history and practice of parliamentary politics. It stands, she believes, as Ralegh’s most clear articulation of his political beliefs: ‘a passionate defence of the need for a public sphere characterised by freedom of speech’.

The American state of New Hampshire's seal depicts the frigate USS Raleigh,  surrounded by a laurel wreath. The Raleigh was one of the first 13 warships sponsored by the Continental Congress for a new American navy, built in 1776, at Portsmouth, NH. She was finally captured by the British in 1778 and renamed as HMS Raleigh

Such writings, including the History with its accounts of the consequences of tyranny, deeply influenced republicans like Oliver Cromwell and John Milton. Over a century later, Ralegh was respected for similar reasons by the American revolutionaries. In 1776, during the War of Independence, they even named one of their warships after him. You can imagine the annoyance of the Royal Navy.

A Beefeater admires the ‘Lost Garden’ at the Tower of London. The garden was set up in 2018 to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Ralegh’s death.  The British Library has in its collection a manuscript in his own hand containing chemical and medical recipes.

Image credit: Historic Royal Palaces

Along with his writings while a prisoner in the Tower, Ralegh also enjoyed the freedom to conduct scientific experiments in a laboratory converted from a disused hen house. He developed his botanical skills in a herb garden adjacent to his quarters. Such was his reputation as a physician, using medicinal plants that he had discovered during his time in the New World, that Queen Anne herself consulted him when her son Prince Henry fell ill.  

These other, less well known aspects of Ralegh’s life, combine to enhance our view of him as a polymath, typical of the breed of 16^th and 17^th century freethinkers otherwise known as Renaissance men and women.   

For the 19^th Earl of Devon, writing in the 400^th anniversary year of Ralegh’s death, East Budleigh’s Great Elizabethan is ‘a hero to every Devonian with a wanderlust and a sense of adventure – we should all make a pilgrimage to the Raleigh Wall in Budleigh Salterton. A copy of the Boyhood of Raleigh hangs on my son’s bedroom wall, a reminder of times when local Devon sailors pushed the bounds of the known world and when our rugged coastline was the Cape Canaveral of its day.'   

Above: ‘Dreaming Beyond the Medieval’ 

Image credit: Ronnie Heeps  http://www.ronnieheeps.net  

Look closely at the bottom right area of Ronnie Heeps’ painting  'Dreaming Beyond the Medieval'. You’ll see that back in 2006 the artist had exactly that same thought when he was commissioned by the government of Jersey to produce a series of works for Mont Orgueil Castle, the magnificent medieval edifice situated above the picturesque town of Gorey.

‘Raleigh was not afraid to undertake daring deeds and dream of glorious multifaceted worlds, which lay just beyond the horizon of conventional thought,’ wrote the artist. ‘He could comprehend a future world that was not a preordained construct. A future world, which was in a constant state of flux and therefore open to the influence of secular thinkers.’

Raleigh the entrepreneur: some of today’s Sir Walters have the final frontier in their sights

Above: Sir Walter Raleigh - Dreaming Beyond the Medieval

© Ronnie Heeps

A dozen years ago, the Scottish artist Ronnie Heeps was commissioned by the Jersey Heritage Trust to create a series of paintings which would be permanently housed in Mont Orgueil Castle.

Mont Orgueil Castle also known as Gorey Castle and Lé Vièr Châté, Saint Clement, Grouville, Saint Martin, Jersey

Image credit: Man vyi  

Inspired by Raleigh’s life story, the artist explained in 2006 that he wanted ‘to try and show the inner workings of a true maverick spirit completely embroiled in the zeitgeist of his day’.  

The School of the Night  © Ronnie Heeps 

The School of Night is a modern name for a group of men centred on Sir Walter Raleigh that was once referred to in 1592 as 'The School of Atheism. The group supposedly included poets and scientists Christopher Marlowe, George Chapman, Matthew Roydon and Thomas Harriot.  

For the accusation of atheism levelled at Raleigh see https://raleigh400.blogspot.com/2018/08/when-gloves-were-off-for-raleigh.html

Sir Walter Raleigh, he wrote, ‘excelled in numerous fields and was able to cross between the disciplines of art, science and philosophy with ease. Such a proficiency in study exemplifies the Renaissance man. The ability to comprehend and bring together many disparate ideas enabled him to formulate a worldview, which had eluded many great medieval intellectuals.

'Wee Raleigh Star Commander'   © Ronnie Heeps

‘Raleigh was not afraid to undertake daring deeds and dream of glorious multifaceted worlds, which lay just beyond the horizon of conventional thought,’ saw Ronnie Heeps. ‘He could comprehend a future world that was not a preordained construct. A future world, which was in a constant state of flux and therefore open to the influence of secular thinkers.’

For many people Raleigh will always be the pirate  - as seen in the above poster - or the man who invented tobacco and the potato.

The sign outside the Sir Walter Raleigh pub, East Budleigh

Others know him primarily as the courtier who won Queen Elizabeth’s favour by laying his cloak over that puddle. 

Image source:  http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/137892.html
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

Many know Raleigh as an explorer, but make the mistake of thinking that he travelled in North America. Images such as the above, entitled 'Sir Walter Raleigh ordering the Standard of Queen Elizabeth to be erected on the Coast of Virginia'  did not help: Sir Walter never set foot on the continent.  

A beefeater - officially known as a Yeoman Warder of Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London - inspects the newly installed Apothecary's Garden set up in 2018 to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Raleigh's death. Image credit: Historic Royal Palaces 

Of course he was also a soldier, and a poet. There were moments when he was a diplomat, and in his laboratory during his imprisonment in the Tower of London he was an amateur scientist. 

You can read more about this aspect at https://raleigh400.blogspot.com/2018/10/sir-walters-lost-garden-revived-for.html

 

Not too many people are aware of Raleigh as an entrepreneur.

I don’t know whether Raleigh is one of Sir Richard Branson’s heroes, but Virgin Trains certainly has a locomotive, no. 221113, named after the Great Elizabethan.

And yet, to finance the incredibly expensive expeditions which he organised, the talents of the modern entrepreneur were what he needed. Which is why the American economist Professor Brent Lane has compared Raleigh’s efforts 400 years ago ‘to push the bounds of the known world’ with the programmes of 21^st century space exploration undertaken by entrepreneurs like Sir Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. 

You can read more at    

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/sir-richard-branson-sir-richard-raleigh-future-private-space-travel

It’s a view echoed by many who appreciate the Great Elizabethan as a visionary of his time.

'Sir Walter Raleigh is a hero to every Devonian with a wanderlust and a sense of adventure – we should all make a pilgrimage to the Raleigh Wall in Budleigh Salterton,’ Charles Courtenay told me.  ‘A copy of the Boyhood of Raleigh hangs on my son’s bedroom wall, a reminder of times when local Devon sailors pushed the bounds of the known world and when our rugged coastline was the Cape Canaveral of its day.'   

Look closely at Ronnie Heeps’ painting 'Dreaming Beyond the Medieval' and you’ll see that thought of Cape Canaveral which so inspired Charles Courtenay, also known as the 19^th Earl of Devon.

For Raleigh, the backing of financiers like William Sanderson (?1548-1638) was vital to ensure that investors in the City of London would support his plans for colonies in the New World. It was Sanderson, a member of the City of London Fishmongers’ Livery Company and married to Raleigh’s niece, who had sponsored and managed the voyages undertaken by the navigator John Davis in search of the North West Passage.

A portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh with a globe, attributed to Federico Zuccari (1542/1543–1609). Raleigh points to the Arctic region of a globe, a reference to the many Arctic voyages made by the English in search of a northwest passage to the Orient, and the privilege granted by Elizabeth I to Raleigh to make northwest discoveries and exploit land in North America.

He also furnished funds to construct the first globes in England, made by Emery Molyneux (d. 1598). He acted for several years as Sir Walter’s financial manager, naming one of his sons Raleigh. 

The Molyneux globe at Petworth, Sussex. 
Image credit: Mark Sherouse
A family tradition has it that Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland and owner of Petworth, met Sir Walter Raleigh when they were both confined in the Tower of London. Being a man of learning, Raleigh may have given the globe to the ninth Earl as a gift. It has no doubt been at Petworth since the Earl's release from the Tower in 1621.
Read more about the Petworth globe at https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/petworth-house-and-park/features/dont-miss-the-molyneux-globe-at-petworth-house

I’d imagined that interest in Sir Walter would fade by the end of 2018. But a few months ago, another Raleigh 400 made its appearance online, emerging not from Devon or Dorset or even the US but from the City of London.

Drapers' Hall, London 

An ambitious year-long series of events focused on business and education is being launched in December 2018 at a reception in Drapers’ Hall. It’s largely the initiative of Peter Hewitt, a former Alderman in the City of London, founding Freeman and Master of the Guild of Entrepreneurs and descendant of Sir Walter Raleigh.   

‘The purpose of the year-long Raleigh 400 celebrations (“R400”) is to re-energise bilateral trading relations between the UK and the US’ reads a statement online explaining the three-fold philosophy behind the move.

‘The past – new research by Queen Mary’s University of London (“QMUL”) on the exploits of Raleigh and his connection with the City of London and the Plantation of Virginia. The present – bringing together business leaders and senior politicians from both sides of the Atlantic to further develop UK-US relations. The future – using a major education festival to educate students of all ages on both sides of the Atlantic on our common heritage, tradition of entrepreneurship and wealth creation.’

On Thanksgiving Day I was delighted to raise a glass of our local Lily Farm Vineyard’s Raleigh sparkling wine and toast this R400 worthy initiative. The occasion was a Thanksgiving Day lunch on Thursday 22 November with Budleigh friends who have family or friends on the other side of ‘The Pond’.

You can read more about R400 at https://raleigh400.com/

FOR THE RALEIGH 400  CALENDAR OF 
EVENTS WORLDWIDE IN 2018 CLICK ON 

http://raleigh400.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/raleigh-400-calendar-of-events-in-2018.html