The Two Burials of Sir Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh was a famous English writer, poet, and explorer who rose to prominence under Queen Elizabeth I (1558). Raleigh was sentenced to death for treason and his body was buried at the parish church next to Westminster Abby, but his head wasn’t, and it would be many years before his head found its final resting place.
Raleigh hated Catholicism and was very vocal about it before a very Protestant Queen Elizabeth I. We can say that Raleigh was accumulating brownie points with the Queen. The Queen became enamored of Raleigh and in fact, made him one of her court favorites. The story goes that Raleigh once laid his expensive cloak over a puddle the queen was to walk over. He just couldn’t let her feet get wet. But this is just a story, which may very well be a Victorian fable.
During Elizabeth’s reign, Raleigh made the mistake of falling in love and secretly marrying one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, Throckmorton “Bess,” who was was eleven years younger than him. Raleigh was imprisoned. It took several years for the scandal to simmer down and for Raleigh to regain favor at court. But Raleigh and Bess remained together, devoted, and had two children, Walter and Carew.
Sir Walter Raleigh & son Walter
When Elizabeth died in 1603 Raleigh was implicated in a plot to overthrow the new king, James I. Raleigh was tried for treason, & imprisoned in the Tower of London until 1616. It is during this time he writes, The Historie of the World, a book about ancient Greece and Rome. When released, he led an expedition to South America to find the lost city of El Dorado. In this expedition he attacked the Spanish settlement at San Thome, and in this battle his son Walter is killed.
As if the death of his son was not enough punishment, the Spanish Ambassador convinces James I to reinstate Raleigh’s death sentence. Raleigh is beheaded at Whitehall on October 29, 1618. Before putting his head on the block, he asked to see the ax, and looking at it said, “This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases.” His devoted Bess, still grieving the death of her son, Walter, must now grieve her husband. She had his head embalmed and kept it in a red leather bag, by her side, all the time. And according to a biography written on Raleigh, “Shepherd of the Ocean,” by J. H. Adamson, & H. F. Holland, Bess was in the habit of “frequently inquiring of visitors if they would like to see Sir Walter.”
Bess died twenty-nine years later at age eighty two, and Raleigh’s head was inherited by his son, Carew, who kept it until his death. On January 1, 1668 Carew was buried with the head, alongside the body of Raleigh. It had taken fifty years for Raleigh’s head to finely rest.
sources: Wikipedia,
http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/sir-walter-raleigh.htm
Curious Events in History, Michael Powell, Sir Walter Raleigh, by Frederick Albion Ober
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