Word: ralegh
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...WALTER RALEGH-Edward Thompson-Yale University Press...
...author though posterity does not seem to think he knew how to spell his own name was one of the most brilliant figures of his brilliant day. Sir Walter Raleigh, whom his latest biographer calls "the last of the Elizabethans," spelled his name three different ways (Rawleyghe, Rauley, Ralegh) but never signed himself Raleigh. Biographer Thompson lists 68 different spellings used by his contemporaries. The Spaniards, to whom Raleigh was Public Enemy No. 1, called him various guttural equivalents, such as "Guatteral." However they spelled Raleigh's name, Englishmen of his Jay and ever after knew it stood...
...Ralegh was the greatest failure of the Elizabethan age, and outside his native Devon the most hated man in England. His rocket-like career came down like a dead stick, but there was a star-burst before the end. Ralegh was a gentleman but not a noble, and both the Tudor and the older nobility frowned on him as an upstart. After a fitful attendance at Oxford some fighting in the Low Countries and in Ireland (where he made historians shudder by his part in the massacre at Smerwick), Ralegh went to Elizabeth's court and began his rapid...
Elizabeth's favor was more than a little hampering to Ralegh. While he had it. she refused to let him endanger his precious skin. While less valued sailors were chivying Spain's great Armada to its doom. Ralegh was kept chafing in London. When Sir Richard Grenville sailed on his fatal raid against the Azores, Ralegh was recalled at the last minute. But Ralegh lost Elizabeth's favor for good when she discovered his secret marriage. She sent the tactless pair to the Tower, then banished them to the country in disgrace. Although he paid a gigantic...
When Elizabeth died and James I, who hated tobacco and feared Spain, succeeded her, Ralegh was left in a dangerous spot. Spain wanted his head, and James was more than willing to comply. On a cooked-up charge of treason, Ralegh was tried and condemned to death. On the eve of execution he wrote his famed farewell to his wife: "First. I send you all the thanks my heart can conceive, or my pen express, for your many troubles and cares taken for me. which-though they have not .taken effect as you wished-yet my debt...