Early Life
Little is known about Raleigh's birth. Some historians believe he was born on January 22, 1552, although the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography currently favours a date of 1554. He grew up in the house of Hayes Barton, a farmhouse in the village of East Budleigh, not far from Budleigh Salterton, in Devon, England. He was the youngest of five sons born to Catherine Champernowne in two successive marriages. His half brothers, John Gilbert, Humphrey Gilbert, Adrian Gilbert, and full brother Carew Raleigh were also prominent during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. Catherine Champernowne was a niece of Kat Ashley, Elizabeth's governess, who introduced the young men at court.
Raleigh's family was highly Protestant in religious orientation and had a number of near-escapes during the reign of the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I of England. In the most notable of these, his father had to hide in a tower to avoid execution. As a result, during his childhood, Raleigh developed a hatred of Roman Catholicism and proved himself quick to express it after the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England came to the throne in 1558.
In 1568 or 1572, Raleigh was registered as an undergraduate at Oriel College, Oxford but does not seem to have taken up residence. In 1575, he was registered at the Middle Temple. At his trial in 1603, he stated that he had never studied law. His life between these two dates is uncertain but in his History of the World he claimed to be an eye-witness at the Battle of Moncontour (3 October 1569) in France. In 1575 or 1576 Raleigh returned to England.
Read more about this topic: Walter Raleigh
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Very early in our children’s lives we will be forced to realize that the “perfect” untroubled life we’d like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don’t want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth ... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)