Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) was an English adventurer, writer, and nobleman. He became a close confidant of Elizabeth I while serving in the army. He was knighted in 1585 and rose to the position of captain of the Queen’s guards. During Elizabeth’s reign, Raleigh organized three major expeditions to America, including the ill-fated Roanoke settlement. In 1588 he took part in the victory over the Spanish armada. He also led many raids against Spanish possession capturing much treasure for the Crown.
Raleigh lost favor with Queen Elizabeth when he began courting one of her maids of honor, Bessy Throckmorton, and he was ordered arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1592. Hoping, upon his release, to recover his lost position, he led an abortive expedition to Guiana in search for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold. He failed in that endeavor but, instead, helped introduce the value and use potato and tobacco plants to England.
King James I, Elizabeth’s successor, distrusted and feared Raleigh. He charged him with treason and had him condemned to death, but subsequently commuted the sentence to imprisonment in the Tower in 1603. It was there that Raleigh lived with his wife and servants and there he authored his History of the World in 1614.
Sir Walter was released from prison in 1616 and charged with leading an unsuccessful expedition to search for gold in South America. His failure invoked once again the ire of the King and Raleigh was once again ordered arrested and imprisoned. His original death sentence for treason was reinstated and he was executed at Westminster on October 29, 1618.
The following prayer was written the night before his beheading and was his final poem and epitaph. I find it to be the perfect Easter prayer with its emphasis on the immutability of the grave juxtaposed against the Easter promise of eternal resurrection.
EVEN SUCH IS TIME, THAT TAKES IN TRUST
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
But from this earth, this grave, this dust
My God shall raise me up, I trust!
Have an AWE-full Easter Weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque