Sir Walter Raleigh, born about 1554 at Hayes Barton in the parish of East Budleigh, Devon, and executed in London on 29 October 1618, remains one of the most vivid and contradictory figures of the English Renaissance. He was a soldier, imperial promoter, courtier, colonial entrepreneur, naval commander, politician, prisoner, historian, scientist, and poet. In popular memory he is often reduced to a picturesque legend…
“Whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Spirituality
James Graham, first Marquess of Montrose, was born in 1612 and died on 21 May 1650. He occupies an unusual place in British literary and political history: a Scottish aristocrat whose short life contained religious revolution, civil war, spectacular military success, exile, defeat, and execution; a Royalist commander remembered as “the Great Montrose”; and a poet whose surviving verses, though few, have remained memo…
“I have been brought hither to suffer death, not for any crime I have committed, but for my loyalty to my sovereign.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Fear
