OUTH OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND _To face p. 16_

GUIANA " 70

RALEIGH.

CHAPTER I.

YOUTH.

Walter Raleigh was born, so Camden and an anonymous astrologer combine
to assure us, in 1552. The place was Hayes Barton, a farmstead in the
parish of East Budleigh, in Devonshire, then belonging to his father; it
passed out of the family, and in 1584 Sir Walter attempted to buy it
back. 'For the natural disposition I have to the place, being born in
that house, I had rather seat myself there than anywhere else,' he wrote
to a Mr. Richard Duke, the then possessor, who refused to sell it.
Genealogists, from himself downwards, have found a rich treasure in
Raleigh's family tree, which winds its branches into those of some of
the best Devonshire houses, the Gilberts, the Carews, the Champernownes.
His father, the elder Walter Raleigh, in his third marriage became the
second husband of Katherine Gilbert, daughter of Sir Philip Champernoun
of Modbury. By Otto Gilbert, her first husband, she had been the mother
of two boys destined to be bold navigators and colonists, Humphrey and
Adrian Gilbert. It, is certainly the influence of his half-brother Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, of Compton, which is most strongly marked upon the
character of young Raleigh; while Adrian was one of his own earliest
converts to Virginian enterprise.

The earliest notice of Sir Walter Raleigh known to exist was found and
communicated to the _Transactions of the Devonshire Association_ by Dr.
Brushfield in 1883. It is in a deed preserved in Sidmouth Church, by
which tithes of fish are leased by the manor of Sidmouth to 'Walter
Rawlegh the elder, Carow Ralegh, and Walter Ralegh the younger,' on
September 10, 1560. In 1578 the same persons passed over their interest
in the fish-titles in another deed, which contains their signatures. It
is amusing to find that the family had not decided how to spell its
name. The father writes 'Ralegh,' his elder son Carew writes 'Caro
Rawlyh,' while the subject of this memoir, in this his earliest known
signature, calls himself 'Rauleygh.'

His father was a Protestant when young Walter was born, but his mother
seems to have remained a Catholic. In the persecution under Mary, she,
as we learn from Foxe, went into Exeter to visit the heretics in gaol,
and in particular to see Agnes Prest before her burning. Mrs. Raleigh
began to exhort her to repentance, but the martyr turned the tabl