A greater man in some ways than even Drake himself was the gentle, noble, lovable, gallant Sir Walter Ralegh, a man who won renown in many fields, not only as soldier, sailor, and explorer, as courtier and administrator, but as historian and poet; whose whole life was crowded with adventure and romance, and who is one of the most picturesque figures in the entire range of English History. Born in 1552, in a house that still stands at Hayes Barton, he was only 17 when he left Oxford to fight for the Huguenots; and from that time, except for brief intervals at Court, and even shorter periods of quiet enjoyment of his property in Ireland, or of his home at Sherborne, or when he was a prisoner in the Tower, the rest of his life was spent in action; now fighting the rebel Desmonds in Ireland, now harrying the ships and towns of Spain and Portugal, now helping in the attack on the Armada, now engaged with his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert in perilous and fruitless exploration in the far north of America, now attempting to colonise Virginia--an enterprise whose sole result was the introduction to this country of tobacco and potatoes--and now sailing up the Orinoco in the vain quest of the fabled golden city of Manoa. [Illustration: Sir Walter Ralegh and his signature] Elizabeth, whose favour he won by the sacrifice of his cloak, and lost again for a time owing to her jealousy of his passion for one of her Maids of Honour, when he had to spend four years in the Tower, knighted him, gave him vast estates in Ireland, made him captain of the guard, Governor of Jersey, Lord Warden of the Stannaries and Vice-Admiral of Devon and Cornwall. Like Drake, he sat in Parliament; and it was while still in favour with the Queen that he was elected Member for his county. On the accession of James I, however, Ralegh was charged with joining in the plot on behalf of Arabella Stuart, and was again sent to the Tower. During his long imprisonment there he wrote his most famous work, the _History of the World_, whose learned, eloquent, and philosophic pages proved that his skill was no less with his pen than with his sword. His stirring description of the last fight of the _Revenge_ inspired Tennyson's noble ballad. Released from prison by James in order that he might once more sail up the Orinoco in search of the mythical treasure-land ruled over by El Dorado, he came back from that most disastrous expedition a broken man. Again committed to the Tower at the instigation of the Spanish Ambassador, he was soon afterwards beheaded on the old charge of treason, dying as he had lived, dignified, noble, and fearless to the last. Two other heroic figures of the Elizabethan age, worthy to be ranked in the same company with Drake, are his gallant comrade Hawkyns, who was born at Plymouth in 1532, and Grenville the indomitable, the hero of that last fight of the _Revenge_.