Original subtitles

This is the West Country of England, famous for seafaring,

and, of course, for seafarers.

And out there, there has always been

the prospect of adventure and discovery,

and quite possibly fame and wealth to follow.

By the mid-16th century, the New World was already on the map

and the Spanish Empire was sending home galleons stuffed with treasure,

and that was all that one young Devon lad could dream about.

This is the story of a man who rose from a relatively obscure background

to dazzle Elizabethan England.

It's a story of deceit, chicanery, flattery,

not to mention treachery and murder.

He's most famous for things he didn't actually do.

But, hey, let's not let the facts get in the way of a good story!

The story of Sir Walter Raleigh.

The age of the great explorers was one of the most dramatic in history.

HE CHUCKLES

'When men risked their lives...'

Cast off and set sail...

Oh! Take up on the peak.

Like that? '..to seek new lands.'

We're somewhere north of the dog's arse.

Where's the camera gone? Hello.

They crossed thousands of miles of treacherous ocean.

They built floating fortresses. They mapped the stars.

They developed whole new branches of science.

Ew! Absolute pish.

'But were these explorers really heroes or just a bunch of chancers?'

So, miracle he found anything at all, really.

Completely made up. Man was a charlatan.

'And is their legacy one of triumph...'

Ah!

'..Or destruction?'

Crikey. Now it's turning a little bit dark.

'I'm doing a bit of discovering of my own...'

Unbelievably terrible. Medieval satnav, 2.0, a stick.

Oh, has he just shat on my trousers?

'..To learn how these explorers conquered the oceans...'

Look at that.

I love it.

Nobody panic yet.

It's not just a map. It's a weapon.

'..And changed the world forever.'

SHOUTS Oh, gold!

If you were in the Navy now, the French would definitely have got us.

HE LAUGHS

Before we set off on this story properly,

I should first admit to a bit of a soft spot for the name Raleigh,

because my first bicycle, aged three,

was a Raleigh, a Raleigh Mayflower, and I loved it.

Obviously, I grew bigger.

I made my way through numerous Raleigh bicycles,

and I learned about Sir Walter, and I liked the association

because my Raleighs were the ways that I went off

on great voyages of discovery.

But by the time I got to my Record Ace,

with its 12 speeds and 531 frame,

I discovered that the bicycle and the swashbuckler

are not in any way related.

And maybe this shattering of my youthful fantasy

was a bit of a taste of things to come,

because it turns out that

the true story of Sir Walter Raleigh is quite difficult to pin down.

In popular legend, Raleigh cuts a rather dashing figure,

throwing his cloak over a puddle for Queen Elizabeth I,

penning great tomes of poetry and prose,

and gallivanting off on adventures to the New World.

We're told he created England's first American colony,

kick starting the British Empire, and brought home tobacco and potatoes.

It's enough to make anyone a national hero,

but I suspect a lot of it might be utter bollocks.

How much of the Raleigh folklore is actually true?

Let's start with what we do know.

Around 1553, Walter Raleigh was born here in this house

just outside the Devon village of East Budleigh.

Now, the family had been wealthy landowners

with a massive manor house and what have you,

but they'd fallen on hard times.

And to make things worse, Walter was the fifth of five sons,

so there was no inheritance coming his way.

'So how did this Devonshire lad go from country bumpkin...'

That's very quaint.

'..To one of the most powerful men in England

'and an intrepid explorer?'

This is all uphill, you bastards!

Step one, go to war.

17-year-old Raleigh, an ardent Protestant,

went to fight the Catholics in France

and proved himself a worthy soldier,

willing to die for the Protestant cause.

But young Raleigh was ambitious.

He wanted wealth, influence,

and the glory of asserting England's power overseas.

For that, he needed to win favour

at the royal court of Queen Elizabeth I...

...and the wily Walter knew just how to get there.

In 1574, he came here, and the things he would learn

would change his fortune and the course of world history.

Now, as you can tell from this important music,

we are at an important location.

Middle Temple in the heart of London's Inns Of Court.

It was, and still is, where the brightest student barristers

honed their skills in front of the country's top legal minds.

Good morning, m'luds.

Probably should have brushed my hair.

This place has resonated to over 500 years of rhetoric,

the art of presenting a compelling argument.

A cornerstone, really, of the English legal system,

which is really just the ultimate battle of wits

between barristers, prosecution versus defence.

It's also a stark reminder to stay on the right side of the law,

because you really don't wanna go up against an institution

that can produce this much wood carving and portraiture.

But Raleigh wasn't here to become a bigwig m'lud.

He was here to learn the skills he'd need to stalk the corridors of power

and talk his way to the top,

skills that barrister

and King's Counsel Benet Brandreth teaches today.

The Inns Of Court were not just great places for learning.

Sometimes described at that time as the third University of England

alongside Oxford and Cambridge,

they were also incredible networking opportunities.

So, Raleigh coming here was because he wanted to learn the techniques

of having influence at the very highest level?

Absolutely.

Raleigh was schooled here in rhetoric,

and his mastery of it would shape his entire life.

It's all about how to win an argument,

so listen up because it might be handy next time you're down the pub.

Rhetoric is the art of discerning in any particular topic

the available means of persuasion.

It's about the power of language to move the minds of others.

And to learn it, Raleigh studied writings from Ancient Greece.

Aristotle first codified all the means of persuasion,

the modes of persuasion, into three groups.

So, ethos are the arguments from authority.

Why should I listen to this person on this topic?

Then you've got logos, the facts.

It's the ruthless statistics and the logic.

Ancl then we have pathos. Pathos is the argument from emotion.

OK. Ethos, logos, pathos. Exactly.

To demonstrate how Raleigh honed his skills, we need a good debate.

Top barrister Benet will go head-to-head with...

me, a sheer novice who's absolutely winging it.

I've gotta think in terms of my ethos, logos, pathos...

Yeah, but you have the gold there, you have the core.

Why should I be heard? Why am I right?

Well, I am right. Does it matter?

That confidence is excellent. There you go.

The question is, how can you convey that confidence?

OK. Can I have ten minutes to think about that?

By all means. Thank you.

The power to persuade was a crucial skill in the Elizabethan age.

Get it right and you could win the ear of the Queen.

Get it wrong and you could lose your head.

It's a bit daunting, this,

because obviously I've got no training, I've had no practice,

and I've had no real time to think about my arguments

so I'm going to be busking it,

which I think is not an accepted practice in law.

Time to enter the debating chamber where Raleigh's future was moulded.

And as if the rows of portraits and coats of arms

weren't intimidating enough...

...my rhetoric skills will be judged by these three -

a board of top Middle Temple barristers.

Gulp!

The debate is, is the pen mightier than the sword?

Ancl we will start with the argument for the sword.

Right, so we're actually going to just do this for real?

Let's do this for real. Yes. What shall I talk about? OK.

Well, I'm positively ululating with the facts at my fingertips

and my extensive research. I dismiss the pen.

I mean, I refute it thus,

as evinced by my failure to bring any notes or a notebook of any type.

The privilege of writing what we all perceive to be the truth

is gifted from history by people who have used swords.

And I give you the example above your heads of Charles I,

whose head was severed from his body, if not by a sword,

at least by a bladed weapon.

And I have a minute left,

but to be brutally honest, I'm spent.

'That went well.'

And now the argument for the pen.

My lord, my ladies, though I have been both a soldier

and a barrister, it is the pen that I chiefly know.

I confess I did not hear my learned opponent indicate

what experience he had of the sword at all.

'I'm doomed.' A sword can destroy a life,

but a pen can destroy a whole way of life.

A sword can only destroy, but a pen can build whole worlds,

whether in fiction or through philosophy.

Ancl I ask you, in your own lives,

which has been the more important, the sword or the pen?

He's done this before! LAUGHING

We have decided that the pen has it.

A pox upon me. But they would say that, wouldn't they?

I just thought that might be something an Elizabethan might say.

Right, Benet, I'll see you outside. Bring your pen.

CHUCKLING

Well, OK, I lost at debating to a man who does it for a living,

but at least this exercise has shown us

that our Sir Walter was an absolute master of the art of persuasion

through words. I think he once said,

"Men's fortunes are oftener made by their tongues

"than by their virtues."

That's exactly what I would have said.

As it turned out, though, Raleigh would use both the pen

and the sword to get to the top.

Now, if you've ever lost a pub quiz, it might be

because one of the questions was, what was England's first colony?

And you put North America.

Wrong because England's and Raleigh's first colonial ambitions

were visited on a country right next door.

England's invasion of Ireland had started in the 12th century,

and by the late 1570s,

the Irish were really pretty BLEEP off with it.

An Irish rebellion rose against the Queen's forces,

and she wanted some soldiers to crush it.

So our Walter, of course, interpreted this

as an excellent opportunity for a scrap with some Catholics.

He used his influence and his connections to raise a detachment

to quell the rebellion and turn Ireland into a subservient colony.

At this point, I'm afraid the image

of our witty and urbane national hero takes a bit of a beating,

because at the Siege Of Smerwick in 1580,

he personally oversaw the massacre

of 600 soldiers, women and children.

Rather depressingly, this was not unusual behaviour

for Tudor English soldiers.

Elizabeth quietly approved, and it got Raleigh noticed.

He composed some rhetoric-filled letters to the Queen's minions,

and in 1581 was invited to court to discuss the conduct of the war.

This was his shot at the big time.

Welcome back, viewers, to 1581,

and a momentous time in Walter Raleigh's life.

So momentous, in fact, I'm spinning in circles with sheer excitement.

Imagine beginning your life in sleepy little East Budleigh,

but then making your way here to Hampton Court Palace,

the sometime seat of supreme English power,

the court of Elizabeth I.

If a social media meme had existed at the time,

it would have been something like, "How it started, how it's going."

'The Virgin Queen, by now on the throne for over 20 years,

'had started funding voyages of exploration to the New World.'

I keep walking...

'For a young, dashing upstart - no, not me, Raleigh -

'power, influence and cash for expeditions

'were there for the taking, if you played your cards right.'

I'm still going.

'Because I am but a lowly commoner to navigate this royal minefield,

'I need some insider help...'

It's beautiful.

It smells of old stuff, doesn't it?

'Hiram Tudor expert Dr )oanne Paul'

Would our Walter have come in here? Oh, probably. Probably.

This is where the court, when they were at Hampton Court,

would celebrate the mass, and everyone was expected to attend.

But Elizabeth would have been up there looking down at everyone.

Her Royal Pew was glassed off,

and she had little, sort of, windows that she could open to listen.

She was reading letters, conducting royal business up there

during the mass.

So you have Elizabeth up there

behind a piece of glass doing the crossword or whatever... Yes!

...but she can at any moment make decisions about,

"Yes, you can have some money.

"No, you can't have a head anymore."

Um, and then she receives complaints

like, "The Earl of Walsingham called me a bell end," or whatever.

And this all goes on in here? Absolutely.

Can we actually go up there? I think we can.

For Raleigh, this was the ultimate goal-

climbing the staircase to courtly success.

This is the Royal Pew. It's very exclusive.

It's very intimate.

This was a personal monarchy,

which meant that physical proximity to the monarch was power.

That was how you rose in the court.

Ancl looking down,

imagine it's like a high school cafeteria.

You've got your different cliques down there. You've got your poets.

You've got your jousters, your explorers.

Ancl Raleigh's gotta find his seat at one of these tables.

I bet he goes for the explorers. Do you think?

Yeah.

And might you be invited up?

I mean, might you say, "Come hither, boy"?

Yeah. She might send down one of her ladies, for instance,

to bring someone up. And of course, you'd have to genuflect

and do all the etiquette things in order to impress her.

Ancl everyone would see you go up, right,

that would be a huge mark of favour.

Massive points, isn't it? Yeah.

Huge bragging right;

"He's been summoned up to the Queen's pew."

Wowzers! It must have been quite scary, actually.

I once had to go and see the Director-General of the BBC,

and I sort of polished my shoes on the back of my trousers a bit.

But imagine going to see, effectively, God. Yes.

'Now that Raleigh had an audience with the Queen,

'he had to make an impression.'

It's chuff tog freezing in the rose garden, isn't it?

Yeah. God!

For Elizabeth,

part of holding power was holding the hearts of her courtiers.

They were meant to be in love with her.

How did the young Walter Raleigh

secure an audience in the rose garden?

The story goes that he put his cape over a puddle for her,

but that probably never happened.

It seems that they were writing very soon after he arrived,

and he was spending a lot of time with her.

Other men in the court must have been a bit "jelly"

of Walter Raleigh cos he was getting all the Queen's attention.

Absolutely, yeah. His rivals were really annoyed,

and he was rising as her new favourite very quickly.

And writing poetry. Ancl writing poetry.

Despite a 20-year age gap,

young Walter wasn't satisfied with just having the Queen's ear.

He wanted to win her heart, too.

I have come armed with some of the rapier-like poesy of Walter Raleigh.

You may want to position yourself where you can vomit

discreetly into a flower bed.

"Fortune hath taken away my love,

"My life's joy and my soul's heaven above.

"Fortune hath taken thee away, my princess,

"My world's joy And my true fantasy's mistress."

There you go. This is like some lovestruck teenager.

This is Elizabeth's rejoinder. Right.

"Ah, silly pug, wert thou so afraid?

"Mourn not, my Wat, nor be thou so dismayed

"|t passeth fickle fortune's power and skill

"To force my heart to think thee any ill."

Oh, very nice, very nice. He is well and truly dismissed.

Do you know, I used to write poems to people when I was, uh,

a much younger man. Were they better than this?

To be honest, I think some of them were, but I never got one back.

Oh! So you see,

He's already doing quite well, isn't he? Yes.

What actually made the Queen fall for Walter Raleigh?

Because, to be brutally frank, he's not that good.

He's a bit birthday card-ish.

Yeah, I don't think it was the poetry.

I think he was a bit rough, a bit rugged.

But most importantly, he was a very frank speaker.

He spoke very directly to the Queen,

but in a way that she could kind of get on board

with these wild things that he was saying.

The Queen became so enamoured with the handsome Raleigh

that their racy behaviour almost caused a scandal.

Warning, please cover the ears of any children in the room now.

When Raleigh was invited over to sit with her,

and he sits down and the Queen moves to rub some dirt off his face,

which is a very intimate thing to do. God, yes.

And what's worse is that Raleigh stops her hand

and wipes it off himself.

He touched the Queen. Yeah. Ancl stops her in what she was doing.

And she could have said, "Off with his head" at that point.

But she didn't. No. She was absolutely fine with it.

All that sizzling romantic tension

made Raleigh Elizabeth's new favourite,

and it was about to pay off, literally.

The boy Walter done good. The Queen gifted him a mansion in Dorset

and the poshest house in London,

and monopolies on wine and woollen cloth.

He was made Lord Warden of the Stannaries,

that is, all the tin mines in the West Country,

and captain of the Queen's Guard.

Oh, and he was also gifted 40,000 acres

of other people's land in Ireland,

which he promptly turned into a very lucrative plantation.

The Devon boy had arrived.

However, there was a vital piece of paper standing between him

and changing the course of England's and the world's history forever.

Walks off mysteriously.

Vast wealth, tick. The Queen's ear, tick.

Now the West Country lad could tackle his greatest ambition -

becoming an explorer.

But for English seafarers at the time,

the line between exploration and piracy was a very blurred one,

and Raleigh had a distant cousin who knew all about that,

fellow Devon lad and captain of the most famous English voyage yet,

Sir Francis Drake.

This is a replica of his ship,

the Golden Hind, the first English ship

to circumnavigate the globe, and of such repute

that it was also the subject of the first ever Airfix model.

Anyway, that circumnavigation at the time

was billed as a voyage of discovery of learning.

In actual fact, it was a raid because Drake sailed off

round the western side of South America, looting Spanish gold.

Drake not only returned with

around half a billion pounds' worth of loot,

he earned himself a knighthood.

For the younger, ambitious Raleigh, this was a man to aspire to,

but first he'd have to tackle some English bureaucracy,

because if you wanted to discover new lands

and plunder Spanish ships en route, you needed a permit.

This is what you needed -

a chitty, a docket, a letter from the Queen.

There is her name writ large, giving you permission as a privateer,

ie, a state sponsored pirate, to loot any ship or raid any port,

providing they were owned by enemies of the Crown.

This is a Tudor licence to kill, and any loot collected

would be split between the privateer and the Queen herself.

Now, the Queen issued these in some secrecy,

usually through her counsel, because that way if the voyage was a success

and she got some more treasure, she could go hurrah for England!

But if it went wrong, if it caused, for example, a war with Spain,

she could completely distance herself from it.

Raleigh wanted a piece of all this,

and he also had a much bigger prize for the Queen in mind.

Raleigh knew the perfect spot to capture a Spanish treasure ship.

By now, Spain had conquered much of the Caribbean and Central America.

Their ships' holds, bursting with gold and silver,

would travel north up the American coast

before catching the trade winds home to Europe.

Raleigh wanted to capitalise on this by setting up a piracy HQ

in North America, from which he could launch his attacks.

This was a golden opportunity for Walter, quite literally.

A new world base would give him

freedom to plunder as many Spanish ships as he wanted,

and he could also provide land, people and souls for his queen

to baptise in the Protestant faith.

It would be England's first New World colony.

Raleigh had a plan and he had a patent.

All that stood in his way was 3,500 miles of open ocean.

You rejoin us, viewers, in 1584,

a very exciting time for Walter Raleigh.

He's won a permit from the Queen

to establish England's first New World colony.

But how's he going to find his way to the right spot?

3,500 miles across the Atlantic,

in a time of rather rudimentary navigational know-how.

"Second star on the right and straight on till morning."

Those were Peter Pan's instructions for reaching Neverland.

And to be honest, up until the invention of satnav in the 1990s,

navigation at sea was pretty much like that.

It's that time in the program me

when we get in a boat and do some sailing.

Permission to come aboard, skipper.

Our task is to test

the leading navigational instruments of Raleigh's day.

And the most common device at the time

was one that had been around since antiquity.

It's called an astrolabe. Normally made of brass,

this is a laser-cut wooden replica made for us by Alan,

who is our vintage navigation correspondent.

It's like a miniature map of the heavens

that you can carry around with you.

This side will tell you all sorts of stuff about stars,

but most importantly, this side will allow you to measure the angle

of the sun above the horizon.

And if you do that at midday, you can work out your latitude,

how far north or south you are. Now, that all sounds very simple,

but actually it's very tricky cos I've gotta try and allow it

to hang vertically from there...

and arrange this so that the sun shines through that hole,

which is a bit like a camera obscura,

and form a little shiny disc on that one.

Let's give it a go, anyway.

Hang on, I've got the little dots.

Yep. It's hanging vertically and it needs to go that way.

Hang on. This is almost impossible.

'And this is on a calm day.

'Imagine trying to do this in a Mid-Atlantic swell!'

Oh, there it is. There it is. Oh, yeah.

Well, I saw the little dot, and I make that 38 degrees.

38 degrees.

'Now, as responsible mathematicians we'll do a few readings

'and take an average. This should be easy now I've had a practice.'

This is impossible. This would be difficult on land.

There's my dot. That time I made it 34 degrees.

OK, that's a few degrees difference.

Shall I do one more?

37 degrees. Somewhere in the middle.

Well, we know roughly where we are.

Which is interesting because we haven't moved. Yes.

Time to head below and check where the astrolabe thinks we are.

That comes out at a latitude of 48.5 degrees.

48... Oh, it's right at the bottom. Northern France, near Brest.

Right. So that's quite a long way off, isn't it?

Because we're actually here.

'The astrolabe has located us around 140 miles

'from our actual location in Cornwall. Oh, dear.'

And that's just the latitude.

We've got no idea about longitude at this point in history.

So all we think is that we're on a line that goes

around the globe there. Yeah.

'So, the astrolabe definitely has room for improvement.

'Luckily, there was an alternative navigational tool,

'something that could make Raleigh's expedition

'across the Atlantic far more accurate -

'a super high-tech, precision engineered piece of kit.'

Right. This is medievalsatnav, version 2.0.

A stick, but a very clever stick. This bit slides along.

It's called a cross-staff because it's cross-shaped.

And if I put it up to my face and get the top of that cross piece

at the bottom of the sun and then the other end on the horizon...

Hold on.

This is a lot easier,

and it makes a lot more sense than the astrolabe,

but it's still pretty difficult.

I mean, apart from that you burn your eyeball out,

it's very difficult to hold it steady.

The sun is so bright when you actually look at it.

This is why pirates ended up with eye-patches

going, "Ooh-ah, ooh-ah" all the time.

Lock it off. And then on the side there is a scale

that I can read in degrees,

and it's roughly 33.5.

Right. Let's see if Raleigh's newfangled stick beat the astrolabe.

So, the cross-staff gives us a latitude of 50.5 degrees.

That doesn't sound quite so bad.

So we're actually... we're actually on a line of latitude that is north

of the end of Cornwall, actually heading up towards Padstow.

But it is in Cornwall. It is in Cornwall.

It is in England.

The cross-staff is only 30 miles out

compared with the astrolabe at 140.

For Raleigh, this improved accuracy would be a godsend.

We're used to navigating in cars

and they can be accurate down to a couple of metres.

But, you know, for the 15th and 16th centuries,

getting the right end of a whole country, that's not bad.

It's not bad. With a wooden stick. With a wooden stick.

So, in April 1584, armed with a wooden stick,

two ships prepared to set sail

on a reconnaissance voyage for Raleigh's New World HQ.

For Walter Raleigh, this, his first great expedition,

would be the culmination of years of expensive planning and fundraising

and writing his ridiculous, flattering poetry.

But it would be a voyage of discovery,

of adventure, of conquest, and of gathering treasure.

Except he wasn't allowed to go.

His fawning and flattery of the Queen had been so successful

that she now couldn't bear to be parted from him.

She ordered Raleigh to stay at court

while his fleet set sail without him.

So much for the great explorer, eh?

While Raleigh was held at Her Majesty's pleasure,

his ships followed the trade winds to the Caribbean,

before sailing north to a chain of islands

along the coast of today's North Carolina.

After six weeks of exploring, they found what seemed like

the perfect spot for Raleigh's American base -

a small island named Roanoke.

This first attempt at a New World colony

would be the catalyst for a powerful force

that would come to dominate the globe - the British Empire.

Now, this, I'm sure you recognise it,

is the British Museum, and it is, depending on who you ask,

either a stunning collection of artefacts

charting human history from all over the globe,

or the world's biggest lost property office.

What it definitely is, is a testimony to the far reach

of the British state,

otherwise known as the British Empire.

'And Raleigh's little expedition

'would be the first faltering step in its creation.'

Do I keep going?

'I'm going behind the scenes at the museum

'to see the treasures that came back from a 1585 voyage to Roanoke.

'Not gold or silver but watercolours.'

Now, the reason these pictures are so incredibly precious,

apart from because they're beautifully done, is that,

of course, this was how the story of this amazing new world was told.

There was obviously no TV or radio or even Pathe newsreel.

It was people bringing back pictures.

Pictures that they'd drawn and painted.

'For the first time, the people of England

'got a glimpse of North America.'

When Raleigh's men arrived,

they encountered a village a little like this one.

They shared food. They shared words.

They wouldn't have understood each other, obviously.

And the locals apparently took to the English and looked after them.

They fed them, they sheltered them, they protected them

from other groups in the area.

And later, one of the captains of the expedition would write,

"A more kind and loving people there cannot be found in the world."

Not that they'd seen the whole world yet, obviously,

they hadn't even seen all of America.

Well, it all appears to be absolutely delightful.

I bet you it doesn't last.

A qualified hand replaces this watercolour

with the next one for our consideration.

I'm obviously not allowed to touch them.

Now, this is probably Wingina, the leader of the Secotan people.

'Legend has it that when the colonists first asked him

'the name of his country, he replied "Wingandacoa".'

Which actually means, in the local language,

something like, "Ooh, look at you with your fancy clothes!"

'Despite confusing a fashion compliment

'with the name of his beloved homeland,

'the explorers won Wingina's trust.'

Very significantly, Wingina decided that he would send back

with the English two senior people from amongst his clan.

And they arrived in England safely,

and Raleigh put them up in his big posh house on The Strand.

He dressed them in Elizabethan finery,

and they caused an absolute sensation.

He was using them as a marketing tool.

Here they had real living people to say,

"Hey, this new place is going to be fantastic.

"Why not fund a second expedition?"

And they did.

'Investors opened their purses

'and planning for another voyage began.

'Raleigh was headline news.'

lnjanuary 1585, Walter Raleigh was knighted.

Soon after that, he also assumed

the title Lord and Governor of Virginia,

naming the new colony after his beloved Virgin Queen.

Sir Walter must have been chuffed to bits.

He had a knighthood. He had a lordship.

He had fame. He had immense fortune.

He had the Queen of England eating out of his hand.

But despite being the first Governor of Virginia,

he still wasn't allowed to go there.

But there was a new danger on the high seas.

Catholic Spain had had enough of the English looting their ships

and backing Protestant rebels.

Open war was about to break out.

Raleigh's second expedition now faced the prospect of sea battles,

and his new colony would need a heavy defence

against the threat of Spanish attack.

His answer? Call in the big guns.

Half of Raleigh's 600-strong expedition

were soldiers packing heat.

Raleigh ordered £400 worth,

that's about £100,000 in today's money,

of gunpowder from the Tower of London.

That was enough to fill around 120 barrels.

120 wooden barrels of gunpowder stored on wooden boats,

where people cooked over an open fire,

lit candles and what have you.

And there wouldn't have been a risk assessment,

because in those days, that would have been considered

ye right load of oldy nonsense.

And they brought guns, lots of guns.

'With the help of my glamorous assistant,

'ballistics expert Charlie, and his high-tech diagnostic kit,

'I'm putting the weapons Raleigh had in his arsenal to the test.'

He's going to fire the weapons for me because, unfortunately,

I've injured my wrist, so...

We need to talk about black powder.

Can I dispense a little bit?

You can. Yeah.

Look at that.

This revolutionised warfare forever.

Potassium nitrate was the vital ingredient,

is actually made from urine and faeces.

So we were actually shooting at the Spanish

with our own piss and shit.

'The most common gun used by Raleigh's men was the matchlock,

'which works by touching a burning wick to the gunpowder to ignite it.'

So, you've got to make it land in the pan, haven't you? Yeah.

'These hadn't changed much since they were first introduced

'in the late 1400s, and they had some serious shortcomings.'

In battle, that would be left smouldering,

which would be quite risky,

cos when you were loading up with black powder,

you could easily blow yourself to bits.

OK, let's load her up.

Straight down the barrel.

The wadding will give you a gas tight seal.

Then we put our ball in.

It is a faff, isn't it?

I mean, to be honest, a good enemy could just run up

and kick you in the bollocks while you're doing this. Yeah.

'But once we're loaded...'

Safety on.

'..The time for faff is over.'

Oh.

It's a bit anti-climactic, Charlie.

Cor. Whoa.

'Let's see that on Charlie's monitor.

'The ball hurtles out at around 300 miles an hour.

'But only once you finally get the powder lit.'

That's actually a bit hopeless, isn't it?

By the time you've faffed around, someone's just wandered up

and casually cut your head off.

Yeah, not for me.

'Luckily for Raleigh,

'a new gun technology had recently been invented.'

OK, does it need a little prime in the pan?

'Using a flint spark to ignite the gunpowder.'

Ancl I think we're ready to fire it.

'This protected it from the rain and the high seas.

'And you could fire it twice as fast.'

Ooh-hoo-hoo-ooh.

I like that, because you can be pretty certain it's gonna work.

Compared with the matchlock.

'So, we've tested Raleigh's small arms firepower.

'But that's not all he was packing on board.

'He would need something much bigger to take on a Spanish fleet.'

Why are we in a tunnel?

Our next experiment requires an enclosed environment.

Right. Is it the sort of projectile that could go a long way?

That kind of carry on, yeah. Right.

If you're wondering what we're talking about, viewers.

Well, it's at the other end of the tunnel outside.

Follow us.

'What we're about to test was one of the most powerful,

'yet mobile, weapons so far invented.'

I'm very excited about it going off.

It's a cannon!

More specifically, a falconet.

So called because the main cannon that they used on the ships

was called the falcon.

This is a small version which is designed to be portable.

You can take it ashore.

You can install it in a fort you've built.

'Perfect for the busy explorer who enjoys a scrap on the move.'

It takes a one pound projectile

and uses half a pound of black powder.

This is the cannonball.

I wonder what that would be worth in a game of marbles at school?

Hundreds and hundreds.

Can I shove that up the spout?

You can shove that up the spout.

That is seated.

Ball, please. Ball.

Ba ll.

The target is ready.

Anyone in the tunnel?

There you are, that's health and safety satisfied.

Right. Let's, as they say, retire to a safe distance.

Earplugs in, everyone.

DOG WHIMPERS

Stand by.

Firing. Three, two, one.

Ooh-hoo-hoo-ooh.

That's a proper bang.

Hang on, you've completely obliterated it.

Where's the target?

It's smashed it.

That's a one pound cannonball.

That's a small one, a falconet.

I think that was a pretty good shot, to be fair,

considering it was a cannon.

JAMES CH UCKLES It's tremendous.

'Charlie's team are on the case with an action replay

'that Raleigh could only have dreamed of seeing.'

That is a state-of-the-art Tudor weapon.

This is state-of-the-art 21st century analysis,

including slow motion.

Wow.

Ooh.

A piece of wood finds out.

What velocity was that? 230 metres per second.

So that was by far the fastest thing in the world...

in Raleigh's time, wasn't it? Yeah.

I mean, by a long, long way. By a long way.

That's really absolutely...

Ronnie Scott-ed it, hasn't it?

'Such was the terrifying power of Raleigh's new weapons.

'But that terror would not be reserved just for the Spanish.

'Raleigh's new colony would descend into chaos and violence.'

Welcome back, viewers, to 1585.

Sir Walter Raleigh is held at court by his doting Virgin Queen,

but he's about to send off his second voyage

to the land he's calling Virginia.

This time, Raleigh sent seven ships

full to bursting with supplies and weapons.

They swung by the Caribbean for a spot of plunder,

before heading north to set up base on Roanoke Island.

But just as they arrived, the ship, carrying all the food,

ran aground on a sandbank and their supplies were lost.

Unable to feed themselves, the starving settlers began bullying

the locals into sharing their precious food stores.

Unsurprisingly, Chief Wingina soon got fed up

with his English house guests.

The situation called for a tactful diplomatic response.

So what did the settlers do?

When a cup went missing, they burned down a local village.

And when Chief Wingina withheld provisions as a protest,

they shot him, and then cut his head off for good measure.

Relations with Wingina's tribe had now descended into violence,

and the colonists were still starving.

When a passing English ship stopped by to check in on them,

the settlers jumped aboard and fled for home.

Raleigh's New World colony was an utter fiasco,

and his reputation was in tatters.

Well, it should have been...

...but the facts were no match for his skill at spin doctoring.

Raleigh hastily commissioned a book giving a behind-the-scenes peek

at his fantastically successful and glamorous colony.

He talks about all the fine things that are available there,

like cedar, wine, oils, furs, copper, pearls.

It's just abundant with great stuff, and especially food.

And they talk about beans.

They loved the beans, the English, and said,

"They were in taste, the equal of our English peas."

So, Raleigh's thinking essentially, was that he wanted to make

this new place exciting, exotic, alluring, an adventure.

But he also wanted to emphasise that it was safe and friendly.

A bit like saying, you know, back in the 1960s,

come to the Costa del Sol, it's warm, it's fantastic.

But don't worry cos you can get egg and chips.

He seems to have left out the bit about the starvation

and the chief they'd beheaded,

and put in a bit about the Secotan people

that says a lot about England's ambitions.

It says that the people may be quickly brought to civility

and true religion.

Uh-uh. And here's a very telling passage.

Now, this is what the indigenous people were thinking.

"That there were more of our generation yet to come

"to kill theirs and take their place."

That was the fear of the locals.

And they were right, weren't they?

They were right to fear that.

'Raleigh's propaganda attracted

'eager new colonists in their droves.'

And seduced by his PR, 117 civilians,

men, women and children, signed up for it.

And in 1587, the third expedition set sail.

And guess what? Walter Raleigh again was not with them.

At first, things went well.

They fixed up the old colony's abandoned wooden fort,

built some huts, and there was even a new baby -

the first English child born in the Americas.

Aww! It didn't last, though.

After a couple of months, it was the same old, same old.

The settlers were starving. The locals were hostile.

So john White, the settlers' leader, hot-footed it,

if that were possible back then, back to England

to organise supplies and equipment for a relief mission.

But there was a problem.

Open war had finally broken out with Spain, and in 1588,

they sent the Spanish Armada to invade England.

This would be one of the biggest naval battles

the world had ever seen,

and every last English ship was needed.

The fledgling colony, 3,500 miles away

and desperate for relief, would have to wait for three years.

When an English ship finally made it back to Roanoke,

they found it completely deserted.

There was no sign of the families, the children, even the garrison.

All they found was the word "Croatoan"

carved on a piece of wood.

Now, Croatoan was another tribe on an island some 50 miles away.

Time for a rescue mission.

But then a storm blew up and they thought,

"Well, sod this for a game of sailors",

and they went back to England.

If Tripadvisor had been around in the time,

well, Raleigh's resort would have probably scored

something like one out of five and the comment,

"Verily, forsooth, I would not recommend ye place."

But even despite all this,

Walter Raleigh still came up smelling of potatoes.

Now, let's put aside for one minute things like Virginia and the Armada

and concentrate on the things for which our Wally is properly famous.

Which means, of course, spuds.

The story goes that fresh from Virginia,

Raleigh brought home the nation's very first potatoes.

With a new, reliable and calorie-packed crop

to power the nation,

the flea-ridden masses danced with joy.

Well, it wasn't quite that simple.

The trouble is, in the 16th century,

nobody really knew what to do with them.

At first, they actually thought they were poisonous.

They called them "the Devil's apples".

And then they decided that they gave you leprosy.

And finally, they decided that potatoes would fill you with lust.

Which is why in The Merry Wives Of Windsor

by William Shakespeare,

Falstaff cries, "Let the sky rain potatoes,

"let it thunder to the tune of Greensleeves",

which I think was him saying that he expected

to get his card stamped that night.

Potatoes had a bit of a PR problem.

Solution, put them in England's favourite dish of the day, the pie.

Elizabeth was apparently a pie fan.

Hooray! And her subjects were chucking any old thing into pastry.

So, why not a newfangled potato,

along with dates, lemons, nutmeg and, er... bone marrow?

They had this rather weird pie recipe.

A potato pie, spelt P-Y-E, for supper.

Gadzooks!

Ooh.

Right, I'm going in,

as they've said in every action film ever made.

That's the stodgiest thing ever created.

You couldn't eat that whole slice, you'd explode.

And the idea that that might fill you with bodily lust

because it's got potatoes in.

I can't imagine a bigger passion killer, to be honest.

It's worse than massive pants.

'So, it might not be the sexiest of vegetables,

'that's obviously the aubergine,

'but the potato is undeniably the most delicious.'

Mmm.

'And once we realised spuds could also become lovely things

'like roasties and jackets and mash, the nation went potato crazy.'

The peasants started growing potatoes in their millions.

They were easy to grow, we all know that.

They were cheap.

The government hadn't cottoned on to a way of taxing them.

But of course, the government did eventually notice

how popular potatoes were,

and they used the potato to build up the population and to feed armies.

So in a roundabout way, through the good offices of the potato,

Sir Walter Raleigh did have a hand in empire building.

Except that's not actually true, because he had absolutely sweet FA

to do with the discovery of potatoes.

They were probably, to be honest, brought to England by the Spanish.

And in any case, they didn't grow in Virginia.

They grew in Colombia, where he also hadn't been.

For once, Raleigh isn't actually responsible for his own spin.

It was the empire-loving Victorians who couldn't bear the thought

that our beloved spuds were brought to Europe by the Spanish.

So they picked out a handy national hero to pin it on instead.

So, empire, fail. Potatoes, fail.

But there was one product of the new world

that he did have a hand in.

For this next bit, viewers, health and safety requires us

to move outside to the fire escape.

This is tobacco, of course.

Virginia was absolutely thick with the stuff.

We don't know for sure that Raleigh personally introduced tobacco

to England, but he definitely made it famous.

Apparently, he encouraged the Queen to have a puff.

It was said, actually,

that the first time Raleigh smoked a pipe back home in England,

his servant threw a jug of ale over him

because he thought he was on fire.

Which I suppose he was, technically speaking.

Oh, and he didn't just propagate the use of tobacco.

He absolutely loved the stuff himself.

After his death, his tobacco pouch was found

and it had inscribed on it,

"You were my friend when I was in need."

'Finally, something Raleigh actually succeeded at.'

So I suppose you could argue, actually,

that our hero has ultimately been responsible for...

tens of millions of deaths and bronchial disorders

and smelly jumpers.

But, you know, if he hadn't done it, somebody else would have.

Just like tobacco,

Raleigh's celebrity status spread like wildfire.

Despite his own failure,

he had ignited English excitement for a North American colony,

and he was still riding high at Elizabeth's court.

But then he made a grave mistake.

He fell in love.

Ah, the rose garden.

What better place to discuss romance, love

and a treacherous betrayal.

So, what actually happened?

Well, Raleigh had a relationship

with one of Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting,

named Bess Th rockmorton.

She ended up pregnant, and the two married secretly.

'Raleigh had to accept he wouldn't be marrying the Queen.

'But with Bess, he got pretty close.'

So, trying to keep something like that secret from the Queen

is a bit of an ask, isn't it?

Especially in a court filled with gossiping people.

Mm. She does find out eventually.

She feels betrayed by her favourite.

She felt that she owned him,

but also his choice of one of her ladies-in-waiting.

Her crush has gotten off with her younger, hotter, close friend.

Yeah, well, he's gonna regret that in a couple of seconds

when I appear outside the Tower of London.

Because hell hath no fury like a virgin monarch scorned.

CAWS

The Queen was absolutely livid.

She barred him from court and locked him... in the Tower.

He wasn't there for long, though.

You rejoin us, viewers,

at a troubling time for our faltering hero.

It's 1592. Queen Elizabeth has locked Raleigh in the Tower

for secretly marrying one of her ladies-in-waiting.

But luckily for Raleigh, one of his raiding fleets

arrived home with the biggest single haul of pilfered treasure

ever known, which proved too enticing to the ship's crew,

who started disappearing with bits of it,

including the Queen's share.

So, Walter was let out of prison to go and round up the missing loot,

and because he was still barred from court,

that meant he could actually go on a real adventure.

Potentially the most lucrative of his life.

Raleigh had heard a tantalising tale,

the greatest legend of the Age of Exploration, in fact,

that, if true, could make him the richest man in England.

A rumour was doing the rounds.

One of a city of pure gold.

The legend of the lost city of El Dorado.

Raleigh was determined to find it, so he raised £60,000,

that's about 10 million quid in today's money.

And because he'd fallen out of favour with the Queen,

he was going to go himself.

The clock was ticking,

as the Spanish were also rumoured to be looking for El Dorado.

In 1595, he set off from Plymouth, charting a course from the Canaries

to the mouth of the Orinoco River in present day Venezuela.

Finally, Raleigh was on an expedition.

He knew, as he put it, that people found him too easeful

and sensual to undertake a journey of such great travail.

So he marched up the Orinoco River

and gave some Spaniards a good shoeing.

And he also found gold. Or at least that's what he wrote to the Queen.

"This area hath more gold than the best of the Indies," he said.

What he'd actually found was iron pyrites - fool's gold.

The Queen was not amused.

Elizabeth clearly wasn't going to fund any more expeditions.

But Raleigh didn't give up that easily.

He would raise it from the gullible public instead.

This is Walter's version of fake news.

His book, The Discovery Of The Large, Rich

And Beautiful Empire Of Guiana.

It's beautifully written. It's lavishly illustrated.

It's complete bullshit.

It's really a sales pitch, because what he wanted to do

was persuade people to invest in his voyage,

because of this marvellous land that would await them if they took part.

And I'm going to read you a bit from it cos it's fantastic.

It says, "More rich and beautiful cities,

"more temples adorned with golden images,

"more sepulchres filled with treasure than either Mexico or Peru.

"And the shining glory of this conquest

"will eclipse the Spanish nation."

Now, let's have a look at some of the pictures.

The land was filled with exotic and very friendly animals,

including this one which had a nice, soft, furry body,

long claws, and the head of lain Duncan Smith.

He also talked about a people who didn't have heads.

They had their faces in the middle of their chests like this.

All lies, though. All of it completely made up.

The man was a charlatan.

It might have all been complete tosh,

but it was page-turning tosh.

Raleigh was now a best-selling author and explorer

and an A-list celebrity.

But then a plot twist.

The Queen died. In an instant, the Tudor era was over,

and the new kid on the block was an entirely different proposition.

BAGPIPES PLAY

James I, a Scot...

...an absolutist monarch who wanted peace with Spain.

And he immediately started annoying Parliament

with his high-handed speeches and his constant demands for money.

Pretty soon, rumours of plots started to circulate

throughout his court, and James decided

that he had to take down anybody

who might pose a threat to his precarious rule.

Over the years, the flashy, outspoken Raleigh

had rubbed most of the court up the wrong way.

His rivals seized their chance

and began turning Kingjames against him.

Soon, Raleigh was implicated in a plot to overthrow the King.

James had him arrested and put on trial for treason.

This would be the ultimate test of Raleigh's silver tongue.

Time to roll out the rhetoric.

So, our Walt is now at the point where he's essentially arguing

for keeping his head on.

He's on trial for his life.

He's got to deploy all of the skills and knowledge that he has gathered

over the years in an attempt not just to persuade the jury,

but also the court of public opinion.

'We don't know if Raleigh had been plotting against the King,

'but the Crown's case was extremely shaky.

'Resting on the evidence of a single witness,

'Raleigh repeatedly demanded that his accuser

'be brought before the court for questioning.'

Ancl when that was refused him, he drew attention to it by saying,

"|f you proceed to condemn me without an oath,

"without witnesses upon a paper accusation,

"you try me by the Spanish Inquisition."

Ancl this enraged the prosecutor who said,

"This is treasonable speech."

Ancl Raleigh replies, "|t is no rare case for a man

"to be falsely accused, aye, and falsely condemned, too."

Ooh, I like that.

'Everyone in the courtroom was spellbound

'by Raleigh's performance.'

One commentator said that before the trial,

he would have ridden 100 miles to see Raleigh hanged.

But after hearing him,

he would have ridden a thousand miles to save his life.

That was the power of the rhetoric that he deployed that clay.

The public didn't get a vote, though, and the trial was fixed.

Raleigh was found guilty and condemned to death,

but his defiant performance had elevated him

to national hero status, and fearing public outcry,

King James was forced to spare him the axe.

He was simply commuted to life imprisonment,

and it's because of that powerful impact

that his presence in the courtroom had.

So the pen did turn out to be mightier than the sword then.

On this particular occasion, absolutely.

But while Raleigh may have weasel led his way out of a beheading,

he was still thrown in the Tower of London.

Bet you he can't talk his way out of this one.

Welcome back, viewers, to 1603 and the Tower of London,

where Kingjames has locked up Sir Walter Raleigh for treason.

Raleigh, the great adventurer,

spent 13 years here in the Bloody Tower,

and presumably it didn't take him very long to explore his two rooms,

so he resorted to what had always helped him in the past.

He wrote another bloody book.

And it seems he may have been a little overambitious,

even for a man with absolutely nothing else to do,

because this pile of books here represents the volume of writing

in Sir Walter Raleigh's History Of The World.

This number of words is greater

than the entirejK Rowling Harry Potter series,

and it doesn't even include any flying cars or owls.

It did, however, include some light roasting of the monarchy

with zingers, such as describing a previous King, Richard Ill,

as "a spectacle of shame and dish on our".

So scandalous was its tone that it became a bestseller...

until the King got a copy for Christmas.

This, of course, annoyed James, and he had it banned,

saying that it was "too saucy in censuring the acts of princes".

Crikey.

I mean, I've sat in a few historic prison cells,

and many of them are smaller and damper

and more windowless than this one.

But even so, what has he got?

A grimy window and his boring book to write for 13 years.

Thirteen years?

I'd have cut my own head off.

But as befitting a man of national hero status,

Raleigh's prison cell also came with a small garden,

which he swiftly realised he could use to claw back some influence

by reinventing himself as a pharmacist.

He grew plants from the seeds he collected on his travels,

and he turned a small hen house into a laboratory

where he concocted potions to cure,

amongst other things, sore eyes, piles and diarrhoea.

And quite by chance,

some of the recipes are here in the herb beds.

Here, for example, is the simple remedy for ye piles.

"For the piles, take the oil of shoemaker's shreds

"made by boiling them in water.

"Beat this oil with the herb mullet and apply it.

"Also, if you burn frankincense and set it in your stool,

"that the fume may come to the fundament..."

Ie, go up yourjacksie.

"..It cureth them or the emerods."

And believe it or not, these were very popular.

Even James' wife, Anne of Denmark, was a customer...

...because, clearly, she had the "emerods".

'And so it seemed Raleigh would live out his remaining days in the Tower,

'curing piles for the ladies of the court.

'But, no, he had one last audacious con up his sleeve.'

King James had fallen out with Parliament so badly

that he'd suspended it, and as a result,

had completely run out of money.

Now, Sir Walter Raleigh, in his prison cell, got wind of this

and wrote to the King, offering to help with promises of gold.

And like many desperate people before him,

the King fell for Raleigh's patter

and decided he would do something with this offer.

Raleigh had done it again.

He was released from prison, given a fleet of ships,

and off he went to find El Dorado.

There was only one rule.

Impoverishedjames had made peace with the Spanish king,

and on no account was the fervently anti-Spanish Raleigh

to rock the boat.

Raleigh set sail, but this time, things didn't go so smoothly.

The fleet was blown off course by storms,

hitting South America 700 miles east of their destination,

and they were forced to crawl up the coast to the Orinoco River.

Then Raleigh came down with a terrible case of the ague

and was laid up in his cabin when the fleet arrived.

He sent his men upriver to find gold,

but instead, flouting the explicit orders of King James,

they looted and burned a Spanish outpost,

killing three of its inhabitants.

King James was furious and accused Raleigh

of trying to start a war with Spain, and there was, of course, no gold.

It was a colossal cock-up, and it sealed Raleigh's fate.

This time, unfortunately,

his silken tongue could not save him.

And so it turned out, before Raleigh could write another book

or perfect a medicinal cure for flatulence,

he was beheaded just over there,

the other side of St Margaret's Church,

and he was buried here as well.

Or most of him was, because even in death he could create a story.

His devoted wife, Bess, carried his severed head around with her

in a bag for the next 30 years.

And just like his severed head, Raleigh's influence lived on.

His king-bashing books and defiant speech from the scaffold

would inspire future anti-monarchists,

particularly Oliver Cromwell, who 30 years later,

would behead Kingjames' own son, Charles.

Raleigh's genius rhetoric would strike its final blow

from beyond the grave.

But what did his voyages achieve?

Was Sir Walter Raleigh a great explorer?

Well, it seems he didn't go on half the expeditions.

And although I've said he was the catalyst for the British Empire,

most of his attempts at colonisation were a bit dismal, let's be honest.

It was while Raleigh was locked up in the Tower that England's

first real American colony was established - Jamestown.

But at least Raleigh's naming of Virginia stuck.

And what did he discover?

Well, not potatoes, as it turns out. Not tobacco, not a city of gold.

And even the bicycle isn't named after him.

Most of those fantastical images of Raleigh

were just made up rubbish,

inventions of an era that loved a bit of colonial propaganda.

I think he might have been a bit of a wide boy,

a bit of an arch manipulator

with an unhealthy taste for violence.

The trouble with this, though, is that the popular legend

of Walter Raleigh is a rather lovely one.

Here's this bloke poncing around in his doublet and hose

with his ruff and his neat little beard,

winning the heart and the ear of the Queen,

and writing poetry and saving the nation through spuds.

It's one of those stories that's too good to check.

The trouble is, I have checked it, and now I've spoilt it.

So all I can do, really, viewers, is apologise. I'm very sorry.

Join me in the next episode when I spoil Captain Cook for you.

'Next time...'

Cast off and set sail.

'..Captain James Cook.'

He would chart the final unknown third of the globe.

This was a massive boost to our scientific esteem.

Look at that.

Everybody on board was absolutely "gangplanked".

This chart that he produced, it's a weapon.

MAN: Fire!

The British invented time. It's ours.

WOMAN: Right, James, put some effort into it.

Wah!

I think the dog does better than this.