Raleghs Last Journey

This title is a study in vanity and ambition, madness and resignation. Sir Walter Raleigh was one of the greatest courtiers of his day, Elizabeth's favourite, dashing, brilliant, wily and powerful. This book book takes as its subject his extraordinary last months, during the summer of 1618 when, his last voyage a failure and under great suspicion from James I, he was escorted back to London by Sir Lewis Stucley; the tragi-comic story of this journey, from Plymouth to the scaffold, of Raleigh's grotesque behaviour along the way, of the web of deceit and counter-treachery woven between him and his reviled and much misunderstood betrayer Judas Stucley, and of their travelling companion the French physician and double agent Dr Manourie.