West Country, Protestant, and privateering origins

Raleigh grows up in North Devon amid the West Country culture that produced many English seafarers. His family’s experience under Mary I helps explain his fierce anti-Catholicism. He appears to have served with the Huguenots from 1569 to 1572 and later claimed to have witnessed the Battle of Moncontour. He attended Oriel College, Oxford, and entered the Middle Temple, although at his 1603 trial he claimed he had never studied law. Voyages in 1577 and 1579 with his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert sought a Northwest Passage and attacked Spanish shipping. Even at this early stage, Raleigh promoted ventures that other people had to carry through.