John Pory on the Death of Sir Walter Raleigh

HIS year, marking the four-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sir Walter Raleigh, who attempted to plant several colonies along the shores of what is now North Carolina, is being celebrated in that state with special events in his honor. Since the exact date of his birth is unknown,' the anniversary day of his execution, October 29, i6i8, has been selected for special notice. A Sir Walter Raleigh Day Commission, appointed by the governor in I947, has worked out plans for the proper observance of the day, particularly among school children. Plans also are being made for the planting of an Elizabethan garden in Raleigh's memory at Roanoke Island, site of his settlements, and a collection of books by and about Raleigh, including numerous first editions, has recently been opened by the University of North Carolina Library in special rooms with panelling and furniture of the sixteenth century. In view of the special notice being given Raleigh at this time, it seems appropriate to print a hitherto unpublished contemporary account of his death. The account comes from the pen of John Pory (I572-i635), one of the most active of the seventeenth-century newsletter writers, who was in London at that time, endeavoring to secure appointment as secretary in the Virginia colony. He had studied and worked under Hakluyt, had served in Parliament from i6o5 to i6ii, had travelled widely through most of the known world, and was on familiar terms with many of the great men of England. At that moment, he was in the employ of Sir Dudley Carleton, James' ambassador in The Hague, and it was to Carleton that the three letters concerning Raleigh's death were written. Only one of the three deals wholly with this subject, although a second discusses it at some length

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