Sir Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh was one of the few prisoners to be sent to the Tower of London more than once. He was raised Protestant and therefore spent much of his early life trying to avoid death and persecution by Queen Mary I. He took part the in the suppression of the Desmond Rebellions between 1579 and 1583. He was given 40,000 acres upon the seizure and distribution of land following the rebellion and he became one of the principal landowners in Munster.
In 1584, Queen Elizabeth gave him a royal charter to explore, colonize and rule any heathen lands not possessed by any Christians. In 1585 he was knighted by the Queen and made Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall and vice-admiral for Cornwall and Devon. In 1591, he secretly married one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting and when the marriage was discovered the following year, both of them were imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was released two months later in order to organize and divide the spoils of a captured merchant ship.
Afterward he was returned to the Tower of London but was released in early 1593 and he became a member of Parliament. He slowly rose back to favor and still remained loyal to his wife who bore him two sons. He regained the favor of Queen Elizabeth by 1600 but the Queen died in March of 1603. It was after her death that Sir. Walter Raleigh was arrested in July 1603 for being involved with the Main Plot against James I. He was again imprisoned in the Tower of London.
He was found guilty and was imprisoned until 1616. He had a very productive prison time writing several treatises and the first volume of The Historie of the World, as well as conceiving a son with his wife. He was pardoned in 1617 in order to conduct a mission to Venezuela to find El Dorado. During the expedition, some of his men attacked a Spanish outpost, which was against the conditions of his pardon. The Spanish ambassador demanded Raleigh’s original death sentence be reinstated and the King complied. Raleigh was beheaded in 1618.