Little is known about Raleigh's birth. Some historians believe Raleigh was born in 1552, while others guess as late as 1554. He grew up in the house of Hayes Barton, a farmer, in the village of East Budleigh, not far from Budleigh Salterton in Devon, England. He was the youngest of five sons born to Catherine Champernowne in two successive marriages. His half brothers, John Gilbert, Humphrey Gilbert, Adrian Gilbert, and full brother Carew Raleigh were also prominent during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. Catherine Champernowne was a niece of Kat Ashley, Elizabeth's governess, who introduced the young men at court. (Ronald, p. 249).

Raleigh's family was strongly Protestant in religious orientation and had a number of near-escapes during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I of England. In the most notable of these, Raleigh's father had to hide in a tower to avoid execution. As a result, during his childhood, Raleigh developed a hatred of Catholicism and proved himself quick to express it after the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England came to the throne in 1558.

In 1568 or 1572, Raleigh was registered as an undergraduate at Oriel College, Oxford, but does not seem to have taken up residence. In 1575, he was registered at the Middle Temple. His life between these two dates is uncertain, but, from a reference in his History of the World, he seems to have served with the French Huguenots at the Battle of Jarnac, 13 March 1569. At his trial in 1603, he stated that he had never studied law.

Between 1579 and 1583, Raleigh took part in the suppression of the Desmond Rebellions. He was present at the siege of Smerwick, where he oversaw the slaughter of Italian and Spanish soldiers after they had surrendered. Upon the seizure and distribution of land following the attainders arising from the rebellion, Raleigh received 40,000 acres (160 km²), including the coastal walled towns of Youghal and Lismore. This made him one of the principal landowners in Munster, but he enjoyed limited success in inducing English tenants to settle on his estates.

During his seventeen years as an Irish landlord, frequently domiciling at Killulagh Castle, Clonmellon, county Westmeath, Raleigh made the town of Youghal his occasional home. He was mayor there from 1588 to 1589. He is credited with having planted the first potatoes in Ireland , but it is far more likely that the plant arrived in Ireland through trade with the Spanish. His town mansion, Myrtle Grove, is assumed to be the setting for the story that his servant doused him with a bucket of water after seeing clouds of smoke coming from Raleigh's pipe, in the belief he had been set alight. But this story is also told of other places associated with Raleigh: the Virginia Ash inn in Henstridge near Sherborne, Sherborne Castle, and South Wraxall Manor in Wiltshire, home of Raleigh's friend, Sir Walter Long.

Amongst Raleigh's acquaintances in Munster was another Englishman who had been granted land there, the poet Edmund Spenser. In the 1590s, he and Raleigh travelled together from Ireland to the court at London. Spenser presented part of his allegorical poem, the Faerie Queene, to Elizabeth I.

Raleigh's management of his Irish estates ran into difficulties, which contributed to a decline in his fortunes. In 1602, he sold the lands to Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork. Boyle subsequently prospered under kings James I and Charles I. Following Raleigh's death, Raleigh family members approached Boyle for compensation on the basis that Raleigh had struck an improvident bargain.

Raleigh's plan in 1584 for colonisation in the "Colony and Dominion of Virginia" (which included the present-day states of North Carolina and Virginia) in North America ended in failure at Roanoke Island, but paved the way for subsequent colonies. His voyages were funded primarily by himself and his friends, and never provided the steady stream of revenue necessary to start and maintain a colony in America. (Subsequent colonisation attempts in the early 17th century were made under the joint-stock Virginia Company, which was able to collect the capital necessary to create successful colonies.)

In 1587, Raleigh attempted a second expedition, again establishing a settlement on Roanoke Island. This time, a more diverse group of settlers was sent, including some entire families, under the governance of John White. After a short while in America, White was recalled to England to find more supplies for the colony. He was unable to return the following year as planned, however, because the Queen had ordered that all vessels remain at port for potential use against the Spanish Armada. The threat of the Armada was only partially responsible for delaying White's return until 1590. After England's victory over the Spanish fleet in 1588, the ships were given permission to sail. Unfortunately for the colonists at Roanoke, the small fleet made an excursion toward Cuba. They tried to capture the treasure-laden Spanish merchant ships reported to be proliferate in those waters at that time. White is said to have objected to this unplanned foray, but was helpless to dissuade the crews. They had been told of the enormous riches to be had by the experienced Portuguese pilot hired by Raleigh to navigate the voyage. It was not until 1590, 3 years later, that the supply vessel arrived at the colony, only to find that all colonists had disappeared.

The only clue to their fate was the word "CROATOAN" and letters "CRO" carved into separate tree trunks. This suggested the possibilities that they had been massacred, or absorbed or taken away by local Croatan or perhaps another native tribe. Other speculation includes their having starved, or been swept away or lost at sea during the stormy weather of 1588. A hurricane prevented John White and the crew of the supply vessel from visiting Croatan to investigate the colonists' disappearance. No further attempts at contact were recorded for some years. Whatever the fate of the settlers, the settlement is now remembered as the "Lost Colony of Roanoke Island".

1580s

In December 1581, Raleigh returned to England from Ireland to despatches as his company had been disbanded. He took part in Court life and became a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. The various colourful stories told about him at this period are unlikely to be actually true.

In 1585 Raleigh was knighted and was appointed warden of the stannaries, that is of the mines of Cornwall and Devon, Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, and vice-admiral of the two counties. Both in 1585 and 1586, he sat in parliament as member for Devonshire.

Raleigh commissioned the shipbuilder R. Chapman, of Deptford to build a ship for him. Originally called Ark, it became Ark Raleigh, following the convention at the time by which the ship bore the name of its owner. The Crown, in the form of Queen Elizabeth I, purchased the ship from Raleigh in January 1587, for the sum of £5,000 (£}} as of ), (This took the form of a reduction in the sum Sir Walter owed the queen: he received Exchequer tallies, but no money). As a result, the ship was renamed Ark Royal.

1590s

In 1592, Raleigh was given many rewards by the Queen, including Durham House in the Strand and the estate of Sherborne, Dorset. He was appointed Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard. However, he had not been given any of the great offices of state. In the Armada year of 1588, Raleigh was appointed Vice Admiral of Devon, looking after the coastal defences and military levies.

In 1591, Raleigh was secretly married to Elizabeth "Bess" Throckmorton (or Throgmorton). She was one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting, eleven years his junior, and was pregnant at the time. She gave birth to a son, believed to be named Damerei, who was given to a wet nurse at Durham House. The infant does not seem to have survived, and Bess resumed her duties to the queen. The following year, the unauthorised marriage was discovered and the Queen ordered Raleigh imprisoned and Bess dismissed from court. He was released from prison to divide the spoils from the captured Spanish ship Madre de Dios (Mother of God).

It would be several years before Raleigh returned to favour. The couple remained devoted to each other. During Raleigh's absences, Bess proved a capable manager of the family's fortunes and reputation. They had two more sons, Walter (known as Wat) and Carew.

Raleigh was elected a burgess of Mitchell, Cornwall, in the parliament of 1593. He retired to his estate at Sherborne where he built a new house, completed in 1594, known then as Sherborne Lodge. Since extended, it is now known as Sherborne Castle. He made friends with the local gentry, such as Sir Ralph Horsey of Clifton Maybank and Charles Thynne of Longleat. During this period at a dinner party at Horsey's, there was a heated discussion about religion. The argument later gave rise to charges of atheism against Raleigh. He was elected to Parliament, speaking on religious and naval matters.

In 1594, he came into possession of a Spanish account of a great golden city at the headwaters of the Caroní River. A year later he explored what is now Guyana and eastern Venezuela in search of Manoa, the legendary city. Once back in England, he published The Discovery of Guiana (1596) an account of his voyage which made exaggerated claims as to what had been discovered. The book can be seen as a contribution to the El Dorado legend. Although Venezuela has gold deposits, there is no evidence Raleigh found any mines. He is sometimes said to have discovered Angel Falls, but these claims are considered far-fetched.

In 1596 Raleigh took part in the capture of Cádiz, where he was wounded. He was also the second-in-command of the Islands Voyage to the Azores in 1597.

In 1597, he was chosen member of parliament for Dorset, and, in 1601, for Cornwall. He was unique in the Elizabethan period in sitting for three counties.

1600 to 1618

From 1600 to 1603, as Governor of the Channel Island of Jersey, Raleigh modernised its defences. This included construction of a new fort protecting the approaches to Saint Helier, Fort Isabella Bellissima, or Elizabeth Castle.

Royal favour with Queen Elizabeth I had been restored by this time but did not last. Elizabeth died in 1603, and Raleigh was arrested at Exeter Inn, Ashburton, Devon and imprisoned in the Tower of London on 19 July. On 17 November, Raleigh was tried in the converted Great Hall of Winchester Castle for treason, due to alleged involvement in the Main Plot against King James. Raleigh conducted his defence with great skill, which may, in part, explain why King James spared his life, despite the guilty verdict. He remained in the tower until 1616. While imprisoned, he wrote many treatises and the first volume of The Historie of the World (London, 1628)about the ancient history of Greece and Rome. His son Carew was conceived and born (1604) while Raleigh was legally "dead" and imprisoned in the tower.

In 1616, Raleigh was released to conduct a second expedition to Venezuela in search of El Dorado. During the expedition, Raleigh's men, under the command of Lawrence Keymis, attacked the Spanish outpost of Santo Tomé de Guayana (San Tomé) on the Orinoco River. In the initial attack on the settlement, Raleigh's son Walter was killed by a bullet. On Raleigh's return to England, the outraged Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, successfully demanded that King James reinstate Raleigh's death sentence.

Raleigh was beheaded at Whitehall on 29 October 1618. "Let us dispatch", he said to his executioner. "At this hour my ague comes upon me. I would not have my enemies think I quaked from fear." After he was allowed to see the axe that would behead him, he mused: "This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all diseases and miseries." According to many biographers — Raleigh Trevelyan in his book Sir Walter Raleigh (2003) for instance — Sir Walter's final words (as he lay ready for the axe to fall) were: "Strike, man, strike!"

Having been one of the people to popularise tobacco smoking in England, he left a small tobacco box, found in his cell shortly after his execution. Engraved upon the box was a Latin inscription: Comes meus fuit illo miserrimo tempo (It was my companion at that most miserable time).

Raleigh's head was embalmed and presented to his wife. His body was to be buried in the local church in Beddington, Surrey, the home of Lady Raleigh, but was finally laid to rest in St. Margaret's, Westminster, where his tomb may still be visited today. "The Lords", she wrote, "have given me his dead body, though they have denied me his life. God hold me in my wits." After her death 29 years later, his head was returned to Raleigh's tomb and interred at St. Margaret's Church.

Although Raleigh's popularity had waned considerably since his Elizabethan heyday, his execution was seen by many, both at the time and since, as unnecessary and unjust. Any involvement in the Main Plot appears to have been limited to a meeting with Lord Cobham. One of the judges at his trial later said: "[T]he justice of England has never been so degraded and injured as by the condemnation of the honourable Sir Walter Raleigh."

The state capital of North Carolina, was named in 1792 for Sir Walter, sponsor of the Colony of Roanoke. The "Lost Colony" is commemorated at the Fort Raleigh National Historic Site on Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Also, one of eleven boarding houses at the Royal Hospital School has been named after him.

Raleigh County, West Virginia is also named in his honour.

In popular culture, he is referenced in the song "I'm So Tired" by The Beatles on their 1968 release, The White Album. In 1986, Simon Jones portrayed Raleigh in the episode "Potato" of the BBC sitcom Blackadder II.

Raleigh was portrayed in films by Richard Todd in The Virgin Queen in 1955, and by Clive Owen in The Golden Age in 2007.

Raleigh's poetry is written in the relatively straightforward, unornamented mode known as the plain style. C. S. Lewis considered Raleigh one of the era's "silver poets", a group of writers who resisted the Italian Renaissance influence of dense classical reference and elaborate poetic devices.

In poems such as "What is Our Life" and "The Lie", Raleigh expresses a contemptus mundi (contempt of the world) attitude more characteristic of the Middle Ages than of the dawning era of humanistic optimism. But, his lesser-known long poem "The Ocean to Cynthia" combines this vein with the more elaborate conceits associated with his contemporaries Edmund Spenser and John Donne, expressing a melancholy sense of history.

A minor poem of Raleigh's captures the atmosphere of the court at the time of Queen Elizabeth I. His response to Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" was "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd". "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" was written in 1592, while Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to The Shepherd" was written four years later. Both were written in the style of traditional pastoral poetry. They follow the same structure of six four-line stanzas employing a rhyme scheme of AABB.

• Adamson, J.H. and Folland, H. F. Shepherd of the Ocean, 1969
• Dwyer, Jack Dorset Pioneers The History Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7524-5346-0
• Fuller, Thomas Anglorum Speculum or the Worthies of England, 1684
• Lewis, C. S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, 1954
• Naunton, Robert Fragmenta Regali 1694, reprinted 1824.
• Nicholls, Mark and Williams, Penry. ‘Ralegh, Sir Walter (1554—1618)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Ronald, Susan The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2007. ISBN 0-06-082066-7
• Stebbing, William: Sir Walter Ralegh. Oxford, 1899 Project Gutenberg eText
• Trevelyan, Raleigh Sir Walter Raleigh, 2002, ISBN 978-0713993264
• The Sir Walter Raleigh Collection in Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Texts by Raleigh

• Project Gutenberg edition of The Discovery of Guiana
• Worldly Wisdom from The Historie of the World