Elizabeth, whose favour he won by the sacrifice of his cloak, and lost again for a time owing to her jealousy of his passion for one of her Maids of Honour, when he had to spend four years in the Tower, knighted him, gave him vast estates in Ireland, made him captain of the guard, Governor of Jersey, Lord Warden of the Stannaries and Vice-Admiral of Devon and Cornwall. Like Drake, he sat in Parliament; and it was while still in favour with the Queen that he was elected Member for his county.
On the accession of James I, however, Ralegh was charged with joining in the plot on behalf of Arabella Stuart, and was again sent to the Tower. During his long imprisonment there he wrote his most famous work, the History of the World, whose learned, eloquent, and philosophic pages proved that his skill was no less with his pen than with his sword. His stirring description of the last fight of the Revenge inspired Tennyson's noble ballad.
Released from prison by James in order that he might once more sail up the Orinoco in search of the mythical treasure-land ruled over by El Dorado, he came back from that most disastrous expedition a broken man. Again committed to the Tower at the instigation of the Spanish Ambassador, he was soon afterwards beheaded on the old charge of treason, dying as he had lived, dignified, noble, and fearless to the last.
Two other heroic figures of the Elizabethan age, worthy to be ranked in the same company with Drake, are his gallant comrade Hawkyns, who was born at Plymouth in 1532, and Grenville the indomitable, the hero of that last fight of the Revenge.
Several other men who were born in our county have distinguished themselves as explorers, or by having helped, by peaceable means, to found our over-seas empire. Such were Davis, the arctic navigator, who was born near Dartmouth about 1550, who left his name in Davis's Straits, and who wrote The Seaman's Secrets and other works; Sir Humphrey Gilbert, born in 1539 at Dartmouth, distinguished as a soldier in the Irish wars of Elizabeth's reign, but still more as having taken possession of Newfoundland, thus establishing the first British colony; Gate, who with Somers colonised Bermuda in 1611; and Wills, who perished in 1861 with Burke in crossing Australia.
Devonshire has been the native land of many soldiers. Two of the most distinguished, both of whom strongly influenced their country's destiny, and were made dukes as a reward for their services, were Monck and Marlborough. George Monck, born near Torrington in 1608, distinguished himself both by land and sea. He twice defeated the great Dutch admiral Van Tromp; and although severely beaten by de Ruyter he afterwards gained a great victory over him off the North Foreland. At first a Royalist, he joined the parliamentary army after his capture by Fairfax (followed by two years in the Tower) and Cromwell made him governor of Scotland. On the death of the Protector he marched to London, and was the chief instrument in the Restoration of Charles II, who made him Duke of Albemarle.
John Churchill, better known as the Duke of Marlborough, born at Ashe House in 1650, was not only the greatest general of his time, but one of the ablest military commanders the world has ever seen. His most memorable successes were the four great battles of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, in which he defeated the long-victorious armies of Louis XIV, then the most powerful monarch on the continent. By this series of victories, followed by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the peace of Europe was secured for thirty years.
Many great Devonshire men, including some of the earliest who became distinguished, were churchmen or divines, not a few of whom are also famous as authors. Such, for example, was Winfrid, otherwise Saint Boniface, and known as the Apostle of Germany, who, born probably at Crediton in 680, began his career as a Benedictine monk at Exeter, and after spending many years in converting the wild German tribes to Christianity, was appointed archbishop of Mainz, and was afterwards murdered by the Frisians in 755. Such were Leofric, the first bishop of Exeter, Warelwast the builder of the Norman cathedral, Quivil the designer of the magnificent fabric that replaced it, Stapledon and Grandisson his able successors, Reynolds the leading Puritan divine at the Hampton Court Conference of 1604, whose proposal of a new translation of the Bible led to the Authorised Version of 1611, Trelawney, one of the Seven Bishops whose trial and acquittal formed one of the most memorable events of the reign of James II, Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, one of the fathers of English Protestantism, the "Judicious" Hooker, author of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Barclay, who translated Brant's satiric allegory under the title The Shyp of Folys, Prince, author of the Worthies of Devon, Dean Buckland the famous geologist, author of Reliquiae Diluvianae, who died in 1856, and Charles Kingsley, born at Holne in 1819, distinguished as an able and eloquent preacher and as a strenuous worker for the good of mankind, as poet, novelist, and naturalist, author of many books, and especially of Westward Ho! and the Water Babies, and of the words of many beautiful songs, such as the Three Fishers. Not a native of the county, but Bishop of Exeter in 1551, was Miles Coverdale, whose translation of the Bible appeared in 1535. To him many of the finest phrases in our Authorised Version of 1611 are directly due.