The river runs into the sea by the charming little town of Budleigh Salterton; but it is more interesting to cross the water at Otterton, and passing through the village of East Budleigh, nearly opposite, to go towards Hayes Barton, the house where Sir Walter Raleigh was born.
Fardell, near Ivybridge, was the ancestral home of the Raleighs, but Sir Walter's father settled at Budleigh. In front of the garden a swirling stream crosses a strip of green; and in the garden, at the right time, one may see the bees busy among golden-powdered clusters of candytuft, and dark-red gillyflowers, and a few flame-rose-coloured tulips, proud and erect. The house is very picturesque; it has cob walls and a thatched roof, and is built in the shape of the letter E; a wing projects at either end, and in the middle the porch juts out slightly. The two wings are gabled; there is a small gable over the porch and two dormer ones over the windows at each side of it, the windows having lattice lights and narrow mullions. Dark carved beams above them show up well against the cream-coloured walls. The heavy door is closely studded with nails, and over it fall the delicate sprays and lilac 'butterfly' blossoms of a wistaria. The house has been little altered, and its outward appearance was probably almost the same in Sir Walter's boyhood as it is to-day.
Branscombe
In front of Hayes Barton is a hill covered with oak-woods, and to the west the ground begins to slope upwards to the high moorland of Woodbury Common. Sir Walter had a great affection for his boyhood's home, and later, in trying to buy it back, he wrote to the then owner: 'I will most willingly give you whatsoever in your conscience you shall deem it worth; ... for ye naturall disposition I have to that place, being borne in that house, I had rather seat myself there, than anywhere else.'
To realize Sir Walter at all adequately, he must be contemplated as soldier, sailor, statesman, courtier, explorer, poet, historian, Governor of colonies abroad and of very important offices at home—most of all as a seer, for his eyes discerned a light that did not dawn on his contemporaries. He and his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, foresaw 'that colonization, trade, and the enlargement of empire, were all more important for the welfare of England than the discovery of gold.' Major Hume, who is by no means over-prejudiced in Raleigh's favour, has said in his 'Life of Sir Walter Raleigh': 'To him is due the undying glory of having made the great northern continent of America an English-speaking country. With him it was no accident. The plan sprang fully formed from his great brain. He was greedy of gain, but he spent his money like water in this great project. He knew full well that there was no gold to reward him; that the profit, if any, must be slow, and must accrue mainly to the nation, and not to an individual; and yet he laboured on for thirty years in the face of defeat, disaster, contumely, and disgrace, in full faith and confidence that the great continent was by God's providence reserved for England.'
Raleigh's biographers have wondered at his immense knowledge of naval matters, and particularly of naval warfare, for the Ark Raleigh, which he had built after his own plans, was admitted to be the best ship in the fleet at the time of the Armada. Perhaps his genius for absorbing information developed very early, and Sir John Millais's picture of the two little boys, fascinated by the words of the sailor speaking to them of the breathless adventures he had fought through, the gorgeous sights that he had seen in the lands overseas, helps to explain it. Most West-Countrymen can tell a tale dramatically, as the sailor is telling it—the picture was painted at Budleigh Salterton—and it may be that, with Raleigh's amazing faculty for gathering knowledge, he learned enough of seamanship as he grew up to enable him to grasp and hoard in his memory every detail of the subject as it came before him in later life.
It is impossible to judge any character of a past century without trying to realize in many questions of conduct the gulf that lies between the former point of view and our own, and whatever Sir Walter's faults were, his genius was incomparably greater. His failings were those of his age, and were more than surpassed by the shortcomings of several of Queen Elizabeth's very eminent statesmen. Raleigh left Oxford when he was only seventeen, and joined Mr Henry Champernowne's band of gentlemen volunteers who were fighting for the Protestant Princes in France. After six years' fighting he left the army and betook himself to the Middle Temple, where possibly he spent more time over lyrics than over the law, for a biographer, describing this period of his life, passes over his legal acquirements, but says that 'his vein for ditty and amorous ode was esteemed most lofty, insolent, and passionate.' He and Spenser were very congenial companions, and later Spenser, speaking of their great friendship, said: 'He pip'd, I sang, and when he sang, I pip'd.'
Sir Walter left the Temple for the sea, then went to fight in Ireland, and at the time of the Armada he was Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and responsible for the companies of tinners, who had turned to soldiering. He planned one expedition after another to the New World, and sent them out mainly at his own expense, giving careful instructions to those in charge to observe carefully any plants or produce of any kind that might profit this country, whereas usually explorers searched eagerly for precious metals alone. It was due to these instructions that the potato was brought to England. Rumour for long maintained that Sir Walter actually brought back the plant himself, but, as a matter of fact, the credit of this is due to Heriot, a man of science employed by Raleigh. He showed it with the other 'commodities' he had collected to Sir Walter, who took the potatoes with him to Ireland, and planted them in his new estate of Youghal.
And though it was most probably Sir John Hawkins who introduced tobacco into England, it certainly was Sir Walter who brought smoking into fashion. In parenthesis, a warning may be given that anyone who wanders from east to west along the south coast of Devon will be wearied beyond measure by the numbers of rooms, banks, porches, and gardens, shown as the identical spot 'where Sir Walter smoked his first pipe.' Dr Brushfield, in an exhaustive article on 'Raleghana,' counts only six places, but they reach from Penzance to Islington, and one is in Ireland.