Walter Raleigh's Quest for El Dorado

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

Sir Walter Raleigh remains one of the enduring names from the Elizabethan era. He was a true Renaissance man - a statesman, soldier, writer, explorer and a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1594, Raleigh heard about the legendary golden city of El Dorado and the following year, explored what is now Guyana and eastern Venezuela in search of it. In his account of the expedition The Discovery of Guiana, Raleigh made exaggerated claims as to what had been discovered, contributing to the enduring El Dorado legend, and his own celebrity.

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to writer and historian Mathew Lyons about Raleigh, his dream of finding El Dorado, and the epic scale of his failure.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm holding in my hands a rather lovely little book published by the Folio Society.
0:10.8	It's called Impossible Journeys.
0:13.4	It's a book of Impossible Journeys because it tells tales of attempted voyages to places
0:18.9	that did not in fact exist.
0:21.1	It's a collection of cartographical and historical co-dissacks.
0:25.3	It tells us fables that were believed to be true.
0:29.2	Like a modern day Chorca, it features stories, the friars tale, the drunkens tale, the cannibals
0:35.0	tale, and among them the courtyers tale, with the subtitle Sir Walter Raleigh goes upriver
0:41.4	in search of Eldorado.
0:44.7	Sir Walter Raleigh is one of the most famous names of the Elizabethan era.
0:48.1	An unusually tall, dark-haired and handsome man Raleigh had a checkered career.
0:53.8	His first mission for Elizabeth I was to Ireland where he still remembered as the perpetrator
0:58.2	of the Smurwick Massacre in which 600 people were killed.
1:03.0	Nevertheless, or perhaps because of that, his rise under Elizabeth was swift.
1:08.2	He had her favour.
1:10.8	He might have been successful, but for his secret marriage to Best Throck Morton, one
1:15.4	of the Queen's maids of honour, which led to both husband and wife being sent to the tower
1:20.6	and then banished from court.
1:22.8	And it's at this point that Raleigh went in search of Eldorado.
1:27.5	The author of Impossible Journeys and my guest today is someone who has peered on this
1:32.1	podcast before, Matthew Lyons.
1:35.1	He's a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and also the author of The Favourite, which
	...

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