Bess and Sir Walter's Head

"Would you like to speak with Walter?" - Raleigh's wife to visitor's postmortem.

It is famously known that Sir Walter Raleigh was a court favorite of HM Queen Elizabeth I. It was a shock for Elizabeth when she learned that Raleigh had secretly married one of her own ladies in waiting "Bess" Throckmorton. He was jailed by the jealous queen, the first of many trials the marriage endured.

After Elizabeth died, Raleigh was tried for treason. Not for marrying a lady in waiting, but because he was implicated in a plot to overthrow the new King James I. He was sentenced to death and taken to the ominous Tower of London where he wrote, "The History of the World". He was eventually released in 1616.

After Raleigh's release he set sail for South America in search of the lost city of gold, El Dorado. His son, Walter Jr.,  was killed during their attack on the Spanish settlement San Thome. Walter senior had also been captured. The Spanish Ambassador appealed to an already disgruntled King James I of England to reinstate Raleigh's death sentence. It was approved and Raleigh's head rolled.

Through it all, however, Bess and Raleigh remained steadfast in their devotion to one another. Even in death Raleigh was with Bess. In a red leather bag Bess kept his embalmed head. She frequently asked guest's if they, "would like to speak with Walter?" (I think in any century that would have been a little odd.)

It was only when Bess died decades later that she finally parted with Walter's head. This is where the story is unclear. One account says that the head was then reunited with the rest of its body in Raleigh's tomb. But another states that after Bess's death  it then passed to Carew, their only living son. Carew in turn kept the head until his own death in January 1668 and it was placed inside the casket with him. This would have been fifty years after the beheading.

Either way...that's one strange, but loyal family!