Sir Walter Raleigh lived in an important time in England’s history

A 1937 Roanoke Half Dollar, a commemorative authorized to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the establishment of Sir Walter Raleigh’s North Carolina colony, sold for $43,200 at an August 2020 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

When I was (much) younger, we thought it was great fun to call a liquor store and ask: “Do you have Sir Walter Raleigh in a can?” If the clerk said yes, we’d shout, “Well, you better let him out! His wife is looking for him!”

This would be followed by raucous laughter and cheering at our clever mischief. What I’m sure we didn’t know was that Sir Walter Raleigh had been beheaded on Oct. 29, 1618, and the severed head given to his wife. She had it embalmed and kept it in a red bag for 29 years until she died.

In a perverse way, our childish phone call may have been technically correct – that his wife had been looking for “the rest of him,” but it was just a much earlier time. Even today, there still exists a controversy over whether the head and body have ever been reunited. Coincidentally, I’ve discovered that Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco is still available (online) in cans or pouches.

Walter Raleigh, born in 1552, lived in an important time in England’s history. As a flamboyant soldier, explorer and would-be colonizer, he owed much of his success to the favor of Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603). She was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, Queen of England from 1553 to 1536 and the second of King Henry VIII’s six wives. Their marriage ended abruptly when Anne was charged with treason, imprisoned in the Tower of London and subsequently beheaded. This was the start of the English Reformation when the Church of England revoked the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church.

Queen Elizabeth fared far better than her mother and ruled for 45 years. She found the tall, handsome Raleigh of great interest and granted him a cornucopia of titles, estates and monopolies as well as the sole patent to place settlers in America. In addition, working on behalf of the Crown, he led privateering expeditions against the Spanish and played a role in the colonization of Ireland, setting in motion the formation of an English Empire.

He was rewarded with a large estate in Ireland and knighthood in 1585. Within a few years, he became captain of the Queen’s Guard. Sir Walter Raleigh was an early supporter of colonizing North America and invested in an expedition across the Atlantic. This was the first attempt to found a permanent English settlement in the New World. It ended up off the coast of modern North Carolina and was known as the Virginia settlement (in honor of Queen Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen”). Some of the colonists returned to England, bringing potatoes and tobacco, two things generally unknown in Europe.

A second voyage was sent in 1590, only to find no trace of the colony, other than the word CROATOAN on a piece of wood. It would become known as the “Lost Colony of Roanoke Island.” Although historians claim that tobacco was present in Europe before Raleigh’s time, he is often credited with popularizing it in England, despite never making a single trip to America. His association with tobacco has been enshrined by the Beatles on their acclaimed White Album. John Lennon derided him in the song “I’m So Tired,” with the lyrics, “Although I’m so tired, I’ll have another cigarette, And curse Sir Walter Raleigh, He was such a stupid get.”

Sadly, by the time the Jamestown Colony was established in Virginia in 1607, Walter Raleigh would be a prisoner in the Tower of London. His jealous enemies in the Court falsely accused him of participation in a bizarre plot to kidnap King James. Regardless, he was charged with treason and condemned to die (in the usual fashion). However, he somehow convinced the king that he could lead an expedition to the famed El Dorado and make the king the wealthiest man on earth.

It turned out to be a fiasco. But Raleigh honorably returned to England, where the treason charge was reimposed and he was again condemned to death. On Oct. 29, 1618, Raleigh, now 66 years old, coolly stepped up to the scaffold and asked the executioner to test his blade to ensure it “had a good edge.” Smiling, he said, “This is sharp medicine, but is it a physician for all diseases?”

The following century, the French Revolution provided a better answer to the issue of paying the executioner a bribe to have a good, sharp edge and be sure it was done with one accurate stroke. They developed a mechanical beheading machine. On Oct. 10, 1789, physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed to the National Academy that decapitation be done with “a simple mechanism.” During the Reign of Terror (1793-94), 17,000 people – including King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette – had a chance to evaluate this improvement, but the results are generally from people observing rather than actual users of this technique. Dr. Guillotine was not one the participants.

Eventually, the American cowboy made further improvements whenever there was a rustler or back-shooter that needed a taste of frontier justice. All that was required was a rope and a tall tree. A sharp whack on the buttocks of a sturdy horse was usually sufficient. My favorite Western movie … Red River, with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift (1948) … ends on the issue of hanging. For trivia buffs, if you ever watched the Peter Bogdanovich movie The Last Picture Show, you know it was Red River!

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Bastille Day Reminds Us That Freedom Vital to Civilized World

This 20½-inch high French carved-ivory figure of Louis XVI from the 19th century realized $19,120 at an October 2006 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

It’s Bastille Day.

On July 14, 1789, an enraged Parisian mob, seeking weapons to defend their city from a rumored royal attack, stormed the crumbling fortress known as the Bastille and murdered its governor and guards. This violent defiance of royal power has become the symbol of the French Revolution, a movement that not only engulfed France, but also reverberated around the world. The ideas articulated in the revolution spelled the end of Europe’s absolute monarchies and inspired their eventual replacement by more democratic governments.

The indecisive French King Louis XVI was hardly the person to confront any crisis, especially one as serious as that facing France in 1789. In the previous century, his great-grandfather, Louis XIV, the Sun King, had established France as an absolute monarchy with all power concentrated in the king’s hands. His palace at Versailles was the most sophisticated court in Europe and a bastion of aristocratic privilege.

In October 1789, events suddenly accelerated when a vast crowd, outraged by a lack of bread in Paris, descended upon Versailles and forcibly removed the royal family to Paris, ransacking the palace for good measure. In what would become an unnerving foretaste of the violence to come, the severed heads of the guards at Versailles were paraded on stakes as Louis and his family were escorted to the capital.

By September, a kind of hysteria gripped the city. A mob stormed the Tuileries, where the royal family was held, slaughtering the Swiss Guards. Louis XVI was put on trial as a traitor and executed on the guillotine in January 1793. Eventually, order was restored by the end of 1795.

Whatever the importance of the French Revolution, it remains the subject of intense historical debate. Its goals of ending repressive monarchy and championing universal rights were confused and often violent. Furthermore, by 1804 Napoleon had effectively swapped one form of absolutism for his own, albeit more effective than any had known since Louis XIV.

Still, it remains a pivotal moment in the belief that freedom should underpin the civilized world … a principle we still embrace with every ounce of energy.

Jim O'NielIntelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is President and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ was Battle Cry of the French Revolution

This note signed by Marie Antoinette realized $7,170 at an October 2006 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In 1788, France was ruled by a monarchy, aristocracy and clergy who lived in luxury, while many of the commoners starved. The Storming of the Bastille is now celebrated as the heroic uprising that started the French Revolution.

It occurred on July 14, 1789, and symbolizes the liberation from the French Crown’s oppressive reign of poverty and crushing taxes. When the mob broke through the gates of the infamous jail, the garrison capitulated. But the prison was almost empty. Unknown to the attackers, the government had scheduled the building to be demolished and only six prisoners were left in its cells.

Four of the prisoners were forgers and the other two insane.

Earlier, when King Louis XVI had assumed the crown (1794), the country was in a major economic crisis, with a staggering national debt and a tax base that was in decline. The Catholic Church (which owned 10 percent of all land) and the nobility took advantage of tax loopholes, leaving the tax burden to poor urban workers. Apparently, economic inequality is not a new situation.

The incident that sparked the Storming was the dismissal of Finance Minister Jacques Necker, who sympathized with the commoners. At dawn on July 14, they broke into Hôtel des Invalides and captured 28,000 muskets and 10 cannons, but the ammunition had been moved to the Bastille … all 20,000 rounds.

Thus, the Bastille was not only a target for ammunition, it represented a symbol of long-standing autocratic political power and social systems. At 2 p.m., someone opened fire and the mob started pouring in.

Later, as the French Revolution went careening out of control, thousands of nobels were executed on any pretext and eventually King Louis XVI and his wife, Queen Marie (“Let them eat cake”) Antoinette, were executed. This set off shock waves all over Europe and nearby nations feared these wildly progressive ideas would spread like wildfire.

During the next decade, France would be radically transformed as widespread mob violence ruled. This “Reign of Terror” would forever tarnish the ideals of the French Revolution. But yet today, Bastille Day is celebrated annually as the day the French people won their freedom.

Vive la France!

Jim O'NielIntelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is President and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].