Ralegh in church at East Budleigh
Ralegh in church at East Budleigh
All Saints Church at East Budleigh, a mile from Sir Walter Ralegh’s birthplace at Hayes Barton and two miles from the Devon coast, contains a wonderful bench-end in oak carved with the arms of the Ralegh family – a shield supported by two wolves surmounted by a helmet and antlers. Originally, before being defaced, the shield would have contained five fusils (lozenges) in a bend with a martlet – a mythical bird – in the upper left, as can be seen in Sir Walter’s seal matrix of 1584 in the British Museum shown below. The carving is dated 1534, some fifteen years after Walter’s father, also Walter, moved to Hayes Barton, and twenty years before Sir Walter was born; Walter senior’s first wife Joan Drake is buried beside the pew. For me, sitting there as the young Ralegh would have done, I imagined an image similar to Millais’ ‘The Boyhood of Ralegh’ showing the boy dreaming of adventure as he listened to the sermons, perhaps with his older brothers and half-brothers beside him – including Sir John Gilbert, future Vice-Admiral of Devon, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who claimed Newfoundland for Queen Elizabeth and in so doing created the first English colony in the Americas.
The coat of arms of the Ralegh family in All Saints Church in East Budleigh, carved into the end of the pew that Ralegh would have sat on as a boy (photo: David Gibbins).
A view down the nave of All Saints Church at East Budleigh. The Ralegh pew is at front left, and the blue carpet beside it covers the grave slab of Jane Ralegh, née Drake, Walter Ralegh senior’s first wife (photo: David Gibbins)
The very fine silver seal-matrix of Sir Walter Ralegh of 1584 in the British Museum, showing the same coat of arms as the East Budleigh carving (5.6 cm across)(1904, 0113.2. © The Trustees of the British Museum).
Wax impression of the British Museum seal, showing the design in lozenges and the martlet bird that have been defaced from the East Budleigh carving. The legend reads PROPRIA INSIGNIA WALTERI RALEGH MILITIS DOMINI ET GUBERNATORIS VIRGINIAE. ‘The personal insignia of Walter Ralegh, Knight, Lord and Governor of Virginia’, with Ralegh’s motto on the coat of arms AMORE.ET.VIRTVTE, ‘Love and Virtue’ (1904, 0113.2. © The Trustees of the British Museum).