NO greater historical figure has stood trial at Winchester than Sir Walter Raleigh who in the early 17th century was accused of treason as a major conspirator to overthrow James I.

The Courts of Law traditionally sat at Winchester but were hastily transferred to the former capital with plague raging in London.

It was in 1603 that the Sheriff ordered the proclamation “to bring up the body of Sir Walter Raleigh into the Great Hall of Winchester Castle on Monday, November 17.”

It was not the first time the famed explorer had been in danger of losing his head. He had once been banished to the Tower of London after marrying a cousin of Queen Elizabeth without seeking her permission.

Born in Devon to a Protestant family, Raleigh was a man of a many parts – poet, soldier, politician, spy and explorer whose voyage of discovery to Virginia with a royal patent led to the colonisation of North America.

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He quickly rose to prominence in Elizabeth’s favour and was knighted in 1585. Within months, he heard a story about a city of gold in South America and set off to find it, exaggerating his exploits in a book that did much to magnify the myth of El Dorado.

His aggressive policy towards the Spanish was welcomed by Elizabeth but brought him into sharp conflict with James 1 on his accession to the throne after her death.

And so Raleigh came to be arrested, facing an impressive array of 11 commissioners, including the Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Popham, and the Lord Chamberlain, Henry Howard, the Earl of Suffolk, at his Winchester trial.

It was a far from the modern jury system that were to deliver their verdict. Instead history records he faced ‘four knights, four esquires and four gentlemen.’ Asked if raised an objection to their composition, Raleigh replied: “I know none of them.”

After pleading not guilty to the indictment of treason, the King’s Sergeant at Law addressed the court.

“You have heard of Raleigh’s bloody attempts to kill the King and his royal progeny and in place thereto to advance one, Arabella Stuart.”

He then claimed: “Raleigh met with Cobham on June 9 and had conference of invasion, of a rebellion and an insurrection to be made by the King’s subjects, to depose the King and kill his children, poor babes that never gave offence.”

His opening address lasted almost as long as the jury took to reach its verdict – just 15 minutes and “guilty.”

Daily Echo: King James I.

Sentencing him, the Lord Chief Justice uttered the following poetical words: “It is best for man not to seek to climb too high lest he fall, nor yet to creep so low to be trodden on.

“Now it resteth to pronounce the judgement, which I wish you had not this day to have received of me. For if the fear of God in you had been answerable to your other great parts, you might have lived to have been a singular good subject.

“I never saw the trial and hope I shall never see the like again.”

Hearing he was to suffer the merciless death of being hung, drawn and quartered, Raleigh besought a death more honourable and less ignominious.

However, the execution was so long delayed that he was released and again sailed to South America in vain search of El Dorado, again infuriating King James for his attacks on Spanish vessels and outposts.

It was on his return to England that he was again arrested and brought before the King’s Bench at Westminster when he tried to overturn his Winchester conviction, asserting that his subsequent employ in the service of the King had rendered the original judgement void.

But the Lord Chief Justice told the crestfallen Raleigh he had been deceived and it was on October 29, 1618, that he was taken to the scaffold at the Old Palace Yard at Westminster.

Five other men – Lord Cobham, Watson, Clarke, Lord Gray and Sir Griffin Markham– had also been tried and condemned at the Great Hall over the same conspiracy. The Lords of the Council, however, postponed execution until they had gone further into the action of each defendant in relation to the King.

But the impatience of the Lord Chief Justice was such that by a writ of the Crown he ordered the execution of Watson and Cobham the following morning. The King signed the execution warrants of the remaining three but reprieved them on the scaffold.