Sir Walter Raleigh—courtier, fighting seaman, explorer, scholar and gifted writer—epitomizes the greatness of the Elizabethan Age. He was badly treated by King James, imprisoned in the Tower for thirteen years and ultimately beheaded. His History of the World was written in the Tower. It accepts the Old Testament chronology and was much appreciated by the Puritans. Shortly before his execution he wrote the following lines:
Even such is time, which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have, And pays us but with age and dust; Who in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days: And from which earth, and grave, and dust, The Lord shall raise me up, I trust.