Full name: Sir Walter Ralegh: A Biography

Author: W. Stebbing Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Biographies, Free books Purchase/reserch links: Amazon Project Gutenberg Goodreads ISBNs: 9781409905837 9781507686201 1409905837 150768620X

[...]county families with which his was connected. During the earlier half of the sixteenth century the majority of the gentry were continually growing poorer, and a minority were growing richer. The Raleghs, it is plain, had not met with the good fortune of the Russells, and others of their rural peers. They were declining, if hardly in the degree represented subsequently. But an ampler share of prosperity could not have made much difference in young Walter's prospects or training. Three brothers were all before him in the succession to the patrimony. His birthright could not have comprised more than the cadet's prescriptive portion of necessity and brains. It is unfair to the natural curiosity of posterity that his extraordinary endowments in the second respect are not traceable in[...].