Greetings, FRIEND. My proper name is Lady
Elizabeth Throckmorton Raleigh. You may know me as Lady Raleigh or the
lady-in-waiting of the privy chamber of Queen Elizabeth. Nevertheless, I hope
you call me Bess. It is the name I prefer and it eliminates the unimportant.
As I pen the tales of my life, and the lives I hear about
because of my former position in society, I realize how few have made it to my
age. Even fewer have made it to my age after my former experiences. Even fewer
know the stories I do. I have known richness, glory, and fame, and I have known
corruption, destitution, and what I means to fight for my life. After all, I am
in a very unique position now and have been all of my life. Am I blessed or cursed?
I will leave it to you to decide.
Today marks the twenty-seventh year since my husband's
beheading. Therefore, I feel quite melancholy and decided to do something more
useful with my time than feel sorrow and act a sluggard. Walter would not want
me to mourn him anyway. He wanted me to live a strong faith and to grow it by
the day, so I could act as an inspiration for others. Consequently, this is my
attempt to do so and I hope to convey how faith is the only way I got through
the last fifty-three years, if I were to speak in such a frank manner.
Walter also did not want any of our stories to fade into the
annals of time. The truth of what really happened mattered to Walter, as it
does to me, and I want to make sure to capture our stories on the page. Our
stories, by the way, can be defined as those we lived or witnessed. After all,
if you witness a story, it becomes part of your story assume well.
Hence, I write this volume of stories for Walter. I hope to
join you in eternity soon. However, I pray it is not too soon. I have much to
accomplish. I have been dabbling with this project for years. It seems
befitting to start this project in full on the anniversary of the worst day of
my life and the best day of yours since you joined our Lord in and for eternity.
I know many people and they have shared with me the stories
I want to impart to you, my reader and friend. Furthermore, I will share some
stories from my point-of-view, for they are my personal stories. I will also
share stories with you from the perspective of others. These are the stories I
heard about from another, whether I was told them directly or overheard others
speaking. Regardless, my recollection of the stories now is through the wisdom
of age and the lenses of hindsight, reflection, and lessons learned and
analyzed.
Decades ago I collected these stories in my secret journals.
Women were not supposed to write for entertainment, let alone keep journals. My
position naturally barred me from doing so as well, but I just could not
resist.
I wanted and want to provide a new look at history, not the
shiny and sparkling one the Queens and Kings have chosen to tell. Royalty must
always appear victorious and in charge, and they rarely show how they are human
like the rest of us. Hence, they paint a different painting of history than
what really transpired oftentimes. Moreover, the story of history they tell is
of those who are wealthy, not of the peasants. Hence, the history of the
kingdoms with a royal family is mostly false and is a small and somewhat untrue
history.
The purpose of my writing is to show you the story of the
commoner, not just those with wealth. It is my desire to share the true
history, not a colored one. Or you might say I want to share a complete
history, not an abbreviated one.
I have hundreds of stories to share with you in time. After
all, time has certainly been my friend and has not been my enemy. What happened
to my husband and myself has meant I have had great time alone to write and
reflect. I also hope to live long enough to go through all of my penned stories
and share them with you from the perspective of the hindsight of an old lady,
both smaller case and upper case L.
I am eighty years old now and I want to retell my former
stories I kept in journals and I have memorialized these stories on the page
through the wisdom of my years and through looking back to see where we have
come. I also want to leave my children, grandchildren, and other descendants a
legacy and the story of what really happened is the single best legacy I can
offer them. I also offer the same legacy of full truth to you, whoever you are,
as well.
What stories can you look forward to reading? You might
wonder.
I will share with you about my childhood, so you can learn
the deranged nature of a family who wanted to join high society, raise within
its ranks, and my family's power and
prestige. Oh, how we were greedy. We were so ambitious we forgot to fully live
and certainly forgot how to have hope. I will paint a very unvarnished truth of
what really happened and of my family and will not trivialize our sins or
accidental missteps.
When I lost everything, including my husband and wealth, I learned
what truly matters in this world. It is not any human being, anything you can
buy with money, and any circumstance. A strong faith is what matters more than
anything. Earthly people, things, and events are temporary. Faith is eternal.
Furthermore, I will tell of world historical and current
events, along with the facts and rumors we heard in the day. I will make sure I
explain what happened, when, and why at the time as well as through the
hindsight and reflective lens of today as I share the true stories from my
life.
If you keep reading my stories, you will learn about my
relationship with the Queen, others of noble blood, and with the other courtiers.
You will also learn about the plight of establishing the
first permanently English settlement in the New World and in America. Since my
husband was one who spearheaded this colonization, I know a great deal of what
happened in private and in the public, from Roanoke to Jamestown. I will share
about the trials and heartbreak regarding the lost colony. I know personally
all of the key players and have spoken with each of them about Roanoke, before
and after they were lost.
I will also share the success of Jamestown, after much
turmoil. The truth is what Jamestown became was in part because of the vision
of my husband and Queen Elizabeth, God rest their souls.
Several years, my husband and I risked the chance of losing
our heads. My husband lost the battle, but I survived because of the grace of
God and it is how I am able to tell you the stories now. It is also the reason
why I found it all the more important to capture the stories those of the
throne would never dare divulge. History is incomplete without the full story,
of those of wealth, of course, because they have the power. However, history is
also incomplete if the stories of the commoners are not shared, learned from,
or remembered.
I write so we will never forget.
I hope the plans I have for preserving these stories help
true and you are reading these words hundreds and thousands of years later.
This first volume of the stories I have collected will be
more about life in England than the rest of the volumes I will share with you
in time. I have twenty-six or so planned at this point. I will do my best to
entertain you and not bore you. Most of these volumes will be told through the
eyes of future generations, though. You just get my stories for a volume or two
or three. We shall see.
These stories are of the best sort. They are full of adventure,
conflict, romance, and drama. No. I do not think you will get bored. Just
remember these stories really happened. That is the most exciting part of all.
Let us get started, shall we?
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