RALEIGH, Walter (1554-1618). Document signed (“W Ralegh”), an indenture, n.p., 8 September 1589.

RALEIGH, Walter (1554-1618). Document signed (“W Ralegh”), an indenture, n.p., 8 September 1589.

One page, 245 x 500mm on vellum (light scattered soiling). Matted and framed with a portrait. Provenance: Sotheby’s London, 13 March 1979, lot 434.

Raleigh signs away the lease of a castle in Ireland. Two years after he mounted his second Roanoke expedition, and with a view to the "more speedie inhabitinge of the wast[e] cuntrie of Monnster", Sir Walter Raleigh signs a forty-year lease to his servant Thomas Colthurst for ‘the Castell and manor of the Shane’ [i.e. Sheanmore Castle], Co. Waterford, Ireland, with its adjoining plough-lands, reserving only the “timber trees” for his own use. Colthurst is to have “always in redines on[e] sufficient light horse w[i]th an able man” for Ralegh’s use; he is also to repair the castle and make it “tenantable” within two years.

A rare document signed by Raleigh conveying a lease to Thomas Colthurst for a portion of the three and a half seignories in Munster, amounting to 42,000 acres, granted to him by Elizabeth I in 1586 at the height of his standing as a royal favorite. Raleigh installed as many as 148 tenants within the first three years of the grant, but by 1594 was leasing out the seignories for £200 per year. Ultimately Raleigh’s Irish estates were never profitable, and in 1602 he would sell the whole grant to Sir Richard Boyle for £1500. Sheanmore Castle had been burnt down by the Earl of Ormond in 1570, and in spite of Colthurst’s commitment in the present lease it was never rebuilt.

Pre-Lot Text
PROPERTY FROM THE ROGER D. JUDD COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL LETTERS, DOCUMENTS & MANUSCRIPTS