This account of Walter Raleigh’s life seems… misleading, at best (and in parts just plain inaccurate)—assuming, that is, that we can trust the Wikipedia page. There seems to be quite a bit of conflict (of interpretation, at least) between that page and this one about Raleigh’s book.
I don’t think we should draw any moral from this story, without first thoroughly verifying it from reliable sources. As it stands, we have several Wikipedia pages, which paint a murky and contradictory picture (and some of which are inconsistent with Scott’s summary).
What exactly is contradictory? I only skimmed the relevant pages, but they all seemed to give a pretty similar picture. I didn’t get a great sense of exactly what was in Raleigh’s book, but all of them (and whoever tried him for treason) seemed to agree it was somewhere between heavily exaggerated and outright false, and I get the same impression from the full title “The discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden city of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado)”
One thing I see: “Raleigh was arrested on 19 July 1603, charged with treason for his involvement in the Main Plot against Elizabeth’s successor, James I, and imprisoned in the Tower of London”
The Wikipedia article states that he was tried for treason at least two times, once for his involvement in the Main Plot, and once for the things he did on his El Dorado adventure. So I think that doesn’t contradict what Scott said.
This account of Walter Raleigh’s life seems… misleading, at best (and in parts just plain inaccurate)—assuming, that is, that we can trust the Wikipedia page. There seems to be quite a bit of conflict (of interpretation, at least) between that page and this one about Raleigh’s book.
I don’t think we should draw any moral from this story, without first thoroughly verifying it from reliable sources. As it stands, we have several Wikipedia pages, which paint a murky and contradictory picture (and some of which are inconsistent with Scott’s summary).
What exactly is contradictory? I only skimmed the relevant pages, but they all seemed to give a pretty similar picture. I didn’t get a great sense of exactly what was in Raleigh’s book, but all of them (and whoever tried him for treason) seemed to agree it was somewhere between heavily exaggerated and outright false, and I get the same impression from the full title “The discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden city of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado)”
One thing I see: “Raleigh was arrested on 19 July 1603, charged with treason for his involvement in the Main Plot against Elizabeth’s successor, James I, and imprisoned in the Tower of London”
The Wikipedia article states that he was tried for treason at least two times, once for his involvement in the Main Plot, and once for the things he did on his El Dorado adventure. So I think that doesn’t contradict what Scott said.