EAST BUDLEIGH: BIRTHPLACE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION? (AUTUMN 2025)

 

‘The British Empire of to-day, and the Republic of the United States, are alike built on his dreams,’ wrote the British author and politician John Buchan. He was commenting on the paradox of Sir Walter Raleigh, whose statue stands in East Budleigh. (Note the shadow’s spooky message. No Photoshop involved!)

Born in East Budleigh, like Roger Conant, Raleigh achieved legendary status in America, not so much for his ‘discovery’ of tobacco and potatoes but for the impact of his History of the World, published in 1614. Its criticism of tyrant rulers angered King James I who described it as ‘too saucie towards princes’.

Thanks to Raleigh’s bold attack in the book, following his execution in 1618, ‘the next generation turned Sir Walter into a champion of parliamentary power, even a republican’, as historian Anna Beer has written. 

Raleigh’s writings later inspired American revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson, who is known to have owned Raleigh's Judicious and Selected Essayes and Observations (1650) and a 1736 edition of the History of the World. The Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia, was a centre of sedition and a meeting-place of patriots such as Jefferson and Governor Patrick Henry.


Americans fighting for freedom against British ‘tyranny’ during the Revolutionary War so admired Sir Walter that they named a warship after him.  


The USS Raleigh, launched in 1776, features on the state seal of New Hampshire.

The patch or badge of the US Navy’s cruiser of the same name, launched in 1922, includes Sir Walter’s arms: Gules, five fusils conjoined in bend argent.

It’s no accident that the city of Raleigh in North Carolina was so named in 1792, at the height of the French Revolution.

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