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Raleigh, Sir Walter

[(raw-lee, rah-lee)]

An English explorer of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. He is best known for his expeditions to the Americas and for introducing tobacco and the potato, two products of the New World, into England.

Note

Raleigh is often considered a near-ideal English gentleman of the Renaissance. A well-known legend holds that he spread his coat over a mud puddle so that Queen Elizabeth I would not have to soil her feet by walking through it.
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.