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 Langport in 1645. Ralegh then fled to Bridgwater, and on the fall of that town (21 July 1645) surrendered to the parliamentarians. From Bridgwater he was sent a prisoner to Chedzoy, but on account of his weakness he was allowed to live in free custody in his own house. The departure of Fairfax and Cromwell was for him the beginning of new troubles. One Henry Jeanes, being anxious, it is said, to secure the rectory for himself, carried off the dean to Ilchester, and there had him lodged in the county gaol. From Ilchester the prisoner was removed to Banwell, and thence to the deanery, Wells, where he was entrusted to the care of David Barrett, a shoemaker. By this person he was rudely dealt with, and at last mortally wounded in a scuffle. According to Simon Patrick, Ralegh was murdered while attempting to screen from Barrett's impudent curiosity a letter that he had written to his wife (cf., Sufferings of the Clergy; Angliæ Ruina, 1647). He died on 10 Oct. 1646, and was buried in the choir of Wells Cathedral, before the dean's stall. No inscription marks his grave. Raleigh's eldest son George attempted to bring Barrett to justice. A priest-vicar of Wells named Standish was arrested for having permitted the burial of the dean in the cathedral, and ‘was kept in custody to the hour of his death’.

Ralegh's papers were preserved in the family, and thirteen of his sermons were given by his widow to Simon Patrick (1626–1707) [q. v.], then dean of Peterborough, who published them in 1679, with a biographical notice, and a Latin poem written in praise of Ralegh by a Cambridge admirer, who is probably Patrick himself. The volume is entitled ‘Reliquiæ Raleighanæ, being Discourses and Sermons on several subjects, by the Reverend Dr. Walter Raleigh.’ The editor praises Ralegh's quickness of wit, ready elocution, and mental powers, but says that he ‘was led to imitate too far a very eminent man,’ whose name is not given. Among Ralegh's friends were Lucius Cary, second viscount Falkland [q. v.], Henry Hammond [q. v.], William Chillingworth [q. v.], and Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon [q. v.]

In 1719 Laurence Howell [q. v.] published ‘Certain Queries proposed by Roman Catholicks, and answered by Dr. Walter Raleigh,’ with an account of Ralegh copied from Patrick. Of a tract on the millennium which Ralegh is said to have written, no trace remains.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon., ed. Bliss, iii. 197; Hoare's Wiltshire, Hundred of Downton, pp. 35, 37; Raleigh Pedigree, privately printed from the records of the College of Arms; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Addit. MSS. 15669–70.]  RALEIGH, ALEXANDER (1817–1880), nonconformist divine, was born at The Flock, a farmhouse near Castle Douglas in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright in Galloway, on 3 Jan. 1817. He was the fourth son of Thomas and Isabella Raleigh. The father was a Cameronian. After a short period of alternate teaching and farming, he was apprenticed in 1832 to a draper at Castle Douglas. Meanwhile his father removed to Liverpool, and in three years Alexander followed. There, while in trade as a draper, he took charge of a Sunday-school Bible class, and began to study for the congregational ministry. In March 1840 he entered Blackburn College as a divinity student, and by too close application injured his health. In 1843 the college was transferred to Manchester, where the last year of Raleigh's student life was spent. In April 1845 he became pastor of the congregational church in Greenock, but in the summer of 1847 his health broke down, and he resigned the charge. For several years he was a wanderer in search of health. After short periods of ministerial service in Birmingham, and at Liscard, near New Brighton, he undertook the pastorate of a church at Rotherham in August 1850, where, with greatly improved health, he laboured until April 1855. At this time he accepted the charge of the West George Street independent chapel, Glasgow, in succession to Dr. Ralph Wardlaw, its minister for fifty years. In 1858 he accepted a call from the congregation of Hare Court Chapel, Canonbury, London. Raleigh soon played an important part in the religious life of London. He preached the annual sermon before the London Missionary Society in Surrey Chapel in May 1861. He was also appointed one of the ‘merchant's lecturers in the city of London.’

In February 1865 the university of Glasgow conferred on Raleigh the degree of D.D. In the same year he was sent by the Congregational Union of England and Wales to represent that body at the National Council of American Congregational Churches. The council met at Boston in June. Raleigh's colleagues were Dr. Vaughan and Dr. George Smith. The American civil war had just concluded, and considerable bitterness was manifested towards Dr. Vaughan, who, as editor of the ‘British Quarterly Review,’ was responsible for some unfriendly articles on the part the north had played in the struggle. Raleigh's tact, however, brought the council's work to a peaceful conclusion.

Raleigh was chairman of the 