Walter Ralegh's sonnet beginning, "Three things there be that prosper up apace" was probably addressed to his elder son, also called Walter, rather than his younger boy. Walt junior was a bit of a rakehelly tearaway, while the younger son took after his mother. The poem suits the older rather than the younger.

As it turned out, Walter junior didn't, as the poem warns might happen, die on the gallows, but was killed on his father's catastrophic raiding expedition to the Spanish West Indies. James had let Ralegh out of the Tower to conduct the raid, but in fact set Ralegh up and tipped off the Spaniards. This gave James an excuse, when Ralegh returned, to top him.

In a letter to his wife informing her of the death of their son, he concludes with the words:

"I can write no more. My brains are broken."

Robin Hamilton