Soldier, explorer, privateer, writer, reckless intellectual,
Sir Walter Raleigh mustered a group of free thinkers
who in secrecy debated such taboos as the new astronomy emerging from the Copernican idea that
the earth revolved around the sun.

The elite gathering, accused of atheism and other blasphemies, was condemned “the school of night.”

Members included the man who discovered the moons
of Jupiter; a popular poet killed in a barroom quarrel;
a champion of religious tolerance; a geographer who sailed around the world; a closet poet favored by the queen; England's father of the atomic theory; the poet famed for his translation of Homer; the philosopher and former Dominican monk burned at the stake for heresy.

Thomas Nashe ridiculed the group as mathematicians “that will prove men before Adam,” and Shakespeare alluded to the group in Love’s Labor’s Lost:

         O paradox! Black is the badge of hell,
         The hue of dungeons and the school of night.

A darling of the queen for whom he named the Virginia colony, Raleigh was beheaded by James I because he uttered unkind remarks about royal sodomites.

Sir Walter's widow carried his head around in a basket.