Sir Walter Raleigh died by execution

On October 29, 1618, Raleigh was executed in the Old Palace Yard at the Palace of Westminster. Raleigh's widow received the embalmed head of Raleigh. His grave is now in St. Margaret's Church in Westminster, while his remains were originally going to be interred in the neighborhood church in Beddington, Surrey, where Lady Raleigh lived.

Raleigh's severed head was given to his wife Bess, who had it embalmed and maintained it for the rest of her life in a scarlet bag, even though his body was interred in the Westminster churchyard of St. Margaret's. His head was taken from her body and placed in his tomb at St. Margaret's Church after she passed away some 29 years later.

Although Raleigh's popularity had significantly declined since his Elizabethan prime, many people, both then and now, believed that his death was needless and unfair because, for a long time, it appeared that his involvement in the Main Plot had only been a meeting with Lord Cobham. "The justice of England has never been so defiled and harmed as by the condemnation of the honorable Sir Walter Raleigh," one of the trial judges remarked later.