Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh discovered the potato. The Third Doctor told Jo Grant that he had once shared a cell with Raleigh in the Tower of London and that he spoke endlessly of the vegetable. (TV: The Mind of Evil)

Raleigh was released from the Tower in March 1616 and arranged for William Shakespeare to be poisoned. The playwright died in Stratford-upon-Avon only five weeks later. (PROSE: The Empire of Glass)