When James I succeeded Elizabeth on the throne Raleigh lost his influence at court, and nearly all the last years of his life were spent a prisoner in the Tower of London, where he wrote his History of the World.  In 1616 he was temporarily released by the king on condition of his finding a gold-mine in Guiana.  When he returned empty-handed he was, on the complaint of the Spanish ambassador, arrested, sentenced to death, and executed on an old verdict of the jury, now recognized to have been based on charges trumped up by political enemies.[23]

Raleigh never relinquished hope in America.  In 1595 he made a voyage to Guiana, and in 1602 sent out Samuel Mace to Virginia—­the third of Mace’s voyages thither.  In 1603, just before his confinement in the Tower, he wrote to Sir Robert Cecil regarding the rights which he had in that country, and used these memorable words, “I shall yet live to see it an English nation."[24]

[Footnote 1:  Edwards, Life of Raleigh, I., 81, II., 10.]

[Footnote 2:  Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1674, p. 17.]

[Footnote 3:  Edwards, Life of Raleigh, I., 82.]

[Footnote 4:  Hakluyt, Voyages, III., 184-208.]

[Footnote 5:  Stevens, Thomas Hariot, 43-48.]

[Footnote 6:  For the patent, see Hakluyt, Voyages, III., 297-301.]

[Footnote 7:  Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 13.]

[Footnote 8:  Hakluyt, Voyages, III., 301.]

[Footnote 9:  Hakluyt, Voyages, III., 302-310.]

[Footnote 10:  Edwards, Life of Raleigh, I., 144-145.]

[Footnote 11:  Hakluyt, Voyages, III., 322, IV., 10.]

[Footnote 12:  Hakluyt, Voyages, III., 323, 340.]

[Footnote 13:  Edwards, Life of Raleigh, I., 106.]

[Footnote 14:  Stevens, Thomas Hariot, 55-62.]

[Footnote 15:  Hakluyt, Voyages, III., 340-345.]

[Footnote 16:  Ibid., 346, 347.]

[Footnote 17:  Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 19.]

[Footnote 18:  Edwards, Life of Raleigh, I., 111.]

[Footnote 19:  Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 20.]

[Footnote 20:  Stebbins, Life of Raleigh, 47.]

[Footnote 21:  Hakluyt, Voyages, III., 350-357.]

[Footnote 22:  Strachey, Travaile into Virginia, 26, 85.]

[Footnote 23:  Edwards, Life of Raleigh, I., 706, 721.]

[Footnote 24:  Ibid., 91.]

[Illustration:  ROANOKE ISLAND, JAMESTOWN AND ST. MARY’S 1584-1632]

CHAPTER III

FOUNDING OF VIRGINIA

(1602-1608)

Though a prisoner in the Tower of London who could not share in the actual work, Sir Walter Raleigh lived to see his prediction regarding Virginia realized in 1607.  He had personally given substance to the English claim to North America based upon the remote discovery of John Cabot, and his friends, after he had withdrawn from the field of action, were the mainstay of English colonization in the Western continent.