2. With the loss of Governor White's colony, Raleigh found that his expenditures had greatly impaired his wealth. He had lost more than two hundred thousand dollars (£40,000 sterling), and, no longer able to fit out costly and fruitless expeditions, was forced to solicit aid from others, joining them in the rights and privileges granted him by the queen in his charter.
[NOTE—It must also be remembered that money in the sixteenth century was worth at least five times more than at present. Forty thousand pounds expended by Sir Walter Raleigh would, at that time, purchase about what one million dollars would now command in England or the United States. ]
1603.
3. But Raleigh found his greatest disaster in the death of Elizabeth. After ruling England so wisely and well for more than fifty years, she died on March 24th, 1603. This great queen left her throne to one of the most paltry and contemptible of men.
4. King James I, was an ungainly Scotch pedant, who was incapable of appreciating heroism and manliness in others, because of his own deficiency in all such qualities. He lavished favors and titles on unworthy favorites, and incurred the contempt of wise men for his follies and vices.
1618.
5. Sir Walter Raleigh had long treated the Spaniards as the enemies of his country. The King of Spain hated him on that account, and King James, to please His Catholic Majesty and secure the marriage of Prince Charles to a Spanish princess, caused the great lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, to procure the wrongful conviction of Raleigh, his greatest subject. After lying in prison for twelve years under this conviction, Raleigh was released by King James, and although not pardoned, was put in command of an expedition to the coast of Guiana. The expedition was unsuccessful, and on his return, to satisfy the King of Spain, James signed the warrant for Raleigh's execution upon his former sentence. Accordingly, Raleigh was beheaded, at the age of sixty-five, as a traitor to the land for whose good he had accomplished more than any one else in all its limits.
[NOTE—Sir Walter Raleigh occupied the twelve years of his imprisonment in writing a "history of the world." This work gave great offence to King James, who endeavored to suppress its circulation. When Raleigh was carried to execution, while on the scaffold, he asked to see the axe. He closely examined its bright, keen edge, and said, with a smile: "This is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases." He then laid his head composedly on the block, moved his lips as if in prayer, and gave the signal for the blow. ]
6. Thus suffered and died the man who first sent ships and men to the soil of North Carolina. That he failed in what he desired to accomplish should not detract from the gratitude and reverence due to his memory. If incompetent and unworthy agents, and the accidents of fortune, thwarted him in his designs, the fault is not his. He was the greatest and most illustrious man connected with our annals as a State, and should ever receive the applause and remembrance of our people.
7. After the death of Sir Walter Raleigh no more efforts were made to plant a colony at Roanoke. The spot was never favorable for such a purpose. No coast in the world is much more dangerous to ships than that of North Carolina. Cape Hatteras is even now the dread of all mariners. It is visited by many storms, and sends its deadly sandbars for fifteen miles out into the ocean to surprise and wreck the ill-fated vessel that has approached too near the coast.