Through Manteo, a friendly Indian, White tried to re-establish amicable relations with the natives, and for his faithful services Manteo was christened and proclaimed "Lord of Roanoke and Dasamon-guepeuk"; but the Indians, with the exception of the tribe of Croatoan, to which Manteo belonged, declined to make friends. August 18, five days after the christening of Manteo, Eleanor Dare, daughter to the governor and wife of Ananias Dare, one of White's council, was delivered of a daughter, and this child, Virginia, was the first Christian born in the new realm.[15 ]
When his granddaughter was only ten days old Governor White went to England for supplies. He reached Hampton November 8, 1587.[16 ] He found affairs in a turmoil. England was threatened with the great Armada, and Raleigh, Grenville, Lane, and all the other friends of Virginia were exerting their energies for the protection of their homes and firesides.[17 ] Indeed, the rivalry of England and Spain had reached its crisis; for at this time all the hopes of Protestant Christendom were centred in England, and within her borders the Protestant refugees from all countries found a place of safety and repose. In 1585 the Dutch, still carrying on their struggle with Spain, had offered Queen Elizabeth the sovereignty of the Netherlands, and, though she declined it, she sent an army to their assistance. The French Huguenots also looked to her for support and protection. Spain, on the other hand, as the representative of all Catholic Europe, had never appeared so formidable. By the conquest of Portugal in 1580 her king had acquired control over the East Indies, which were hardly less valuable than the colonies of Spain; and with the money derived from both the Spanish and Portuguese possessions Philip supported his armies in Italy and the Netherlands, and was the mainstay of the pope at Rome, the Guises in France, and the secret plotters in Scotland and Ireland of rebellion against the authority of Elizabeth.
This wide distribution of power was, however, an inherent weakness which created demands enough to exhaust the treasury even of Philip, and he instinctively recognized in England a danger which must be promptly removed. England must be subdued, and Philip, determining on an invasion, collected a powerful army at Bruges, in Flanders, and an immense fleet in the Tagus, in Spain. For the attack he selected a time when Amsterdam, the great mart of the Netherlands, had fallen before his general the duke of Palma; when the king of France had become a prisoner of the Guises; and when the frenzied hatred of the Catholic world was directed against Elizabeth for the execution of Mary, queen of Scots.
How to meet and repel this immense danger caused many consultations on the part of Elizabeth and her statesmen, and at first they inclined to make the defence by land only. But Raleigh, like Themistocles at Athens under similar conditions, urgently advised dependence on a well-equipped fleet, and after some hesitation his advice was followed. Then every effort was strained to bring into service every ship that could be found or constructed in time within the limits of England, so that in May, 1588, when Philip's huge Armada set sail from the Tagus, a numerous English fleet was ready to dispute its onward passage. A great battle was fought soon after in the English Channel, and there Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, and Raleigh and Drake and Hawkins joined with Grenville and Cavendish and Frobisher and Lane, and all the other glorious heroes of England, in the mighty overthrow of the Spanish enemy.[18 ]
Under the inspiration of this tremendous victory the Atlantic Ocean during the next three years swarmed with English cruisers, and more than eight hundred Spanish ships fell victims to their attacks. So great was the destruction that the coast of Virginia abounded in the wreckage.[19 ] But the way to a successful settlement in America was not entirely opened until eight years later, when the English fleet, under Howard, Raleigh, and Essex, completed the destruction of the Spanish power by another great naval victory won in the harbor of Cadiz.
Amid all this excitement and danger Raleigh did not forget his colony in Virginia. Twice he sent relief expeditions; but the first was stopped because in the struggle with Spain all the ships were demanded for government service; and the second was so badly damaged by the Spanish cruisers that it could not continue its voyage. Raleigh had spent £40,000 in his several efforts to colonize Virginia, and the burden became too heavy for him to carry alone. As Hakluyt said, "It required a prince's purse to have the action thoroughly followed out." He therefore consented, in 1589, to assign a right to trade in Virginia to Sir Thomas Smith, John White, Richard Hakluyt, and others, reserving a fifth of all the gold and silver extracted, and they raised means for White's last voyage to Virginia.[20 ]
It was not until March, 1591, that Governor White was able to put to sea again. He reached Roanoke Island August 17, and, landing, visited the point where he had placed the settlement. As he climbed the sandy bank he noticed, carved upon a tree in Roman letters, "CRO," without a cross, and White called to mind that three years before, when he left for England, it had been agreed that if the settlers ever found it necessary to remove from the island they were to leave behind them some such inscription, and to add a cross if they left in danger or distress. A little farther on stood the fort, and there White read on one of the trees an inscription in large capital letters, "Croatoan." This left no doubt that the colony had moved to the island of that name south of Cape Hatteras and near Ocracoke Inlet. He wished the ships to sail in that direction, but a storm arose, and the captains, dreading the dangerous shoals of Pamlico Sound, put to sea and returned to England without ever visiting Croatoan.[21 ] White never came back to America, and his separation from the colony is heightened in tragic effect by the loss of his daughter and granddaughter.
What became of the settlers at Roanoke has been a frequent subject of speculation. When Jamestown was established, in 1607, the search for them was renewed, but nothing definite could be learned. There is, indeed, a story told by Strachey that the unfortunate colonists, finally abandoning all hope, intermixed with the Indians at Croatoan, and after living with them till about the time of the arrival at Jamestown were, at the instigation of Powhatan, cruelly massacred. Only seven of them—four men, two boys, and a young maid—were preserved by a friendly chief, and from these, as later legends have declared, descended a tribe of Indians found in the vicinity of Roanoke Island in the beginning of the eighteenth century and known as the Hatteras Indians.[22 ]
Sir Walter Raleigh will always be esteemed the true parent of North American colonization, for though the idea did not originate with him he popularized it beyond any other man. Just as he made smoking fashionable at the court of Elizabeth, so the colonization of Virginia—that is, of the region from Canada to Florida—was made fashionable through his example. His enterprise caused the advantages of America's soil and climate to be appreciated in England, and he was the first to fix upon Chesapeake Bay as the proper place of settlement.
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 ]