After a voyage beset with one accident after another, Governor White arrived in England, only to find himself caught in the maelstrom of war.
Under Her Sovereign Majesty Elizabeth, England was rising to a position where she would soon be a formidable rival to the countries of Europe. Her ships had penetrated to the White Sea of Northern Russia; the dusky tribes of Guinea traveled many miles through the tropical forests of the Soudan to sell their ivory and gold to the trading vessels of England. Antwerp and Bruges merchants settled in London, thereby transferring much of the trade of India and the Far East from Flanders to England; and Sir Francis Drake had circumnavigated the globe.
Not only had commercial enterprise filled the coffers of Elizabeth, but the untilled recesses of men’s minds were beginning to flower again.
Sir Philip Sidney had enriched the world with his Arcadia, and immortal sonnets. Edmund Spenser was fighting out the battle between good and evil in his Faerie Queen, and Francis Bacon was delving into the secrets of nature.
Behind the fame of commercial enterprise and the glory of the Literary Renaissance loomed the struggle with Philip of Spain. He was burning with the desire to crush the power of Elizabeth and to revenge the death of Mary Queen of Scots. Already the Spanish Armada was hovering off the coasts of England.
Sir Walter Raleigh tried ineffectually to obtain ships for Governor White, and even succeeded in fitting out two which were later seized and impressed into service. Every bark and pinnace was needed to keep Philip and the Inquisition out of England. No one had time to remember the colonists shut away in Virginia, for all were watching Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh scuttle the Spanish galleons.
About a month after Governor White sailed away a wasting sickness broke out among the colonists in Virginia. The fields lay untilled and the corn and vegetables withered up under the hot breath of the sun. No drop of water fell to cool the parched earth; daily the store of food dwindled away.
Gaunt starvation stalked through the island, and in his footsteps crept Winginia and his Catawbas.
At length Eleanor Dare’s husband fell ill and lay dying.