On August 3rd, an immense Spanish galleon, the _Madre de Dios_, was sighted by Captain Thomson, in _The Dainty_. He immediately attacked, and was beaten off with some loss, until Sir John Burrough came up with the _Roebuck_, and the attack was resumed at close range. Still, however, the galleon held her own: Sir R. Cross then sailed up in the _Foresight_, and Sir John Burrough conferred with him as to the best course to pursue. At all costs they must prevent the Portuguese from taking her to shore and firing her, as they had fired the _Santa Cruz_, a few months earlier. They decided to board the _Madre de Dios_. Their first attack was repulsed: the galleon slowly kept on her way to the island. Then Sir R. Cross encouraged his men to make a final attempt. For three hours they fought on alone, when two ships of the Earl of Cumberland arrived, and the galleon was at length taken. Naturally there was considerable anger among the men of Ralegh's fleet, when the Earl of Cumberland's captains demanded their share of the spoils. Feeling ran high between both parties, and many valuables were stolen, for the galleon was beyond all belief, rich in treasure. And when, on the eighth of September, they arrived with the capture at Dartmouth, and learned that Ralegh was in the Tower, the disorder grew perilously near to mutiny. Ralegh's presence became a necessity, and he was released. He went to the West as a State prisoner. Sir Robert Cecil preceded him. News of the treasure on the captured ship had spread far and wide: and a proclamation was issued throughout the towns in Devon and Cornwall "that all passengers should be stopped, and that all trunks, carriers, packs, hampers, cloak-bags, portmanteaus, and fardells, that are likely to have in them any part of the goods lately arrived in the ports of Dartmouth or Plymouth in a Spanish carrock ... should be stayed and searched." For the galleon, besides jewels and bullion, contained spices, drugs, silks, calicoes, carpets and quilts, to the value of about £150,000. So, Cecil writes in a letter to his father, that "Whomsoever I met by the way within seven miles, that either had anything in cloak-bag, or in mail, which did but smell of the prizes (for I assure your Lordship I could smell them almost, such hath been the spoils of amber and musk amongst them) I did, though he had little about him, return him with me to the town of Exeter.... I have taken order to search every bag or mail coming from the West.... My Lord, there never was such spoil! I will suppress the confluence of these buyers, of which there are above two thousand. And except they be removed there will be no good.... Fouler ways, desperater ways, nor more obstinate people did I never meet with.... Her Majesty's captive comes after, but I have outrid him."