Both ships were compelled to return to England. The delay was fatal: the English kingdom and the Protestant reformation were in danger; nor could the poor colonists of Roanoke be again remembered till after the discomfiture of the Invincible Armada. Even then Sir Walter Raleigh, who had already incurred a fruitless expense of £40,000, found his impaired fortune insufficient for further attempts at colonizing Virginia. He therefore used the privilege of his patent to endow a company of merchants and adventurers with large concessions. Among the men who thus obtained an assignment of the proprietary's rights in Virginia is found the name of Richard Hakluyt; it connects the first efforts of England in North Carolina with the final colonization of Virginia. The colonists at Roanoke had emigrated with a charter; the instrument of March, 1589, was not an assignment of Raleigh's patent, but the extension of a grant, already held under its sanction by increasing the number to whom the rights of that charter belonged. More than another year elapsed before White could return to search for his colony and his daughter; and then the island of Roanoke was a desert. An inscription on the bark of a tree pointed to Croatan; but the season of the year and the dangers from storms were pleaded as an excuse for an immediate return. The conjecture has been hazarded that the deserted colony, neglected by their own countrymen, were hospitably adopted into the tribe [the Croatans] of Hatteras Indians. Raleigh long cherished the hope of discovering some vestiges of their existence, and sent at his own charge, and, it is said, at five several times, to search for his liege men. But imagination received no help in its attempts to trace the fate of the colony of Roanoke." _G. Bancroft, History of the United States, part 1, ch.5 (volume 1)_. "The Croatans of to-day claim descent from the lost colony. Their habits, disposition and mental characteristics show traces both of savage and civilized ancestors. Their language is the English of 300 years ago, and their names are in many cases the same as those borne by the original colonists. No other theory of their origin has been advanced." _S. B. Weeks, The Lost Colony of Roanoke (American History Association Papers, volume 5, part 4)_.