He found the kingdom wholly engrossed in taking measures of defence against the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada, and Raleigh, Grenville, and Lane assisting Elizabeth in her council of war--a conjuncture most unpropitious to the interests of the infant colony. Raleigh, nevertheless, found time even in this portentous crisis of public affairs to dispatch White with supplies in two vessels. But these, running after prizes, encountered privateers, and, after a bloody engagement, one of them was so disabled and plundered that White was compelled to put back to England, while it was impossible to refit, owing to the urgency of more important matters. But, even after the destruction of the Armada, Sir Walter Raleigh found it impracticable to prosecute any further his favorite design of establishing a colony in Virginia; and in 1589 he formed a company of merchants and adventurers, and assigned to it his proprietary rights. This corporation included among its members Thomas Smith, a wealthy London merchant, afterwards knighted; and Richard Hakluyt, dean of Westminster, the compiler of a celebrated collection of voyages. He is said to have visited Virginia, and Stith gives it as his opinion that he must have come over in one of the last-mentioned abortive expeditions. Raleigh, at the time of making this assignment, gave a hundred pounds for propagating Christianity among the natives of Virginia. After experiencing a long series of vexations, difficulties, and disappointments, he had expended forty thousand pounds in fruitless efforts for planting a colony in Virginia. At length, disengaged from this enterprise, he indulged his martial genius, and bent all his energies against the colossal ambition of Spain, who now aspired to overshadow the world.