The story of the attempted settlement on Roanoke Island is the story of one of the world's tragedies. Misfortune seemed to be the doom, not only of the colonists, but of many gallant men who sought to aid Sir Walter Raleigh in his enterprise. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, with two of his ships, was the first to perish at sea; Sir Francis Drake and his compeer, Sir John Hawkins, both died of pestilence in the West Indies; and, to the baffled and broken- hearted originator of the scheme, the coming years were black with disaster and death. 2. With the loss of Governor White's colony, Raleigh found that his expenditures had greatly impaired his wealth. He had lost more than two hundred thousand dollars (£40,000 sterling), and, no longer able to fit out costly and fruitless expeditions, was forced to solicit aid from others, joining them in the rights and privileges granted him by the queen in his charter. [NOTE--It must also be remembered that money in the sixteenth century was worth at least five times more than at present. Forty thousand pounds expended by Sir Walter Raleigh would, at that time, purchase about what one million dollars would now command in England or the United States. ] 1603. 3. But Raleigh found his greatest disaster in the death of Elizabeth. After ruling England so wisely and well for more than fifty years, she died on March 24th, 1603. This great queen left her throne to one of the most paltry and contemptible of men. 4. King James I, was an ungainly Scotch pedant, who was incapable of appreciating heroism and manliness in others, because of his own deficiency in all such qualities. He lavished favors and titles on unworthy favorites, and incurred the contempt of wise men for his follies and vices. 1618. 5. Sir Walter Raleigh had long treated the Spaniards as the enemies of his country. The King of Spain hated him on that account, and King James, to please His Catholic Majesty and secure the marriage of Prince Charles to a Spanish princess, caused the great lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, to procure the wrongful conviction of Raleigh, his greatest subject. After lying in prison for twelve years under this conviction, Raleigh was released by King James, and although not pardoned, was put in command of an expedition to the coast of Guiana. The expedition was unsuccessful, and on his return, to satisfy the King of Spain, James signed the warrant for Raleigh's execution upon his former sentence. Accordingly, Raleigh was beheaded, at the age of sixty-five, as a traitor to the land for whose good he had accomplished more than any one else in all its limits.