The triumvirate, it was noticed, dined together one day at Essex House and conversed for three hours after. Another day, early in July, Cecil was host. In return Essex again, and Ralegh, entertained Cecil. An allusion to this festivity in a letter of Ralegh's has furnished his biographers with a pet puzzle. 'I acquainted the Lord General,' wrote Ralegh to Cecil on July 6, 1597, 'with your kind acceptance of your entertainment; he was also wonderful merry at your conceit of Richard the Second. I hope it shall never alter, and whereof I shall be most glad of, as the true way to all our good, quiet, and advancement, and most of all for Her sake, whose affairs shall thereby find better progression.' Commentators have been tempted to discern some shadow before of the fatality four years later, when the patronage by Essex and his partisans of the play of _Henry IV_ at the Globe Theatre became an article of indictment. The passage forms a conundrum to which the clue has not yet been found. If the reference be to Shakespeare's drama which Essex, Cecil, and Ralegh may have seen acted in this July, it constitutes the only ascertained association of the hand which could do all and the brain which could conceive all. [Sidenote: _The Islands Voyage._] Evidence of the amity of the three was afforded by the liberal scale of the expedition, which started on July 10. A fleet of 120 vessels sailed from Plymouth. Twenty were Queen's ships. Ten were contributed by the Low Countries. The rest were volunteers. Essex commanded in chief, as lieutenant-general and admiral. Lord Thomas Howard was vice-admiral. Ralegh was rear-admiral. Lord Mountjoy was lieutenant of the land forces. Vere was marshal, and George Carew master of the ordnance. The serjeant-major was Sir Ferdinand Gorges. Sir Arthur Gorges was captain of Ralegh's flagship. Essex feared that Vere and Ralegh might harbour a mutual grudge on account of the strife over the Cadiz spoil. He persuaded them to shake hands at Weymouth. 'This,' chronicles Vere, 'we both did, the more willingly because there had nothing passed between us that might blemish reputation.' Ralegh, in the _History of the World_, has spoken in the same spirit of Vere, as constituting with Sir John Norris 'the most famous' pair of captains by land, and is indignant that he should have left behind him neither title nor estate. [Sidenote: _Weather-bound._]