These are benefits which must be repaid. The father will repay them hereafter in his own way. In the meanwhile the son does so in his way, by soliciting the Sherborne estate as for himself, intending to restore it to Raleigh. He succeeds. Carr is bought off for £25,000, where Lady Raleigh has been bought off with £8000; but neither Raleigh nor his widow will ever be the better for that bargain, and Carr will get Sherborne back again, and probably, in the King’s silly dotage, keep the £25,000 also. In November 1612 Prince Henry falls sick. When he is at the last gasp, the poor Queen sends to Raleigh for some of the same cordial which had cured her. Medicine is sent, with a tender letter, as it well might be; for Raleigh knew how much hung, not only for himself, but for England, on the cracking threads of that fair young life. It is questioned at first whether it shall be administered. ‘The cordial,’ Raleigh says, ‘will cure him or any other of a fever, except in case of poison.’ The cordial is administered; but it comes too late. The prince dies, and with him the hopes of all good men. * * * At last, after twelve years of prison, Raleigh is free. He is sixty-six years old now, gray-headed and worn down by confinement, study, and want of exercise: but he will not remember that. ‘Still in his ashes live their wonted fire.’ Now for Guiana, at last! which he has never forgotten; to which he has been sending, with his slender means, ship after ship to keep the Indians in hope. He is freed in March. At once he is busy in his project. In August he has obtained the King’s commission, by the help of Sir Ralph Winwood, Secretary of State, who seems to have believed in Raleigh. At least Raleigh believed in him. In March next year he has sailed, and with him thirteen ships, and more than a hundred knights and gentlemen, and among them, strange to say, Sir Warham St. Leger. This is certainly not the quondam Marshal of Munster under whom Raleigh served at Smerwick six-and-thirty years ago. He would be nearly eighty years old; and as Lord Doneraile’s pedigree gives three Sir Warhams, we cannot identify the man. But it is a strong argument in Raleigh’s favour that a St. Leger, of a Devon family which had served with him in Ireland, and intimately connected with him his whole life, should keep his faith in Raleigh after all his reverses. Nevertheless, the mere fact of an unpardoned criminal, said to be _non ens_ in law, being able in a few months to gather round him such a party, is proof patent of what slender grounds there are for calling Raleigh ‘suspected’ and ‘unpopular.’ But he does not sail without a struggle or two. James is too proud to allow his heir to match with any but a mighty king, is infatuated about the Spanish marriage; and Gondomar is with him, playing with his hopes and with his fears also.