During these two years Elizabeth had died, and Raleigh had been convicted of treason. Such rights as he may have possessed to the land of North Virginia were ignored, therefore, when the Earl of Southampton, Thomas Arundell, and others dispatched Weymouth to find a suitable place for colonizing in the parts visited by Gosnold and Pring. This was the real intent of the expedition, although it was given out that it was for the discovery of the Northwest Passage.[72] There is some evidence that the proposed colony was to be for Roman Catholics. At least, Sir George Peckham and Sir Thomas Gerrard, who claimed to be assignees of the Gilbert patent, had secured the privilege for Romanists of becoming colonists, and the Earl of Southampton and his leading associates in the present venture were of that faith.[73] Weymouth spent about a month on the coast, exploring the shores about the St. George's Islands and the river of the same name.[74] Footnote 72: “We found the land a place answerable to the intent of our discovery, viz. fit for any nation to inhabit.” “Rosier's Relation,” in Burrage, _Early English and French Voyages_ (New York, 1906), p. 371. Sir F. Gorges, “A Briefe Narration of the Originall Undertakings, etc., 1658,” in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series III, vol. VI, p. 50. Footnote 73: _Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, America and West Indies, 1574-1660_, p. 695 (hereafter cited as _Cal. State Pap., Col._); J. P. Baxter, _Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine_ (Prince Society, Boston, 1890), vol. I, p. 65. Footnote 74: The river was formerly thought to be the Kennebec. Cf. Burrage, _Early Voyages_. In Burrage's edition of _Rosier's Relation_ (Gorges Society, Portland, 1887), there is an exhaustive survey of the literature. The English, however, had not been the only explorers upon the New England coast, nor to them only had it begun to appeal as a possible place for colonizing. For the French, as well as the English, the sixteenth century in America had been a period of exploration, of staking out of vague claims, and of unsuccessful efforts to establish permanent settlements. The first decade of the seventeenth was to witness the success of both nations in the latter undertaking, the English at Jamestown in 1607, and the French at Quebec but one year later, so close was the race between them. In the territory of New England, however, both nations were to try, and fail, within the same period; and citizens of both countries had already, from time to time, received grants of undefined extension in that general part of the world, when finally a charter with definite bounds was assigned by the French King to the Sieur de Monts, in 1603. This grant embraced all the territory between the 40th and 46th degrees of latitude, or from Philadelphia to Montreal.