Accordingly, in the year 1585, he sent out Sir Richard Grenville with one hundred and eight men, and on Roanoke Island a little colony was established. Ralph Lane was left in charge of the party, and Grenville sailed for home, hoping for the best but fearing the worst. Unhappily the wrong sort of men had been sent out—soft-handed gentlemen who could not dig, and were ashamed to beg. Before long there were bitter quarrels in the little hive between the drones and the workers, food ran short, and the colonists were on the verge of starvation. In the next year Drake touched at Roanoke after his attack on Cartagena, and seeing what a helpless, shiftless crew the colonists were, he carried them all back to England save fifteen. The colony had thus proved a costly failure, but the experiment was notable, because it was the first attempt to found a greater Britain beyond the seas. He who writes the history of British expansion must never forget to give Raleigh a foremost place in the roll of Empire-makers. One of the immediate results of the voyage was the introduction into this country of the potato and the tobacco plant. Raleigh grew potatoes in his garden at Youghal, and thus gave Ireland the staple food of her peasantry. According to an old story, he was the first man to smoke tobacco in England. It is said that his servant, seeing volumes of smoke issuing from his mouth, concluded that he was on fire, and promptly poured a bucket of water over him, thus effectually putting out his pipe. A second attempt to found a colony on Roanoke Island failed, and Raleigh was terribly disappointed. He could do no more; so in 1589, the year after he helped to repel the Armada, he disposed of his rights to a company of merchants, who made no attempt to found a new colony on the ruins of the old. Thus the sixteenth century came to an end, and England had no colony of any kind in America. In the year 1592 Raleigh fell into disgrace with his royal mistress. She discovered that the man she had delighted to honour and enrich had actually dared to love one of her maids of honour. An excuse was speedily found by the jealous queen for sending Raleigh and his lady-love, Elizabeth Throgmorton, to the Tower. At length, however, the queen relented and restored Raleigh to liberty, but forbade him the court. The lovers were married and settled at Sherborne, where Raleigh busied himself in erecting a magnificent mansion and laying out its grounds with great taste.