The expedition sailed from England at the end of March 1617, from Plymouth, and consisted of fourteen ships and nine hundred men. But its story was one of continued disaster, and on the 21st of June 1618, writing to his friend Lord Carew, Raleigh gives a detailed account of all his misfortunes. In the postscript he adds: “I beg you will excuse me to my Lords for not writing to them, because want of sleep for fear of being surprised in my cabin at night” (even on his own ship he was a prisoner, the crew having mutinied) “has almost deprived me of sight, and some return of the pleurisy which I had in the Tower has so weakened my hand that I cannot hold the pen.” Sir Walter’s eldest son was killed gallantly fighting in Guiana. Then followed a miserable time, and on his road to London the hope of life at times impelled him to attempt escape, but he was doomed to drink the bitter cup of his King’s ingratitude to the dregs. On the 10th of August he again entered the Tower where so much of his life had been spent, and which was now to be his last abode on earth. The next day the Council of State met to decide upon Sir Walter’s fate, and incredible as it seems, it was actually debated whether Raleigh should be handed over to the tender mercies of the Spaniards or executed in London. Surely if what passed on this earth could have been known to Elizabeth, she would have burst her tomb at Westminster to protest against this abomination, this unspeakable shame and disgrace to the name of England. James was now all impatience to get rid of Raleigh as quickly as possible; he trembled at the threats of Gondomar, and had the sapient monarch not given his word that Raleigh should die? The great difficulty before the Council, however, was to find a pretext for condemning Raleigh to death. Bacon and his colleagues racked their wise brains to invent a cause by which he could be found guilty of high treason. At length the Lord Chief-Justice, Montagu, with a committee of the Council decided that the King should issue a warrant for the re-affirmation of the death sentence given at Winchester in 1603, by which it might be made valid and carried out. Sir Walter pleaded that the King’s commission appointing him head of the Guiana expedition with powers of life and death, invalidated the former sentence and its punishment, both in the eyes of justice and of reason. But Sir Walter was overruled. On the 24th of October the warrant for the execution was signed and sealed by the King, and four days later Sir Walter was taken from the Tower to the King’s Bench. He was then suffering from ague, and having been roused from his sleep very early had not had time to have his now snow-white hair dressed with his usual care. One of his servants noticed this as he was being taken away, and telling him of it, Raleigh answered, smiling, “Let them kem (comb) it that have it,” then he added, “Peter, dost thou know of any plaister to set a man’s head on again when it is cut off?”