nd when the Queen died might have saved him from the calumny
of treason.

It has been supposed that Raleigh was a complete loser by these vain
expeditions. But a passage in a letter of August 21, 1602, shows us that
this was not the fact. He says: 'Neither of them spake with the people,'
that is, with the lost Virginian colonists, 'but I do send both the
barques away again, having saved the charge in sassafras wood.' From the
same letter we find that Gilbert and Gosnoll went off without Raleigh's
leave, though in his ship and at his expense, and the latter therefore
prays that his nephew may be stripped of his rich store of sassafras and
cedar wood, partly in chastisement, but more for fear of overstocking
the London market. He throws Gilbert over, and speaks angrily of him not
as a kinsman, but as 'my Lord Cobham's man;' then relents in a
postscript--'_all_ is confiscate, but he shall have his part again.'

Raleigh was feeble in health and irritable in temper all this time. Lady
Raleigh, with a woman's instinct, tried to curb his ambition, and tie
him down to Sherborne. 'My wife says that every day this place amends,
and London, to her, grows worse and worse.' Meanwhile, there is really
not an atom of evidence to show that Raleigh was engaged in any
political intrigue. He spent the summer and autumn of 1602, when he was
not at Sherborne, in going through the round of his duties. All the
month of July he spent in Jersey, 'walking in the wilderness,' as he
says, hearing from no one, and troubled in mind by vague rumours, blown
over to him from Normandy, of the disgrace of the Duc de Biron. He is
also 'much pestered with the coming of many Norman gentlemen, but cannot
prevent it.' On August 9, he left Jersey, in his ship the 'Antelope,'
fearing if he stayed any longer to exhaust her English stores, and get
no more 'in this poor island.' On landing at Weymouth on the 12th, he
wrote inviting Cecil and Northumberland to meet him at Bath. He was
justly exasperated to find that during his absence Lord Howard of Bindon
had once more taken up the wicked steward, Meeres, and persuaded Sir
William Peryam, the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, to try the suit again.
Raleigh complains to Cecil:

I never busied myself with the Lord Viscount's [Lord Bindon's]
wealth, nor of his extortions, nor poisoning of his wife, as is
here avowed, have I spoken. I have foreborne ... but I will not
endure wrong at so peevish a fool's