e, a fixed duty on exportation in general, and a charge
on 'over-lengths,' that is to say, on pieces which exceeded the maximum
length of twenty-four yards. When Burghley assailed this whole system of
taxation in 1591, he stated that Raleigh had, in the first year only of
his grant, received 3,950_l._ from a privilege for which he paid to the
State a rent of only 700_l._ If this was correct, and no one could be in
a better position than Burghley to check the figures, Raleigh's income
from broad-cloth alone was something like 18,000_l._ of Victorian money.

Such were the sources of an opulence which we must do Raleigh the credit
to say was expended not on debauchery or display, but in the most
enlightened efforts to extend the field of English commercial enterprise
beyond the Atlantic. We need not suppose him to have been unselfish
beyond the fashion of his age. In his action there was, no doubt, an
element of personal ambition; he dreamed of raising a State in the West
before which his great enemy, Spain, should sink into the shade, and he
fancied himself the gorgeous viceroy of such a kingdom. His imagination,
which had led him on so bravely, gulled him sometimes when it came to
details. His sailors had seen the light of sunset on the cliffs of
Roanoke, and Raleigh took the yellow gleam for gold. He set his faith
too lightly on the fabulous ores of Chaunis Temotam. But he was not the
slave of these fancies, as were the more vulgar adventurers of his age.
More than the promise of pearls and silver, it was the homely products
of the new country that attracted him, and his captains were bidden to
bring news to him of the fish and fruit of Virginia, its salts and dyes
and textile grasses. Nor was it a goldsmith that he sent out to the new
colony as his scientific agent, but a young mathematician of promise,
the practical and observant Thomas Hariot.

Some personal details of Raleigh's private life during these two years
may now be touched upon. He was in close attendance upon the Queen at
Greenwich and at Windsor, when he was not in his own house in the still
rural village of Islington. In the summer of 1584, probably in
consequence of the new wealth his broad-cloth patent had secured him, he
enlarged his borders in several ways. He leased of the Queen, Durham
House, close to the river, covering the site of the present Adelphi
Terrace. This was the vast fourteenth-century palace of the Bishops of
Durham, which had come int