isgrace me in the eye of the world. From thence she
came to speak of Raleigh; and it seemed she could not well
endure anything to be spoken against him; and taking hold of my
word 'disdain,' she said there was 'no such cause why I should
disdain him.' This speech did trouble me so much that, as near
as I could, I did describe unto her what he had been, and what
he was.... I then did let her know, whether I had cause to
disdain his competition of love, or whether I could have comfort
to give myself over to the service of a mistress which was in
awe of such a man. I spake, with grief and choler, as much
against him as I could; and I think he, standing at the door,
might very well hear the worst that I spoke of himself. In that
end, I saw she was resolved to defend him, and to cross me.

It was probably about this time, and owing to the instigation of Essex,
that Tarleton, the comedian, laid himself open to banishment from Court
for calling out, while Raleigh was playing cards with Elizabeth, 'See
how the Knave commands the Queen!' Elizabeth supported her old
favourite, but there is no doubt that these attacks made their
impression on her irritable temperament. Meanwhile Raleigh, engaged in a
dozen different enterprises, and eager to post hither and thither over
land and sea, was probably not ill disposed to see his royal mistress
diverted from a too-absorbing attention to himself.

On May 8, 1587, Raleigh sent forth from Plymouth his fourth Virginian
expedition, under Captain John White. It was found that the second
colony, the handful of men left behind by Sir Richard Grenville, had
perished. With 150 men, White landed at Hatorask, and proposed to found
a town of Raleigh in the new country. Every species of disaster attended
this third colony, and in the midst of the excitement caused the
following year by the Spanish Armada, a fifth expedition, fitted out
under Sir Richard Grenville, was stopped by the Government at Bideford.
Raleigh was not easily daunted, however, and in the midst of the
preparations for the great struggle he contrived to send out two
pinnaces from Bideford, on April 22, 1588, for the succour of his
unfortunate Virginians; but these little vessels were ignominiously
stripped off Madeira by privateers from La Rochelle, and sent helpless
back to England. Raleigh had now spent more than forty thousand pounds
upon the barren colony of Virginia, and, finding