When James I succeeded Elizabeth on the throne Raleigh lost his influence at court, and nearly all the last years of his life were spent a prisoner in the Tower of London, where he wrote his _History of the World_. In 1616 he was temporarily released by the king on condition of his finding a gold-mine in Guiana. When he returned empty-handed he was, on the complaint of the Spanish ambassador, arrested, sentenced to death, and executed on an old verdict of the jury, now recognized to have been based on charges trumped up by political enemies.[23]
Raleigh never relinquished hope in America. In 1595 he made a voyage to Guiana, and in 1602 sent out Samuel Mace to Virginia--the third of Mace's voyages thither. In 1603, just before his confinement in the Tower, he wrote to Sir Robert Cecil regarding the rights which he had in that country, and used these memorable words, "I shall yet live to see it an English nation."[24]
[Footnote 1: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 81, II., 10.]
[Footnote 2: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1674, p. 17.]
[Footnote 3: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 82.]
[Footnote 4: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 184-208.]
[Footnote 5: Stevens, _Thomas Hariot_, 43-48.]
[Footnote 6: For the patent, see Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 297-301.]
[Footnote 7: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 13.]
[Footnote 8: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 301.]
[Footnote 9: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 302-310.]
[Footnote 10: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 144-145.]
[Footnote 11: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 322, IV., 10.]
[Footnote 12: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 323, 340.]
[Footnote 13: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 106.]
[Footnote 14: Stevens, _Thomas Hariot_, 55-62.]
[Footnote 15: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 340-345.]
[Footnote 17: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 19.]
[Footnote 18: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 111.]
[Footnote 19: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 20.]
[Footnote 20: Stebbins, _Life of Raleigh_, 47.]
[Footnote 21: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 350-357.]
[Footnote 22: Strachey, _Travaile into Virginia_, 26, 85.]
[Footnote 23: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 706, 721.]
[Illustration: ROANOKE ISLAND, JAMESTOWN AND ST. MARY'S 1584-1632]
Though a prisoner in the Tower of London who could not share in the actual work, Sir Walter Raleigh lived to see his prediction regarding Virginia realized in 1607. He had personally given substance to the English claim to North America based upon the remote discovery of John Cabot, and his friends, after he had withdrawn from the field of action, were the mainstay of English colonization in the Western continent.