Connecting Links with Jamestown and New
England
Following his marriage to Elizabeth Throckmorton,
which displeased the Queen, Raleigh remained out of favor until after
the capture of Cadiz, in 1596, in which he had participated. Upon the
accession of King James I, in 1603, he again lost favor at Court and on
July 16, 1603, was imprisoned in the Tower of London on the charge of
having conspired to place Arabella Stuart on the throne instead of
James. At the trial in November, Raleigh, along with Lords Cobham and
Grey, was convicted and condemned to death. The lives of all three were
dramatically spared at the last minute, but the conviction and sentence
of death against Raleigh were allowed to stand and he remained in prison
in the Tower until 1616.
One consequence of the conviction of Raleigh was the
loss of any rights that he might still have had under the patent of 1584
giving him the sole right to colonize the vast territory called
Virginia. The patent had obligated him to settle Virginia within 6 years
but so long as the mystery of the Lost Colonists remained unsolved,
Raleigh could allege that his colonists might be living somewhere in
Virginia and that in consequence his rights under the Charter of Queen
Elizabeth were still in force. These claims he asserted as late as 1603.
In fact, the abolition of Raleigh's claims appears to have been one of
the outstanding consequences of the Cobham plot trails. Because his
patent was now clearly lost and because of his imprisonment, Raleigh was
unable to participate in the movement that culminated in the settlement
of Virginia in 1607. Yet this movement, and the movement to settle New
England, had close ties with him. Among the leading spirits behind the
later successful Virginian enterprise were Richard Hakluyt and Sir
Thomas Smythe, two of those to whom Raleigh had deeded his interest in
the Lost Colony undertaking on March 7, 1589. Likewise, among the early
leaders of the North Virginia, or Plymouth, group were Raleigh Gilbert
and Sir John Gilbert, sons of Raleigh's half-brother, Sir Humphrey
Gilbert. Raleigh Gilbert participated in the effort to plant a
settlement on the Kennebec River in Maine in 1607 and was a member of
the Plymouth Company as late as 1620.
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