pledged all his resources. He called in
the loan of L3000 to the Countess of Bedford. His wife sold to Mr.
Thomas Plumer for L2500 her house and lands at Mitcham. Altogether he
spent L10,500. Part he had to borrow on bills. So impoverished was he
that, as he related subsequently, he left himself no more in all the
world, directly or indirectly, than L100, of which he gave his wife L45.
Warm personal friends, of whom he always had many, notwithstanding his
want of promiscuous popularity, gave encouragement and sympathy. George
Carew, writing to Sir Thomas Roe at the Great Mogul's Court of the
building of the Destiny, which was launched on December 16, 1616,
'prayed Heaven she might be no less fortunate with her owner than is
wished by me.' Carew, shrewd and prudent, had no doubt of the sincerity
of his 'extreme confidence in his gold mine.' Adherents contributed
money and equipments. Lady Ralegh's relative, grand-nephew of her old
opponent at law, Lord Huntingdon, presented a pair of cannon. The Queen
offered good wishes, and was with difficulty dissuaded from visiting the
flagship.

Many co-adventurers joined, and contributed nearly L30,000.
Unfortunately they were, Ralegh has recorded, mostly dissolute,
disorderly, and ungovernable. Their friends were cheaply rid of them at
the hazard of thirty, forty, or fifty pounds apiece. Some soon showed
themselves unmanageable, and were dismissed before the fleet sailed. Of
the discharged a correspondent of Ralegh's pleasantly wrote: 'It will
cause the King to be at some charge in buying halters to save them from
drowning.' More than enough stayed to furnish Ralegh with mournful
grounds later on for recollecting his own Cassandra-like regret that
Greek Eumenes should have 'cast away all his virtue, industry, and wit
in leading an army without full power to keep it in due obedience.' Of
better characters were some forty gentlemen volunteers. Among them were
Sir Warham St. Leger, son of Ralegh's Irish comrade, not as Mr. Kingsley
surmises, the father, who had been slain in 1600; George Ralegh,
Ralegh's nephew, who had served with Prince Maurice; William or Myles
Herbert, a cousin of Ralegh, and near kinsman of Lord Pembroke; Charles
Parker, misnamed in one list Barker, a brother of Lord Monteagle;
Captain North; and Edward Hastings, Lord Huntingdon's brother. Hastings
died at Cayenne. He would, wrote Ralegh at the time, have died as
certainly at home, for 'both his liver, spleen, a