for a moment at one or two of the
leash of privateering enterprises, all of them a little under the rose,
in which Sir Walter Raleigh was in these years engaged. An English ship,
the 'Angel Gabriel,' complained of being captured and sacked of her
wines by Raleigh's men on the high seas, and he retorts by insinuating
that she, 'as it is probable, has served the King of Spain in his
Armada,' and is therefore fair game. So, too, with the four butts of
sack of one Artson, and the sugar and mace said to be taken out of a
Hamburg vessel, their capture by Raleigh's factors is comfortably
excused on the ground that these acts were only reprisals against the
villainous Spaniard. It was well that these more or less commercial
undertakings should be successful, for it became more and more plain to
Raleigh that the most grandiose of all his enterprises, his determined
effort to colonise Virginia, could but be a drain upon his fortune.
After Captain White's final disastrous voyage, Raleigh suspended his
efforts in this direction for a while. He leased his patent in Virginia
to a company of merchants, on March 7, 1589, merely reserving to himself
a nominal privilege, namely the possession of one fifth of such gold and
silver ore as should be raised in the colony. This was the end of the
first act of Raleigh's American adventures. It may not be needless to
contradict here a statement repeated in most rapid sketches of his life.
It is not true that at any time Raleigh himself set foot in Virginia.

In the Portugal expedition of 1589 Raleigh does not seem to have taken
at all a prominent part. He was absent, however, with Drake's fleet from
April 18 to July 2, and he marched with the rest up to the walls of
Lisbon. This enterprise was an attempt on the part of Elizabeth to place
Antonio again on the throne of Portugal, from which he had been ousted
by Philip of Spain in 1580. The aim of the expedition was not reached,
but a great deal of booty fell into the hands of the English, and
Raleigh in particular received 4,000_l._ His contingent, however, had
been a little too zealous, and he received a rather sharp reprimand for
capturing two barks from Cherbourg belonging to the friendly power of
France. It must be understood that Raleigh at this time maintained at
his own expense a small personal fleet for commercial and privateering
ends, and that he lent or leased these vessels, with his own services,
to the government when additional nava