But he had not gone far, when a swift messenger was sent to him ordering him to return.  Unwillingly he obeyed, and when he reached home he was at once sent to the Tower a prisoner.  This time the Queen was really angry with him; in her eyes Raleigh’s crime was a deep one, for he had fallen in love with one of her own maids of honor, Mistress Elizabeth Throgmorton, and the Queen had discovered it.  Elizabeth allowed none of her favorites to love any one but herself, so she punished Raleigh by sending him to the Tower.

Mistress Throgmorton was also made a prisoner.  After a time, however, both prisoners were set free, though they were banished from court.  They married and went to live at Sherborne where Raleigh busied himself improving his beautiful house and laying out the garden.  For though set free Raleigh was still in disgrace.  But we may believe that he found some recompense for his Queen’s anger in his wife’s love.

In his wife Raleigh found a life-long comrade.  Through all good and evil fortune she stood by him, she shared his hopes and desires, she sold her lands to give him money for his voyages, she shared imprisonment with him when it came again, and after his death she never ceased to mourn his loss.  How Raleigh loved her in return we learn from the few letters written to her which have come down to us.  She is “Sweetheart” “Dearest Bess,” and he tells to her his troubles and his hopes as to a staunch and true friend.

We cannot follow Raleigh through all his restless life, it was so full and varied that the story of it would fill a long book.  He loved fighting and adventure, he loved books too, and soon we find him back in London meeting Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, and all the great writers of the age at the Mermaid Club.  For Raleigh knew all the great men of his day, among them Sir Robert Bruce Cotton of whom you heard in connection with the adventures of the Beowulf Manuscript.

But soon, in spite of his love for his wife, in spite of his interest in his beautiful home, in spite of his many friends, Raleigh’s restless spirit again drove him to the sea, and he set out on a voyage of discovery and adventure.  This time he sailed to Guiana in South America, in search of Eldorado, the fabled city of gold.  And this time he was not called back by the Queen, but although he reached South America and sailed up the Orinoco and the Caroni he “returned a beggar and withered"* without having found the fabled city.  Yet his belief in it was as strong as ever.  He had not found the fabled city but he believed it was to be found, and when he came home he wrote an account of his journey because some of his enemies said that he had never been to Guiana at all but had been hiding in Cornwall all the time.  In this book he said that he was ready again to “lie hard, to fare worse, to be subjected to perils, to diseases, to ill savours, to be parched and withered"* if in the end he might succeed.