entitled to privileges extending two hundred leagues from Roanoke. As
long as Elizabeth lived no one disputed Raleigh's privileges under his
patent, though partly assigned, but none of the Assignees cared to
adventure further. The patent had become practically a dead letter. As
late however as 1603 the compliment was paid Raleigh of asking his
permission to make a voyage to North Virginia. As no English plantation
between the Spanish and the French possessions in North America at the
time of the accession of James was maintained the patent was allowed
nominally to remain in force. But no one claimed any rights under it. It
has been stated by several recent historians that the attainder of
Raleigh took away his patent privileges, but evidence of this is not
forthcoming. It is manifest that James the First, who had little regard
for his own or others' royal grants or chartered rights in America,
considered the coast clear and as open to his own royal bounty as it had
been long before to Pope Alexander the Sixth. It was easier and safer to
obtain new charters than to revive any questionable old ones.

But to all intents and purposes the interesting history of Virginia
begins with Raleigh. Whence he drew his inspiration, how he profited by
the experience of others, how he patronized his Magi and bound them to
himself with cords of friendship and liberality; how by his very
blunders and misfortunes he transmitted to posterity some of the most
precious historical memorials found on the pages of English or American
history, we have, perhaps at unnecessary length, endeavoured to show in
this long essay on the brief and true Report of Thomas Hariot, his
surveyor and topographer in Virginia, which must ever serve as the
corner-stone of English American History, by a man who, though long
neglected and half forgotten, must eventually shine as the morning star
of the mathematical sciences in England, as well as that of the history
of her Empire in the West.