Editing Roanoke Colony (section)

===Conspiracy against Raleigh===
Anthropologist Lee Miller proposed that Sir [[Francis Walsingham]], Simon Fernandes, Edward Strafford, and others participated in a conspiracy to [[marooning|maroon]] the 1587 colonists at Roanoke. The purpose of this plot, she argued, was to undermine Walter Raleigh, whose activities supposedly interfered with Walsingham's covert machinations to make England a Protestant world power, at the expense of Spain and other Catholic nations. This conspiracy would have impeded Raleigh and White from dispatching a relief mission until Walsingham's death in 1590.{{Sfn|Miller|2002|pp= 168–204}} Miller also suggested that the colonists may have been [[English Dissenters|separatists]], seeking refuge in America from religious persecution in England. Raleigh expressed sympathy for the separatists, while Walsingham considered them a threat to be eliminated.{{Sfn|Miller|2002|pp= 43–50, 316}}

According to Miller, the colonists split up, with a small group relocating to Croatoan while the main body sought shelter with the [[Chowanoke]]. The colonists, however, would have quickly spread European diseases among their hosts, decimating the Chowanoke and thereby destabilizing the balance of power in the region. From there Miller reasoned that the Chowanoke were attacked, with the survivors taken captive, by the "Mandoag", a powerful nation to the west that the Jamestown colonists only knew from the vague accounts of their neighbors.{{Sfn|Miller|2002|pp= 227–237}} She concluded that the "Mandoag" were the [[Eno people|Eno]], who traded the captured surviving Lost Colonists as slaves, dispersing them throughout the region.{{Sfn|Miller|2002|pp= 255–260}}

Miller's theory has been challenged based on Walsingham's considerable financial support of Raleigh's expeditions, and the willingness of Fernandes to bring John White back to England, instead of abandoning him with the other colonists.{{Sfn|Fullam|2017|pp= 29–30}}