there is no ground for belief that he would have perpetrated a
cold-blooded fraud to gratify his ill-will. He was arrogant and
tyrannical, not criminal, as the circumstances of the loss of his
Lieutenancy show. The presence of honest and friendly Carew as one of
the royal commissioners, renders the account as it stands all but
incredible. He certainly would not have been a party to a lying and
wicked prevarication. Cecil would not, nor Sir Julius Caesar. But it is
one of the many Ralegh myths, with a possible particle of truth in it,
which cannot be sifted out of the mass of fiction.

[Sidenote: _Ralegh on a Piedmontese Alliance._]

Ralegh built more hopes on the favour of the Prince of Wales than on
that of his mother. Prince Henry was of a high spirit. He would have
rejoiced in war at which his father shuddered. Through his mother he
made Ralegh's acquaintance in his boyhood, and for him the prisoner was
a hero. Everybody has heard his saying: 'Who but my father would keep
such a bird in a cage!' Ralegh eagerly responded to the advances of one
through whom he might become not only free but powerful. The Prince
delighted in the company of Ralegh, who states that he had intended the
_History of the World_ for him; and he is said to have looked over the
manuscript. He consulted Ralegh in 1611 on the proposal by Duke Charles
Emmanuel I of Savoy for a double intermarriage. The Elector Palatine was
negotiating for the hand of Princess Elizabeth. Spain and the whole
Catholic party in Europe dreaded an alliance of the English royal family
with German Protestantism. They tried to engage James to affiance
Elizabeth to the Duke of Savoy's son, the Prince of Piedmont, and Henry
to the Duke's daughter. Ralegh combated the scheme in two Discourses,
printed long after his death. The first mainly discussed the plan of
Elizabeth's marriage to 'a prince jesuited,' her removal far from her
country to a family circle of another faith, a dependent now and ever,
as Ralegh not prophetically declared, 'either upon France or upon
Spain.' He foreboded how, in default of male heirs in England, 'a
Savoyan, of Spanish race, might become King of England.' 'I do prize,'
he declared, 'the alliance of the Palatine of the Rhine, and of the
House of Nassau, more than I do the alliance of the Duke of Savoy.' In
the second Discourse Ralegh argued against the Prince's alliance with
Dukes of the blood of Spain, and servants of 'Spain, which to England is