One Belle reported himself to Montmorency as Faige's associate. In that
character he obtained Ralegh's letter, and carried it with other papers,
and a map of Guiana, to Madrid. There he told the story in the May of
the following year. Ralegh's letter to Bisseaux in his handwriting has
been seen and copied at Simancas. If he ever received, as is inferred
from his admissions to the Royal Commissioners next year, and to Sir
Thomas Wilson, the warrant he asked, it was a permit from the French
Admiralty. It was not a commission from the French Crown, and, whatever
it was, James and his Ministers were parties to its grant.

[Sidenote: _Mystifications._]

The whole secret history of the preliminaries to the Guiana expedition
forms a tangled skein. The negotiations of Ralegh with France were
certainly known to Winwood, and, there can be little doubt, to James
also. Ralegh taxed the King by letter in October, 1618, with privity and
assent to the arrangement, through Faige, for the co-operation of French
ships against the Spaniards at the mouth of the Orinoko. He was not
contradicted. Winwood and his section of the Council in good faith
preferred a French to a Spanish compact. They did not shudder at the
contingency of war. James and the pro-Spanish party concurred for the
moment in the playing off of France against Spain, in order to push
Spain into the English alliance which they coveted. From the double
motive the Government in general encouraged Ralegh to treat with France.
That Spain might be frightened he was instigated to an intimacy with
French Ministers and plotters. Though he never received a regular French
commission, it was allowed to be supposed that one had been issued to
him. No French ships were fitted out to aid him, or despatched to the
coast of Guiana. Nothing, it may confidently be asserted, was ever
farther from his thoughts than the surrender of territory he might
appropriate to any foreign Crown. All simply was a game of mystification
devised for one purpose by Winwood, and, for a different purpose, joined
in by James and the rest. The Spanish faction wished to give Spain cause
to fancy its foe was being unchained to do his worst against it at his
own discretion, and by any agency he chose, unless it should come to
terms speedily. A condition of the game, which Ralegh but imperfectly
understood, was that it should be played at his especial peril. He was
suffered to concert measures with one foreign ally of