theory that he had never meant to seek for a mine, and had always
intended to seize the treasure-ships. He was alleged to have confessed
on his return that, before the mining project failed, he had proposed
the capture of the fleet in the event of its failure. He was said to
have admitted in talk with Sir Thomas Wilson in the Tower, that, after
the return from San Thome, he formally enunciated to his officers a
design to that effect. He was said to have told them that he had a
French commission which empowered him to take any Spanish vessel beyond
the Canaries. The allegation that, after the collapse of the expedition
to San Thome, he had meant to sail for the Carib islands, and leave the
land companies to their fate, insinuated that he was projecting some
great piracy. His own subsequent contradiction of the issue to him of
any commission from the French Crown has been represented by modern
writers as a dishonest prevarication. He had, it is asserted, a French
commission, though from the French Lord High Admiral, not from the King
of France.

[Sidenote: _Ralegh's real Project._]

Much of this indictment rests upon tainted evidence. When the testimony
is respectable, it is for the most part outweighed by Ralegh's own word.
At all events, for his alleged intention to have been of avail for the
support of a criminal charge it was necessary to prove some act in
conformity with it. None could be instanced except the San Thome
collision itself, which the Spaniards had brought on. Whether he would
have embraced a good opportunity for anything like buccaneering it is
difficult to decide. Though the rumours of the fleet, reckless words of
his own, other words uttered for some very dissimilar purpose,
admissions dishonourably drawn from him and craftily pieced together,
and a phrase in a heart-broken letter to his heart-broken wife, need not
be accepted as conclusive, it may be conceded that they accord with his
and the prevalent English temper. For him England and Spain in America
were always at war. 'To break peace where there is no peace,' he wrote,
'it cannot be. The Spaniards give us no peace there.' He stated the
literal truth. Spaniards treated unlicensed English voyagers to any part
of South America as pirates and felons. He claimed the right of
reprisals; and public opinion in England was on his side. English law
was not. He might have been amenable to it had he acted upon his idea of
Anglo-Spanish reciprocity, and in