His communications with Ralegh were limited to the extraction of this expression of assent. Nowhere does he assert or imply that Ralegh accepted any present from him, or entered into any compact. Yet Hume founds on the bald statement of sympathy a formal allegation that Ralegh offered his services to France, and that the offer was repulsed. It is a sample of the way in which he has been traduced. Sully's evidence exhibits him in his invariable attitude of an adversary of Spain and Spanish pretensions. It does not indicate the smallest tendency in him to further his own policy by means of illegitimate foreign influences. His mistake was the belief that he could by perseverance impose his doctrines and himself upon the sovereign. In theory he understood, as he lays down in his History, that it is not sufficient to be wise with a wise prince, valiant with a valiant, and just with a just; a courtier, who would have an estate in his prosperity, must, he teaches, live altogether out of himself, study other men's humours, and change with the successor to the throne. In practice none ever disobeyed this law of advancement more signally than Ralegh in relation to James. His egotism often before had blinded him to the idiosyncrasies of others. He seems to have been more than ordinarily incapable of comprehending those of his present ruler. He presumed eagerness in a young King to signalize his accession by feats of arms. The high spirit of James was the source from which he hoped to draw the motive force necessary for the accomplishment of his vast designs against the colonial empire of Spain. An accidental conjunction of circumstances enabled him to see speedily the effect of his attempt to storm the royal confidence by displaying his own martial propensities.
We now enter the period of the plot and plot within plot in which Anthony Copley, the priests William Watson and Francis Clarke, George Brooke and his brother Cobham, Sir Griffin Markham and his brothers, the Puritan Lord Grey of Wilton, and Sir Edward Parham were variously and confusedly implicated. The intrigue, 'a dark kind of treason,' as Rushworth calls it, 'a sham plot' as it is styled by Sir John Hawles, belongs to our story only so far as the cross machinations involved Ralegh. His slender relation to it is as hard to fix as a cobweb or a nightmare. Even in his own age his part in it was, as obsolete Echard says, 'all riddle and mystery.' Cobham had an old acquaintance with the Count of Arenberg, Minister to the Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabel, joint sovereigns of the Low Countries. The Infanta was that daughter of Philip II whose claims to the English throne Jesuits had asserted, and Essex had affected to fear. During the late reign Cobham had been in the habit of corresponding with the Count both openly and secretly. De la Fayle and an Antwerp merchant, la Renzi or de Laurencie, carried letters and messages to and fro. In November, 1602, the Count had invited Cobham to come over and confer about peace, of which Cobham was a strong advocate. After James's accession he wrote again. Cobham inquired of Cecil and the King how he was to reply. James answered that Cobham should know his pleasure on the meeting of the Council. To Lennox he remarked angrily that Cobham was more busy in it than he needed to be. Cobham meanwhile thought of going abroad; but Cecil dissuaded him. In May, 1603, Arenberg sent a third letter by de la Fayle.