grounds for doubt if he did the latter.


There was also on Virginia in these days the shadow of Spain. In 1611 the
English had found upon the beach near Point Comfort three Spaniards from a
Spanish caravel which, as the Englishmen had learned with alarm, "was
fitted with a shallop necessarie and propper to discover freshetts, rivers,
and creekes." They took the three prisoner and applied for instructions to
Dale, who held them to be spies and clapped them into prison at Point Comfort.

That Dale's suspicions were correct, is proved by a letter which the King
of Spain wrote in cipher to the Spanish Ambassador in London ordering him
to confer with the King as to the liberty of three prisoners whom
Englishmen in Virginia have captured. The three are "the Alcayde Don Diego
de Molino, Ensign Marco Antonio Perez, and Francisco Lembri an English
pilot, who by my orders went to reconnoitre those ports." Small wonder that
Dale was apprehensive. "What may be the daunger of this unto us," he wrote
home, "who are here so few, so weake, and unfortified, . . . I refer me to
your owne honorable knowledg."

Months pass, and the English Ambassador to Spain writes from Madrid that he
"is not hasty to advertise anything upon bare rumours, which hath made me
hitherto forbeare to write what I had generally heard of their intents
against Virginia, but now I have been . . . advertised that without
question they will speedily attempt against our plantation there. And that
it is a thing resolved of, that ye King of Spain must run any hazard with
England rather than permit ye English to settle there . . . .Whatsoever is
attempted, I conceive will be from ye Havana."

Rumors fly back and forth. The next year 1613--the Ambassador writes from