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By far the most interesting and readable, part of the History of the World is its preface. This is a book in itself, and one in which the author condescends to a lively human interest. We cheerfully pass from Elihu the Buzite, and the conjectures of Adricomius respecting the family of Ram, to the actualities of English and Continental history in the generation immediately preceding that in which Raleigh was writing. When we consider the position in which the author stood towards James I. and turn to the pages of his Preface, we refuse to believe that it was without design that he expressed himself in language so extraordinary. It would have been mere levity for a friendless prisoner, ready for the block, to publish this terrible arraignment of the crimes of tyrant kings, unless he had some reason for believing that he could shelter himself successfully under a powerful sympathy. This sympathy, in the case of Sir Walter Raleigh, could be none other than that of Prince Henry; and it may well have been in the summer of 1612, when, as we know, he was particularly intimate with the Prince and busied in his affairs, that he wrote the Preface. With long isolation from the world, he had lost touch of public affairs, as The Prerogative of Parliament would alone be sufficient to show. It is probable that he exaggerated the influence of the young Prince, and estimated too highly the promise of liberty which he had wrung from his father.

It took James some time to discover that this grave Rabbinical miscellany, inspired by Siracides and Goropius Becanus, was not wholesome reading for his subjects. On January 5, 1615, after the book had been selling slowly, the King gave an order commanding the suppression of the remainder of the edition, giving as his reason that 'it is too saucy in censuring the acts of kings.' It is said that some favoured person at Court pushed inquiry further, and extracted from James the explanation that the censure of Henry VIII. was the real cause of the suppression. Contemporary anecdote, however, has reported that the defamation of the Tudors in the Preface to the History of the World might have passed without reproof, if the King had not discovered in the very body of the book several passages so ambiguously worded that he could not but suspect the writer of intentional satire. According to this story, he was startled at Raleigh's account of Naboth's Vineyard, and scandalised at the description of the impeachment of the Admiral of France; but what finally drew him up, and made him decide that the book must perish, was the character of King Ninias, son of Queen Semiramis. This passage, then, may serve us as an example of the History of the World:

Ninus being the first whom the madness of boundless dominion transported, invaded his neighbour princes, and became victorious over them; a man violent, insolent, and cruel. Semiramis taking the opportunity, and being more proud, adventurous, and ambitious than her paramour, enlarged the Babylonian empire, and beautified many places therein with buildings unexampled. But her son having changed nature and condition with his mother, proved no less feminine than she was masculine. And as wounds and wrongs, by their continual smart, put the patient in mind how to cure the one and revenge the other, so those kings adjoining (whose subjection and calamities incident were but new, and therefore the more grievous) could not sleep, when the advantage was offered by such a successor. For in regno Babylonico hic parum resplenduit: 'This king shined little,' saith Nauclerus of Ninias, 'in the Babylonian kingdom.' And likely it is, that the necks of mortal men having been never before galled with the yoke of foreign dominion, nor having ever had experience of that most miserable and detested condition of living in slavery; no long descent having as yet invested the Assyrian with a right, nor any other title being for him pretended than a strong hand; the foolish and effeminate son of a tyrannous and hated mother could very ill hold so many great princes and nations his vassals, with a power less mastering, and a mind less industrious, than his father and mother had used before him.

It is in passages like this, where we read the satire between the lines, and in those occasional fragments of autobiography to which we have already referred in the course of this narrative, that the secondary charm of the History of the World resides. It is to these that we turn when we have exhausted our first surprise and delight at the great bursts of poetic eloquence, the long sonorous sentences which break like waves on the shore, when the spirit of the historian is roused by some occasional tempest of reflection. In either case, the book is essentially one to glean from, not to read with consecutive patience. Real historical philosophy is absolutely wanting. The author strives to seem impartial by introducing, in the midst of an account of the slaughter of the Amalekites, a chapter on 'The Instauration of Civility in Europe, and of Prometheus and Atlas;' but his general notions of history are found to be as rude as his comparative mythology. He scarcely attempts to sift evidence, and next to Inspiration he knows no guide more trustworthy than Pintus or Haytonus, a Talmudic rabbi or a Jesuit father. In the midst of his disquisitions, the reward of the continuous reader is to come suddenly upon an unexpected 'as I myself have seen in America,' or 'as once befell me also in Ireland.'

Another historical work, the Breviary of the History of England, has been claimed for Sir Walter Raleigh. This book was first published in 1692, from a manuscript in the possession of Archbishop Sancroft, and, as it would appear, in Raleigh's handwriting. Before its publication, however, the Archbishop had noted that 'Samuel Daniel hath inserted into his History of England [1618], almost word for word, both the Introduction and the Life; whence it is that you have sometimes in the margin of my copy a various reading with "D" after it.' Daniel, a gentle and subservient creature, was the friend of Camden, and a paid servant of Queen Anne, during Raleigh's imprisonment. He died a few months after Raleigh's execution. It is very likely that he was useful to Raleigh in collecting notes and other material. It may even have been his work for the interesting prisoner in the Tower that caused Jonson's jealous dislike of Daniel. The younger poet's own account, as Mr. Edwards pointed out, by no means precludes the supposition that he used material put together by another hand. At the same time Sancroft's authority cannot be considered final as regards Raleigh's authorship of the Breviary, for the manuscript did not come into his hands until nineteen years after Raleigh's death.

No such doubt attaches to the very curious and interesting volume published nominally at Middelburg in 1628, and entitled The Prerogative of Parliament. This takes the form of a dialogue between a Counsellor of State and a Justice of the Peace. The dramatic propriety is but poorly sustained, and presently the Justice becomes Raleigh, speaking in his own person. The book was written in the summer of 1615, a few months after the suppression of the History of the World, and by a curious misconstruction of motive was intended to remove from the King's mind the unpleasant impression caused by those parables of Ahab and of Ninias. It had, however, as we shall see, the very opposite result. The preface to the King expresses an almost servile desire to please: 'it would be more dog-like than man-like to bite the stone that struck me, to wit the borrowed authority of my sovereign misinformed.' But Raleigh was curiously misinformed himself regarding the ways and wishes of James. His dialogue takes for its starting-point the trial of Oliver St. John, who had been Raleigh's fellow-prisoner in the Tower since April for having with unreasonable brutality protested against the enforced payment of what was called the Benevolence, a supposed free-will offering to the purse of the King. So ignorant was Raleigh of what was going on in England, that he fancied James to be unaware of the tricks of his ministers; and the argument of The Prerogative of Parliament is to encourage the King to cast aside his evil counsellors, and come face to face with his loyal people. The student of Mr. Gardiner's account of the Benevolence will smile to think of the rage with which the King must have received Raleigh's proffered good advice, and of Raleigh's stupefaction at learning that his well-meant volume was forbidden to be printed. His manuscript, prepared for the press, still remains among the State Papers, and it was not until ten years after his death that it was first timidly issued under the imprints of Middelburg and of Hamburg.

Not the least of Raleigh's chagrins in the Tower must have been the composition of works which he was unable to publish. It is probable that several of these are still unknown to the world; many were certainly destroyed, some may still be in existence. During the thirty years which succeeded his execution, there was a considerable demand for scraps of Raleigh's writing on the part of men who were leaning to the Liberal side. John Hampden was a collector of Raleigh's manuscripts, and he is possibly the friend who bequeathed to Milton the manuscript of The Cabinet Council, an important political work of Raleigh's which the great Puritan poet gave to the world in 1658. At that time Milton had had the treatise 'many years in my hands, and finding it lately by chance among other books and papers, upon reading thereof I thought it a kind of injury to withhold longer the work of so eminent an author from the public.' The Cabinet Council is a study in the manner of Macchiavelli. It treats of the arts of empire and mysteries of State-craft, mainly with regard to the duties of monarchy. It is remarkable for the extraordinary richness of allusive extracts from the Roman classics, almost every maxim being immediately followed by an apt Latin example. At the end of the twenty-fourth chapter the author wakes up to the tedious character of this manner of instruction, and the rest of the book is illustrated by historical instances in the English tongue. The book closes with an exhortation to the reader, who could be no other than Prince Henry, to emulate the conduct of Amurath, King of Turbay, who abandoned worldly glory to embrace a retired life of contemplation. The Cabinet Council must be regarded as a text-book of State-craft, intended in usum Delphini.

Probably earlier in date, and certainly more elegant in literary form, is the treatise entitled A Discourse of War. This may be recommended to the modern reader as the most generally pleasing of Raleigh's prose compositions, and the one in which, owing to its modest limits, the peculiarities of his style may be most conveniently studied. The last passage of the little book forms one of the most charming pages of the literature of that time, and closes with a pathetic and dignified statement of Raleigh's own attitude towards war. 'It would be an unspeakable advantage, both to the public and private, if men would consider that great truth, that no man is wise or safe but he that is honest. All I have designed is peace to my country; and may England enjoy that blessing when I shall have no more proportion in it than what my ashes make.' There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of these words; yet we must not forget that this pacific light was not that in which Raleigh's character had presented itself to Robert Cecil or to Elizabeth.

None of Raleigh's biographers have suggested any employment for his leisure during the year which followed his release from the Tower. Yet the expressions he used in the preface to his Observations on Trade and Commerce show that it must have been prepared during the year 1616 or 1617: 'about fourteen or fifteen years past,' that is to say in 1602, 'I presented you,' he says to the King, 'a book of extraordinary importance.' He complains that this earlier book was suppressed, and hopes for better luck; but the same misfortune, as usual with Raleigh, attended the Observations. That treatise was an impassioned plea, based upon a survey of the commercial condition of the world, in favour of free trade. Raleigh looked with grave suspicion on the various duties which were levied, in increasing amount, on foreign goods entering this country, and he entreated James I. to allow him to nominate commissioners to examine into the causes of the depression of trade, and to revise the tariffs on a liberal basis. It must have seemed to the King that Raleigh wilfully opposed every royal scheme which he examined. James had been a protectionist all through his reign, and at this very moment was busy in attempting to force the native industries to flourish in spite of foreign competition. Raleigh's treatise must have been put into the King's hands much about the time at which his violent protectionism was threatening to draw England into war with Holland. Raleigh's advice seems to us wise and pointed, but to James it can only have appeared wilfully wrong-headed. The Observations upon Trade disappeared as so many of Raleigh's manuscripts had disappeared before it, and was only first published in the Remains¹⁰ of 1651.

Of the last three years of Raleigh's imprisonment in the Tower we know scarcely anything. On September 27, 1615, a fellow-prisoner in whom Raleigh could not fail to take an interest, Lady Arabella Stuart, died in the Tower. In December, Raleigh was deprived, by an order in Council, of Arabella's rich collection of pearls, but how they had come into his possession we cannot guess. Nor can we date the stroke of apoplexy from which Raleigh suffered about this time. But relief was now briefly coming. Two of Raleigh's worst enemies, Northampton and Somerset, were removed, and in their successors, Winwood and Villiers, Raleigh found listeners more favourable to his projects. It has been said that he owed his release to bribery, but Mr. Gardiner thinks it needless to suppose this. Winwood was as cordial a hater of Spain as Raleigh himself; and Villiers, in his political animus against the Somerset faction, would need no bribery. Sir William St. John was active in bringing Raleigh's claims before the Court, and the Queen, as ever, used what slender influence she possessed. Urged on so many sides, James gave way, and on January 30, 1616, signed a warrant for Raleigh's release from the Tower. He was to live in his own house, but, with a keeper; he was not to presume to visit the Court, or the Queen's apartments, nor go to any public assemblies whatever, and his whole attention was to be given to making due preparations for the intended voyage to Guiana. This warrant, although Raleigh used it to leave his confinement, was only provisional; and was confirmed by a minute of the Privy Council on March 19. Raleigh took a house in Broad Street, where he spent fourteen months in discreet retirement, and then sailed on his last voyage.

CHAPTER IX.
THE SECOND VOYAGE TO GUIANA

Raleigh had been released from the Tower expressly on the understanding that he should make direct preparations for a voyage to Guiana. The object of this voyage was to enrich King James with the produce of a mine close to the banks of the Orinoco. In the reign of Elizabeth, Raleigh had stoutly contended that the natives of Guiana had ceded all sovereignty in that country to England in 1595, and that English colonists therefore had no one's leave to ask there. But times had changed, and he now no longer pretended that he had a right to the Orinoco; he was careful to insist that his expedition would infringe no privileges of Spain. He was anxious by every diplomatic subtlety to avoid failure, and for the first few months he kept extremely quiet. He had called in the 8,000l. which had been lying at interest ever since he had received it as part of the compensation for the Sherborne estates. Lady Raleigh had raised 2,500l. by the sale of some lands at Mitcham.¹¹ 5000l. more were brought together by various expedients, some being borrowed in Amsterdam through the famous merchant, Pieter Vanlore,' and 15,000l. were contributed by Raleigh's friends, who looked upon his enterprise much as men at the present day would regard a promising but rather hazardous investment.

His first business was to build one large ship of 440 tons in the Thames. This he named the 'Destiny,' and he received no check in fitting her up to his desire; the King paid 700 crowns, as the usual statutable bounty on shipbuilding, without objection. At the same time Raleigh built or collected six other smaller vessels, and furnished them all with ordnance. The preparation of such a fleet in the Thames could not pass unobserved by the representatives of the foreign courts, and during the last six months of 1616 Raleigh's name became the centre of a tangle of diplomatic intrigue, and one which frequently occurs in the correspondence of Sarmiento, better known afterwards as Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, and in that of Des Marêts, the French ambassador. Mr. Edwards has remarked, with complete justice, that the last two years of Raleigh's life were simply 'a protracted death-struggle between him and Gondomar.' The latter had been in England since 1613, and had acquired a singular art in dealing with the purposes of James I. At the English Court during 1616 we find Spain watching France, and Venice watching Savoy, all of them intent on Raleigh's movements in the river. For the unravelment of these intrigues in detail, the reader must be referred to Mr. Gardiner's masterly pages.

On August 26, a royal commission was issued, by which Raleigh was made the commander of an expedition to Guiana, under express orders, more stringently expressed than usual, not to visit the dominions of any Christian prince. This was to allay the alarm of the Spanish ambassador, who from the first rumour of Raleigh's voyage had not ceased to declare that its real object was piracy, and probably the capture of the Mexican plate fleet. At the same time James I. allowed Gondomar to obtain possession of copies of certain documents which Raleigh had drawn out at the royal command describing his intended route, and these were at once forwarded to Madrid, together with such information as Gondomar had been able to glean in conversation with Raleigh. Spain instantly replied by offering him an escort to his gold mine and back, but of course Raleigh declined the proposition. He continued to assert that he had no piratical intention, and that any man might peacefully enter Guiana without asking leave of Spain.

It is doubtful whether the anecdote is true which records that Raleigh at this time applied to Bacon to know whether the terms of his commission were tantamount to a free pardon, and was told that they were. But it rests on much better testimony that Bacon asked him what he would do if the Guiana mine proved a deception. Raleigh admitted that he would then look out for the Mexican plate fleet. 'But then you will be pirates,' said Bacon; and Raleigh answered, 'Ah, who ever heard of men being pirates for millions?' There was no exaggeration in this; the Mexican fleet of that year was valued at two millions and a half. The astute Gondomar was at least half certain that this was Raleigh's real intention, and by October 12 he had persuaded James to give him still more full security that no injury should be done, at the peril of Raleigh's life, to any subject or property of the King of Spain.

The building of the 'Destiny' meanwhile proceeded, and Raleigh received many important visitors on board her. He was protected by the cordial favour of the Secretary, Sir Ralph Winwood; and if the King disliked him as much as ever, no animosity was shown. In the first days of 1617, Raleigh ventured upon a daring act of intrigue. He determined to work upon the growing sympathy of the English Court with Savoy and its tension with Spain, to strike a blow against the rich enemy of the one and ally of the other, Genoa. He proposed to Scarnafissi, the Savoyard envoy in London, that James I. should be induced to allow the Guiana expedition to steal into the Mediterranean, and seize Genoa for Savoy. Scarnafissi laid the proposal before James, and on January 12 it was discussed in the presence of Winwood. There was talk of increasing Raleigh's fleet for this purpose by the addition of a squadron of sixteen ships from the royal navy. For a fortnight the idea was discussed in secret; but on the 26th, Scarnafissi was told that the King had determined not to adopt it. Four days later Raleigh was released from the personal attendance of a keeper, and though still not pardoned, was pronounced free. On February 10, the Venetian envoy, who had been taken into Scarnafissi's counsel, announced to his Government that the King had finally determined to keep Raleigh to his original intention.

Raleigh was next assailed by secret propositions from France. Through the month of February various Frenchmen visited him on the 'Destiny,' besides the ambassador, Des Marêts. He was nearly persuaded, in defiance of James, to support the projected Huguenot rebellion by capturing St. Valéry. To find out the truth regarding his intention, Des Marêts paid at least one visit to the 'Destiny,' and on March 7 gave his Government an account of a conversation with Raleigh, in which the latter had spoken bitterly of James, and had asserted his affection for France, and desire to serve her. It is in the correspondence of Des Marêts that the names of Raleigh and Richelieu become for a moment connected; it was in February 1617 that the future Cardinal described his English contemporary as 'Ouastre Raly, grand marinier et mauvais capitaine.' In March the English Government, to allay fresh apprehensions on the part of Spain, forwarded by Gondomar most implicit assertions that Raleigh's expedition should be in no way injurious to Spain. And so it finally started after all, not bound for Mexico, or Genoa, or St. Valéry, but for the Orinoco. Up to the last, Gondomar protested, and his protestations were only put aside after a special council of March 28. Next day Raleigh rode down to Dover to go on board the 'Destiny,' which had left the Thames on the 26th.

His fleet of seven vessels was not well manned. His own account of the crews is thus worded in the Apology: 'A company of volunteers who for the most part had neither seen the sea nor the wars; who, some forty gentlemen excepted, were the very scum of the world, drunkards, blasphemers, and such others as their fathers, brothers, and friends thought it an exceeding good gain to be discharged of, with the hazard of some thirty, forty, or fifty pound.' He was himself Admiral, with his son Walter as captain of the 'Destiny;' Sir William Sentleger was on the 'Thunder;' a certain John Bailey commanded the 'Husband.' The remaining vessels were the 'Jason,' the 'Encounter,' the 'Flying Joan,' and the 'Page.' The master of the 'Destiny' was John Burwick, 'a hypocritical thief.' Various tiresome delays occurred. They waited for the 'Thunder' at the Isle of Wight; and when the rest went on to Plymouth, the 'Jason' stayed behind ignominiously in Portsmouth because her captain had no ready money to pay a distraining baker. The 'Husband' was in the same plight for twelve days more. The squadron was, however, increased by seven additional vessels, one of them commanded by Keymis, through the enforced waiting at Plymouth, where, on May 3, Raleigh issued his famous Orders to the Fleet. On June 12 the fleet sailed at last out of Plymouth Sound.

West of Scilly they fell in with a terrific storm, which scattered the ships in various directions. Some put back into Falmouth, but the 'Flying Joan' sank altogether, and the fly-boat was driven up the Bristol Channel. After nearly a fortnight of anxiety and distress, the fleet collected again in Cork Harbour, where they lay repairing and waiting for a favourable wind for more than six weeks. From the Lismore Papers, just published (Jan. 1886), we learn that Raleigh occupied this enforced leisure in getting rid of his remaining Irish leases, and in collecting as much money as he could. Sir Richard Boyle records that on July 1 Raleigh came to his house, and borrowed 100l. On August 19 the last Journal begins, and on the 20th the fleet left Cork, Raleigh having taken a share in a mine at Balligara on the morning of the same day. Nothing happened until the 31st, when, being off Cape St. Vincent, the English fleet fell in with four French vessels laden with fish and train oil for Seville. In order that they might not give notice that Raleigh was in those waters, where he certainly had no business to be, he took these vessels with him a thousand leagues to the southward, and then dismissed them with payment. His conduct towards these French boats was suspicious, and he afterwards tried to prove that they were pirates who had harried the Grand Canary. It was also Raleigh's contention, that the enmity presently shown him by Captain Bailey, of the 'Husband,' arose from Raleigh's refusal to let him make one of these French ships his prize.

On Sunday morning, September 7, the English fleet anchored off the shore of Lanzarote, the most easterly of the Canaries, having hitherto crept down the coast of Africa. These Atlantic islands were particularly open to the attacks of Algerine corsairs, and a fleet of 'Turks' had just ravaged the towns of the Madeiras. The people of Lanzarote, waking up one morning to find their roadstead full of strange vessels, took for granted that these were pirates from Algiers. One English merchant vessel was lying there at anchor, and by means of this interpreter Raleigh endeavoured to explain his peaceful intention, but without success. He had a meeting on shore with the governor of the island, 'our troops staying at equal distance with us,' and was asked the pertinent question, 'what I sought for from that miserable and barren island, peopled in effect all with Moriscos.' Raleigh asserted that all he wanted was fresh meat and wine for his crews, and these he offered to pay for.

On the 11th, finding that no provisions came, and that the inhabitants were carrying their goods up into the hills, the captains begged Raleigh to march inland and take the town; 'but,' he says, 'besides that I knew it would offend his Majesty, I am sure the poor English merchant should have been ruined, whose goods he had in his hands, and the way being mountainous and most extreme stony, I knew that I must have lost twenty good men in taking a town not worth two groats.' The Governor of Lanzarote continued to be in a craven state of anxiety, and would not hear of trading. We cannot blame him, especially when we find that less than eight months later his island was invaded by genuine Algerine bandits, his town utterly sacked, and 90 °Christians taken off into Moslem slavery. After three Englishmen had been killed by the islanders, yet without taking any reprisals, Raleigh sailed away from these sandy and inhospitable shores. But in the night before he left, one of his ships, the 'Husband,' had disappeared. Captain Bailey, who is believed to have been in the pay of Gondomar, had hurried back to England to give report of Raleigh's piratical attack on an island belonging to the dominion of Spain. As the great Englishman went sailing westward through the lustrous waters of the Canary archipelago, his doom was sealed, and he would have felt his execution to be a certainty, had he but known what was happening in England.

He called at Grand Canary, to complain of the Lanzarote people to the governor-general of the islands, but, for some reason which he does not state, did not land at the town of Palmas, but at a desert part, far from any village, probably west of the northern extremity of the island. The governor-general gave him no answer; but the men found a little water, and they sailed away, leaving Teneriffe to the north. On September 18 they put into the excellent port of the island of Gomera, 'the best,' he says, 'in all the Canaries, the town and castle standing on the very breach of the sea, but the billows do so tumble and overfall that it is impossible to land upon any part of the strand but by swimming, saving in a cove under steep rocks, where they can pass towards the town but one after the other.' Here, as at Lanzarote, they were taken for Algerines, and the guns on the rocks began to fire at them. Raleigh, however, immediately sent a messenger on shore to explain that they were not come to sack their town and burn their churches, as the Dutch had done in 1599, but that they were in great need of water. They presently came to an agreement that the islanders should quit their trenches round the landing-place, and that Raleigh should promise on the faith of a Christian not to land more than thirty unarmed sailors, to fill their casks at springs within pistol-shot of the wash of the sea, none of these sailors being permitted to enter any house or garden. Raleigh, therefore, sent six of his seamen, and turned his ships broadside to the town, ready to batter it with culverin if he saw one sign of treachery.

It turned out that when the Governor of Gomera knew who his visitors were, he was as pleased as possible to see them. His wife's mother had been a Stafford, and when Raleigh knew that, he sent his countrywoman a present of six embroidered handkerchiefs and six pairs of gloves, with a very handsome message. To this the lady rejoined that she regretted that her barren island contained nothing worth Raleigh's acceptance, yet sent him 'four very great loaves of sugar,' with baskets of lemons, oranges, pomegranates, figs, and most delicate grapes. During the three days that they rode off Gomera, the Governor and his English lady wrote daily to Sir Walter. In return for the fruit, deeming himself much in her debt, he sent on shore a very courteous letter, and with it two ounces of ambergriece, an ounce of the essence of amber, a great glass of fine rose-water, an excellent picture of Mary Magdalen, and a cut-work ruff. Here he expected courtesies to stay, but the lady must positively have the last word, and as the English ships were starting her servants came on board with yet a letter, accompanying a basket of delicate white manchett bread, more clusters of fruits, and twenty-four fat hens. Meanwhile, in the friendliest way, the sailors had been going to and fro, and had drawn 240 pipes of water. So cordial, indeed, was their reception, that, as a last favour, Raleigh asked the Governor for a letter to Sarmiento [Gondomar], which he got, setting forth 'how nobly we had behaved ourselves, and how justly we had dealt with the inhabitants of the islands.' Before leaving Gomera, Raleigh discharged a native barque which one of his pinnaces had captured, and paid at the valuation of the master for any prejudice that had been done him. On September 21 they sailed away from the Canaries, having much sickness on board; and that very day their first important loss occurred, in the death of the Provost Marshal of the fleet, a man called Stead.