Nor is it unimportant, as bearing on the _degree_ of credibility to be assigned to GONDOMAR’S despatches, when they chance to be uncorroborated,—to remark that a despatch addressed by him to the Duke of LERMA, in November, contains an express contradiction of an assertion addressed to PHILIP, in the preceding April. To the King, as we have just seen, he narrates COTTON’S communication of despatches written by DIGBY. To the Minister he writes, six months later, that ‘a traitor had given information’ against COTTON, for communicating Papers of State to the Spanish Ambassador, and that the charge is ‘false.’ [Sidenote: Simancas MS. 2534, 61 (Gardiner Transcripts).] Discrepancies like this (howsoever easily explained, or explainable) suffice to show that GONDOMAR’S testimony, when unsupported, needs to be read with caution; and of such discrepancies there are many. Consummate as he was in diplomatic ability of several kinds, this able statesman was nevertheless loose (and sometimes reckless) in assertion. He was very credulous when he listened to welcome news. It is impossible to study his correspondence without perceiving that to him, as to so many other men, the wish was often father of the thought. On the 22nd of June, Sir Robert paid another visit to GONDOMAR. He told me, says the Ambassador, that the King’s hesitations had been overcome; that JAMES was now willing to negotiate on the basis of the Spanish articles, with some slight modifications; that Somerset had taken his stand upon the match with Spain, had won the co-operation of the Duke of Lennox, and was now willing to stake his fortunes on the issue. Sir Robert COTTON, adds GONDOMAR, ‘assured me of his own satisfaction at the turn which things had taken, as he had no more ardent wish than to live and die an avowed Catholic, like his fathers and ancestors.[6] Whereupon I embraced him, and said that God would guide.’ Thus far, I have, advisedly, followed a Spanish account of English conversations. Although believing that there exists, already ample, evidence (both in our own archives and elsewhere) for bringing home to the Count of GONDOMAR wilful misstatements of [Sidenote: SIR ROBERT COTTON’S ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST INTERVIEW WITH COUNT GONDOMAR.] fact—in the despatches which he was wont to write from London—as well as very pardonable misapprehensions of the talk which he reports, I have preferred to put before the reader the Ambassador’s own story in its Spanish integrity.