according to a notary act of the year 1567, involving their brother Pellegrino, resident at La Rochelle since his marriage to the daughter of the mayor Vincent Nicolas. From Lisbon, where he was an agent of the Bonvisi, Francisque d’Albaigne betook himself to Paris, to propose the occupation of a “certain very rich new land of very great extent not yet discovered by the kings of Spain and Portugal”. He had suborned from the service of the Portuguese the cosmographer Bartholomeu Velho, who came to “demonstrate” to King Charles IX the situation of this unknown country. However Velho died at Nantes on 28 February 1568, and was soon followed to the grave by Francisque. André d’Albaigne took up the proposal of his brother. Warmly recalling how France had come to regret having dismissed Christopher Columbus, he now also promised the discovery of a new part of the world, at seven months voyage, with “realms abundant and rich in gold, silver, precious stones, drugs and spiceries”. No doubt André d’Albaigne had inherited from Velho some certainties regarding this hypothetical continent. La Popelinière, who was inspired by his memoir, specified in 1582 that what he was concerned with was “a land stretching from the South, or Midi, to thirty degrees from the Equator, of much greater extent than all of America, only discovered by Magellan when he passed through the strait between this Austral land and the southern quarter of America to go to the Moluccas”. Although the geographical destination of this enterprise was not plainly stated anywhere in the relevant correspondence, the chief modern authority on the matter, E.-T. Hamy, suggested that the real purpose, though concealed in vague and cryptic language, was to explore and colonize the unknown continent of Terra Australis. As Kenneth Andrews has commented, this thesis cannot be proved, and has evidently failed to convince some other authorities, but it must be taken seriously in the light of references to Francesco's project contained in the dispatches of Michel de Castelnau de la Mauvissière, French ambassador in London, during the period 1577-1580 when he reported on the voyages of John Frobisher, Humphrey Gilbert and Francis Drake. Reporting upon the return of Drake in November 1580, the ambassador mentioned Francisque d’Albaigne in connection with Drake's alleged sighting, after passing the Cape of Good Hope, of “une des terres australles et meridionalle qui ne sont descouvertes”, the same lands d’Albaigne