In Paris, MacGregor persuaded the Compagnie de la Nouvelle Neustrie, a firm of traders that aspired to prominence in South America, to seek investors and settlers for Poyais in France. He concurrently intensified his efforts towards King Ferdinand VII of Spain—in a November 1823 letter the Cazique proposed to make Poyais a Spanish protectorate. Four months later he offered to lead a Spanish campaign to reconquer Guatemala, using Poyais as a base. Spain took no action. MacGregor's "moment of greatest hubris", Matthew Brown suggests in his biographical portrait, came in December 1824 when, in a letter to the King of Spain, he claimed to be himself "descendent of the ancient Kings of Scotland". Around this time Josefa gave birth to the third and final MacGregor child, Constantino, at their home in the Champs-Élysées. Gustavus Butler Hippisley, a friend of Major Richardson and fellow veteran of the British Legions in Latin America, accepted the Poyais fantasy as true and entered MacGregor's employ in March 1825. Hippisley wrote back to Britain refuting "the bare-faced calumnies of a hireling press"; in particular he admonished a journalist who had called MacGregor a "penniless adventurer". With Hippisley's help, MacGregor negotiated with the Nouvelle Neustrie company, whose managing director was a Frenchman called Lehuby, and agreed to sell the French company up to 500,000 acres (781 square miles; 2,023 square kilometres) in Poyais for its own settlement scheme; "a very clever way of distancing himself", Sinclair comments, as this time he would be able to say honestly that others were responsible and that he had merely made the land available.