i 52 HISTORY OF THE [BOOK H. 



The latest treaty which had been made between 

 England and Spain, previous to the assumption of the 

 protectorate by Cromwell, was concluded in the year 

 1630; by the first article of which it was stipulated, 

 " that there should be peace, amity, and friendship, 

 " between the two crowns and their respective sub- 

 " jects in all parts of the world" Before this period, 

 the sovereigns of Spain had not only encouraged, but 

 openly avowed, the exercise of perpetual hostility on 

 the ships and subjects of all the nations of Europe, 

 that were or might be found in any part of the new 

 hemisphere ; arrogantly assuming to themselves a right, 

 not only to all the territories which their own sub- 

 jects had discovered there, but claiming also, the sole 

 and exclusive privilege of navigating the American 

 seas.J 



J In the reign of James I. within two years after the conclusion of a 

 peace between England and Spain, which saved the Spanish monarchy 

 from absolute destruction, Sir Charles Cornwallis, in a letter dated from 

 Madrid in May 1606, informs the earl of Salisbury, that Don Lewis 

 Firardo, a Spanish admiral, having met with certain English ships laden 

 with corn and bound to Seville, " took the masters, and first set their necks 

 In the stocks. He afterwards removed them into his own ship, and there, 

 with his own hands, did as much to their legs ; reviling them, and calling 

 them heretics, Lutheran dogs, and enemies of Christ, threatening to 

 hang them 5 and in conclusion robbed them of what he thought fit." See 

 Winwood, vol. ii. p. 143 It appears, by subsequent letters preserved in 

 the same collect'on, that Cornwallis, complaining to the duke of Lerma, 

 the minister of Spain, of Firardo's conduct, particularly in sending to 

 the gallies some English mariners, whom he had made prisoners in the 

 West Indies, was told by that minister, " that Firardo should be called 

 to account, not (adds the duke) for sending the men to the gallies, but 

 for not having hanged them up, as he ought to have done.'''' Sir Walter 

 Raleigh, some time afterwards, in a letter to king James, speaks of it as 



