CHAP, ii.] WEST INDIES. 153 



Pretensions so exorbitant, which violated alike the 

 laws of nature and nations, were resisted by every 

 maritime state that felt itself concerned in the issue : 

 by the English particularly, who had already planted 

 colonies in Virginia, Bermudas, St. Christopher's and 

 Barbadoes ; territories, some of which Spain had not 

 even discovered, and none of which had she ever oc- 

 cupied. Thus actual war, and war with all its hor- 

 rors, prevailed between the subjects of Spain in the 

 new world, and those of the several other nations who 

 ventured thither; while, at the same time, peace 

 apparently subsisted between the parent states in 

 Europe. 



To secure to the English an uninterrupted inter- 

 course with their settlements above mentioned, was 

 one great object of the treaty of 1630. It seems 

 indeed to have been more immediately founded on 

 a remarkable instance of Spanish perfidy, which had 

 recently happened in the island of St. Christopher; 

 for the court of Spain having, towards the latter end 

 of the year 1629, fitted out a fleet of twenty-four 

 ships of force, and fifteen frigates, under the com- 

 mand of Don Frederick de Toledo, ostensibly to at- 

 tack the Dutch settlement in Brasil, secretly ordered 

 the admiral to proceed in the first place to the island I 







a well known fact, that the Spaniards, in another instance, had murder- 

 ed twenty- six Englishmen, tying them back to back, and then cutting 

 their throats, even after they had traded with them a whole month, and 

 when the English went ashore in full confidence, and without so much as 

 one sword among them. See Raleigh's Works by Birch, vol. ii. p. 37$. 



Vol. I, v 



