156 HISTORY OF THE [BOOK. n. 



ly groundless and unjust. The very mercies of the 

 Spaniards were cruel ; for if, in some few instances, 

 they forbore to inflict immediate death on their pri- 

 soners, they sentenced them to a worse punishment; 

 condemning them to work in the mines of Mexico 

 for life. 



It is evident, from the numerous schemes and pro- 

 posals for attacking the Spaniards, which were pre- 

 sented to Cromwell on his elevation to the protector- 

 ate, that the English in General, had a deep and just 

 sense of the wrongs which they sustained from the 

 bigotry, avarice, and cruelty of the Spanish nation. 



The Spaniards, after the death of Cromwell, revived these practices, 

 and continued them to our own times. About the year 1680, they land- 

 ed on the island of Providence, one of the Bahamas, and totally destroy- 

 ed the English settlement there. The governor (Mr. Clark) they took 

 with them to Cuba, in irons, and put him to death by torture. Oldmixon, 

 who wrote te The British Empire in America/' was informed by Mr. 

 Trott, one of Governor Clark's successors, that the Spaniards roasted 

 Clark on a spit. The insolence and brutality of the commanders of the 

 Spanish guarda-costas, in the days of Walpole, are remembered by many 

 persons now living; and perhaps there are those alive who were present 

 when captain Jenkins gave that remarkable evidence to the house of com- 

 mons, which it would bethought might have animated every British heart 

 to insist on exemplary vengeance. The case was this : A Spanish com- 

 mander, after rummaging this man's vessel for what he called contraband 

 goods, without finding any, put Jenkins to the torture, and afterwards, 

 without the smallest provocation, cut off one of his ears, telling him to 

 carry it to the king of England his master. Jenkins had preserved the 

 ear in a bottle, which he displayed to the House of Commons. Being 

 asked by one of the members, what he thought or expected while in the 

 bands of such a barbarian ? "I r ecommended (he replied) my soul to God, 

 and my cause to my country." 



See Torbuck's Parliamentary Debates. 



