70 FREE TRADERS AND FREEBOOTERS. [1570. 



rovers, and thieves, which visit any heathen coast that they have 

 sailed by or looked on." 



Against these exclusive regulations the English and the French 

 at first murmured and protested, and then began to act. The 

 English government, having thrown ofT its allegiance to the head of 

 the Roman Catholic church, denied the validity of the Spanish 

 claims founded on the papal concessions, and required from Spain 

 the recognition of the rights of Englishmen to navigate any part of 

 the ocean, to settle in any country not occupied by another Chris- 

 tian nation, and to trade with the Spanish American provinces. 

 These demands having been resisted, Queen Elizabeth * openly, as 

 well as covertly, encouraged her subjects, even in time of peace, to 

 violate regulations which she pronounced unjustifiable and inhuman ; 

 and the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indian seas were, in conse- 

 quence, haunted by bands of daring English, who, under the 

 equivocal denominations of free traders and freebooters, set at 

 defiance the prohibitions of the Spaniards, as to commerce and 

 territorial occupation, and plundered their ships, and the towns on 

 their coasts. About the same time, the French Protestants began 

 their attempts to plant colonies in Florida and Carolina, which were 

 not defeated without considerable expenditure of Spanish blood and 

 treasure ; and the revolt in the Netherlands, which ended in the 

 liberation of the Dutch provinces, soon after produced a formidable 

 addition to the forces of these irregular enemies of Spain. The 

 efforts of the English, and of their government, to establish com- 

 merce with the Spanish dominions in America, have, in fact, been 

 the principal causes or motives of nearly all the wars between those 

 nations since the middle of the sixteenth century. In these efforts 

 the English have constantly persevered ; and the Spanish govern- 

 ment has resolutely opposed them, during peace, during war, and 



* Queen Elizabeth's reply to the Spanish ambassador, who complained of the 

 plunder of one of his sovereign's vessels by the English, in the West Indies, during 

 peace between the two nations, is characteristic of her disposition, as well as reason- 

 able. She said " that the Spaniards had drawn these inconveniences upon themselves, 

 by their severe and unjust dealings in their American commerce ; for she did not 

 understand why either her subjects, or those of any other European prince, should 

 be debarred from traffic in the Indies; that, as she did not acknowledge the Spaniards 

 to have any title, by donation of the bishop of Rome, so she knew no right they had 

 to any places other than those they were in actual possession of; for that their 

 having touched only here and there upon a coast, and given names to a few rivers 

 or capes, were such insignificant things as could in no ways entitle them to a pro- 

 priety farther than in the parts where they actually settled, and continued to inhabit." 

 — Camden's Annals of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, for 1580. 



