268 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



power. These two nations were Catholic : England was Pro- 

 testant, and disinherited therefore, as it seemed, of her lawful 

 share in the riches of the world. She had thus far wasted her 

 means and endangered the lives of her citizens in fruitless at- 

 tempts to find a route for herself, by the northwest or the north- 

 east, to the lands of gold and gums. Baffled in these efforts, 

 she permitted, if she did not encourage, a certain class of her 

 subjects to engage in a system of warfare against Spain which 

 can be characterized by no milder term than piracy. Still, 

 those who resorted to it adduced ready arguments to prove that, 

 so far from engaging in piratical practices, they were employed 

 in open warfare and an honest cause. Spain and England were 

 in a state of manifest enmity, they urged, more bitter on both 

 sides than if they had been avowedly at war. No English sub- 

 ject trading in the Spanish dominions was safe unless he were a 

 Roman Catholic, or unless, being a heretic, he succumbed to the 

 menaces or the tortures of the Holy Inquisition. These out- 

 rages were resented by the English people before they were 

 taken up by the British Government; and the injured parties, 

 calling to their aid all persons of adventurous spirit or shattered 

 fortunes, set out upon the sea, if not with the commission, at 

 least with the connivance, of the crown, to avenge their wrongs 

 themselves. They did not consider themselves to be pirates, 

 because of this tacit sanction given by the Government, because 

 of the fact that they carried on hostilities, not against all who 

 traversed the sea, but against the Spaniards only, and because 

 of the risk they ran, — for if taken by the enemy they had no 

 mercy to expect. It thus became the fashion in England for 

 men of desperate fortunes and damaged character to seek to 

 retrieve the one and redeem the other by cruising against the 

 Spaniards. 



Among the earlier adventurers of this stamp was one Sir 

 John Hawkins. His exploits were for a time brilliant and suc- 

 cessful: at last, however, they were disastrous, and one of his 



