The rovers were already venturing into lower latitudes CHAP XII in search of richer prizes. In May 1563 a galleon was 1563 waylaid and plundered at Cape St. Vincent by two small evil-looking vessels, recognized as English by the flights English of arrows which drove the Spaniards from the decks; outrages while again the Spanish ships of war provoked a repeti- reprisals. tion of such outrages by their clumsy and awkward reprisals. 1 About the same time the Indian fleet coming into the Azores, found five brigs from Bristol and Barnstaple loading with woad. The Englishmen were getting under weigh as the Spanish Admiral, Pedro Melendez, entered the harbour. They neglected to salute, and in half insolence carried the St. George's cross at the main. Melendez instantly gave chase. 'Down with your flags, ye English dogs! ye thieves and pirates!' he shouted, as he ran into the midst of them, firing right and left. The crews were thrown into irons; the ships and cargoes were taken into Cadiz and confiscated. The English ambassador appealed to Philip; the case was inquired into, and the innocent character of the vessels was perfectly established. But when the owners applied to have their property restored to them, Melendez had made it over to the Inquisition; the Inquisition had sold it; and the crews were at last glad to depart with their empty vessels, having suffered nothing worse than six months' imprisonment on bread and water in the gaol at Seville.2 sition. The Inquisition had the management of the Spanish The Inquiharbours, and the Englishman was to be considered for 1 The mariners say plainly that they were Englishmen, for that they shot so many arrows that they were not able to look out.'-Hugh Tipton to Sir T. Chaloner, June 1, 1563. Spanish MSS. Rolls House. 2 MS. Ibid. CHAP XII tunate who extricated himself alive from their hands. 1563. Though the English rovers were often common plunderers, yet there was a noble spirit at work at the bottom of their proceedings, which raised many of them into the wild ministers of a righteous revenge. Complaint of Thomas In August 1561 Thomas Nicholls, an English merchant resident in the Canaries, wrote thus to Elizabeth's ambassador at the court of Philip the Second: Please your lordship to consider that I was taken Nicholls. prisoner by them of the Inquisition about twenty months past, and put into a little dark house about two paces long, laden with irons, without sight of sun or moon all the said time of twenty months. 'When I was arraigned they laid to my charge that I should say our mass to be as good or better than theirs; also that I went not to mass; also that I should say I had rather give my money to the poor than to buy bulls of Rome with it; with other paltry inventions. I answered, proving the allegations untrue with many witnesses. Then they put me again in prison for a certain space, and alleged anew against me six or seven articles against our Queen's grace, saying her Majesty was enemy to the faith, and her Grace was preached to be the antichrist, and that her Grace did maintain circumcision' and the Jewish law; and also a friar shaked off the dust of his shoes against her and the city of London, with such abominable and untrue sayings. Then stood I to the defence of the Queen's Majesty's cause, proving the infamies to be most untrue. Then was I put in Little Ease again till the end of twenty months finished, protesting mine innocent blood against the judge to be demanded before Christ." 1 Spanish MSS. Rolls House. In the year 1563 the following petition was addressed CHAP XII to the Lords of Elizabeth's Council: 1563 Dorothy 'In most lamentable wise showeth unto your honours Petition of your humble orator Dorothy Seeley, of the city of Bristol, Seeley. wife to Thomas Seeley, of the Queen's Majesty's guard, that where her said husband upon most vile, slanderous, spiteful, malicious, and most villanous words uttered against the Queen's Majesty's own person by a certain subject of the King of Spain-here not to be utterednot being able to suffer the same did flee upon the same slanderous person and gave him a blow-so it is most honourable Lords, that hereupon my said husband, no other offence in respect of their religion then committed, was secretly accused to the Inquisition of the Holy House, and so committed to most vile prison, and there hath remained now three whole years in miserable state with cruel torments. For redress whereof, and for the Queen's Majesty's letter to the King of Spain, your said suppliant was heretofore a humble suitor to the Queen's Majesty at Bristol in that progress; and her Majesty then promised to write and see redress. But whether her Majesty did by letter or by ambassadors after sent into Spain deal with the said King for redress I know not; but certain it is that my said husband, with divers others the Queen's subjects, remains yet in prison, without hope, without your honours' help to be delivered.' In the list of captains who accompanied Drake to the West Indies in his famous voyage of 1585-6, I find the name of Thomas Seeley in command of the 'Minion.' Perhaps it was the same man. It is more likely however that the husband of Dorothy Seeley was one of the many hundred 1563 CHAP XII In tender consideration whereof and of the daily common tormenting of the Queen's Majesty's subjects, it may please your honours to grant your favourable earnest letters herein to the King of Spain-or rather, to permit and suffer the friends of such her Majesty's subjects as be there imprisoned, afflicted and tormented against all reason, to make out certain ships to the sea at their own proper charges, and to take such Inquisitors or other such Papistical subjects of the King of Spain as they can take by sea or land, and them to retain in prison in England with such torments and diet as her Majesty's subjects be kept with in Spain; and that it may please the Queen's Majesty withal, upon complaint to be made thereupon by the King of Spain or his subjects, to make such like answer as the King of Spain now maketh to her Majesty or her ambassador suing for her subjects imprisoned by force of the Inquisition. 'Or that it may please her Majesty to grant unto the Archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops, the like commission in all points for foreign Papists as the Inquisitors have in Spain for the Protestants, that thereby they may be forced not to trouble her subjects repairing to Spain, or that there may be hereupon an interchange of delivery of prisoners of Protestants for the Papists; that the Queen's Majesty's subjects may be assured hereby that they have a Prince with such honourable Council that cannot nor will not longer endure such spoils and torments of her natural subjects, and such daily pitiful complaints hereabout; and that the Spaniard have not cause by the Queen's Majesty's long sufferance to triumph, or to think that this noble realm dare not seek the revenge of such importable wrongs daily done to this realm by daily spoiling her Majesty of the lives and goods of her good subjects; and consequently spoiling the realm of great force and strength. And your poor CHAP XII supplicant, with many others the Queen's Majesty's sub- 1563 jects, shall daily pray for your honours in health and felicity long to continue."1 Either as the afterthought of the writer, or as the comment of some person in authority, the following singular note was appended to Dorothy Seeley's petition : Long peace such as it is, by force of the Spanish Inquisition becometh to England more hurtful than open war. It is the secret and determined policy of Spain to destroy the English fleet and pilots, masters and sailors, by means of the Inquisition. The Spanish king pretends that he dare not offend the Holy House, while it is said in England, we may not proclaim war against Spain for the revenge of a few, forgetting that a good war might end all these mischiefs. Not long since the Spanish Inquisition executed sixty persons of St. Malo in France, notwithstanding entreaty to the King of Spain to stay them. Whereupon the Frenchmen armed and manned forth their pinnaces, and lay for the Spaniards, and took a hundred and beheaded them, sending the Spanish ships to the shore with the heads, leaving in each ship but one only man to render the cause of the revenge; since which time the Spanish Inquisition has never meddled with those of St. Malo.'2 The theology of English sailors was not usually of a very rigid character. Out of seventy-one of Sir John Hawkins's men who were taken by the Spaniards in 1567, three only held out against rack and scourge with sufficient firmness to earn martyrdom; yet on the 10th of 1 Petition of Dorothy Seeley, 1563. Spanish MSS. Rolls House. 2 Ibid. |