every thing valuable, received a considerable ransom for sparing the houses. He then retreated to his ships, and carried off his booty without interruption.

From this period until the capture of the island by the English in 1655, during the usurpation of Cromwell, I know nothing of its concerns, nor perhaps were they productive of any event deserving remembrance. I shall therefore proceed, in the next chapter, to the consideration of the protector's motives for attacking the territories of Spain at a time when treaties of peace subsisted between the two nations; which I conceive have hitherto been greatly misunderstood, or wilfully misrepresented by historians in general.

* In the preceding pages (see 140 of the present edition) I have assigned some reasons in support of the traditional account of the destruction of New Seville, on the northern side of Jamaica, by the ancient Indians; and I have supposed that event to have happened in the year 1523. have since discovered that the reasons I have given were well founded. Among Sir Hans Sloane's MSS. in the British Museum, I have been shewn part of an unpublished history of Jamaica, which was written the beginning of the present century, by Doctor Henry Barham, a very learned and respectable physician of that island, wherein the circumstance is related nearly in the manner I have suggested, and stated to have occurred (as I had supposed) immediately after the embarkation of the force under Garay; which is known, from Herrera, to have taken place in 1523.-In the same work, the letter from Christopher Columbus (vide p. 131, et seq.) is preserved as a document of undoubted authenticity.

CHAPTER II.

ཎྞཾ

Cromwell vindicated for attacking the Spaniards in 1655.Their cruelties in the West Indies, in contravention of the treaty of 1630.-Proposals offered by Modyford and Gage. —Forcible arguments of the latter.-Secretary Thurloe's account of a conference with the Spanish Ambassador.— Cromwell's demand of satisfaction rejected.-State of Jamaica on its capture.

HERE is no portion of the English annals, in

TH

the perusal of which greater caution is requisite, than the history of the administration of the protector Cromwell. The prejudices of party, which, in common cases, are lost in the current of time, have floated down to us in full strength against this prosperous usurper; and his actions, from the period that he reached the summit of power, are still scrutinized with industrious malignity; as if it were impossible that authority irregularly acquired, could be exercised with justice.

It is not strange therefore, that the vigorous proceedings of the Protector against the Spanish nation, in 1655, should have been obnoxious to censure, or that writers of very opposite political principles should concur in misrepresenting his conduct on that occasion,

The celebrated female republican* terms it "dishonourable and piratical," and the courtly and elegant apologist of the Stewart family,† pronounces it a most unwarrantable violation of treaty.

The publication of the state papers of Thurloe (the secretary) ought, however, to have mitigated this weight of censure. In truth, it will be found, that nothing but a most disingenuous concealment of the hostile proceedings of the Spaniards, too gross to be palliated, towards the subjects of England, can give even the colour of plausibility to the charge which has been brought against Cromwell, of having commen→ ced an unjust and ruinous war against a friend and ally, contrary to the interest of the nation, and in violation of the faith of treaties. If the power which is vested in the executive magistrate, by whatever name he be distinguished, be held for the protection and security of the religion, liberties, and properties of the people under his government, the measures adopted by the protector on that occasion were not merely justifiable; they were highly necessary, and even meritorious; for the conduct of Spain, especially in America, was the declaration and exercise of war against the whole human race. I shall adduce a few remarkable facts to support this assertion. The subject is curious in itself, and, in some respects, will be new to the reader.

Mrs. Macauley-Hist. of England. + David Hume-Hist. of Great Britain.

The latest treaty which had been made between England and Spain, previous to the assumption of the protectorate by Cromwell, was concluded in the year 1630; by the first, article of which it was stipulated, "that there should be peace, amity, and friendship, "between the two crowns and their respective subjects in all parts of the world." Before this period, the sovereigns of Spain had not only encouraged, but openly avowed, the exercise of perpetual hostility on the ships and subjects of all the nations of Europe, that were or might be found in any part of the new hemisphere; arrogantly assuming to themselves a right, not only to all the territories which their own subjects had discovered there, but claiming also, the sole and exclusive privilege of navigating the American seas.‡

In the reign of James I. within two years after the conclusion of a peace between England and Spain, which saved the Spanish monarchy from absolute destruction, Sir Charles Cornwallis, in a letter dated from Madrid in May 1606, informs the earl of Salisbury, that Don Lewis Firardo, a Spanish admiral, having met with certain English ships laden with corn and bound to Seville, "took the masters, and first set their necks in the stocks. He afterwards removed them into his own ship, and there, with his own hands, did as much to their legs; reviling them, and calling them heretics, Lutheran dogs, and enemies of Christ, threatening to hang them; and in conclusion robbed them of what he thought fit." See Winwood, vol. ii. p. 143-It appears, by subsequent letters preserved in the same collection, that Cornwallis, complaining to the duke of Lerma, the minister of Spain, of Firardo's conduct, particularly in sending to the gallies some English mariners, whom he had made prisoners in the West Indies, was told by that minister, "that Firardo should be called to account, not (adds the duke) for sending the men to the gallies, but for not having hanged them up, as he ought to have done." Sir Walter Raleigh, some time afterwards, in a letter to king James, speaks of it as

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 occupied. Thus actual war, and war with all its horrors, 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 intercourse 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 command of Don Frederick de Toledo, ostensibly to attack 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 murdered 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. 376. Vol. I.

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