indling between the two nations, a hatred which it took one hundred
and fifty years to quench.

The most venturesome of these sea-rovers, however, were soon attracted
to a larger and more distant sphere of activity. Spain, as we have seen,
was then endeavouring to reserve to herself in the western hemisphere an
entire new world; and this at a time when the great northern maritime
powers, France, England and Holland, were in the full tide of economic
development, restless with new thoughts, hopes and ambitions, and keenly
jealous of new commercial and industrial outlets. The famous Bull of
Alexander VI. had provoked Francis I. to express a desire "to see the
clause in Adam's will which entitled his brothers of Castile and
Portugal to divide the New World between them," and very early the
French corsairs had been encouraged to test the pretensions of the
Spaniards by the time-honoured proofs of fire and steel. The English
nation, however, in the first half of the sixteenth century, had not
disputed with Spain her exclusive trade and dominion in those regions.
The hardy mariners of the north were still indifferent to the wonders of
a new continent awaiting their exploitation, and it was left to the
Spaniards to unfold before the eyes of Europe the vast riches of
America, and to found empires on the plateaus of Mexico and beyond the
Andes. During the reign of Philip II. all this was changed. English
privateers began to extend their operations westward, and to sap the
very sources of Spanish wealth and power, while the wars which absorbed
the attention of the Spaniards in Europe, from the revolt of the Low
Countries to the Treaty of Westphalia, left the field clear for these
ubiquitous sea-rovers. The maritime powers, although obliged by the
theory of colonial exclusion to pretend to acquiesce in the Spaniard's
claim to tropical America, secretly protected and supported their
mariners who coursed those western seas. France and England were now
jealous and fearful of Spanish predominance in Europe, and kept eyes
obstinately fixed on the inexhaustible streams of gold and silver by
means of which Spain was enabled to pay her armies and man her fleets.
Queen Elizabeth, while she publicly excused or disavowed to Philip II.
the outrages committed by Hawkins and Drake, blaming the turbulence of
the times and promising to do her utmost to suppress the disorders, was
secretly one of the principal shareholders in their enterprises.