It cometh to my
remembrance of a certain burgher at Antwerp, whose house was entered by
a company of Spanish soldiers when they sacked that city.
He besought
them to spare him and his goods, being a good catholic, and therefore
one of their own party and faction. The Spaniards answered, they knew
him to be of a good conscience in himself; but his money, plate, jewels,
and goods, were all heretical, and therefore good prize. So they abused
and tormented the foolish Fleming, who thought that an _Agnus Dei_ had
been a sufficient safeguard against all the force of that holy and
charitable nation.
Neither have they at any time, as they protest, invaded the kingdoms of
Mexico and Peru and elsewhere, being only led thereto to reduce the
people to Christianity, not for gold or empire: Whereas, in the single
island of Hispaniola, they have wasted and destroyed thirty hundred
thousand of the natives, besides many millions else in other places of
the Indies: a poor and harmless people, created of God, and might have
been won to his service, as many of them were, even almost all whom they
endeavoured to persuade thereto. The story of these their enormities,
has been written at large by Bartholomew de las Casas[375], a bishop of
their own nation, and has been translated into English and many other
languages, under the title of _The Spanish Cruelties_. Who therefore
would repose trust in such a nation of ravenous strangers, and more
especially in those Spaniards, who more greedily thirst after the blood
of the English, for the many overthrows and dishonours they have
received at our hands; whose weakness we have discovered to the world,
and whose forces, at home, abroad, in Europe, in the Indies, by sea and
by land, even with mere handfuls of men and ships on our sides, we have
overthrown and dishonoured?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 674 of 842
Words from 184036 to 184359
of 230997
