outdone in this respect by the Inquisitors of Spain. Froude says of him[1] that, whilst cruising in the Channel, he caught sight of a Spanish ship, which had been freighted in Flanders for Bilbao, with a cargo valued at eighty thousand ducats, and forty prisoners who were going to Spain to serve in the galleys, and that he chased her into the Bay of Biscay, where he fired into her, killed the captain's brother and a number of his men, and, boarding her when all resistance had ceased, sewed up the captain himself and the survivors of the crew in their own sails, and flung them overboard. Having scuttled the ship, Cobham made off with the booty to his pirate's den in the south of Ireland.
Though English hearts had often been broken with the news of brothers, sons, or husbands wasting to skeletons in the dungeons of Cadiz, or burning to ashes in the Plaza at Valladolid, the eighteen drowned bodies, with the mainsail for their winding sheet, which were washed upon the Spanish shores, tended only to increase the horrors and to magnify the punishments to which English prisoners in Spain had long been subjected.[2]*
- ↑ Froude, vol. viii. p. 447.
- ↑ In the midst of such terrible outrages it is surprising how peace with Spain was so long maintained, and this can only be accounted for by the strong religious feeling which then prevailed to such an extent among the people of both countries, that their governments, even if they had the power and inclination, do not seem to have used sufficient vigour in suppressing their individual revenge and love of plunder. Numerous vessels cleared from the ports of England and France to prey upon Spanish, Portuguese, and any other Papists whom they might encounter; and although their acts were not formally recognised by Elizabeth, the officers of customs were not restrained from supplying them with stores, arms, ammunition, and, indeed, with whatever they required for their lawless exploits. In December 1562 one of these
