confident that they could repel an attack of the Spanish Power even if that Power had had the boldness to make it. “A few men in Virginia,” they declared in 1609, “may dispute the possession of any place, wherein they were fortified, where the enemy is so much a stranger that he must discover and fight at once; upon all disadvantages of streights, fords, and woods; and where he can never march with horse nor with ordnance without them; nor can abide to stay many months when all his relief must be had from his ships, which cannot long supply a number competent to besiege. Neither is it possible to block us up by planting between us and the sea, the rivers being so broad and so many outlets from them into the Bay. Besides the protection and privilege of subjects to so potent a King whom any wise estate will be wary to affront or provoke.”[1]
Substitute Kingdom for King and how just were these last words, and how correct historically! As early as 1580, the English government had frankly announced to the Spanish monarch that the English people would not acknowledge the right of the Spaniards to all America, either by donation from the Pope, or on account of their having touched here and there upon those coasts; that this by the law of nations could not hinder other princes from freely navigating those seas and transporting colonies to the parts the Spaniards did not inhabit; in other words, “that prescription without possession availed
- ↑ A True and Sincere Declaration, Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 349.
fleeing from Spain, and would carry him to Virginia and instruct him as to the mouth of the river, posts, fortifications, &c., which they had, and that soon he would tell the King by what means those people (i.e. the English) could be driven out without violence in arms.” Letter of Zuniga to Philip III, March, 1609, Spanish Archives, Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 243.
