Читать книгу The Life of Sir Henry Morgan. With an account of the English settlement of the island of Jamaica онлайн

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Many English people were firmly convinced that Spain was a cruel and implacable national enemy. Cromwell proclaimed this doctrine insistently in his speech to Parliament on 17th September, 1656.

"Abroad," he said, "our great enemy is the Spaniard. He is a natural enemy, by reason of that enmity that is in him against whatsoever is of God." No satisfaction could be obtained either for the denial of freedom of conscience to the English traders in Spain or for "the blood of our poor people shed in the West Indies. The truth is that no peace is possible with any popish state. Sign what you will with one of them, that peace is but to be kept so long as the pope says 'Amen' to it.... The Spaniard hath an interest in your bowels. The Papists in England have been accounted Spanielised ever since I was born. They never regard France; they never regarded any Papist state. Spain was their patron."[13]

In his opinion the contest was a just and holy war. He promised liberal supplies to General Fortescue, to whom Venables had turned over the command of the troops. "We think it much designed and it is much designed amongst us," he assured him, "to strive with the Spaniard for the mastery of all those seas." His mind had been strongly impressed by proposals for an easy conquest of other Spanish provinces in America, laid before him by Thomas Modyford of Barbados and the renegade priest, Thomas Gage.[14]