PROTESTANTISM - The Library of Iberian Resources Online

If this was the case in regard to nations presumably Catholic, we can readily conceive how much
greater vigilance was exercised towards those which had lapsed into heresy. Commercial intercourse
with them was unavoidable, but it was a necessary evil, to be restricted within the narrowest limits by
deterrent regulations. For awhile, indeed, the heretic trader took his life and fortune in his hands when
he ventured to make a Spanish harbor, as we have seen in the case of the good ship Angel. Even
castaways were the legitimate prey of the Inquisition, as was experienced by seventeen English sailors
of a fishing-boat, who were captured by a French vessel and were thrown on shore on Fuerte Ventura,
one of the Canaries. They were tried and escaped burning by conversion, after which four of them,
Richard Newman, Edward Stephens, John Ware, and Edward Stride managed to escape. As this showed
them to be impenitent, they were prosecuted in absentia for relapse, and their effigies were solemnly
burnt in an auto of July 22, 1587. (120) The number of merchant vessels touching at the Canaries, in
fact, furnished to the tribunal at one time the major portion of its work. A record of prisoners entered in
its secret prison, during six months of 1593, shows thirteen belonging to the German ship San Pedro,
seventeen to the Flemish ship La Rosa, and fifteen to the Flemish ship El Leon Colorado, besides a
dozen English sailors whose vessel is not specified. These comprise all hands, officers and crews,
merchants and passengers, and presumably, if the cargoes were not confiscated, they were effectually
looted in the absence of their guardians. (121) That such was the motive, rather than the protection of
Spain from the infection of heresy, is inferable from a sentence of the Granada tribunal, in 1574,
condemning to reconciliation and life-long galley-service Jean Moreno, a Frenchman, resident in
Málaga, because he had warned some Protestant sailors not to enter the port of Almería. (122) When
there was prospect [463] of a fat confiscation, indeed, the Inquisition paid little respect to the justice of
the case or to the parties who might suffer. There was a long dispute between Rome and Madrid over
two cargoes of alum, which the papal camera was sending to England, when the ships were seized and
the cargoes sequestrated by the tribunal of Seville, on the ground that the English crews were heretics.
(123)
This barbarous policy necessarily made itself felt in the cost of foreign commodities, especially after
the troubles in the Netherlands had cut off or reduced that portion of the carrying trade. Under this
pressure, in 1597, an exception was made in favor of the Hansa. Instructions were issued by the
Suprema that, when its ships arrived with merchandise, the persons in them were not to be interrogated
about their religion, nor on that account were the ships or cargoes to be sequestrated or confiscated,
unless while in port they had offended against the Catholic faith and, in such case, only the property of
delinquents was to be seized; search, however, for prohibited books was to be made, as was customary
with Catholic vessels. (124) There was also an approach to admitting the Dutch, in a royal order of
February 27, 1603, providing that Holland vessels and crews, bearing passports from the Archdukes of
the Netherlands, were to be allowed entrance to Spanish ports, and their persons and property were to
be secure, but this was revoked, December 11, 1604, subject to the twelve months' notice provided in
the order. (125)
A treaty of peace with England, covering this matter, was ratified by James I, August 29/19, 1604 and
by Philip III, June 16, 1605. During this interval, in November, 1604, an English ship, with a crew of
twenty men, coming for a load of corn, touched at Messina and then at Palermo. In the latter port it was
visited by the officials of the Inquisition, when the men admitted that they were Protestants and wished
to live in that faith. They were all arrested and appealed to the viceroy, the Duke of Feria. He was
powerless save to write a private letter in which he declared that the arrest was a disservice to the king
and tended to destroy the treaty agreed upon, wherefore the Inquisition ought to dissemble [464] and
treat the heretics well, for the public good. The inquisitors thereupon assembled ten consultora,
reaching the conclusion that the Englishmen could be liberated only on condition of giving ample
security that they would go to Spain and present themselves before the inquisitor-general. For strangers