It is not easy to explain the motives that prompted Cromwell to make an enemy of Spain. He was eagerly courted by both French and Spaniards, and it was open to him to choose whichever he pleased for his allies. The probability is that he was still swayed by the old religious hatred of the days of Elizabeth, and, like her, looked to fill his empty treasury with the spoils of the Indies. He did not perceive that the religious wars of Europe were virtually ended, and that nations were tending already to their old friendships and antagonisms as they existed before the Reformation. Be that as it may, he was hardly firm in the saddle as Protector when he began to frame a great design against the Spanish possessions in the New World. His chief advisers were one Colonel Thomas Modyford of Barbados, who had his own reasons for wishing to ingratiate himself with the Protector, and Thomas Gage, a renegade priest, who had lived long in the Antilles and on the Spanish Main and had written a book on the subject. The most fitting base of operations was obviously Barbados, which, from its position to windward of the whole Caribbean Archipelago, possessed a strategic importance which it has only lost since the introduction of steam-vessels. It lay ready to Cromwell's hand, having been an English possession since 1628, and was, if Modyford were to be believed, ready to give active assistance in the enterprise. There remained the question whether the expedition should be directed against an Island or against the Main. Gage was for the latter course, and named the Orinoco as the objective: Modyford recommended Cuba or Hispaniola,[185] and Modyford's opinion prevailed. Gradually the design matured itself, and presently assumed gigantic proportions. A footing once established on one of the Spanish Islands to leeward, there was to be a general contest with the Spaniards for the whole of the South Atlantic. Two fleets were to be employed, one in seconding the army's operations on the Islands and making raids upon the Main, the other in cruising off the Spanish coast so as to interrupt both plate-fleets from the west and reinforcements from the east. Lastly, not England only, but New England was to play a part in the great campaign. Supplies would be one principal difficulty, but these could be furnished from English America, and not only supplies but settlers, who, trained to self-defence by Indian warfare, should be capable of holding the territory wrested from Spain. Thus the English from both sides of the Atlantic were to close in upon the Spanish dominions in the New World, and turn Nova Hispania into Nova Britannia. There was no lack of breadth and boldness in the design.