Indeed, men belonging to the best families in England then became lawless rovers, especially as one of them, Sir Thomas Seymour, had formed the idea of establishing a private sovereignty among the Scilly Islands, where, as on the coast of Ireland, there were numerous narrow channels affording safe and convenient rendezvous for any desperate cruiser, who levied war on his own account whenever he thought the government neglected its duty, or whenever, by a fortunate chance, richly laden vessels happened to cross his path. The annals of the period[118] frequently mention traders which had sailed from Antwerp to Cadiz, never having reached their destination; no danger of the sea had impeded their progress, but, when hugging the land, they had met a mysterious stranger, who had ordered them to heave-to, and deliver their cargo: boats from the nearest shore in league with the cruiser, were frequently in attendance, and, during the course of the night, carts and waggons were ready at some sheltered nook on the beach to relieve the boats of their loads, and to convey bales of goods or tubs of spirits to the convenient cellars of the country squires.[119] Sometimes the unsuspecting trader was pounced upon during the course of the night by a lugger full of armed men, which had lain in wait for her, hidden, during the day, among the rocks or in one of the inlets on the coast. [Sidenote: Conduct of the Spaniards.] [Sidenote: A.D. 1563.] No doubt the Spaniards had, in many instances, provoked acts of piracy by rousing a spirit of revenge for the cruel sufferings Englishmen had sustained at the hands of the Inquisition. Thus Dorothy Seely, when petitioning the Lords of Elizabeth’s Council for recovery of the losses and sufferings of her husband, who, with others of the Queen’s subjects, had been thrown into a Spanish prison, prays that she and “the friends of such of Her Majesty’s subjects as be there imprisoned, afflicted and tormented against all reason, may be allowed to fit out certain ships for the sea at their own proper charges, and to capture such Inquisitors, or other such Papistical subjects of the King of Spain, as they can take by sea or land, and to retain them in prison in England with such torment and diet as Her Majesty’s subjects had suffered in Spain.... Or that it may please Her Majesty to grant unto the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops the like commission in all points for foreign Papists, as the Inquisition has in Spain for the Protestants, that thereby they may be forced not to trouble her subjects repairing to Spain, or that there may be hereupon an interchange or delivery of prisoners.”[120] [Sidenote: Daring exploits and cruelty of Lord Thomas Cobham,]