The English came later. The relations between England and Spain were for long friendly, and their commercial intercourse was of old standing. But after the Reformation the religious factor came to complicate the situation. Though the Governments strove to maintain peace, the Protestant rovers from the West Country preyed on Spanish commerce, and the Holy Inquisition ignored all the laws of nations in its treatment of heretic seamen. Nor was it in human nature to stand idly and see the trade of half the world monopolized by two countries merely on the authority of a papal bull. The colonists themselves were quite willing to trade, and English merchants soon began to endeavour to establish markets. To describe them as pirates is totally inaccurate, but the Spanish officials did not--perhaps in their ignorance could not--realize the comparative innocence of the English merchants. In 1568 John Hawkins, the most prominent of the pioneers, was treacherously attacked in the Mexican port of San Juan de Ulua by the Viceroy and Francisco de Luxan, General of the Fleet of New Spain. The result was to deeply embitter the relations of the two Powers, and thenceforth English seamen went to the West Indies determined, since the Spaniards would not trade, to make their profit out of them otherwise. At sea the two states were most unequally matched. The power of Spain on land was great, but her strength at sea has been ludicrously misrepresented. Spain at this time had no sea-going navy at all! In the Mediterranean she had some 100 war-galleys, but galleys were useless for ocean work. On the other hand, England had, for the time, a considerable Royal Navy, and the number of armed merchantmen liable for service in time of war was very large. Portugal had a considerable oceanic squadron. But Spain, for two generations, was content to leave her Atlantic trade entirely unprotected, until the depredations of the French corsairs forced the situation upon the notice of her Government. It was Pero Menendez de Aviles, perhaps the greatest of all Spanish seamen, who goaded his slow-moving and short-sighted Government into creating an oceanic navy. Menendez was a fanatically religious man, and regarding, as he did, the heretic corsairs as the enemies of mankind, he was frequently guilty of acts of ferocious cruelty. That he, as sincerely as his English antitype Francis Drake, believed himself to be the chosen instrument of Heaven cannot be doubted; but he certainly lacked Drake’s kindly nature.