Professor John Fiske shows that "it was not until the Protestant England of Elizabeth had come to a life-and-death grapple with Spain, and not until the discovery of America had advanced much nearer completion, so that its value began to be more correctly understood, that political and commercial motives combined in determining England to attack Spain through America, and to deprive her of supremacy in the colonial and maritime world. Then the voyages of the Cabots assumed an importance entirely new, and could be quoted as the basis of a prior claim on the part of the English Crown, to lands which it [through the Cabots] had discovered." Having in mind the terrible history of slaughter and reprisal between the Spanish and French (Huguenot) settlers in Florida in 1565-67, [Bancroft, History of the United States, vol. i. p. 68; Fiske, Discovery of America, vol. ii. p. 511 et seq. With the terrible experience of the Florida plantations in memory, the far-sighted leaders of the Leyden church proposed to plant under the shelter of an arm strong enough to protect them, and we find the Directors of the New Netherland Company stating that the Leyden party (the Pilgrims) can be induced to settle under Dutch auspices, "provided, they would be guarded and preserved from all violence on the part of other potentates, by the authority, and under the protection of your Princely Excellency and the High and Mighty States General." Petition of the Directors of the New Netherland Company to the Prince of Orange.]