Whilst Philip’s system had reduced his own country to this state, the ships of Drake, Ralegh, Hawkins, Cumberland, and the rest of them were harrying the Indies, the English were trading openly with Spanish settlements in spite of royal prohibition, and in the insensate thirst for gold, the Spanish colonists were wiping out whole nations of inoffensive Indians who were unable or unwilling to satisfy their greed. The missionary friars sometimes raised their voices against the wholesale murder of their possible converts, but they cried in vain, for Philip’s hide-bound system only referred the protests against the slaughter to the men who perpetrated it. Philip’s American possessions consequently were enriching his enemies rather than himself, and, as Ralegh said, were furnishing the means for them to carry on war against him. In the meanwhile his own coasts, both of Italy and Spain, were practically undefended. The loss of the Armada had been a blow both to his credit and to his naval power, from which he could never entirely recover, and neither men, money, nor ships could easily be obtained. Perez lived caressed and flattered in Essex House, and knew all that passed in Spain. Everything which his wickedness and malice could devise to injure his enemy he urged with ceaseless pertinacity. He persuaded the queen that her physician, the Jew Dr. Lopez, had plotted with Philip to murder her. There was just enough foundation to give a plausible appearance to the assertion, and Lopez was executed (June 7, 1594). That he was ready to undertake such commissions is doubtless true, but evidence is now forthcoming which tends to show that in this case Perez lied, and that Lopez was innocent.[4]