[Footnote 38:  Ibid., 274; Mass.  Col.  Records, IV., pt. i., 122-126.]

[Footnote 39:  Mass.  Col.  Records, IV., pt. i., 129.]

[Footnote 40:  Williamson, Maine, I., 340, 341.]

[Footnote 41:  Mass.  Col.  Records, IV., pt. i., 157-165, 359-360.]

CHAPTER XVII

COLONIAL NEIGHBORS

(1643-1652)

Although the successive English colonies—­Virginia, Maryland, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Haven, New Hampshire, and Maine—­each sprang from separate impulses, we have seen how one depended upon another and how inextricably their history is connected each with the other.  Even the widely separated southern and northern groups had intercourse and some transmigration.  Thus the history of each colony is a strand in the history of England in America.

In the same way the history of each colony and of the colonies taken together is interwoven with that of colonies of other European nations—­the Spaniards, French, and Dutch—­planted at first distant from the English settlements, but gradually expanding into dangerous proximity.  It was from a desire to protect themselves against the danger of attack by their foreign neighbors and to press their territorial claims that the New England group of English colonies afforded the example of the first American confederation.

Danger to the English colonization came first from the Spaniards, who claimed a monopoly of the whole of North America by virtue of discovery, the bull of Pope Alexander VI., and prior settlement.  When Sir Francis Drake returned from his expedition in 1580 the Spanish authorities in demanding the return of the treasure which he took from their colonies in South America vigorously asserted their pre-emptive rights to the continent.  But the English government made this famous reply—­“that prescription without possession availed nothing, and that every nation had a right by the law of nature to freely navigate those seas and transport colonies to those parts where the Spaniards do not inhabit."[1]

The most northerly settlement of the Spaniards in 1580 was St. Augustine, in Florida, for, though in 1524 Vasquez de Ayllon had planted a settlement called San Miguel on James River, starvation, disease, and Indian tomahawk soon destroyed it.  After the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the subsequent terrible punishment inflicted on the Spanish marine England was less disposed than ever to listen to the claims of Spain.[2] Reduced in power, the Spaniards substituted intrigue for warlike measures, and while they entangled King James in its web and hastened a change in the form of government for Virginia, they did not inflict any permanent injury upon the colony.

In 1624 England declared war against Spain, and English emigrants invaded the West Indies and planted colonies at Barbadoes, St. Christopher, Nevis, Montserrat, and other islands adjoining the Spanish settlements.  Till the New England Confederation the chief scene of collision with the Spanish was the West Indies.  In 1635 the Spanish attacked and drove the English from the Tortugas, and Wormeley, the governor, and many of the inhabitants took refuge in Virginia.[3]