Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/522

 508 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 56. provide. The prisoner of war, stripped of everything that he possessed at his capture, and far away from his friends, experienced the hardest extremities which the inhumanity of carelessness could innict. English captives everywhere would have had no enviable lot. In Spain, and in the Spanish colonies, they fell as heretics into the hands of the Inquisition. Some of Hawkins's men had been burnt ; all had been more or less tortured ; and such as had not died or been murdered, had been transferred to Europe, and were lying half dead of hunger in the Archbishop of Seville's dun- geons. 1 Sir John was not a virtuous man in the clerical sense of the word, but he had the aifection of a brave man for the comrades who had fought at his side ; and the fate of those poor fellows who had hunted negroes with him in the mangrove swamps, had sur- veyed the reefs in the Gulf of Mexico, and shared so many dangers and so many successes, now lying in those horrid dens at the mercy of the familiars of the Holy Office, never left his mind. Two years after his return, while, they were still in Mexico, he had intended to go out in search of them. The Government, afraid of the consequences, prevented the expedition, and Hawkins, since he was forbidden to use force, deter- mined to try what he could do by cunning. With Cecil's secret permission, he paid a visit to Don Guerau, complained of his ill-usage by the Crown, and asked whether nothing could be done for the relief of his 1 ' Muertos de hambre,' was the admission of the Spaniards them- selves.