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 172 ENGLAND'S ATTEMPTS TO KEACH INDIA The struggle flickered out only after the native princes surrendered their islands to the Portuguese or bound themselves by treaties absolutely to exclude the Castilians from their ports. At length in 1545 the Christian commanders came to an agreement, each side solemnly purging itself as " blameless of the cockle which the Enemy of Mankind had commenced to sow." But the cockle of discord soon sprang up afresh. By a later treaty in the same year, the Spaniards surren- dered their artillery and gave hostages as a guarantee that they would really evacuate Tidore; while their soldiers were offered service under the Portuguese. The monopoly of the two Catholic nations in the East, thus established, was destined to be drawn still closer by the union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns in 1580. The attitude of England to Portugal seems, on the other hand, to have been cordial. Ten years before the finding of the Cape route, the old friendship between the two nations had been cemented afresh, in 1489, by a " ratification of the Perpetual Peace." When, there- fore, our Henry VH, inspired by Da Gama's discovery, determined to explore on his own account, he was care- ful to respect the rights of his " dearest brother and kinsman, the King of Portugal." In 1500 and 1502, in granting somewhat wide charters to certain Bristol and Portuguese adventurers to sail under the English flag into all heathen countries of the seas, and to erect his royal banner on whatever island or continent they should discover, Henry VII expressly provided that