Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/264

 206 ENGLAND'S ATTEMPTS TO REACH INDIA out, not by royal fleets and armies alone, but also by the merchants of the rival nations. The Dutch and Spanish war of commercial edicts scarcely makes itself heard in history amid the din of battle, the shrieks of street massacres, the groans from Inquisition chambers, and the inrush of the ocean through the dikes. But it gave a staggering blow to the Catholic monopoly of the Indian trade. In 1585, for example, Philip II ordered the seizure of all Dutch ships in Spanish waters. The States-General retorted by forbidding any Dutch vessels to trade with Spain or Portugal under pain of forfeiting both ship and goods. If these menaces had some ring of empty shouting in front of the battle, they soon acquired a very real meaning. Spain ruined Ant- werp. The States-General issued ten proclamations be- tween 1585 and 1600 against trade with Portugal or Spain. In 1595 the States-General forbade all naviga- tion of Dutch vessels within Spanish waters, and in 1596 sent a ship of war as far as Calais to arrest any Dutch craft on its way to Spain, Portugal, or Italy. England, thus deprived of her Indian trade through Antwerp, had meanwhile met the difficulty in the Eliz- abethan fashion. The open enmity authorized by the rupture of diplomatic relations with Spain in 1584- 1585, broke out into blows between a Portuguese ship of the East Indian fleet and two English vessels in 1586. In 1587 Drake captured off the Azores the San Filippe, a great carrack bearing the king's saint-name and laden with an Indian cargo which yielded 108,049 of prize-money. In 1592 Sir John Burrough swooped