lish settlers in 1623; and two years
later the island was formally divided with the French, thus becoming the
earliest nucleus of English and French colonization in those regions.
Barbadoes was colonized in 1624-25. In 1628 English settlers from St.
Kitts spread to Nevis and Barbuda, and within another four years to
Antigua and Montserrat; while as early as 1625 English and Dutch took
joint possession of Santa Cruz. The founders of the French settlement on
St. Kitts induced Richelieu to incorporate a French West India Company
with the title, "The Company of the Isles of America," and under its
auspices Guadeloupe, Martinique and other islands of the Windward group
were colonized in 1635 and succeeding years. Meanwhile between 1632 and
1634 the Dutch had established trading stations on St. Eustatius in the
north, and on Tobago and Curacao in the south near the Spanish mainland.

While these centres of trade and population were being formed in the
very heart of the Spanish seas, the privateers were not altogether idle.
To the treaty of Vervins between France and Spain in 1598 had been added
a secret restrictive article whereby it was agreed that the peace should
not hold good south of the Tropic of Cancer and west of the meridian of
the Azores. Beyond these two lines (called "les lignes de l'enclos des
Amities") French and Spanish ships might attack each other and take fair
prize as in open war. The ministers of Henry IV. communicated this
restriction verbally to the merchants of the ports, and soon private
men-of-war from Dieppe, Havre and St. Malo flocked to the western
seas.[59] Ships loaded with contraband goods no longer sailed for the
Indies unless armed ready to engage all comers, and many ship-captains
renounced trade altogether for the more profitable and exciting
occupation of privateering. In the early years of the seventeenth
century, moreover, Dutch fleets harassed the coasts of Chile and
Peru,[60] while in Brazil[61] and the West Indies a second "Pie de
Palo," this time the Dutch admiral, Piet Heyn, was proving a scourge to
the Spaniards. Heyn was employed by the Dutch West India Company, which
from the year 1623 onwards, carried the Spanish war into the transmarine
possessions of Spain and Portugal. With a fleet composed of twenty-six
ships and 3300 men, of which he was vice-admiral, he greatly
distinguished himself at the capture of Bahia, the seat of Portuguese
power in Brazil. Similar expeditions were sen