tom of the North-west Passage, turning
eastward round the North Cape to look for it, and perished in the ice.
English commerce was beginning to grow in spite of the Protector's
experiments; but a new and infinitely dangerous element had been
introduced by the change of religion into the relations of English
sailors with the Catholic Powers, and especially with Spain. In their
zeal to keep out heresy, the Spanish Government placed their harbours
under the control of the Holy Office. Any vessel in which an heretical
book was found was confiscated, and her crew carried to the Inquisition
prisons. It had begun in Henry's time. The Inquisitors attempted to
treat schism as heresy and arrest Englishmen in their ports. But Henry
spoke up stoutly to Charles V., and the Holy Office had been made to
hold its hand. All was altered now. It was not necessary that a poor
sailor should have been found teaching heresy. It was enough if he had
an English Bible and Prayer Book with him in his kit; and stories would
come into Dartmouth or Plymouth how some lad that everybody knew--Bill
or Jack or Tom, who had wife or father or mother among them,
perhaps--had been seized hold of for no other crime, been flung into a
dungeon, tortured, starved, set to work in the galleys, or burned in a
fool's coat, as they called it, at an _auto da fe_ at Seville.

The object of the Inquisition was partly political: it was meant to
embarrass trade and make the people impatient of changes which produced
so much inconvenience. The effect was exactly the opposite. Such
accounts when brought home created fury. There grew up in the seagoing
population an enthusiasm of hatred for that holy institution, and a
passionate desire for revenge.

The natural remedy would have been war; but the division of nations was
crossed by the division of creeds; and each nation had allies in the
heart of every other. If England went to war with Spain, Spain could
encourage insurrection among the Catholics. If Spain or France declared
war against England, England could help the Huguenots or the Holland
Calvinists. All Governments were afraid alike of a general war of
religion which might shake Europe in pieces. Thus individuals were left
to their natural impulses. The Holy Office burnt English or French
Protestants wherever it could catch them. The Protestants revenged their
injuries at their own risk and in their own way, and thus from Edward
VI.'s time to the end of the century