West Indies, or
at the leaste to as moche as is from Florida to the Circle articke, is
more lawfull and righte then the Spaniardes, or any other Christian
Princes.

To confute the generall claime and unlawfull title of the insatiable
Spaniardes to all the West Indies, and to prove the justenes of her
Majesties title and of her noble progenitours, if not to all, yet at
leaste to that parte of America which is from Florida beyonde the Circle
articke, wee are to sett downe in true order, accordinge to the juste
observation of tyme, when the West Indyes, with the ilandes and continent
of the same, were firste discouered and inhabited, and by what nation, and
by whome. Then are wee to answer in generall and particulerly to the moste
injurious and unreasonable donation graunted by Pope Alexander the Sixte,
a Spaniarde borne, of all the West Indies to the Kinges of Spaine and
their successors, to the greate prejudice of all other Christian Princes,
but especially to the domage of the Kinges of England.

Ffor the firste pointe, wee of England have to shewe very auncient and
auctenticall chronicles, written in the Welshe or Brittishe tongue,
wherein wee finde that one Madock ap Owen Guyneth, a Prince of North
Wales, beinge wearye of the civill warres and domesticall dissentions in
his contrie, made twoo voyadges oute of Wales, and discovered and planted
large contries which he founde in the mayne ocean south westwarde of
Ireland, in the yere of our Lorde 1170.(81) This historie is also to be
seene in Englishe in printe, in the booke sett furthe this yere of the
Prince of Wales, dedicated to Sir Henry Sidney. And this is confirmed by
the language of some of those people that dwell upon the continent betwene
the Bay of Mexico and the Grande Bay of Newfoundelande, whose language is
said to agree with the Welshe in divers wordes and names of places, by
experience of some of our nation that have bene in those partes. By this
testimonie it appereth, that the West Indies were discovered and inhabited
322. yeres before Columbus made his firste voyadge, which was in the yere
1492.

Secondly, the acceptation of Columbus his offer of the West Indies by
Kinge Henry the Seaventh, at the very firste, maketh moche for the title
of the Kinges of England, althoughe they had no former interest; which I
will here putt downe as I finde it in the eleventh chapiter of the
historie of Ferdinandus Columbus of the relation of the life and doinges
o