Irene A. Wright - Further English Voyages to Spanish America, 1583-1594

Documents from the Archives of the Indies at Seville illustrating English Voyages to the Caribbean, the Spanish Main, Florida, and Virginia

Edited by
IRENE A. WRIGHT

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLSHOSE AND CO. LTD. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW

THIS volume owes its completion to the sustained assistance extended to the editor by officers of The Hakluyt Society, the former President Sir William Foster, the late Honorary Secretary Dr. Edward Lynam, and his successor, Mr. R. A. Skelton. It owes even more to the encouragement and help of Dr. James A. Williamson, who gave the work the benefit of his wide and deep knowledge of the period within which lie the documents presented. Without the support of the gentlemen mentioned obstacles created by the editors removal from Seville to Washington and other dislocations would not have been overcome.

Further, to these names should be added that of Sr. D. Jos Pea who extended the hand of old friendship from the Archives of the Indies; and that of Professor David B. Quinn who generously contributed results of his own investigations, especially in identification of persons whose names as rendered in the Spanish originals no one else could have recognized.

Because the reader will certainly discover errors in the book, it should immediately be added that not all the advice proffered was accepted. Let all others be absolved of faults due to the editors insistence on maintaining some perhaps dubious translations, identifications, deductions and appraisals.

Finally, in concluding this, undoubtedly my last contribution to the Societys publications, I desire again to invite attention to the wealth of materials as yet unused which in Spanish archives await the consideration of students of English history. Not only is there material for another volume after this one, to carry the story of English seamen in the Caribbean, along the Main, Mexico and Virginia to a more logical terminus at 1603, but also there is much more. There is, for example, an almost inexhaustible body of documents bearing on the Spanish War. Incidentally, whoever undertakes a serious study, based on Spanish documents, of French incursions into this same area in the sixteenth century will upset a great many currently accepted versions of events.

I have appreciated my association with the Society. It has indeed been an honour to work with men wholeheartedly devoted to history, exacting in the standards they insist the Society must maintain, and generously willing to help complete a project when the expenditure involved of their time and of their knowledge can be repaid only by a few words inadequately expressive of an editors gratitude. My only regret is that I have not another quarter of a century of life to spend in such good company.

IRENE A. WRIGHT

THE present volume, the third of Miss Wrights collection of documents from the Archives of the Indies at Seville* covers the years 1583 to 1594, and, like its predecessors, it was the contemporary Spanish view, from officials and private men, of occurrences in the Caribbean hitherto known only from English accounts. The documents cover the transition to recognised war, the campaign of Drake in 15856, and the privateering of the years that followed. They present us with important new material particularly on Drake at Santo Domingo and Cartagena. The Society is indeed fortunate to have been able to produce these three volumes, which together form a collection that rounds off the evidence for a great passage of history and are comparable in value to the English documents edited by Sir Julian Corbett and Sir John Laughton for the Navy Records Society at the end of the last century. In the story of all such voyages as those of the Elizabethan seamen there are two points of view, distinct and complementary, that of the invaders with their minds on themselves, their equipment and their purposes, and that of the defenders, settled in their colonies and regarding the intruders as a disturbance. For the Caribbean area, at least, we now have both aspects for the greater part of the Elizabethan age. Our debt to Miss Wrights research and editing is not easy to express.