30 RELIGION, COLONISING AND TRADE 
them have been sent over bya Society for propagating 
the Gospel in Foreign Parts, never go among the 
Indians.’ ! 
Religion was assuredly a powerful, possibly the 
most powerful, motive in shaping Cromwell’s colonial 
policy. Inherited Protestant antipathy to Spain and 
the Spaniards’ creed largely inspired the © Western 
design.” ‘Truly God’s great enemy is the Spaniard. 
He is 2 natural enemy.” 2 So he claimed in his speech 
to Parliament on September 17, 1656, and, over and 
above actual outrages committed by Spaniards and un- 
atoned for, he laid stress upon the Spanish refusal to 
grant liberty of conscience to the English who traded 
in their Indies. A year previously © a manifesto of 
the Lord Protector . . . wherein is shown the reason- 
ableness of the cause of this Republic against the 
depredations of the Spaniards ’ had been printed. It 
had been written in Latin by Milton, who was 
Cromwell’s Latin secretary. Milton similarly rested 
the case against Spain upon the dangers to which the 
souls as well as the lives of English traders were 
exposed in the Spanish Indies ; and as, ‘ what of all is 
the most momentous and important,” he pleaded the 
duty of not letting slip ¢ the most noble opportunities 
of promoting the Glory of God and enlarging the 
bounds of Christ’s Kingdom; which we do not 
doubt will appear to be the chief end of out late expedi- 
tion into the West Indies against the Spaniards.’ 3 
1 See below, p. 70, note. 
* Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches with Elucidations, by Thomas 
Carlyle (1871), Part IX, p. 180. 
* The original of the manifesto was in Latin and first printed in 
1655. The English translation dated only from 1738.