Note (return) — Chapter V

The indignation of the Spaniards, when the news of the sack of Panama reached Spain, rose to a white heat. "It is impossible for me to paint to your Lordship," wrote Godolphin to Lord Arlington, "the face of Madrid upon the news of this action ... nor to what degree of indignation the queen and ministers of State, the particular councils and all sorts of people here, have taken it to heart."330 It seems that the ambassador or the Spanish consul in London had written to Madrid that this last expedition was made by private intimation, if not orders, from London, and that Godolphin had been commanded to provide in the treaty for a long term before publication, so as to give time for the execution of the design. Against these falsehoods the English ambassador found it difficult to make headway, although he assured the queen of the immediate punishment of the perpetrators, and the arrest and recall of the Governor of Jamaica. Only by the greatest tact and prudence was he able to stave off, until an official disavowal of the expedition came from England, an immediate embargo on all the goods of English merchants in Spain. The Spanish government decided to send a fleet of 10,000 men with all speed to the Indies; and the Dukes of Albuquerque and Medina Coeli vied with each other in offering to raise the men at their own charge from among their own vassals. After Godolphin had presented his official assurance to the queen, however, nothing more was heard of this armament. "God grant," wrote the English ambassador, "that Sir Thomas Modyford's way of defending Jamaica (as he used to call it) by sending out the forces thereof to pillage, prove an infallible one; for my own part, I do not think it hath been our interest to awaken the Spaniards so much as this last action hath done."331