He was to be unpleasantly undeceived.  A few days after he had arrived at Plymouth, he met the man whom he had sent to Cadiz with the hides forlorn and empty-handed.  The Inquisition, he said, had seized the cargo and confiscated it.  An order had been sent to St. Domingo to forfeit the reserved slaves.  He himself had escaped for his life, as the familiars had been after him.

Nothing shows more clearly how little thought there had been in Hawkins that his voyage would have given offence in Spain than the astonishment with which he heard the news.  He protested.  He wrote to Philip.  Finding entreaties useless, he swore vengeance; but threats were equally ineffectual.  Not a hide, not a farthing could he recover.  The Spanish Government, terrified at the intrusion of English adventurers into their western paradise to endanger the gold fleets, or worse to endanger the purity of the faith, issued orders more peremptory than ever to close the ports there against all foreigners.  Philip personally warned Sir Thomas Chaloner, the English ambassador, that if such visits were repeated, mischief would come of it.  And Cecil, who disliked all such semi-piratical enterprises, and Chaloner, who was half a Spaniard and an old companion in arms of Charles V., entreated their mistress to forbid them.

Elizabeth, however, had her own views in such matters.  She liked money.  She liked encouraging the adventurous disposition of her subjects, who were fighting the State’s battles at their own risk and cost.  She saw in Philip’s anger a confession that the West Indies was his vulnerable point; and that if she wished to frighten him into letting her alone, and to keep the Inquisition from burning her sailors, there was the place where Philip would be more sensitive.  Probably, too, she thought that Hawkins had done nothing for which he could be justly blamed.  He had traded at St. Domingo with the Governor’s consent, and confiscation was sharp practice.

This was clearly Hawkins’s own view of the matter.  He had injured no one.  He had offended no pious ears by parading his Protestantism.  He was not Philip’s subject, and was not to be expected to know the instructions given by the Spanish Government in the remote corners of their dominions.  If anyone was to be punished, it was not he but the Governor.  He held that he had been robbed, and had a right to indemnify himself at the King’s expense.  He would go out again.  He was certain of a cordial reception from the planters.  Between him and them there was the friendliest understanding.  His quarrel was with Philip, and Philip only.  He meant to sell a fresh cargo of negroes, and the Madrid Government should go without their 30 per cent. duty.