India were regarded as a favourable field for filibusters, the earliest
we hear of being Vincente Sodre, a companion of Vasco da Gama in his
second voyage. Intercourse with heathens and idolaters was regulated
according to a different code of ethics from that applied to intercourse
with Christians. The authority of the Old Testament upheld slavery, and
Africans were regarded more as cattle than human beings; while Asiatics
were classed higher, but still as immeasurably inferior to Europeans. To
prey upon Mahommedan ships was simply to pursue in other waters the
chronic warfare carried on against Moors and Turks in the Mediterranean.
The same feelings that led the Spaniards to adopt the standard of the
Cross in their conquest of Mexico and Peru were present, though less
openly avowed, in the minds of the merchants and adventurers of all
classes and nationalities who flocked into the Indian seas in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With the decadence of buccaneering
and the growth of Indian trade, there was a corresponding increase of
piracy, and European traders ceased to enjoy immunity.

In 1623 the depredations of the Dutch brought the English into disgrace.
Their warehouses at Surat were seized, and the president and factors were
placed in irons, in which condition they remained seven months. This
grievance was the greater, as it happened at the time that the cruel
torture and execution of Captain Towerson and his crew by the Dutch took
place at Amboyna. It was bad enough to be made responsible for the doings
of their own countrymen, but to be punished for the misdeeds of their
enemies was a bitter pill to swallow. In 1630, just as peace was being
concluded with France and Spain, Charles I., who was beginning his
experiment of absolute government, despatched the _Seahorse_, Captain
Quail, to the Red Sea to capture the ships and goods of Spanish subjects,
as well as of any other nations not in league and amity with England.
There were no Spaniards in the Red Sea or the Indian Ocean, but