Elizabethan Era

The Elizabethan Era appears in the account as a period whose patriotic moral memory is unsettled by the history of English participation in slavery. The passage links the days of Good Queen Bess to both professed outrage at Spanish cruelty and the beginning of the British slave trade, exposing the distance between national self-image and conduct.

Historical Setting and Account

The period is identified through the reference to the days of Good Queen Bess, with 1562 as its specific historical point. The account says that English people were disgusted by the Spanish enslavement of American Indians, yet it immediately complicates that apparent moral distinction by describing English plunder of treasure ships, whether England was at war with Spain or not.

Hawkyns and the Slave Trade

The passage credits Sir John Hawkyns, who later became paymaster of the navy and a hero of the Armada fight, with starting the British slave trade in 1562. It describes him stealing Black slaves from the Portuguese in Africa and selling them to the Spaniards in the New World. The juxtaposition makes the period’s remembered English opposition to Spanish cruelty inseparable from English participation in the same system of enslavement.

Later Legal Reversal

The account carries the history beyond the Elizabethan Era, noting that the British Parliament made the trade a criminal offence in 1811. That later prohibition marks a legal reversal, but it does not erase the earlier contradiction: the English who condemned Spanish enslavement had themselves begun trafficking enslaved people.