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Voyager's Tales

Richard Hakluyt · 1598-1600 (compiled/issued in three folio volumes as Principal Navigations...; this collection typically reproduced from Hakluyt’s printed voyages)

passage 65 of 75 · (65/75)

in brief
After the monastery term begins, Phillips serves at the Black Friars among Indigenous workers building a church, notes precarious liberties and critiques against Spaniards, and later recounts his and others’ release rituals and re-surveillance.

WAS MADE TO TAKE HIM; AND HOW I, SEEKING TO ESCAPE, WAS AGAIN TAKEN AND PUT IN PRISON IN VERA CRUZ, AND HOW AGAIN I MADE MINE ESCAPE FROM THENCE.

I, Miles Phillips, and William Lowe were appointed to the Black Friars, where I was appointed to be an overseer of Indian workmen, who wrought there in building a new church, amongst which Indians I learned their language or Mexican tongue very perfectly, and had great familiarity with many of them, whom I found to be a courteous and loving kind of people, ingenious, and of great understanding, and they hate and abhor the Spaniards with all their hearts. They have used such horrible cruelties against them, and do still keep them in such subjection and servitude, that they and the negroes also do daily lie in wait to practice their deliverance out of that thraldom and bondage that the Spaniards do keep them in.

William Lowe, he was appointed to serve the cook in the kitchen; Richard Williams and David Alexander were appointed to the Grey Friars; John Storey and Robert Cooke to the White Friars; Paul Horsewell the Secretary took to be his servant; Thomas Hull was sent to a monastery of priests, where afterward he died. Thus we served out the years that we were condemned for, with the use of our fools' coats, and we must needs confess that the friars did use us very courteously, for every one of us had his chamber, with bedding and diet, and all things clean and neat; yea, many of the Spaniards and friars themselves do utterly abhor and mislike of that cruel Inquisition, and would as they durst bewail our miseries, and comfort us the best they could, although they stood in such fear of that devilish Inquisition that they durst not let the left hand know what the right doeth.

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topics: crowds, mobs, and public opinion · labor, wages, and the division of work · religious persecution and toleration

Voyager's Tales · Richard Hakluyt · 1598–1600