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34 THE STRUGGLE WITH THE PORTUGUESE of their discoveries/ ' We charge you, Nicholas Down- ton, not to " go about to set upon " any of our Christian allies, especially Spain, " except you shall be by them first thereunto justly provoked." If, however, this should happen, " you shall not for any act or acts " needful in the case, " be in danger or subject to the peril and penalties of our laws." Above all you are " to suffer no spoil to be made of any goods or mer- chandise " which " shall be recovered by you," " but to see them safely brought home with their bills of lading, so that We may adjust matters hereafter," with the offending State. Truly an Elizabethan commission drafted with an eye to making out an ex post facto diplomatic case worthy of the Great Queen, yet, in spite of its Jacobean pedantry, disclosing a clear perception of the realities of distant sea-trade. James recognized that European treaties had little effect beyond the Cape of Good Hope. He desired his subjects to abstain from offence, yet if offences must needs come, not to be the losers by them; and to repel force by force. Captain Downton thoroughly grasped the situation. Should spoliation be going, he was determined not to be the despoiled. The fundamental difference of view taken by England and by Portugal as to their relative positions in the East inevitably led to conflict. From the moment that Da Gama's ships returned in 1499 the Portuguese dynasty affirmed its right to " the sov- ereignty and dominion of all we have discovered," be- sides its wider claim under the Demarcation Bull of