Thomas Day and John Scott, two englishmen before the Mexican Inquisition: 1597-1607

Abstract

After the maritime attack orchestrated by William Parker on the New Spanish port of Campeche in 1597, some sailors were stranded on the mainland and were ultimately prosecuted by the Mexican Inquisition. At the same time, two Englishmen, members of Captain Christopher Newport’s pirate expedition, were sent to Mexico City as prisoners, after a maritime incident that occurred in the Caribbean Sea, so they were prosecuted for Lutheran heresy at the hands of the Holy Office of the Inquisition and receive mild punishmets, compared to others prosecuted for Protestantism at the end of the 16th century. The objective of this article is to reconstruct, through the deductive method and a case study, with the support of primary and secondary sources, the unprecedented inquisitorial trials followed against Thomas Day and John Scott, therefore this collaboration will seek to contribute to the study of the judicial praxis emmanated by an organism that generates ecclesiastical justice, in one of its Indian districts against a minority sector of the population that represented a threat to the guardianship of the faith, in times of war between Spain and England.