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THE COUNCIL OF NEW ENGLAND

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Council complaining of it as a grievance. Sir Francis Bacon, who had long been particularly interested in the fisheries, was now the leading member in the Government. Captain John Smith's book in praise of New England and its fisheries1 disposed him to consider favourably suggestions for the consolidation of an English monopoly in those regions such as Guy and his associates had failed to secure in the international fishing grounds off Newfoundland. The initiative was taken by Sir Ferdinando Gorges who proposed to revive the moribund North Virginia Company. Smith had been trying hard for some time to get subscriptions for a colonising company for New England, but he complained that "one might as well try to hew rocks with oyster shells" as to induce merchants to furnish funds for such an undertaking. The Virginia Company had never paid a dividend, the Newfoundland Company had lost all its capital, and Gorges pointed out with truth that "men could not be drawn to adventure in actions of that kind where they were assured of loss and small hopes of gain".2 English colonisation was still in the early experimental stage, and it was quite uncertain what form of organisation would best accomplish the desired purpose. As the reorganisation of the London Company in 1609 on the lines of a trading company seemed to some extent to have been responsible for its troubles, the Privy Council decided instead to revive something like the organisation of the 1606 charter. In November 1620 a patent was issued granting the territory in North America between 40 and 48 degrees north to a body designed to promote colonising efforts. The Lord High Admiral, Buckingham, was appointed President of "The Council established at Plymouth in the County of Devon for the Planting, Ruling, Ordering and Governing of New England in America", which was composed of forty persons of honour or gentlemen of blood and a few merchants, all nominated by the Crown. Exclusive monopoly of trade and fishery was granted in their territory and the seas adjoining, together with the right to collect fees for licences and to expel intruders. Both Southampton and Warwick were among "the patentees and counsellors for the managing of the business by whose favours the royal charter was granted", but the moving spirit was Gorges, who at once set to work to compel the western fishing merchants to take up licences for their voyages to the profitable new fishing grounds and with the funds so derived to send out colonists to the mainland.

The issue of the patent at once aroused an outcry from the fishermen as an infringement of the rights of free fishing that had been guaranteed to them ever since the reign of Edward VI.4 Sir Edwin Sandys, the new treasurer of the Virginia Company, voiced the

1 Smith, John, Description of New England (1616); New England's Trials (1620). 2 Gorges, F., Brief Narration (Collns. of Maine Hist. Soc.), II, 35.

Printed in Hazard, Hist. Collections, 1, 103.

By Act of Parl., 2 Ed. VI, c. 6.

control belong to the second part of our period, they will be considered later.

In 1629 a Spanish fleet cleared out the colonists from Nevis and St Christopher, but they returned as soon as it sailed. The war lingered on indecisively from 1626 to 1629, but Spain was exhausted and had long been anxious to make peace. Negotiations were attempted as early as 1627 without success owing to Charles's unacceptable demands; by 1629 he was ready to agree to any terms he could get, even though they involved a disgraceful alliance against the Dutch with whom we had been associated for seventy years. The public treaty was concluded at Madrid on 5/15 November 1630,1 and the secret anti-Dutch alliance on 12 January 1631,2 but the negotiations had been so involved and so mixed with verbal assurances and reservations on both sides, that the words of the agreed articles really meant very little. The provisions of the Treaty of Madrid did little more than revive those of the Treaty of London of 1604, the Spaniards merely restoring the freedom of English commerce with their dominions as stipulated in that treaty. But the Spanish commissioners avowed that they did not intend to question the English navigation to the East Indies, and promised that if Charles would agree not to trade in certain specified harbours possessed by the Portuguese, they would "capitulate a free navigation not only into those seas but to the coast of America also, particularly allowing the plantations of Virginia and others". Their design was to induce the English to act against the Dutch colony of New Netherland, but Charles was too weak for that or any other warlike enterprise. The English negotiators abandoned their old contention that there was "no peace beyond the line", and for the first time they agreed to an article extending the peace to the regions beyond the "lines of amity" after an interval of nine months to permit of the proclamation of the treaty.5 In 1629-30 the long struggle for oceanic power seemed in fact to have petered out. England and Spain, once the principal combatants, were too completely exhausted to fight any longer. Only France and the Dutch were the gainers, for the one was rapidly acceding to Spain's former position of pre-eminence among the Powers, while the other had won the carrying trade of the world and a seemingly unchallengeable mastery of colonial markets.

English colonial enterprise in North America was not, as in the West Indies, directly affected by the war with Spain, but it was profoundly influenced by the increasingly bitter disputes and struggles of the last years of James I. We saw in an earlier chapter that Guy's Newfoundland Company met with devastating opposition from the fishermen and that in 1618 petitions were presented to the Privy

2 Clarendon State Papers, 1, 49, 50.

1 Davenport, pp. 308-14. See Art. 7 reviving Art. 9 of the Treaty of London, and Cal. St. Pap. Venetian, XXII, 448. • Cottington to the King, 17 Nov. 1630, quoted in Davenport, p. 307.

5 Art. 2.

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Council complaining of it as a grievance. Sir Francis Bacon, who had long been particularly interested in the fisheries, was now the leading member in the Government. Captain John Smith's book in praise of New England and its fisheries1 disposed him to consider favourably suggestions for the consolidation of an English monopoly in those regions such as Guy and his associates had failed to secure in the international fishing grounds off Newfoundland. The initiative was taken by Sir Ferdinando Gorges who proposed to revive the moribund North Virginia Company. Smith had been trying hard for some time to get subscriptions for a colonising company for New England, but he complained that "one might as well try to hew rocks with oyster shells" as to induce merchants to furnish funds for such an undertaking. The Virginia Company had never paid a dividend, the Newfoundland Company had lost all its capital, and Gorges pointed out with truth that "men could not be drawn to adventure in actions of that kind where they were assured of loss and small hopes of gain”.2 English colonisation was still in the early experimental stage, and it was quite uncertain what form of organisation would best accomplish the desired purpose. As the reorganisation of the London Company in 1609 on the lines of a trading company seemed to some extent to have been responsible for its troubles, the Privy Council decided instead to revive something like the organisation of the 1606 charter. In November 1620 a patent was issued granting the territory in North America between 40 and 48 degrees north to a body designed to promote colonising efforts. The Lord High Admiral, Buckingham, was appointed President of "The Council established at Plymouth in the County of Devon for the Planting, Ruling, Ordering and Governing of New England in America", which was composed of forty persons of honour or gentlemen of blood and a few merchants, all nominated by the Crown. Exclusive monopoly of trade and fishery was granted in their territory and the seas adjoining, together with the right to collect fees for licences and to expel intruders. Both Southampton and Warwick were among" the patentees and counsellors for the managing of the business by whose favours the royal charter was granted"; but the moving spirit was Gorges, who at once set to work to compel the western fishing merchants to take up licences for their voyages to the profitable new fishing grounds and with the funds so derived to send out colonists to the mainland.

The issue of the patent at once aroused an outcry from the fishermen as an infringement of the rights of free fishing that had been guaranteed to them ever since the reign of Edward VI. Sir Edwin Sandys, the new treasurer of the Virginia Company, voiced the

1 Smith, John, Description of New England (1616); New England's Trials (1620).
2 Gorges, F., Brief Narration (Collns. of Maine Hist. Soc.), 11, 35.

Printed in Hazard, Hist. Collections, 1, 103.

4 By Act of Parl., 2 Ed. VI, c. 6.

opposition in Parliament on the ground that the exclusive grant was harmful to the interests of the colony that was already established. In April 1621 he introduced a bill for the free liberty of fishing voyages to the sea-coasts of Newfoundland, Virginia and other coasts of America, and opened a debate of great interest.1 In its course not only was the "great patent" for New England attacked, but also the pretensions of Whitbourne and Mason to make their colonies in Newfoundland centres from which to preserve order among the fishermen of all nations by virtue of their commissions of vice-admiralty. John Guy, now member for Bristol, strongly opposed the bill as preventing any possibility of colonisation either in New England or Newfoundland. But the sense of the House was as much opposed to him as it was to Secretary Calvert, the spokesman for the Government. He raised an important constitutional point, for he maintained that as the bill concerned America, it was beyond the competence of the House. When the members continued the discussion in spite of his protest, the Secretary strongly supported a proviso brought forward by Guy to safeguard the rights of planters. Matters stood over during the prorogation, but the agitation did not subside. Gorges went on with his demands for fees from the fishermen, and in June 1621 the first land grant for a plantation in New England was made to the representative of the Mayflower Pilgrims who had gone out in the previous year, and whose story we consider later. When the session was resumed, the Commons summoned Gorges to appear before them and bring up the obnoxious patent. He refused to produce the document as a matter beyond his power, but he gave evidence that the council's main purpose was the furtherance of plantation and that they were open to compromise regarding the fisheries. Calvert pointedly warned the House that, unless the interests of the planters were properly safeguarded, the bill would not receive the royal assent, but the fishing interest was too strong, and Guy's proviso was decisively rejected. This speech of the Secretary of State is suggestive as indicating a direct interest of the Privy Council in balancing the claims of contending parties. The traditional version has blamed the King for decisions with which he had little to do, and has attributed to him a narrow desire to oppress his subjects for his own benefit. In reality, in this as in the other difficult colonial questions with which they were trying to cope at the same time, the ministers had a sounder appreciation of the national interest than most of their critics. Their grasp of the problems was imperfect, and they were forced to experiment in an unknown field, but even thus early we can see dimly some attempt to search for a sound imperial policy. The members from the west of England resolutely protested that any and every colony in Newfoundland and New England alike was harmful to the interests of the English fisheries and should be prevented, and they 1 Stock, L. F., Debates, 1, 39. 2 Commons' Journals, 1, 626.

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persuaded the House of Commons to pass the bill for free fishing in its most uncompromising form, although it was defeated in the Lords where the advocates of colonisation were stronger. The matter was regarded by the Commons as in the forefront of the grievances that precipitated the quarrel with the King over free speech and led to the abrupt dissolution of Parliament in 1621.

Parties were differently aligned on the other acute colonial question of the time, the importation of tobacco, for here the private interests of Sandys and his friends favoured the setting up of a strict and exclusive monopoly. The Privy Council began to give close attention to the tobacco question in 1619, and thenceforward for a quarter of a century discussions and negotiations between the various interests concerned were both incessant and intricate. The controversy1 was really at the centre of a prolonged series of experiments in economic statecraft. The colonies were newcomers in the body politic, and Englishmen had to find gradually by a process of trial and error the way to construct a new economic system to include them. The King's subjects, whether at home or overseas, had a like right to look to him and his Government for measures to foster their prosperity. They were all parts of the realm that he had sworn to govern well. In 1621 the Crown consented to prohibit the growing of tobacco in England and Ireland, but required in return that the colonists should bring all their tobacco to England for sale. The importation of Spanish tobacco was greatly restricted or forbidden in order to leave the market clear. Thus English consumers had to pay high prices for an inferior article to foster the interests of the planters, but Virginia was never satisfied. When the new English colonies were settled in the West Indies repeated petition was made that all tobacco-growing should be prohibited there, though without success until sugar came to replace it after 1640.

The troubles over the tobacco contract in 1621-2 added fuel to the fires of faction that were raging in the Virginia and Bermuda Companies, and Sandys and his friends were unmeasured in the accusations of corrupt practices that they heaped upon their rivals and government officials alike.2 They showed no scruples in suppressing complaints from Virginia that would be damaging to their management and in editing the official records of proceedings to favour their arguments.

The results of the Southampton-Sandys régime were of great importance in the political field, as will be seen later, but this could not be realised at the time. In the economic field they fell so lamentably short of the promises that had been held out that the Privy Council was obliged at last to take action, in much the same way as in the case

1 See Beer, Origins, chap. iv.

* See Scott, W. R., Joint Stock Companies, 11, 271 seqq.; Osgood, H. L., American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, III, 41–53.

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