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THE COLONIES IN THE CIVIL WAR

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struggles of her Puritan Revolution. In the history of the outer Empire the Civil War was as important a factor as it was in English history, but its action was wholly negative. For ten years or more each colony was practically isolated from outside interference and each continued its development in its own way. The only unifying influence was removed, and the factors working for differentiation had full play. Hence it is impossible to trace any connected story and we must confine ourselves to a few brief references to events that were contemporary but unrelated.

The flow of English emigration continued with little check down to 1641, but with the beginning of civil war in 1642 it rapidly dried up owing to the impossibility of finding transport. The great exodus that had carried at least 80,000 Englishmen across the Atlantic was over, and no efflux of such magnitude in comparison with the population was to be seen again until the nineteenth century. When the Long Parliament seized executive power, it directed some attention to colonial projects, but its plans were of a kind that was out-of-date, being concerned mainly with the design of establishing a West India Association on the lines of the Dutch West India Company to organise attacks upon the Spanish colonies.1 Pym and others of the Providence Company were appointed to a parliamentary committee to examine the project, but they never reported. The interest of the incident lies in the link it affords with the Western Design of 1655.2 Neither King nor Commons could spare much thought for colonial affairs, but since the Parliamentarians held London, which did by far the greater part of the colonial trade, they had a certain control over the customs on imports and exports. Hence any action they took was mainly concerned with economic matters.3

In 1643 the Earl of Warwick was appointed Governor-in-Chief and Lord High Admiral of all the English colonies in America with a standing council endowed with considerable powers. But these powers were merely nominal, for it was impossible to enforce any orders of the council. Massachusetts flatly denied the legislative power of Parliament in the colony, for they maintained that "the laws of the parliament of England reach no further, nor do the king's writs under the great seal go any further. Our allegiance binds us not to the laws of England any longer than while we live in England".5 In the other colonies the English struggle between Royalists and Parliamentarians was duplicated, though the points at issue were concerned more with local disputes than with any broader questions. Centrifugal forces were, in fact, in full play and everyone sought his own immediate interests.

In New England during this period of autonomy the most important event was the establishment of a confederation of the colonies 3 Beer, Origins, pp. 343-6 seqq. 5 Winthrop, II, 352.

1 Stock, Debs. 1, 122–3.

2 Vide infra, p. 225.

• Ordinance of 2 November 1643.

for defence against the Indians, the Dutch and the French. By 1640 the population of New England had grown to about 18,000, of whom nearly 14,000 were in Massachusetts, and while the flow of immigration continued the prosperity of the colonies seemed to increase by leaps and bounds. But with the cessation of the stream the boom collapsed, business came to a standstill and men found it so hard to make a living that emigration to the West Indies began and soon assumed proportions that were alarming to the authorities. Each of the colonies during the boom had been expanding into the interior as fast as it could, but with the crash the dangers with which they were faced from their neighbours looked more menacing than the advantages to be derived from any increase of territory. Massachusetts had made repeated attempts to bring the smaller colonies under her control, but they had always withstood her, and when in 1643 she expressed her readiness to recognise their independence and to agree to Articles of a Confederation for common defence, in the council of which each colony was granted equal representation, they were willing to accept. "A firm and perpetual league of friendship and amity for offence and defence, mutual advice and succour" was established,1 and a board of commissioners was set up to consider matters of mutual interest and to determine all military questions, each colony supplying the forces required from it. The existence of any authority in England was completely ignored, and the "United Colonies of New England" arranged the confederation entirely between themselves by diplomatic negotiations like independent

states.

In Virginia the general tendency during the Civil War was to favour the royalist cause, but no effort was made to give active support to the King's forces. Advantage was taken of the downfall of external authority to free the colony from restrictive commercial regulations and to enter into active trading relations with the Dutch, who were beginning to supply negro slaves in considerable numbers. This remedied the scarcity of white indentured servants and had an important effect upon the plantation economy of the colony. The troubles in England drove abroad numbers of those who disliked the Puritan régime, and Virginia welcomed many emigrants of a much better social position than those who had come to her shores as indentured servants. But on the other hand the royalist government of the colony drove many Puritans away, and in the year 1649 more than a thousand persons left Virginia to settle in Maryland. The colony was, however, so firmly established that it could support these defections. The contrast between its condition during the Civil War and its earlier years is marked by the way in which it met a second Indian massacre. The disaster of 1622 had nearly proved fatal, but

1 Newton, A. P., Federal and Unified Constitutions, pp. 50-6.
2 Bruce, P. A., Economic Hist. of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century.

SIR DAVID KIRKE IN NEWFOUNDLAND

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in 1644 when the Indians rose again and slaughtered more than 300 persons in the frontier settlements, no serious check to Virginia's general prosperity resulted. The Indians were driven entirely out of the lower part of the colony, and thenceforward its development was unhampered by troubles with the savages except upon the frontier. In Maryland the troubles between the Puritans and the Roman Catholic proprietors led to two years of civil war in 1645 and 1646, but the struggle exercised little influence on affairs outside the colony.

In Newfoundland the period was marked by the final disappearance of all those who in earlier years had attempted to establish colonies of permanent residents, by the increase of French interests in the island and its fisheries, and by the beginnings of a permanent settlement of Englishmen. We showed earlier how Lord Baltimore established himself at Ferryland in the Province of Avalon in 1628-9, but abandoned the island after a season's stay. In all probability a few isolated settlers remained behind, but they were quite unorganised, and it was not until ten years later that another attempt at systematic colonisation was undertaken. Sir David Kirke, it will be remembered,1 had been deprived of his conquest of Canada after the Treaty of St Germain-en-Laye in 1632. In 1638 James, Marquis of Hamilton, and others secured from the Crown a patent granting to them the whole island of Newfoundland, including the Province of Avalon, as "Lords Proprietors and Adventurers." This syndicate was organised by Kirke and he went out to the island with a company of settlers mostly from the west country to assume the government. He occupied Baltimore's deserted buildings and thence began to enforce order and exact licence dues from all fishermen landing on the coast. By 1640 Sir David had fallen out with the Lords Proprietors and they attempted to replace him as Governor, but he refused to budge, and for ten years he ruled the island as he thought fit, entirely disregarding any authority other than his own. Protests were made against his proceedings by the fishing merchants, but it was not until 1651 that any effective action could be taken, when Kirke was compelled to return to England to answer for his arbitrary actions before the Council of State. However, his settlers remained and it is certain that the residence of an English community in Newfoundland can be traced continuously from 1638 onwards and is to be associated with the work of the Kirke family.

During the time when the sequence of regular fishing voyages from the English ports was interrupted by the Civil War, ships and merchants began to find bases for their operations in the New England ports and an active commerce sprang up. Ships from Boston or Rhode Island began to carry flour and meat to St John's to sell to the Newfoundland fishermen and there to freight their vessels with fish and train oil 1 Vide supra, p. 155.

for sale in the ports of southern Europe. The circumstances of the trade are obscure, but there is no doubt that during the Civil War that association began between the commerce of Newfoundland and New England which was to be of such rapidly increasing importance after the Restoration.

In the Caribbean colonies the interval between the outbreak of the Civil War and the execution of the King was a mere prologue to the events of the Protectorate and was most remarkable for the beginnings of a complete change in the economic interests of the colonists. The introduction of the sugar industry set the West Indian colonies on the path to a prosperity that made the "Sugar Islands" the greatest prize in the wars of the following century, but the consideration of the changes that ensued belongs to a later period of their history.

CHAPTER VI

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE OUTER WORLD, 1450-1648

THE fifteenth century marks the culminating period in the age of

discovery which had commenced three centuries previously, and which with the year 1492, when Columbus discovered America, entered upon its most important stage. The previous centuries had been of little, if any, interest to England in this respect, though Spain and Portugal were adding vast areas to their respective Crowns. Gradually and by slow stages the coast of Africa had been discovered, and in 1486 Bartolomeu Diaz, the Portuguese navigator, had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, the "Tempestuous Cape". Six years after the voyage of Columbus to America, Vasco da Gama reached India, and anchored off Calicut on 20 May 1498. Spain and Portugal had thus been steadily expanding their possessions, and they had obtained a title or recognition of their title to their new dominions by papal grants or bulls. Popes had claimed in the time of the Crusades to dispose of lands inhabited by infidels, though this claim was not conceded by all writers. However, in 1344 Clement VI granted the Canary Islands to Luis de la Cerda on condition that they were converted to Christianity; in 14541 and 14552 Portugal received from Nicholas V the exclusive right as against Spain to trade and acquire territory south of Capes Bojador and Não (Nam or Naon) through and beyond Guinea, with power to conquer all barbarous nations, and all the faithful of Christ, secular or lay, no matter what their condition or nation, were prohibited from trading there or entering those seas. Alexander VI by the famous bull Inter caetera of 4 May 1493 granted to Spain all islands and mainlands not possessed by Christian princes to the west and south of a line drawn from the North to the South Poles at 100 leagues towards the south and west of the Azores and Cape Verde.3 Between 1455 and the issue of the bull Inter caetera there were serious controversies between Spain and Portugal, the former claiming Guinea, notwithstanding the papal decree; a compromise was effected whereby Guinea, the Azores and Cape Verde Islands were recognised as Portuguese, while Portugal acknowledged 1 The bull Romanus pontifex: text in Davenport, F. G., European treaties bearing on the history of the United States to 1648, p. 9.

* The bull Inter caetera (Calixtus III), Davenport, p. 27.

See on these bulls Bollan, W., Colonia Anglicane Illustrate and the bibliography given by F. G. Davenport under the headings of each bull in the collection. For the history of the line of demarcation see also Bourne, E. G., Essays in historical criticism, p. 193; Harrisse, H., Diplomatic history of America.

See Davenport, p. 79, and Linden, H. Vander, "Alexander VI and the Demarcation of the Maritime and Colonial Domains of Spain and Portugal," Amer. Hist. Rev. (Oct. 1916), xxп, 1-20.

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