received her full share of new settlers from the great flow of emigration that marked the years of Charles I's personal government.

Meanwhile after Smythe's displacement, clear signs appeared that the despotic commercial management of the colony, under which the settlers were treated like labourers on a detached English estate, must give place to one in which they would at least share in framing decisions on their local concerns. The new administration had a free hand, and to remove the grievances of monopolist government it turned to the parliamentary methods in which it trusted. It desired to elicit the full co-operation of the colonists in carrying out its policy, and one of its first decisions was to summon a General Assembly in Virginia to consist of the council of state and two burgesses chosen by the planters or freeholders from each town, hundred or other particular plantation. An instruction to this effect was sent out by the new governor, Sir George Yeardley, and the first Assembly was convoked in the church at James Town in July 1619.1 The union of the separate districts as parts of one colony government was thus assured and the first offspring of the ancient Mother of Parliaments came into being. It was followed by the summoning of a similar Assembly in 1620. The Somers Islands Company also directed its governor to call the colonists into council at the same date,2 and the Bermuda Assembly thus convoked has an uninterrupted connection with the island legislature of to-day.

The acts of the Virginia Assembly were sent to England to be considered by the Company in 1620, but the result has not been recorded; the second Assembly sat in 1621 and the third in 1624 just before the Company's charter was resumed. The first list of acts that has been preserved comes from this third Assembly and the acts mostly relate to the organisation of local government and to economic matters. One important echo of current political controversies in England appears. The sole taxing power of the General Assembly was affirmed, and it was declared that no taxes should be laid in the province except by its authority or expended except as it should direct. When Sir Francis Wyat was sent out as the first royal governor of Virginia in 1624, he received instructions to continue the Assembly in the same form as in Yeardley's time, and the burgesses were given free power to consult and conclude on matters concerning the public weal of the province and to enact general laws for its government. Thus the assumption by the Crown of direct control involved no restriction of the political liberties of the colonists, but rather placed them on a more secure and permanent footing.

While the troubles over Virginia were at their height Sir Ferdinando Gorges was pushing on his northern schemes. Theoretically the grant to the Council of New England covered the whole coast

1 Osgood, 1, 92.

2 Lefroy, Mems. of Bermudas, 1. Hening, Statutes of Virginia, I, 121; Osgood, 1, 96.

SCOTTISH COLONIAL SCHEMES

153 between Newfoundland and Virginia, but the Dutch set a southern limit by the foundation of their colony of New Amsterdam at the mouth of the Hudson River in 1621. The grant of the site of New Plymouth to John Pierce in June 1621 on behalf of the Mayflower Pilgrims1 was the first assignment of lands by the new council, and the next was to one of the King's old followers, Sir William Alexander, who was projecting a colony of Scotsmen. His interest in colonising schemes was aroused by Captain Mason who had been governor of Guy's colony in Newfoundland and wrote thence in 1617 to a friend in Edinburgh to commend it as a place of settlement for the Scotsmen who were then flocking over to the new plantations in Ulster.2

Alexander's grant of September 1621 covered the whole northern part of the territory assigned to the New England Council, which he called "New Scotland" and divided with his friend Sir Robert Gordon of Lochinvar who proposed to found a colony of "New Galloway" in Cape Breton Island. Small expeditions with a few ' emigrants were sent out by Alexander at his own expense in 1622–3, but they had no success.

Scattered parties of settlers went out from time to time to various places on the New England coast and met with uniform failure, and the only real colony before 1629 was that at Plymouth. There has been a tendency among historians of the period to belittle the efforts of Gorges and his coadjutors and to attribute their failure to the incompetence of the court party, possibly with the unconscious aim of showing the success of the Puritans in sharper relief. They class the formation of the New England Council among measures of Stuart "tyranny", whereas, if we look beyond the boundaries of a single area and consider what was happening elsewhere at the time, it appears rather as an experiment in the unexplored art of managing distant dependencies. The failure of the early attempts both in Maine and in Newfoundland was really attributable to the trouble over the fisheries and to lack of consistent financial support. The association of the names of well-known courtiers with the New England Council does not warrant us in attributing its failure to a court party any more than the success of St Christopher and Barbados can be attributed to the Earl of Carlisle, the most prominent courtier of his time. In reality, the most active noblemen associated with the work of the Council, like Lords Warwick, Brooke and Saye, were identified in the political struggle with the party of opposition. Most of the other men of rank who lent their names, like Hamilton, Lindsey and Goring, did so in pursuit of a passing fashion.

The projectors and patrons of most of the colonising schemes of the time were neither persistent enough nor, which is more important, able to furnish the regular supplies of capital that were necessary. The only 1 See "Records of the Council of New England", Proc. of Amer. Antiq. Soc. April 1866, PP. 91-93. 2 Published in 1620 as A Brief Discourse of the New-found-land.

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persons with ready money at command were the merchants who, as a rule, cared little for ideas such as attracted the projectors. In the early days of Virginia and Bermuda Smythe was willing for the sake of his ideas to wait long for his profits, but he was unique both in the amplitude of his resources and the breadth of his views. The merchants at the back of the West Indian ventures were willing to continue providing capital because they could look for profits on the sale of tobacco and by supplying goods to the planters. In the same way the men who kept Virginia and Bermuda going were not those who wrangled in the courts of the companies, but those who supplied the magazines and took the planters' produce in payment. In New England and Newfoundland the interests of the merchants concerned were directed not towards colonisation, but to the fishing and fur trades to which a resident population was inimical. The great majority of the fishing merchants were determined, if they could, to carry on their business in the traditional way and to keep the shores as drying grounds during the summer season. The disputes over free fishing were fatal to the schemes of the colonisers. Merchants gave little credit to their promises of profit, and could find better use for their money elsewhere. The better class of emigrants would not readily go to places where it was notorious that they would be faced with the hostility of large numbers of unruly fishermen, and New England had therefore to await a new and more potent colonising motive than that of profit. Alexander's expeditions to Nova Scotia were regarded by France as an infringement of her right of prior occupation, and in 1624 she protested to James I against the trespass of his subjects in the peninsula. But the protest was disregarded, and the King tried to aid Alexander by following a precedent employed in the plantation of Ulster. To further the enterprise an order of "Knights Baronets of Nova Scotia" was founded for those who would send out settlers and pay heavy subscriptions to the funds. The outbreak of war with France set on foot other enterprises to seize the fur trade and to profit by attacking Champlain's little colony on the St Lawrence.

The story of this first English conquest of Canada will be told in a later volume, and we can here say only that on 29 August 1629 Champlain was forced to surrender the fortress of Quebec to an expedition organised by David Kirke, a privateering merchant of mixed English and French descent;3 a few weeks previously Scottish colonists had landed in Cape Breton Island and Alexander's men had occupied the settlement of Port Royal. The whole of the territory in French occupation in North America had therefore fallen into British hands. But meanwhile affairs at home had taken a turn that was fatal to Kirke's ambitions.

1 See Insh, G. P., Scottish Colonial Schemes, 1620-88, pp. 212-13.

2 See vol. VI.

3 See Kirke, H., The First English Conquest of Canada.

TREATY OF ST GERMAIN-EN-LAYE

155

The French war had been marked by a series of disgraceful failures and Charles was utterly without means to fight further. The nation had lost interest even in the war with Spain and men's thoughts were more and more concentrated on the domestic quarrels in Church and Parliament. Richelieu, anxious to free his hands for the struggle with Spain over the Mantuan inheritance, was ready to make peace on easy terms. On 14/24 April 1629, therefore, a treaty between the two Powers was signed at Susa. Almost all debatable questions were postponed for further discussion, but it was agreed that while prizes made before the peace should be retained, those taken after an interval of two months from its conclusion should be restored.1

Richelieu was paying especial attention at this time to commercial and colonial affairs and he would not acquiesce in the retention of Canada and Acadia by Great Britain. Kirke's and Alexander's occupation had undoubtedly begun after the lapse of the period of two months' grace stipulated in the Treaty of Susa and though the words of the article ostensibly referred only to ships captured as prizes, they could also be read to include establishments on shore. The Scottish colonists in Cape Breton Island had been defeated and brought captive to France very soon after their landing, but Kirke was firmly in possession at Quebec and Sir William Alexander's Scots at Port Royal. On the other hand the French had not yet paid over the whole of the dowry of Queen Henrietta Maria, and they retained two rich English prizes which had been captured and brought to Dieppe while carrying negro slaves for Sir Nicholas Crisp from Guinea to the American plantations. The negotiations for an accommodation were long drawn out, but ultimately the French succeeded in their demands and by the Treaty of St Germain-enLaye (19/29 March 1632)2 mutual restitution was agreed upon. Quebec and Port Royal were handed over to the French com-1 manders, and the first English occupation of Canada was at an end. Little interest was taken in the transaction by the general public, but Kirke and his associates were loud in their outcry against the injustice that they claimed had been done and before long they tried again in Newfoundland.3

In reality it would have been impossible for England to have retained the conquests without the danger of a fresh breach with France, which Charles was in no position to contemplate. An illconceived and ill-directed foreign policy had placed England in an inferior position wherever she had to face the competition of other colonising Powers. Luckily the progress of the Empire was not dependent upon governmental support; at the very moment when English prestige in Europe had sunk to its lowest point, in the field of colonisation individual enterprise became more active than ever 1 Art. 7 of Treaty of Susa: Davenport, p. 364. 2 Davenport, pp. 319-23.

Vide infra, p. 181.

before. New motives were at work that owed little to high policy but sprang wholly from domestic conditions. They brought about the settlement of colonies of a new sort with results of profound importance for England and the world.

Upon the details of the founding of New England it is not necessary to dwell at length. For our purpose it is of more importance to emphasise certain aspects of it that were of lasting consequence. Though the great majority of Englishmen conformed to the settlement of the Church as established by the Act of Uniformity, there were small groups scattered here and there who desired to go much further in the direction of reform and would not acquiesce in even the mildest episcopal control. We showed earlier how such a group of Brownists proposed to sail to America with Captain Charles Leigh in 1596 and how the design ended in failure. Many other little parties of separatists left England under Elizabeth and James I to escape the reach of authority, and they mostly fled to the Netherlands. In 1607 such an independent congregation from Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, without licence from the authorities,1 were led oversea by their pastor, the Rev. John Robinson, and William Brewster. They established themselves first in Amsterdam and later in Leyden, and there for ten years they strove to keep themselves apart, much as they had done in England. But they found the conditions round them irksome, their religious feelings were troubled by their neighbours, they had a hard struggle to make a living, and feared that their children were forgetting that they were English.2 In 1617 the leaders determined to carry their congregation to a fresh home in the New World far from corrupting influences. But they were without sufficient means to provide for transportation and to stock a colony. They first contemplated a settlement in Guiana where they might live by planting, but this plan was soon abandoned, and they approached the Virginia Company for a licence to settle within the limits of its grant but far removed from the colony round James Town. An invitation from the Dutch to settle in their newly projected colony at the mouth of the Hudson River was rejected as inconsistent with their desire to remain English, and through Sir Edwin Sandys they obtained the Virginia licence they desired. Application was made to the Crown for governmental sanction of their project, and this was granted without trouble, but they failed to obtain the patent they sought to protect their separatist form of Church organisation. No Government in that age could be expected to establish such a precedent of religious toleration, but the petitioners were informally promised that they would not be interfered with so long as they bore themselves peaceably. So far from persecuting them, the authorities

1 For impartial surveys of the story see Adams, J. T., Founding of New England, pp. 90– 103; Channing, E., Hist. of U.S. 1, 293-315.

2 Bradford, W., Hist. of Plymouth Plantation, pp. 22-4.