The influx of immigrants into the various islands, especially Barbados and St Christopher, between 1630 and 1640 was enormous in comparison with their limited area, and every scrap of cultivable ground was occupied. Despite the excessive mortality that resulted from ignorance of the means of living under tropical conditions, by 1639 there were probably more than 1000 proprietors in Barbados and a total population that is said to have amounted to 30,000 persons.1 In St Christopher and Nevis there may have been as many as 20,000 by 1640 and all the evidence proves that the islands were very densely populated and that the struggle for existence was severe. There was therefore constant unrest among landless men and readiness to re-emigrate in search of better conditions. The first Lord Proprietor of the Caribbees died in 1636 after conveying almost the whole of his property to trustees to protect it from his many creditors. During the period of his rule there had been practically no interference by the Privy Council with the affairs of the islands, and Carlisle, or rather the syndicates who sheltered themselves behind him, was left unhindered to make the utmost profit out of the planters. From 1635 to 1642, however, there were incessant quarrels between rival claimants to the proprietorship, and the colonists took advantage of them to secure what freedom they could. In 1639 the Earl of Warwick tried to find profit in these dissensions. He had bought up the Earl of Pembroke's derelict rights and with the aid of men from Bermuda and Providence was attempting to establish settlements in Tobago and Trinidad; he endeavoured to get possession of Barbados through the governor, Captain Hawley, and to persuade many of the planters there to move to his new plantations. Hawley was dismissed from the governorship of Barbados by the trustees of the late lord proprietor, but acting, as he claimed, under Warwick's orders he seized the government again and refused to allow the new governor to enter. In order to secure the support of the settlers he summoned a representative Assembly for the first time, "chose burgesses and settled a parliament or in a parliamentary manner as he termed it".2 Thus at a time when no Parliament had sat in England for ten years, Warwick, the leader of the party that was striving for its revival, furthered popular election among the colonists after the fashion of the continental colonies in order to secure their support. During his governorship Hawley had been tyrannical and extortionate, and the burgesses of the Assembly found as great causes of complaint against him as against the holders of the proprietorship. But the calling of a representative body practically marks the end of proprietary authority in Barbados, and when Philip Bell, a client of 1 See Harlow, V. T., Hist. of Barbados, 1625-85, Appendix B, for discussion of these figures. 2 C.O. 1/10, no. 72, Huncks to Carlisle, 11 July 1639. Cited by Williamson, op. cit. p. 144. CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION OF THE COLONIES 175 Warwick's, came to the island as governor from Providence after its capture by the Spaniards in 1641, affairs were run in much the same way as in Virginia, viz. in accordance with the views of the richer planters, whose first considerations were always for their material prosperity and who desired autonomy because they found it cheaper. As already remarked, the Home Government troubled very little with the affairs of the proprietary colonies, but the great outflow of emigrants from England after 1630 to New England and the West Indies became a matter of grave concern to the Lords of the Council both on economic and political grounds and led to the first serious attempts to provide an organisation for a general imperial control over the colonies. The economic side of the question being considered in a later chapter, our attention can be confined to political matters. In the incessant constitutional controversy that filled the reigns of the first two Stuarts colonial affairs were at first made a battleground of the English political struggle. The Parliamentarians under the lead of Sir Edwin Sandys attempted to bring Virginian affairs before the House of Commons on the implied ground that the grievances of the colonists differed in nothing from those of subjects within the realm, and like them must properly be presented to the King in Parliament. But the Crown refused to accept this view and both in 1621 and 1624 definitely denied the competence of Parliament to consider colonial grievances. When Virginia became a royal province, the colonists preferred to consider their grievances in their own Assembly and present them by direct petition to the Crown rather than involve them in the welter of English disputes. There was no conscious adoption of a policy, but distance had already produced its inevitable effect in a separation of interests. The policy of the rulers of Massachusetts was, on the other hand, from the beginning, a conscious one of separation. After the violent dissolution of Parliament in 1629 it seemed as though the old constitutional rights of Englishmen had gone like those of France and Spain, and many of those who passed across the Atlantic were minded to save what they could of their ancient liberties from the peril of royal tyranny. The first ten critical years of the founding of the new colonies coincided with such an intermission of Parliament as England had never known before, and only beyond the ocean could men meet in constitutional assembly to debate their affairs. The effect was one of profound importance. The struggle for control that arose seemed to be one between free commonwealths wherein the ancient liberties had been preserved and an autocratic monarch ruling with irresponsible prerogative. Englishmen of the Opposition like Oliver Cromwell saw New England as a land of freedom, and some like Sir Henry Vane fled thither with high political hopes. The course of events differed widely from what was foreshadowed in 1629, but the ten years of personal government did their work, and thenceforward the conception of America as the land of refuge against kingly tyranny was permanently rooted in the national consciousness. The practical consequence of the intermission of Parliament was that the only organ of government to consider colonial affairs was the executive, i.e. the King with his personal ministers of the Privy Council who suggested or worked out his policy. It has been the tradition of colonial historians to attribute every governmental mistake in the colonial field to the incompetence or tyranny of James I or Charles I. In reality it seems certain that colonial affairs interested either very little save when they interfered with questions of high policy, as when North's Guiana enterprise obstructed James's designs for the Spanish match or the General Courts of the Virginia Company became a forum for the parliamentary opposition. Charles I's personal intervention in directly colonial affairs was usually confined to securing some profit for one of his courtiers like Carlisle. Some of his ministers, however, paid considerable attention to such matters, and more than once we can vaguely trace efforts to work out a policy, though nothing of the sort persisted until the next period when Warwick and others infused Cromwell with some of their colonial enthusiasm. The affairs of the rapidly growing outer Empire, in fact, secured little attention from English statesmen in their preoccupation with foreign policy and the absorbing constitutional struggle. From time to time we find indications that small committees of the Privy Council were entrusted with special tasks in regard to the Plantations as they were for trade, and usually the committees for both matters had much the same personnel. But this was the customary way in which the Privy Council dealt with its executive tasks, and no committee had a continuing or separately organised existence. It was not until the menace to the policy of the Government of the nonconformity and separatism of Massachusetts became apparent that a special body was commissioned to supervise general colonial affairs. The impetus came from Sir Ferdinando Gorges who was stirred into action by the success of rival settlements in a region which he had vainly tried for years to colonise. In 1632, in conjunction with certain persons expelled by the Massachusetts magistrates, Gorges petitioned the Government for redress against the colonists, whom he and his protegés accused of having separated themselves from the lawful authority of Church and State and of intending to rebel against the King. The indictment was far too serious to be dismissed without careful enquiry by the Privy Council, and a committee was instructed to hear the evidence of the petitioners and to examine witnesses who could speak for the colonists. After a careful enquiry Gorges's petition was dismissed, but when in the following year Laud with his passion for legality and determination to enforce ecclesiastical discipline through THE COMMISSION FOR PLANTATIONS 177 out the realm became Archbishop of Canterbury, the matter grew more serious. His repressive measures at once accelerated the flow of Puritan emigration and he began to see in New England a dangerous centre of disaffection whither the malcontents in Church and State were fleeing to plot treason and heresy. A fresh enquiry into the provisions of the Massachusetts charter was begun, certain ships laden with emigrants were arrested for a time, and in April 1634 a permanent board of "Lords Commissioners for Plantations in General" was erected by patent,1 with wider executive, legislative and judicial powers than had been entrusted to any body since the time of Henry VIII. Actually the membership was confined to Lords of the Privy Council of which the commission was nothing but a standing committee entrusted with the powers of the Council in a particular field.2 A body of sub-commissioners composed of men of lesser rank but of special experience was appointed later by the commission to prepare matters for its decision or that of the Privy Council.3 The opponents of the Government saw in the commission a dangerous instrument of the prerogative and a new threat to their ancient liberties, and many men of high position and influence like Warwick began seriously to make plans to abandon England for good. The revolutionary temper was clearly rising, though eight years more were to elapse before the outburst. But Massachusetts, which saw in the commission an instrument directed against itself, had no reluctance to proceed upon a course that was one of rebellion in all but name. To the demands of the commission to produce the Company's charter for examination the governor and Assembly returned only evasive answers, and it became evident that they did not intend to obey. A suit of quo warranto was therefore begun in the King's Bench. But the whole machinery of the Company having been removed to New England where there was no means of enforcing judgment, judicial proceedings were futile. Only executive action could be of effect and the rapidly increasing domestic troubles made any such effort impossible. Meanwhile other steps were being taken by the Archbishop and the Privy Council which indicated the policy they intended to adopt if they could find the means. The Council for New England had been moribund for some years, and in 1634 it was resolved on the suggestion of Gorges and Captain John Mason to surrender its charter and to divide the territories allotted to it between the surviving members in the hope that some of them would enforce their shadowy rights at their own expense. The terms of the surrender pointed to the proceedings of the Massachusetts colonists as the cause of the failure of the Council's schemes and practically accused them of rebellion. "They made themselves a free 1 Rymer, Foedera, xx, 8-10. 2 Beer, Origins, pp. 313-14. * See Andrews, C. M., British Committees, etc., of Trade and Plantations, 1622–75, pp. 18–20. CHBEI 12 People... and framed unto themselves new conceits of Religion and forms of ecclesiastical and temporal Orders and Government, punishing divers that would not approve thereof...by banishing and the like." The King announced his intention of appointing Sir Ferdinando Gorges as Governor-General of New England and giving him full proprietary rights over one of its provinces for his support, while John Mason was appointed Vice-Admiral of New England with full martial authority in those seas and also beyond into the South Sea "where lie California and Nova Albion", an interesting reminder that Drake's annexations had not been forgotten.2 Mason died, however, before he could take up his commission and no successor was appointed. Gorges began to organise an armed expedition to establish his government, and if he could have secured proper support from the Crown, such as would have been forthcoming in normal times, there is little doubt that the American revolutionary war would have been anticipated by a hundred and forty years. That anyone of influence in Massachusetts intended to claim complete political independence from England is unlikely, for that would have meant laying the colony open to attack by other European Powers. The implications of the course of policy they were pursuing had not been fully realised, and it was possible for their apologists to deny sincerely that "under the colour of planting a Colony they intended to raise and erect a seminary of faction and separation"3, while others were writing thence that "they aimed at sovereignty and it was accounted perjury and treason in their general court to speak of appeals to the king". It was neither the first nor the last time that revolutionaries in intent have tried to make the best of both worlds. However, the colony was determined to resist any attempt to suppress its charter by force of arms, and the years 1635 and 1636 were filled with preparations for defence. Forts and blockhouses were erected and the train bands armed and drilled, but the looked-for expedition never arrived, for Gorges could get no help, and his own resources were too depleted for him to do anything effective. The English Government had its hands full with the beginning of the troubles with the Scots and could spare no help to suppress colonial rebels beyond the Atlantic. Distance from the centre of the Empire was clearly the colonists' best defence, and only a stronger and more highly organised power than the distracted Government of Charles I could have done anything to curb the rapidly hardening separatist spirit in America. With the outbreak of the Scottish war the power of the English Government to pay any attention to colonial affairs practically came to an end and England became wholly absorbed in the domestic 1 Recs. of Council for New England in Proceedings of Amer. Antiq. Soc. (1867), p. 124. 2 Dean and Tuttle, Life of John Mason, p. 347. 3 The Planters' Plea (Force's Tracts), pp. 14, 44. 4 Hutchinson, T., Hist. of Mass. 1, 87. |