calves' skins, for the making of smalt, and for the melting of iron ore, were also specially excepted from the operation of the act. We will now add a few notices respecting the state of some particular branches of trade in this reign. One of the fields of enterprise that attracted most attention was that of the northern fisheries. Besides whales, the frequenters of the Greenland coasts now began to kill morses, or sea-horses, whose teeth were then esteemed more valuable than ivory. The fishery was at first prosecuted by individual adventurers, but at length the Russia Company having entered into the business, obtained, in 1613, a charter from James, excluding all other persons from sailing to Spitzbergen; acting upon which, they that year fitted out seven armed ships, with which they drove away from those seas four English fishing-vessels, and fifteen sail of Dutch, French, and Biscayans, and forced some other French ships, which they permitted to remain, to pay them tribute for their forbearance. The next year the company sent out thirteen ships; but the Dutch had now taken care to be provided for them, and, appearing with eighteen vessels, four of which were men of-war, set them at defiance, and remained and fished at their ease, as usual. In 1615 a new claim to the dominion of Spitzbergen and the surrounding waters was preferred by the Danes, who made their appearance with three ships of war, being the first Danish vessels that had ever been seen in that quarter, and demanded tribute or toll both from the Dutch and the English, who were, however, too strong for them to succeed in enforcing their claim. We have already mentioned the junction of the Russia and East India Companies for the prosecution of the Greenland fishery. It is said to be in 1617 that the earliest mention is found of fins or whalebone being brought home along with the blubber. The dispute between the English and Dutch, about the right of fishing, still continued to be waged with great animosity and occasional violence; meanwhile," the manner of managing the whalefishing of both nations," says Anderson, in a summary of the details given by the voyagers of the time, was then quite different from what it is in our days. The whales, in those early times, having never been disturbed, resorted to the bays near the shore, so that their blubber was easily landed at Spitzbergen, where they erected cookeries (that is, coppers, &c.) for boiling their oil; which cookeries they left standing from year to year, and only brought home the purified oil and the whalebone. The English, having been first in that fishery, kept possession of the best bays. The Hollanders, coming late, were obliged to find bays farther north yet the Danes, who came later into this trade than the Dutch, got in between the English and Dutch. The Hamburghers came after the Danes; and after them came the French, and also the Biscayners, who, though they were older whalefishers than any in Europe, except the Norwegians, had not, however, practised this method but by the example of the English and the rest, and who were forced to set up their cookeries still farther off. But, since those times, the whales are less frequent in the bays, and are most commonly among the openings of the ice at a greater distance from land, which obliges the ships to follow them thither. So that the blubber is now cut from the whales which are taken in small pieces at the ships' sides, and then casks filled therewith, and thus brought home to be boiled and purified, and the whale-fins also to be cleaned. This latter method, however, of fishing, being often found dangerous and hazardous to shipping, it discouraged our English adventurers, who then traded in a company, so that they soon after relinquished that fishery; and so it remained till the reign of King Charles II.""* We have a proof, notwithstanding the complaints of the decay of the national trade and industry, which, as we have seen, were not wanting now any more than in every other period of our history, that the country still continued, on the whole, to advance in wealth and prosperity, though at a slacker pace than for some time before, in the fact that both the mercantile and the royal navies were considerably increased in the course of the present reign. It is said that, in the fleet fitted out in 1588 against the Spanish armada, Elizabeth had forty ships of her own;t but, according to other accounts, what properly formed the royal navy consisted at her death of only thirteen ships, while at the death of James it consisted of twenty-four. While the largest of Elizabeth's ships, also, was only of the burden of 1000 tons, and carried forty cannon, her successor, in 1609, built a man-of-war, called the Prince, of the burden of 1400 tons, and carrying sixty-four guns. At James's accession, it is stated by Sir William Monson, that there were not above four hundred ships in England of four hundred tons burden.§ An anonymous, but apparently wellinformed writer, the author of a tract entitled 'The Trade's Increase,' published in 1615, has given us an account of the English shipping at that date, which, although the object of the writer is not to draw a flattering picture, seems to indicate that its quantity was then very considerably greater than it would appear to have been twelve years before, either from Monson's statement, or from that of Raleigh respecting the general trade of the kingdom, to which we have adverted in a preceding page. According to the author of 'The Trade's Increase,' there were, when he wrote, twenty English ships, chiefly laden with herrings, employed in the trade to Naples, Genoa, Leghorn, Marseilles, Malaga, and the other ports of the Mediterranean; together with thirty from Ireland, laden with pipe-staves,-an article that has now long ceased to be found among the exports from that country. To Portugal and Andalusia twenty Histor. and Chron. Deduct, of Orig. of Com. ii. 272. + See vol. ii. p. 793. § Naval Tracts, 1623. charges, was 2,320,436/. 12s. 10d.; while the total of customs dues, and 100,000/. for fine run-goods, &c., was 2,619,3157.* This state of matters, according to the universally prevalent notion of the time, indicated a balance lost to the country that year by its foreign commerce of 298,8781. 7s. 2d. But, in truth, a comparison of the two accounts, supposing them to be tolerably correct, only proves that the trade of the country, on the whole, had rather increased than diminished in the course of the nine years which they embrace. It appears that in 1613 the exports and imports, taken together, amounted in value to 4,628,5861.; and in 1622 to 4,939,751. The highest of these sums may be about the twentieth part of the united value of our present exports and imports. ships were sent for wines, sugar, fruits, and West 15 per cent., together with freight and petty India drugs; to Bourdeaux, sixty ships and barks for wines; to Hamburgh and Middleburgh thirty-value of the imports, including 91,0597. 11s. 7d. five vessels, all belonging to the Company of Merchant-Adventurers; to Dantzic, Koningsberg, &c., about thirty,-namely, six from London, six from Ipswich, and the rest from Hull, Lynn, and Newcastle; to Norway, five. The Greenland whale-fishery employed fourteen ships; the Iceland fishery, one hundred and twenty ships and barks. Only one hundred and twenty small ships were engaged, according to this writer, in the Newfoundland fishery; but another authority states that this very year there were at Newfoundland two hundred and fifty English ships, the burden of which, in all, amounted to 15,000 tons.* The Newcastle coal-trade employed alone four hundred vessels; namely, two hundred for the supply of London, and as many more for the rest of England. "And besides our own ships," says our author, “hither, even to the mine's mouth, come all our neighbouring nations with their ships continually, employ-higher estimation than that of any other country, ing their own shipping and mariners. The French sail hither in whole fleets of fifty sail together; serving all their ports of Picardy, Normandy, Bretagne, &c., even as far as Rochelle and Bourdeaux. And the ships of Bremen, Embden, Holland, and Zealand supply those of Flanders, &c., whose shipping is not great, with our coals." Besides all these, there were the ships belonging to the East India Company, which, if they were not as yet very numerous, were some of them the largest merchantmen of the kingdom. Sir Dudley Digges, in a treatise entitled "The Defence of Trade,' published this same year, in reply to the author of The Trade's Increase,' who had attacked the company, gives a list of all the ships they had employed from their first establishment, which he makes to have been twenty-four in number; of which one was of 1293 tons burden, one of 1100, one of 1060, one of 900, one of 800, and the rest of from 600 to 150. According to a return made to an order of the privy council, in 1614, the entire value of the exports from England to all parts of the world, for the preceding year, was 2,090,640l. 11s. Ed.; and that of the imports, 2,141,283l. 17s. 10d. In order, however, to make it appear that the balance of trade was at this time favourable, the account adds to the value of the exports 86,794/. 16s. 2d. for custom on the goods; 10,000l. for the import paid outwards on woollen goods, tin, lead, and pewter; and 300,000l. for the merchants' gains, freight, and other petty charges: in this way making out an apparent balance of the exports over the imports, or, as it is phrased, "a balance gained this year to the nation" of 346,283/. 17s. 10d. In 1622, according to another account which has been preserved, the total amount of exportations, including therein the custom at 5 per cent. on such goods as paid poundage, the imports on bays, tin, lead, and pewter, and the merchants' profit of • Gerard Malynes, in his Lex Mercatoria, 1622; p. 247. The great staple of the kingdom still continued to be the trade in wool and in woollen cloths. But although the English wool was finer, and held in the imperfect manner in which the processes of dressing and dyeing the cloth were performed had long been matter of regret with all who took an interest in the prosperity of our commerce and manufactures. We have already noticed Raleigh's representations upon that subject. At length an effort was made to remedy the evil, which, if strong measures were always the most successful in such cases, could hardly have failed to accomplish its professed purpose. In 1608 James issued a proclamation absolutely prohibiting any undyed cloths to be sent beyond seas even by the Company of Merchant-Adventurers, whose charter expressly empowered them to export such cloths, of which, indeed, their trade in all probability mostly consisted. At the same time he granted to Alderman Cockayne a patent giving him the exclusive right of dyeing and dressing all woollen cloths. But the States of Holland and the German cities immediately met these proceedings by prohibiting the importation of all English dyed cloths. "Thus," says Anderson, was commerce thrown into confusion, Cockayne being disabled from selling his cloth anywhere but at home; beside that his cloths were worse done, and yet were dearer, than those finished in Holland. There was a very great clamour, therefore, raised against this new project by the weavers now employed, &c., so that the king was obliged to permit the exportation of a limited quantity of white cloths; and a few years after, in the year 1615, for quieting the people, he found himself under the necessity of annulling Cockayne's patent, and restoring that of the Merchant-Adventurers." The prohibition by the Dutch and Germans, however, of the importation of English woollens dyed in the cloth had, in the mean time, set the clothiers of England upon the new method of dyeing the wool before weaving it, and thus producing the kind of fabric called medley-cloth, formed from threads of different ⚫ Circle of Commerce, by Edward Misselden, Esq., 1623, p. 121. 66 colours. This discovery is assigned to the year | 1613. Either from the effects of the derangement occasioned by Cockayne's patent, or from other causes, the woollen-trade a few years after this date appears to have fallen into a declining state. In 1622 a commission was issued by the king to a number of noblemen and gentlemen, directing them to inquire into the causes of the decay, and the best means of effecting the revival both of this and other branches of the national commerce and industry; in which his majesty declares that both the complaints of his subjects at home, and the information he received from his ministers abroad, had assured him that the cloth of the kingdom had of late years wanted that estimation and vent in foreign parts which it formerly had; that the wools of the kingdom were fallen much from their wonted values; and that trade in general was so far out of frame that the merchants and clothiers were greatly discouraged; so that great numbers of people employed by and dependent on them wanted work, farmers wanted the usual means of paying their rents, landlords failed to receive their former incomes, and the crown also suffered by the diminution of the customs and other duties. The remainder of the paper enumerates the points to be more particularly inquired into, and suggests some remedies that might, it was thought, deserve consideration. The commissioners were directed, among other things, to endeavour to find out what had occasioned the fall in the price of wool; what would be the most effective course to take in order to prevent the exportation of wool and woollenyarn, fuller's-earth, and wood-ashes; how to remedy the present unusual scarcity of money, &c. They were also to consider if it might not be behoveful to put in execution the laws still in force which obliged merchant-strangers to lay out the proceeds of the merchandise imported by them on the native commodities of the realm. The commission goes on to complain that the merchants trading into the Eastland countries (that is, the countries lying along the south shores of the Baltic) had neglected of late to bring back corn as they had been formerly wont; and also that, instead of loading their ships, as formerly, with great quantities of undressed hemp and flax, which set great numbers of the people of this kingdom to work in dressing the same and converting it into linen-cloth, they now imported hemp and flax ready dressed, and that for the most part by strangers. Much treasure, it is afterwards affirmed, was yearly spent for linen-cloth imported from abroad at a high price. It is certain that, before the close of this reign, the Dutch had begun successfully to compete with the English weavers in the manufacture of the finer kinds of woollen-cloth, a branch in which this country had till now stood unrivalled. In 1624 a statement was given in to the parliament, by which it appeared that 25,000 pieces of fine woollens had been that year manufactured in Holland; whereupon the House of Commons resolved, first, "That the Merchant Adventurers' Company setting imposts upon our cloths is a grievance, and ought not to be continued; and that all other merchants promiscuously, as well as that company, may transport everywhere northern and western dozens, kerseys, and new draperies:" secondly, "That other merchants beside the Merchant-Adventurers' Company may freely trade with dyed and dressed cloths, and all sorts of coloured cloths, into Germany and the Low Countries." This was certainly the true way of restoring the trade, and of securing to the English weavers something better than even that exclusive possession of the manufacture of the finer fabrics, which was now irrecoverably lost. According to the author of "The Trade's Increase,' the commerce of England with Spain and Portugal had fallen to so low a state, in consequence of the long wars with those countries in Elizabeth's time, that when he published his work, in 1615, it scarcely employed five hundred seamen. An attempt was made in 1618 to revive the trade to the coast of Guinea by the chartering of a company with the exclusive privilege of carrying it on; but the only result was, that the company and the private adventurers, whose former freedom was invaded by the charter, became involved in such disputes as soon ruined both; so that the trade was for some years abandoned altogether. Considerable annoyance was experienced by our commerce in the south of Europe in the course of this reign from the pirates of the Barbary coast. About the year 1616 the fleet of these corsairs is stated to have consisted of forty sail of tall ships, that carrying the admiral being of 500 tons burden; with this force they struck terror all along the Spanish coasts, dividing it into two squadrons, with one of which they blocked up the port of Malaga, while with the other they cruised between Lisbon and Seville. In 1620 the king commissioned Sir Robert Maunsell, vice-admiral of England, to lead a fleet, composed partly of some royal ships, partly of others belonging to private individuals, against the pirates; but nothing appears to have been done in consequence. The next year, however, Maunsell actually proceeded to Algiers with an armament consisting of eight ships, four of them carrying forty cannon each, besides twelve armed merchantmen, the whole having on board a force of nearly 2700 men. But, after making an attempt to burn the ships in the Mole, which did not succeed, it was deemed prudent to return home, under the conviction that nothing further could be done. It is said that the corsairs, as soon as Maunsell had turned his back, picked up nearly forty good English ships, and infested the Spanish coasts with greater fury than ever. Two years after we find complaints made both by foreign powers and by English merchants, that sundry subjects of England were in the habit of supplying the rovers of Algiers and Tunis with ammunition, military weapons, and provisions, whereby they were enabled to disturb our own commerce as well as that of other Christian nations; on which James issued a proclamation strictly prohibiting all his subjects from offending for the future in that sort. We have sketched in the preceding Book the history of the several attempts which were made, in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, to effect settlements in the newly-discovered world of North America, principally by Sir Walter Raleigh and his relations, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Richard Grenville, and which all terminated so unsuccessfully or disastrously.* A considerable intercourse had, however, been kept up with the Indians on the coasts of Virginia and the more northern part of the American continent by the merchants both of London and Bristol, who found it very profitable to purchase their furs and skins with beads, knives, combs, and other such trinkets or articles of little value, ever since a Captain Gosnold, in the year 1602, had for the first time made the voyage to those parts by a direct course, without sailing round about to the West Indies and through the Gulf of Florida, as had always been done by preceding navigators. At length, in 1606, James chartered two companies, the first called that of the London Adventurers, or South Virginia Company, who were authorised to plant all the American coast comprehended between the 34th and 41st degrees of north latitude, or the country which afterwards formed the provinces of Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina; the second, called the Company of Plymouth Adventurers, to whom was assigned all the territory to the north of this as far as to the 45th degree of latitude, including the modern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and the New England States. The London Company that same year sent out a hundred settlers in two ships, who founded, about three miles from the mouth of the Powhatan (now called James River), the present town, still known by its original name, of James Town, in Virginia. In 1610 this company obtained a second charter, incorporating them anew by the name of the Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the First Colony of Virginia, and empowering them to grant lands to the adventurers and planters, to appoint a resident council, to place and displace officers, &c.in short, granting them all the powers of selfgovernment. In 1612 a settlement was formed on the Bermuda, or Somers Isles, by a company of persons, to whom the king granted a charter after they had purchased the islands from the Virginia Company, who claimed the dominion of them in consequence of their having been discovered, as was supposed, by two of their captains, Sir George Somers and Sir Thomas Gates, who were shipwrecked on one of them, in the course of a voyage to Virginia, in 1609, and lived there for nine months, though they had been really visited a hundred years before by Bermuda, a Spanish navigator. In 1616, Sir Walter Raleigh, released from his long confinement in the Tower, received from James his commission to undertake the • See vol. ii. pp. 791, 792. voyage to Guiana, in South America, which the gallant adventurer entered upon in the spring of the following year, and the fatal issue of which has already been related. Meanwhile, although the colony in Virginia went on increasing, and began, after many disappointments, to promise some return to the outlay of the adventurers, they had enough to do in defending their possessions against enemies and rival claimants on all sides of them. Besides the contests in which they were involved with the aboriginal inhabitants, they found themselves called upon to take measures for driving away both a number of Frenchmen who had crossed the St. Lawrence and settled in Acadia (the present Nova Scotia), and in the country now forming the New England States; and also a body of Dutch colonists who had built the town of New Amsterdam (the present New York) and the port of Orange (now Albany), in what they called the country of New Netherlands; for as yet all the eastern coast of the American continent, from the 34th to the 45th parallels of latitude, was considered as belonging either to southern or northern Virginia, and as, therefore, included in the grants to the two companies. Both the French and the Dutch were dislodged in 1618 by the English governor, Sir Samuel Argal; but the latter soon returned, and eventually made good their position. Many attempts had been made to establish English settlements in the northern parts of this territory; but it was not till the year 1620 that the first plantation was made which actually took root and became permanent, at a place called Plymouth, the country around which soon after received the name of New England from the Prince of Wales (afterwards Charles I.). About the same time, also, a grant of the Island of Barbadoes, which had been taken possession of for the King of Eng land by an English ship returning from Guinea in 1605, was obtained from James by his lordtreasurer, Lord Leigh, afterwards Earl of Marlborough, for himself and his heirs in perpetuity; and, under his sanction, a settlement was made upon it, and the town of James Town founded, in 1624, by a colony sent out at the expense of Sir William Courteen, an opulent and spirited merchant of London. Various schemes had also been entertained, and some of them in part carried into effect, though they all failed in the end, for esta blishing English colonies in the island of Newfoundland, and on the eastern coast of South America. But, even at the close of this reign, the parent colony of Virginia was still far from being in a satisfactory state, or holding out a complete assurance of stability and ultimate success. One of the last acts of James's government was to commission a number of noblemen and gentlemen to make inquiry into the condition of that colony; the courses taken for settling which, his majesty declares, had not had the good effect intended—a previous commission having reported that most of the persons sent thither had either, died by sickness ⚫ See ante, pp. 73,&c. and famine, or been massacred by the natives; and that such as still survived were in lamentable necessity and want notwithstanding all which, however, the commissioners conceived the country to be both fruitful and healthful, and that, if industry were used, it would produce many good staple commodities, though, by the neglect of the governors and managers, it had as yet produced few or none. There was one commodity now beginning to be raised in Virginia, their cultivation of which would hardly contribute to recommend the settlers James's favour. A portion of his literary fame rested upon his singular treatise entitled 'A Counterblast to Tobacco,' in which he assails the use of that herb with every form of pedantic invective. Not satisfied with this grand display of declamatory pyrotechnics, he issued, besides, in the course of his reign, a succession of royal proclamations in denunciation of tobacco, some of which are almost as tempestuous as his book. In 1604, while as yet all the tobacco imported came from the Spanish West Indies, he took it upon him, without the consent of parliament, to raise the duty upon it from twopence to six shillings and tenpence a pound, with the professed object of preventing the enormous inconveniences proceeding, as he declared, from the great quantity of the article daily brought into the realm. "Tobacco," says the commission directed upon this occasion to the lord-treasurer, "being a drug of late years found out, and brought from foreign parts in small quantities, was taken and used by the better sort, both then and now, only as physic to preserve health; but it is now at this day, through evil custom and the toleration thereof, excessively taken by a number of riotous and disorderly persons of mean and base condition, who do spend most of their time in that idle vanity, to the evil example and corrupting of others, and also do consume the wages which many of them get by their labour, not caring at what price they buy that drug; by which the health of a great number of our people is impaired, and their bodies weakened and made unfit for labour." In his Counterblast' he affirms that some gentlemen bestowed three, some four hundred pounds a-year "upon this precious stink;" an estimate in which the royal pen must surely be understood to be running on in poetic numbers. When the Virginian colonists began to cultivate tobacco, James complained that they made so much as to overstock the market; and in 1619 he issued a proclamation commanding that the production of it should not exceed the rate of a hundred weight for each individual planter. In this regulation, however, his majesty appears to have had an eye to the interests of the royal revenue as well as to the health of his people; for he at the same time confines the right of importing the commodity to such persons as he should license for that purpose; in other words, he takes the monopoly of it into his own hands, and avows it to be his object to raise its price. In a pro clamation of the next year enforcing this restriction upon the cultivation of the plant, which had not been strictly attended to, he again inveighs against the use of tobacco, as "tending to a general and new corruption of men's bodies and manners." Nevertheless he holds it, "of the two, more tolerable that the same should be imported, amongst many other vanities and superfluities which come from beyond seas, than to be permitted to be planted here within this realm, thereby to abuse and misemploy the soil of this fruitful kingdom." At length, in the last year of his reign, on the petition of the House of Commons, James consented to prohibit the importation of all tobacco except such as should be of the growth of the English plantations; but this he professed to do without any abatement of his old and well-known aversion to the useless and pernicious weed, and solely because he had been often and earnestly importuned to that effect by many of his loving subjects, planters and adventurers in Virginia and the Somers Isles, on the ground that those colonies were but yet in their infancy, and could not be brought to maturity unless he should be pleased for a time to tolerate their planting and vending of tobacco. The proclamation also strictly prohibited the introduction of any tobacco from Scotland or Ireland; but it appears, from many more proclamations that were issued in the course of the next reign, absolutely forbidding the cultivation of the herb in any of the home dominions of the crown, that it continued to be raised in large quantities for a long time after this in England itself, as well as in both those countries. The march both of colonization and of commerce appears to have been considerably accelerated during the space that elapsed from the accession of Charles I. to the breaking out of the war between the king and parliament. In the first year of his reign, Charles, on the ground that such a colony was not best managed by an incorporated company, "consisting of a multitude of persons of various dispositions, amongst whom affairs of the greatest moment are ruled by a majority of votes," ordained by a proclamation that the government of Virginia should henceforth depend immediately on himself, and be administered by a governor and resident council appointed by the crown and acting in subordination to the privy council at home. In making this change, Charles treated the charter of the Virginia Company as having been annulled by his father; and James, indeed, in his proclamation of the preceding year, already quoted, declares that, having by the advice of his privy council resolved to alter the charters of the said company as to points of government, and the treasurer and company not submitting thereto, "the said charters are now avoided by a quo warranto." Charles, however, in his proclamation does not rest the right of the crown altogether upon this revocation; he broadly advances the principle that these colonies and, by implication, all others founded |