or occupied by English subjects, were essentially a portion of the dominion of the mother-country ;considering, also," are his words, "that we hold those territories of Virginia and the Somers Isles, as also that of New England, lately planted, with the limits thereof, to be a part of our royal empire." It is said that by this time the Virginian companies had expended a capital of not less than 200,000l., from which they had as yet derived but a very inadequate return, so that many of the original adventurers, thoroughly weary of the speculation, had sold their shares for what they would bring. The failure of their expectations, however, did not check other attempts of the same kind. Almost all the West India islands not previously settled upon were taken possession of and colonized within a few years from this date. In 1627 an English and a French company divided the island of St. Christophers between them; and the next year the English added to the territory in their occupation the neighbouring small isle of Nevis, and also sent off a detachment of their body to Barbuda, as they likewise did others in subsequent years to Montserrat and Antigua. Meanwhile, in 1629, Charles confirmed a former grant to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, and to his heirs for ever, of all the Caribbee Islands, as they were called, including both those that have just been mentioned and also Barbadoes, with regard to which an arrangement had been made with the former grantee, the Earl of Marlborough. That same year he granted in perpetuity to Sir Robert Heath and his heirs all the Bahama or Lucaya Isles, together with what was then called the Province of Carolana on the Continent of North America, being the immense region now forming the States of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the southern part of Louisiana. This vast territory was afterwards conveyed by Heath to the Earl of Arundel, who had planted some parts of it before the civil wars at home interrupted his operations. The Bahama Islands are also believed to have been begun to be planted about this time. In 1632 a part of what had till now been considered as the territory of Virginia was granted by Charles to be held in free and common soccage by Lord Baltimore, his majesty at the same time giving it the name of Maryland, in honour of the queen. Lord Baltimore was a Roman Catholic; and Maryland, which began to be colonized within two years from the date of the charter, afterwards formed the main refuge of the persons of that religion who were driven by the severity of the penal laws from England, greatly to the perturbation and rage of their puritan neighbours in Virginia, who made several attempts to drive the idolaters from a soil which, besides its having been thus desecrated, they regarded as rightfully belonging to their own colony. And in 1641, after the failure of a similar attempt made some years before, an English colony was settled, at the expense of Lord Willoughby, in Surinam, on the southern continent of America, the Guiana, the dream of whose gold-mines lured on Raleigh to his fatal expedition. The course of the growth and extension of the foreign commerce of the country during this interval is marked by few incidents requiring to be specially recorded, but the general results show that the progress made must have been considerable. An account of the height to which the trade of England had arrived in 1638 is given by Lewes Roberts in his work entitled The Merchant's Map of Commerce,' published at London in that year; and a summary of what is most material in his statements, with a few additional notices from other sources, will be sufficient for our present purpose. Roberts, a native of the principality, is almost as eloquent in some passages as his countryman Fluellin; but even his flourishes have their value as expressing something of the high tone and bearing which English merchants now assumed. He enters upon his description all but overwhelmed by the magnitude to which the commerce of his country had attained, scarcely allowing himself to hope that it can long continue of the same extent, and almost afraid to advert to anything apparently so extravagant, and merely within the limits of possibility, as the notion that it should ever become greater than it was. "When I survey," he exclaims, "every kingdom and great city of the world, and every petty port and creek of the same, and find in each of these some English prying after the trade and commerce thereof, . . . I am easily brought to imagine that either this great traffic of England is at its full perfection, or that it aims higher than can hitherto by my weak sight be either seen or discerned. I must confess England breeds in its own womb the principal supporters of its present splendour, and nourisheth with its own milk the commodities that give both lustre and life to the continuance of this trade, which I pray may neither ever decay, nor yet have the least diminution. But England being naturally seated in another corner of the world, and herein bending under the weight of too ponderous a burden, cannot possibly always and for ever find a vent for all those commodities that are seen to be daily imported and brought within the compass of so narrow a circuit; unless there can be by the policy and government of the state a mean found out to make this island either the common emporium and staple of all Europe, or at leastwise of all these our neighbouring northern regions."* He then proceeds to observe that English commerce was formerly confined to the export of the staple merchandise of the country, "such as are cloths, lead, tin, some new late draperies, and other English real and royal commodities," and to the import from foreign parts of mere supplies for ourselves; but that "the late great traffic of this island hath been such that it hath not only proved a bountiful mother to the inhabitants, but also a courteous nurse to the adjoining neighbours;" so that whatever trade they had lost we had gained, ⚫ Map of Commerce, fol, Lon. 1638, Part ii. p. 257. and they now obtained a large portion of what they consumed of the produce of distant parts of the world through the medium of England. Thus England, he proceeds, had fallen into the traffic with India, Arabia, and Persia, which was formerly enjoyed by Venice, and now furnished that very city plenteously with the rich commodities of these eastern countries. London also supplied the place of Venice to the rest of Italy. To France England still brought the excellent commodities of Constantinople, Alexandria, Aleppo, and the rest of the Turkish dominions, the French having almost lost their own trade with those parts. Nay, to the Turks themselves England now conveyed the precious spices of India, after their own merchants had ceased to carry on that trade. "Will you," continues our author, "view Muscovia, survey Sweden, look upon Denmark, peruse the East Country and those other colder regions; there shall you find the English to have been; the inhabitants, from the prince to the peasant, wear English woollen livery, feed in English pewter, sauce with English Indian spices, and send to their enemies sad English leaden messengers of death. Will you behold the Netherlands, whose eyes and hearts envy England's traffic, yet they must perforce confess, that, for all their great boasts, they are indebted to London for most of their Syria commodities, besides what of other wares else they have of English growth. Will you see France, and travel it from Marselia to Calais, though they stand least in need of us, yet they cannot last long without our commodities. And for Spain, if you pry therein from the prince's palace to the poor man's cottage, he will voto a Dios (vow to God) there is no clothing comparable to the English bay, nor pheasant excelling a seasonable English red herring!" So ambitious a burst of rhetoric might have had a more imposing close; but the red herring serves not ill to introduce the more calm and prosaic statement of particulars to which Mr. Roberts now descends from these extensive general views. In a letter written to King James, in support of the complaints of the Merchant Adventurers against the patent or charter granted, as mentioned in a former page, to Alderman Cockayne, the great Bacon says, "I confess I did ever think that trading in companies is most agreeable to the English nature, which wanteth that same general view of a republic which runneth in the Dutch, and serves them instead of a company." And this appears to have been the common notion of the times; whatever trade was carried on by private individuals was as yet considered to be of very secondary importance. In this feeling our author begins his enumeration with the East India Company, who, he says, trading to Persia, India, and Arabia, export to these countries our English commodities, and bring back thence "pepper, cloves, maces, The original is a little obscure here, apparently through some typographical error; but, from what follows, the sense of the passage appears to be as we have given it. VOL. III. nutmegs, cottons, rice, calicoes of sundry sorts, bezoar stones, aloes, borax, calamus, cassia, mirabolans, myrrh, opium, rhubarb, cinnamon, sanders, spikenard, musk, civet, tamarinds, precious stones of all sorts, as diamonds, pearls, carbuncles, emeralds, jacynths, sapphires, spinals, turques, topazes, indigo, and silks, raw and wrought into sundry fabrics, benjamin, camphire, sandal-wood, and infinite other commodities." "And though in India and these parts," he adds, "their trade equalizeth not neither the Portugals nor the Dutch, yet in candid, fair, and merchant-like dealing, these Pagans, Mahometans, and gentiles hold them in esteem far before them, and [they] deservedly have here the epithet of far more current and square dealers. And although for the present this trade and company do suffer under some adverse clouds, and groan under some unkind losses by the falsehood of the Netherlanders, and sad accidents at sea, yet their adventures and acts are praiseworthy, and their fair endeavours for England's honour in point of trade meriteth due commendations and just applause." The affairs of the company, in truth, had been all this reign in a very depressed state. In May, 1628, their stock had fallen to eighty per cent., or to less than two-fifths of the price at which it had sold eleven years before. At length, in 1631, a new stock of 420,000l. was raised with great difficulty. But while they were still struggling with inadequate means and with the hostility of the Dutch and Portuguese abroad, they were suddenly involved in still more serious embarrassments by a flagrant violation of their charter on the part of the king, who, in December, 1635, granted a new charter to Sir William Courten and others to trade for five years to Goa, Malabar, China, and Japan. Under this authority Courten and his associates the next year fitted out and dispatched some ships on an adventure, in the course of which they became embroiled first with the Mogul, and then with the Chinese; the former of whom made reprisals upon the property of the original company, while the latter declared the English, with whom they were now brought into contact for the first time, to be the enemies of the empire, and as such to be for ever excluded from its ports. By these and other proceedings, it was estimated that this new company, whose charter was confirmed and extended by the king in 1637, had injured the old company to the amount of fully 100,000l. before it was dissolved in 1646, by which time it had also, according to their own account, occasioned a loss to Courten and his associates of above 150,000/. The Turkey Company is the next that Roberts notices. Of this body he says, "Not yearly, but monthly, nay, almost weekly, their ships are observed to go to and fro, exporting hence the cloths of Suffolk, Gloucester, Worcester, and Coventry, dyed and dressed, kerseys of Hampshire and York, lead, tin, and a great quantity of the abovesaid India spices, indigo, and calicoes; and in return thereof import from Turkey the raw silks of Persia, 4 A Damasco, Tripoly, &c.; galls of Mosolo and Toccat; chamlets, grograms, and mohairs of Angora; cottons and cotton-yarn of Cyprus and Smyrna, and sometimes the gems of India, and drugs of Egypt and Arabia, the muscadins of Candia, the corance (currants) and oils of Zante, Cephalonia, and Morea, with sundry others." The mention of cotton by Roberts in these accounts of the exports of the East India and Turkey companies appears to have been generally overlooked; the earliest notice either of the English cotton manufacture or of the import of the raw material being commonly stated to be that found in his subsequent work, The Treasure of Trafic,' published in 1641, where it is said, "The town of Manchester, in Lancashire, must be also herein remembered, and worthily for their encouragement commended, who buy the yarn of the Irish in great quantity, and, wearing it, return the same again into Ireland to sell. Neither doth their industry rest here; for they buy cotton-wool in London that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna, and at home work the same, and perfect it into fustians, vermillions, dimities, and other such stuffs, and then return it to London, where the same is vented and sold, and not seldom sent into foreign parts, who have means at far easier terms to provide themselves of the said first materials." This account implies that the cotton manufacture had already reached a point of considerable advancement, so that it must have been established for some years at the time when the Treasure of Trafic was written. Various old acts of parliament and other authorities, it may be observed, make mention of Manchester cottons and cottonvelvets before the seventeenth century; but it is certain that the fabrics so denominated were all really composed of sheep's wool. The manufacture of cottons, properly so called, in England cannot be traced farther back than to the period with which we are now engaged, the early part of the reign of Charles I. The Ancient Company of the Merchant Adventurers is the third in Roberts's list. They are described as furnishing the cities of Hamburgh, Rotterdam, and others in the Netherlands with English cloth of sundry shires, and some other commodities, monthly, and as bringing back thence to England tapestries, diaper, cambrics, Hollands, lawns, hops, mather (madder), steel, Rhenish wines, and many other manufactures, as blades, stuffs, soap, latten, wire, plates, &c. In 1634 the Company of Merchant Adventurers, whose exclusive privileges we have seen denounced by the House of Commons ten years before, had found means to induce Charles to issue a proclamation which. restored their monopoly by strictly prohibiting the exportation of "any white cloths, coloured cloths, cloths dressed and dyed out of the whites, Spanish cloths, baizes, kerseys, perpetuanos, stockings, or any other English woollen commodities " part either of Germany or the Netherlands, except to the marts or staple towns of the com to any pany. It was alleged by their enemies that both now and on former occasions the company were indebted for the favour shown them to the newyears' gifts with which they bribed the courtiers or officers of state. It is asserted, for instance, that, in the year 1623, the lord treasurer was presented by them with two hundred broad pieces of gold, besides a piece of plate; and that other presents were also then made to the Duke of Buckingham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Keeper, the Lord President, the Secretaries of State, &c.* The Eastland and Muscovy (or Russian) Companies are stated to "export principally cloth, as the best commodity, as also tin, lead, with some spices of India, and other southern commodities, and to bring home ashes, clapboard, copper, deals, firs, rich furs, masts, pipe-staves, rye, timber, wainscot, wheat, fustians, iron, latten, linen, mathers, quicksilver, flax, hemp, steel, caviare, cordage, hides, honey, tar, ropes, tallow, pitch, wax, rosin, and sundry others." The exports of the French Company were cloths, kerseys, and bays, of English manufacture, with galls, silks, and cottons from Turkey; their imports, buckrams, canvas, cards, glass, grain, linens, salt, claret, and white wines, woad, oils, almonds, pepper, with some silk stuffs and some other petty manufac tures. England and France, however, were at this time, as they have continued to be, with little interruption, down almost to the present day, jealous rivals, when they were not open enemies, in trade as in everything else, and the commercial intercourse between them was extremely insignificant. Although Roberts here speaks of the French Company, it does not appear that the English mer chants trading to France were really incorporated. The merchants trading to Spain, he proceeds to inform us, carried to that country bays, says, serges, perpetuanos, lead, tin, herrings, pilchards, salmon, Newland (Newfoundland) fish, calf-skins, with many other commodities; and brought back wines of Xeres, Malaga, Bastard, Candado, and Alicant, rosins (or resins), olives, oils, sugars, soaps, anise-seeds, licorice, soda barillia, pate (?), and sundry West India commodities. This account embraces also the trade with Portugal, for the present united under the same sovereignty with Spain; although in 1640, two years after the publication of Roberts's book, the great revo lution which placed the Duke of Braganza on the Portuguese throne again separated the two countries for ever, an event which, by depriving Spain of the Portuguese possessions in the East Indies, compelled her to depend upon the English and Dutch for her supplies of the produce of that part of the world, and thereby opened a new and valuable field to the trade of both these nations. "The merchants of England trading into Naples, Sicilia, Genoa, Leghorn, and Venice, &c., which I term Italy, are not," says our author, These allegations are made in a treatise entitled Free Trade, by J. Parker, published in 1618.-Anderson, ii, 358. Selected from Braun's "Civitates Orbis Terrarum," 1584, and various Prints and Paintings of the period. "observed to have any joint society or company:" national industry at this time is also indicated by but, trading separately, they export to Italy, he various improvements that were now introduced. tells us, "bays, says, serges, perpetuanos, kerseys, Hackney-coaches are said to have made their first lead, tin, cloth, and many other native commo- appearance in London in the year 1625. They dities, besides pepper, indigo, cloves, and other were then only twenty in number for the whole of Indian commodities in great abundance; and for the capital and contiguous parts, and they did not returns thence have cloths of gold and silver, ply in the streets, but were sent for by those who satins, velvets, taffetas, plushes, tabins (?), da- wanted them to the stables of certain inns, where masks, alum, oils, glass, anise-seeds, rice, Venice they stood. Ten years later, however, we find the gold and silver, great quantity of raw silks of sun-king publishing a proclamation, in which he dedry sorts, and divers other commodities." "And here likewise," he adds, repeating nearly the same formula with which he has wound up every preceding paragraph, "all other foreign nations give willingly place to the English, as the prime and principal merchants that either abide amongst them, or negotiate with them." Of some other branches of our commerce he gives merely a naked enumeration; thinking it unnecessary" to insist upon the reliques of that famous Barbary trade," or to mention "the petty adventures of the English to Guinea and Benny (or Benin);" "neither," says he in conclusion, "need I nominate the home land commerce of this kingdom to Scotland and Ireland; neither go about to particularise the large traffic of this island to their late plantations of Newfoundland, Somers Islands, Virginia, Barbadoes, and New England, and to other places which rightly challenge an interest in the present trade and traffic of this kingdom." The comparative activity and prosperity of the clares that the great numbers of hackney-coaches of late time seen and kept in London, Westminster, and their suburbs, and the general and promiscuous use of coaches there, were not only a great disturbance to his majesty, his dearest consort the queen, the nobility, and others of place and degree, in their passage through the streets; but the streets themselves were so pestered, and the pavements so broken up, that the common passages were hindered and made dangerous, and besides the prices of hay and provender made exceeding dear. "Wherefore," concludes the proclamation, "we expressly command and forbid that no hackney or hired coaches be used or suffered in London, Westminster, or the suburbs thereof, except they be to travel at least three miles out of the same. And also that no person shall go in a coach in the said streets, except the owner of the coach shall constantly keep up four able horses for our service when required." Such an edict as this, so insolent in its tone, so arbitrary and absurd in its exactions, citizen and sworn broker of London, the sole privilege of vending for fourteen years a certain weekly bill of the several rates or prices of all commodities in the principal cities of Christendom, which it seems he had printed and published for enables us to measure the distance between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century,-between English freedom as it existed before the civil wars and as it now exists. Two years later the first mention of the licensing of hackney-coaches occurs, in a commission directed to the Marquess of the three preceding years. The patent recites that Hamilton, the master of the horse, in which his majesty admits that he finds it very requisite for his nobility and gentry, as well as for foreign ambassadors, strangers, and others, that there should be a competent number of such vehicles allowed for their use; and empowers the marquess to license fifty hackney-coachmen for London and Westminster, each to keep no more than twelve horses a-piece, and so many in other cities and towns of the kingdom as in his wisdom he should think to be necessary, all other persons being prohibited to keep any hackney-coach to let or hire, either in London or elsewhere. In 1634, also, sedan-chairs had been brought into use by Sir Sanders Duncomb, to whom the king granted the sole privilege of letting them to hire for fourteen years, the patent declaring that the streets of London and Westminster and their suburbs had been of late so much encumbered with the unnecessary multitude of coaches, that many of his majesty's subjects were thereby exposed to great danger, and the necessary use of carts and carriages for provisions was much hindered; whereas Sir Sanders had represented that in many parts beyond sea people were much carried about in covered chairs, whereby few coaches were used amongst them. If the inditer of this description of the terrors of the London streets from the crowd of coaches in the year 1634 could be brought back out of his grave, it would be amusing to see how he would look when he found himself in the midst of the torrent and tumult of Regent Street or Piccadilly in the present day. Another of the patents of the same year deserves notice,-that granting to John Day, this practice of publishing a price-current for the use of the commercial world had "never yet been brought here to that perfection answerable to other parts beyond sea;" "by which neglect," adds his majesty, "within our city of London (being one of the mother cities for trade in all Christendom) our said city is much disgraced, and our merchants hindered in their commerce and correspondence." The next year produced a more important novelty,-the first establishment of a regular, though limited system of internal posts. James I. had originally established a post-office for the conveyance of letters to and from foreign parts; and the control and profits of this foreign post-office, which is described as for the accommodation of the English merchants, had been confirmed and continued to William Frizell and Thomas Witherings, by Charles, in 1632. But the origin of the home post-office dates only from 1635. Up to this time, his majesty observes in a proclamation on the subject, there had been no certain intercourse between the kingdoms of England and Scotland; wherefore he now commands his postmaster of England for foreign parts to settle a running post or two, to run night and day between Edinburgh and London, to go thither and come back again in six days; and to take with them all such letters as shall be directed to any post-town in or near that road. Bye-posts are, at the same time, ordered to be connected with several places on the main line to bring in and carry out the letters from and to Lincoln, Hull, and other towns. A similar post to Chester and Holyhead, and another to Exeter and Plymouth, are at the |