Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/396

362 to a vast extent. The civil war in England then prevented the attention of the government being directed to the affairs of this important company. At the end of Charles's reign the company's affairs were at the worst, and its trade appeared extinct. In 1649, however, the parliament encouraged the raising of a new stock, which was done with extreme difficulty, and only amounted to one hundred and ninety-two thousand pounds. But in 1654, the parliament living humbled the Dutch, compelled them to pay a balance of damages of eighty-five thousand pounds and three thousand six hundred pounds to the heirs of the murdered men at Araboyna. It required years, however, to revive the prosperity of the company, and it was only in 1657 that, obtaining a new charter from the protector, and raising a new stock of three hundred and seventy thousand pounds, it rose again into vigour, and traded successfully till the restoration.

During this period, too, the incorporated companies—Turkey Merchants or the Levant Company, the Company of Merchant Adventurers trading to Holland and Germany, the Muscovy Company trading to Russia and the North, where they prosecuted also the whale fishery—were in active operation, besides a great general trade with Spain, Portugal, and other countries. The Tm-key Merchants carried out to the Mediterranean our cloths, lead, tin, spices, indigo, calicoes, and other Indian produce brought home by our East India Company; and they imported thence the raw silks of Persia and Syria, galls from Aleppo, cotton and cotton yarn from Cyprus and Smyrna; drugs, oils, and camlets, grograms, and mohairs, of Angora. In 1652 we find coffee first introduced from Turkey, and a coffee-house set up in Cornhill. On the breaking out of the civil war, the Muscovy Company were deprived of their charter by the czar, because they took part with the parliament against their king and the Dutch adroitly came in for the trade.

These great monopolies of foreign trade were supposed to be necessary to stimulate and protect our commerce; but the system of domestic monopolies which were most destructive to enterprise at home, which had arrived at such a height under Elizabeth, was continued by both James and Charles to the last, notwithstanding the constant outcries against them, and their being compelled, ever and anon, by public spirit to make temporary concessions. The commerce of England was now beginning to receive a sensible increase by the colonies which she had established in America and the West Indies. One of the earliest measures of James was the founding of two chartered companies to settle on the coasts of North America. One called the London Adventurers, or South Virginia Company, was empowered to plant the coast from the 34th to the 41st degree, which now includes Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. The other, the company of Plymouth Adventurers, were authorised to plant all from the 41st degree to the 45th of north latitude, which now includes the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England. In 1612 a settlement was made in Bermuda. The state of New England was founded by the planting of New Plymouth in 1620, and about the same time the French were driven out of Nova Scotia, and the island of Barbadoes was taken possession of; and within a few years various other West India islands were secured and planted. James granted all the Caribbee Isles to his favourite, James Hay, earl of Carlisle, and the grant was confirmed by Charles, who also granted to Robert Heath and his heirs all the Bahama Isles and the vast territory of Carolina, including the present North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the south of Louisiana. In 16;12 Charles also granted the present Maryland to lord Baltimore, a catholic, which became the refuge of the persecuted catholics in England, as the New England states did of the puritans.

These immense territories were gradually peopled by the victims of persecution and the victims of crime. According as the storm of religious persecution raged against the catholics, the puritans, or the episcopalians and royalists, they got away to New England, Maryland, or Virginia. By degrees the Indians were driven back, and cotton, tobacco, and in the West Indies the sugar cane became objects of cultivation. James abominated tobacco, and published his "Counterblast" against it, laying serious restrictions upon its growth; but as the high duties imposed upon it proved very profitable to the revenue, gradually these restrictions were relaxed, and all cultivation of it at home was prohibited in favour of the colonies, and has continued so ever since. The Dutch had managed to engross the carrying trade under James and Charles to our American and West India colonies, having a strong position at New Amsterdam, now New York; but of this the parliament, after the revolution, deprived them in 1646, and extended that regulation to all our foreign trade by the famous Navigation Act 1651. In 1650 Cromwell's conquest of Jamaica completed our power in the West Indies.

The growth of our commerce was soon conspicuous by one great consequence, the growth of London. It was in vain that both James and Charles issued repeated proclamations to prohibit fresh erections of houses, and to order the nobility and gentry to live more on their estates in the country, and not in London, in habits of such extravagance, and drawing together so much loose company after them. From the union of the crowns of Scotland and England, this rapid increase of the metropolis, so alarming to these kings, was more than ever visible. When James came to the throne in 1603, London and Westminster were a mile apart, but the Strand was quickly populated by the crowds of Scots that followed the court; and though St. Giles's-in-the-Fields was then a distinct town, standing in the open country, with a very deep and dirty lane, called Diury Lane, running from it, to the Strand, before the civil wars it had become united to London and "Westminster by new erections in Clare Market. Long Acre, Bedfordbury, and the adjoining neighbourhood. Anderson, in his "History of Commerce," gives us some curious insight into this part of London at this period. "The very names of the older streets about Covent Garden," he observes, "are taken from the royal family at this time, or in the reign of Charles II., as Catherine Street, Duke Street, York Street. Of James and Charles the I.'s time, James Street, Charles Street, Henrietta Street, &c., all laid out by the great architect, Inigo Jones, as was also the fine piazza there, although that part where stood the house and gardens of the duke of Bedford is of much later