Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/189

 very justly complained that they had expended 200,000l. in the Virginian undertaking alone, and as yet had not received any returns. Nevertheless the whole of that province, as also the West India Islands not previously taken possession of and colonised, were occupied, under the authority of the Crown of England, within a few years afterwards. About that period also the Bahama Islands were appropriated, together with North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the southern part of Louisiana. This immense territory was granted to Robert Heath and his heirs, and afterwards conveyed by him to the Earl of Arundel. In like manner Maryland, previously considered a part of Virginia, became the property of Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, a grant afterwards productive of deep religious animosities, when the Puritans were driven to Virginia. In 1641 Lord Willoughby made a settlement at Surinam on the southern continent of America. The commercial results of these colonisation schemes were at first slow and unsatisfactory, but they eventually exercised a vast influence on merchant shipping, and contributed essentially to the gradual consolidation and greatness of England.

The French, whose commercial navy was now be-*

charters, one to Virginia, to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island respectively, Massachusetts' second charter, and that to New Hampshire and Maine. With these are also the "proprietary" charters to Maryland, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; and also those of New York, New Jersey, and Georgia. The careful study of these documents shows clearly on what liberal terms our ancestors commenced colonising, when we bear in mind that, according to the theory of those times, colonies were assumed to be the property of the Crown.]
 * [Footnote: Colonies in America,' Lond. 8, 1850. Among these will be found three