Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/190

 *ginning to emerge from obscurity and insignificance, formed settlements in Acadia, the present Nova Scotia, and extended their dominion into the territory now known as the New England States. But in 1620 both they and the Dutch, who had founded the town of New Amsterdam (now the city of New York and capital of the province), were dislodged by English adventurers.

Passing on to events in England connected with merchant shipping, by far the most conspicuous about this period were the attempts of that unwise and unfortunate monarch Charles I. to burden the mercantile community with the expense of a fleet which his, perhaps natural, anxiety to support the Palatinate had rendered necessary. Demanding from the city of London and from the other seaports the requisite number of ships or their equivalent in money, the people of the maritime towns not actually dependent upon trade passively resisted, thereby making the burden yet more intolerable to those who remained on the coast. The proclamation which consequently followed, commanding the parties who had withdrawn to return to their dwellings, brought about the famous struggle of Hampden, who resisted the writs as illegal. The first writ recited that certain "Thieves, pirates, and robbers of the sea, as well Turks, enemies of the Christian name, as others,*