Winfred Trexler Root

“ Embraced in the movement were the efforts of the unprivileged merchants, persisting through many years, to break down the political and commercial dominance of the monopolistic London companies in favor of a more open trade and free ports. Bristol and the outports, unconcerned by what authority a council was established, royal or parliamentary, worked to secure one so modelled that it should be representative and non-partizan as well as expert. ”

“ In Stuart days the increased membership, averaging thirty-five under the earlier and forty-five under the later kings, made the council an unwieldy body at a time when it was subjected to the pressure of an expanding business. To meet this situation, to insure care and despatch in the transaction of affairs, the committee system was adopted. A division of labor was even more necessary in the Restoration era to enable the council to keep pace and cope with the manifold problems and interests brought into play by the rapid and striking expansion of empire. ”

“ Merchants who were interested in the empire might well have questioned whether a council committee would be sufficiently free and skilled to give to commerce and colonies that measure of attentive and intelligent treatment which their growing importance and complexity deserved. ”

“ In fact the council committee, known as the Lords of Trade and Plantations, assumed its duties in 1675 with a high sense of loyalty and a display of energy that ended a period of drift and opened a decade of unified and forceful conduct in imperial control. The conditions were favorable to imperial centralization. The dominance of Charles II. over the forces of opposition created a brief period of internal stability, and the close of the Dutch wars in 1675 brought years of peace abroad. ”

“ The Earl of Mulgrave in 1694 urged the king to revert to a "select number for all Committees, instead of all the Councell, as it now is; because everybody's business is nobody's, whereas the other way such will be charged with it who are capable of attending and understanding it". He proposed specifically a plantation committee of select and knowing personnel, in which regular attendance should be required and regular meetings should be held "two mornings in a week on fixed dayes, and not according to the leasure or humour of a President of the Councell". ”

“ This paper proposes to deal with the machinery of imperial control as evidenced in organization, personnel, methods, and spirit.
When the home government first assumed the cares and functions of governing a wide empire there was no thought of separating matters chiefly external in character from those wholly or mainly domestic. Traditionally the outlying portions of the realm, "the Scotch borders, the Welsh marches, the Channel Islands, and Ireland were in a special sense" the care of the Privy Council. By custom, therefore, colonies across the sea became subject to its particular direction. ”

“ Unity was not attained until the king recognized the utility of party support, but in the meantime administration was crippled by faction and by frequent changes in personnel. The fluctuating membership in the council was reflected in the changing personnel of the plantation committee of the whole council. This fault of instability became a striking and serious condition after 1689, when defense loudly demanded cohesion and constancy of power. ”

“ Indeed the close connection of the merchants with the statesmen and officials in the dual tasks of building and governing the empire is a striking factor in British expansion. [42] The directors of the privileged trading companies were frequently consulted and their interests supported by the government. They were employed in the offices of national administration, where they exerted a directive influence in imperial control, and they ruled the city and port of London to their own advantage. ”

“ The House of Commons, smarting under the severe injuries to the economic and maritime interests of the nation and incited to action by the influence of the merchants, closely examined into the whole matter, and, as Bishop Burnet records, "when all the errors, with relation to the protection of our trade, were set out and much aggravated, a motion was made to create by act of parliament, a council of trade". ”

“ What measure of defense they did receive was due in no small degree to the ceaseless activity of the merchants and colonial agents in pleading and urging their claims and dangers. [80]
No less serious was the break in the line of competent personnel and the loss of cohesion in the plantation committee. There appeared around the plantation board after 1685 few of the older group that had been actively engaged in the work of expansion and had given momentum to imperial political centralization. Death had taken Anglesey, Bridgewater, Carteret, Downing, Francis North, Radnor, and Rupert. ”

“ Colonial protection was poor enough, but commerce on the high seas suffered disastrously. [84] Large and constant were the losses of ships and cargoes by capture and destruction because of the inadequacy of the navy and the incompetency of administration. [85] Oversea trade fell off to the advantage of foreign merchants because of the want of convoy protection. [86] Merchants risked their vessels and goods without protection rather than to wait upon deficient and delayed convoys, only to increase the chances of capture. ”

“ The board included also such able and active officials as Sir George Downing and Sir Richard Temple, members of former select boards of trade. Sir John Werden, for a long time agent for the Duke of York's colony on the Hudson, and Sir Robert Southwell, the first industrious secretary to the plantation committee. [45] Clayton was a factor in the colony of Bermuda. [46] Downing, Werden, and Southwell were experienced diplomats. Temple and North were the authors of notable economic tracts. [47] Above all rises the strong personality of Downing, abiding through nearly a quarter-century. ”

“ During the confusion of the Puritan experiments in government the administration of colonies and commerce was conducted in a cumbersome. indifferent, and amateur manner. [8] The result was that the colonies, strongly predisposed to self-direction, promptly seized the opportunity to take their own way without hindrance. But the English merchants, whose commercial interests were especially imperilled by the drift, were provoked to deplore the lack of political unity and strength in the empire. ”

“ But if political mutations worked to the benefit of colonial self-direction, imperial control suffered thereby. Governors in the royal colonies of the West Indies, anxiously awaiting instructions, wrote home in complaint of the sacrifice of the urgent needs of remote provinces to domestic politics. [18] And during the next six years, when the Test Act and the Exclusion Bill raised political and social issues that bred factious discontent, the sessions ranged from thirty-five to forty-five a year, marking a significant decline from the good record of the first few years. ”

“ Blathwayt applied himself with vigor and persistence to his duties as under-secretary and as auditorgeneral. He is to be counted in that group of minor officials whose length of service, knowledge, and strict attention to business brought consistency of practice and efficiency into a system which subjected the holders of high office to the distractions and changing fortunes of politics. ”

“ He was a young man of about twenty-six when he began, in the humble position of assistant, the career in the colonial service which, successfully weathering all political vicissitudes, lasted through a generation. ”

“ Coventry no doubt acquired an interest in the colonial world as brother-in-law of Shaftesbury, the enthusiastic imperialist, and was well equipped to handle foreign intercourse by his services on important diplomatic missions abroad. [31] Williamson's career in the central imperial service lasted through a score of years. He began as clerk to Sir Edward Nicholas, secretary 1660–1662, and was continued in the employ of Sir Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, secretary 1662–1674. Arlington was deeply interested in expansion ”

“ Own Time, p. 621. ↑ The Bristol merchants declared that if the proposed council of trade "be made up of Courtiers unexperienced in Trade, twill become only a matter of charge to the Nation; if of Londoners, They will endeavour to overrule things so as they shall best conduce to bringing all Trade to that great City, without respect to other Ports"; it was urged that the body be composed of "Men well verst" in trade, chosen from "all the parts thereof, as well the countys, as some particular Trading Citys and ports". ”

“ Secretary. You can best garble it and lay ... the needful before them", so wrote Governor Lynch of Jamaica to Blathwayt in 1683. Cal. St. P., Col., 1681–1685, pp. 395–396. ↑ Lynch, and Vaughan his successor, declared to the home government that it was not qualified to pass proper judgment on the concerns of remote and strange provinces. ”

“ Ibid., 1677–1680, § 1388; 1681–1685, § 126. ↑ Ibid., 1677–1680, §§ 894, 974, 975. ↑ In 1682 the lieutenant-governor of Virginia wrote home complaining that "Nothing has been concluded here for near two years, which one could think was time enough to give notice to this poor Colony"; and the governor of Jamaica in 1683 declared that he had sent home frequent reports but had received no reply. Ibid., 1681–1685, §§ 550, 1065. ↑ Andrews, Brit. Comm., pp. 61–63, 79–80. ↑ L. T. J., I. 8–9; A. P. C., Col., vol. I., § 1021. ↑ Dictionary of National Biography, II. 1 (Annesley) ; IX. 208 (Carteret) ”