THE LORDS OF TRADE AND PLANTATIONS, 1675–1696
Much has been done by writers and students to explain the long-neglected rôle of the old colonies in the unfolding of Britain's first empire; much remains to be done before Anglo-colonial relations are fully known and appreciated. The field itself is broad, the angle of vision is new, and the great mass of available material has not yet been made to shed its full light on the subject. The history of the central organs of imperial control, a subject of essential importance, has been presented in late years in studies of a scholarly and exhaustive nature, but they have left out of account, except in an incidental way, the history of the full score of years fixed by this paper.[1] To fill this gap, if only to make the account continuous, is a desideratum. There is, however, a more striking reason. The period itself is significant because of the marked trend toward administrative dominance in all that had to do with the advancement of the interests and ideals of the empire. 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.[2] The council was a body of the personal and responsible advisers of the king, embracing the chief ministers of state, officials of the royal household, a few bishops, and some not otherwise holding office. In Tudor days, when the council was small in size and its area of competence did not include the sweep
- ↑ Andrews, British Committees, Commissions, and Councils of Trade and Plantations (Johns Hopkins Studies, XXVI.), for the period prior to 1675. Andrews, Guide to Materials for American History in the Public Record Office, I. 82–100; Dickerson, American Colonial Government; Clarke, "Board of Trade at Work", American Historical Review, XVII. 17 (1911); Root, Relations of Pennsylvania with the British Government, ch. II., for the period 1696–1783, Osgood, The American Colonies, III. 147–154, 280–282; Beer, Old Colonial System, pt. I., vol. I., ch. IV., for incidental and collateral treatment of the subject for 1660–1689.
- ↑ Cheyney, History of England, 1588–1603, I. 69–70.
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