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THE AMERICAN NATION
A HISTORY

FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES BY ASSOCIATED SCHOLARS
EDITED BY

ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ADVISED BY
VARIOUS HISTORICAL SOCIETIES

THE AMERICAN NATION
A HISTORY

LIST OF AUTHORS AND TITLES

Group I

Foundations of the Nation

Vol. I European Background of American
History, by Edward Potts Cheyney,
A.M., Prof. European Hist., Univ. of
Pa.

" 2 Bsisis of American History, by Liv-
ingston Farrand, LL.D., President
Univ. of Colo.

" 3 Spain in America, by the late Ed-
ward Gaylord Bourne, Ph.D., for-
merly Prof. Hist., Yale Univ.

" 4 England in America, by Lyon Gar-
diner Tyler, LL.D., President Will-
iam and Mary College.

" 5 Colonial Self - Government, by
Charles McLean Andrews, Ph.D.,
Prof. Am. History, Yale University.

Group II

Transformation into a Nation

Vol. 6 Provincial America, by Evarts Bou-
tell Greene, Ph.D., Prof. Hist, and
Dean of College, Univ. of 111.
" 7 France in America, by the late
Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D., for-
merly Sec. Wisconsin State Hist. Soc.

Vol. 8 Preliminaries of the Revolution,
by George Elliott Howard, Ph.D.,
Prof. Polit. Science Univ. of Neb.

" 9 The American Revolution, by-
Claude Halstead Van Tyne, Ph.D.,
Head Prof. Hist. Univ. of Michigan.

" 10 The Confederation and the Consti-
tution, by Andrew Cunningham
McLaughlin, A.M., Head Prof.
Hist., Univ. of Chicago.

Group III

Development of the Nation

Vol. II The Federalist System, by John
Sfjencer Bassett, Ph.D., Prof. Am.
Hist., Smith College.

" 12 The Jeffersonjan System, by Ed-
ward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. An-
cient and Modem Hist., Harvard
Univ.

" 13 Rise of American Nationality, by
Kendric Charles Babcock, Ph.D.,
Dean Col. Arts and Sciences, Univ.
of IlUnois.

" 14 Rise of the New West, by Frederick
Jackson Turner, Ph.D., Prof. Hist.,
Harvard University.

" 15 Jacksonian Democracy, by William
MacDonald, LL.D., Prof. Govern-
ment, Univ. of CaUfomia.

Group IV

Trial of Nationality

Vol. 16 Slavery and Abolition, by Albert
Bushnell Hart, LL.D., Prof. Gov-
ernment, Harvard Univ.

Vol. 17 Westward Extension, by the late
George Pierce Garrison, Ph.D., for-
merly Prof. Hist., Univ. of Texas.

" 18 Parties and Slavery, by Theodore
Clarke Smith, Ph.D., Prof. Am.
Hist., Williams College.

" 19 Causes of the Civil War, by Rear-
Admiral French Ensor Chadwick,
U.S.N., retired former Pres. of
Naval War College.

" 20 The Appeal to Arms, by James
Kendall Hosmer, LL.D., formerly
Librarian Minneapolis Pub. Lib.

" 21 Outcome of the Civil War, by
James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D.

Group V

National Expansion

Vol. 22 Reconstruction, Political and Eco-
nomic, by William Archibald Dun-
ning, Ph.D., Prof. Hist, and Politi-
cal Philosophy, Columbia Univ.

23 National Development, by Edwin
Erie Sparks, Ph.D., Pres. Pa. State
College.

24 National Problems, by Davis R.
Dewey, Ph.D., Professor of Eco-
nomics, Mass. Inst, of Technology.

25 America as a World Power, by John
H. Latan^, Ph.D., Prof. Am. Hist.,
John Hopkins University.

26 National Ideals Historically Traced,
byAlbertBushnellHart,LL.D.,Prof.
Government, Harvard University.

27 National Progress — 1907-1917, by
Frederic Austin Ogg, Ph.D., Prof.
Political Science, Univ. of Wisconsin .

28 Index to the Series, by David May-
dole Matteson, A.M., Harvard
College Library.

COMMITTEES ORIGINALLY APPOINTED TO
ADVISE AND CONSULT WITH THE EDITOR

Thb Massachusetts Historical Society

Charles Francis Adams, LL.D., President
Samuel A. Green, M.D., Vice-President
James Ford Rhodes, LL.D., 2d Vice-President
Edvirard Channing, Ph.D., Prof. History Harvard

University
Worthington C. Ford, Chief of Division of MSS.,

Library of Congress

The Wisconsin Historical Society

Reuben G. Thwaites, LL.D., Secretary and Super-
intendent

Frederick J. Turner, Ph.D., Prof, of American His-
tory, Wisconsin University

James D. Butler, LL.D., formerly Piof. Wisconsin
University

William W. Wight, President

Henry E. Legler, Curator

The Virginia Historical Society

William Gordon McCabe, Litt D., President
Lyon G. Tyler, LL.D., Pres. of William and Mary

College
Judge David C. Richardson
J. A. C. Chandler, Professor Richmond College
Edward Wilson James

The Texas Historical Society

Judge John Henninger Reagan, President
George P. Garrison, Ph.D., Prof, of History, Univer-
sity of Texas
Judge C. W. Raines
Judge Zachary T. Fullmore

PRINCE HENRY, THE NAVIGATOR

THE AMERICAN NATION : A HISTORY

VOLUME 1

EUROPEAN BACKGROUND
OF AMERICAN HISTORY

I 300- I 600

BY

EDWARD POTTS CHEYNEY, A.M.

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, UNIVBRSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1904, by Hakpbk & Bsothbbs.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA

M-T

TO

MY FATHER

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGB

Editor's Introduction to the Series . . xv

Editor's Introduction xxvii

Author's Preface xxi

I. The East and the West (1200-1500) ... 3

II. Oriental and Occidental Trade-Routes

(1200-1500) 22

III. Italian Contributions to Exploration

(1200-1500) 41

IV. Pioneer Work OF Portugal (1400-1527) . . 60

V. The Spanish Monarchy in the Age op

Columbus (1474-1525) 79

VI. Political Institutions of Central Europe

(1400-1650) 104

VII. The System of Chartered Commercial Com-

panies (1550-1700) 123

\riii. Typical American Colonizing Companies

(1600-1628) 147

tx. The Protestant Reformation on the Con-
tinent (1500-1625) 168

X. Religious Wars in the Netherlands and

Germany (1520-1648) 179

XI. The English Church and the Catholics

(1534-1660) 200

xiv CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGB

XII. The Engush Puritans and the Sects (iSS©-

1689) 216

XIII. The Political System of England (1500-

1689) 240

XIV. The English County and its Officers (1600-

1650) 261

XV. English Justices of the Peace (1600-1650) 274

XVI. English Parish or Township Government

(1500-1650) 29a

XVII. Critical Essay on Authorities 316

Index 333

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES

THAT a new history of the United States is
needed, extending from the discovery down to
the present time, hardly needs statement. No such
compreheisive work by a competent writer is now
in existence. Individual writers have treated only
limited chronological fields. Meantime there is a
rapid increase of published sources and of service-
able monographs based on material hitherto unused.
On the one side there is a necessity for an intelli-
gent summarizing of the present knowledge of
American history by trained specialists; on the
other hand there is need of a complete work, writ-
ten in untechnical style, which shall serve for the
instruction and the entertainment of the general
reader.

To accomplish this double task within a time
short enough to serve its purpose, there is but one
possible method, the co-operative. Such a division
of labor has been employed in several German,
French, and English enterprises ; but this is the first
attempt to carry out that system on a large scale
for the whole of the United States.

The title of the work succinctly suggests the char-

VOL. I. 2 XV

xvi EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES

acter of the series, The American Nation: A History.
From Original Materials by Associated Scholars. The
subject is the "American Nation," the people com-
bined into a mighty political organization, with a
national tradition, a national purpose, and a national
character. But the nation, as it is, is built upon its
own past and can be understood only in the light
of its origin and deyelopment. Hence this series is
a "history," and a consecutive history, in which
events shall be shown not only in their succession,
but in their relation to one another ; in which cause
shall be connected with effect and the effect be-
come a second cause. It is a history " from orig-
inal materials," because such materials, combined
with the recollections of living men, are the only
source of our knowledge of the past. No accurate
history can be written which does not spring from
the sources, and it is safer to use them at first hand
than to accept them as quoted or expounded by
other people. It is a history written by " scholars " :
the editor expects that each writer shall have had
previous experience in investigation and in state-
ment. It is a history by "associated scholars,"
because each can thus bring to bear his special
knowledge and his special aptitude.

Previous efforts to fuse together into one work
short chapters by many hands have not been alto-
gether happy: the results have usually been ency-
clopaedic, uneven, and abotmding in gaps. Hence
in this series the whole work is divided into twenty-

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES xvh

six volumes, in each of which the writer is free to
develop a period for himself. It is the editor's
function to see that the links of the chain are ad-
justed to each other, end to end, and that no con-
siderable subjects are omitted.

The point of view of The American Nation is that
the purpose of the historian is to tell what has been
done, and, quite as much, what has been purposed,
by the thinking, working, and producing people who
make pubUc opinion. Hence the work is intended
to select and characterize the personalities who have
stood forth as leaders and as seers ; not simply the
founders of commonwealths or the statesmen of the
republic, but also the great divines, the inspiring
writers, and the captains of industry. For this is
not intended to be simply a political or constitutional
history : it must include the social life of the people,
their religion, their literature, and their schools.
It must include their economic life, occupations,
labor systems, and organizations of capital. It must
include their wars and their diplomacy, the rela-
tions of commtmity with community, and of the
nation with other nations.

The true history, nevertheless, must include the
happenings which mark the progress of discovery
and colonization and national Hfe. Striking events,
dramatic episodes, like the discovery of America,
I)rake's voyage around the world, the capture of
New Amsterdam by the English, George Rogers
Clark's taking of VinQennes, an4 the bpipbai^en^

xviii EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES

of Fort Sumter, inspired the imagination of contem-
poraries, and stir the blood of their descendants.

A few words should be said as to the make-up of
the volumes. Each contains a portrait of some
man especially eminent within the field of that vol-
ume. Each volume also contains a series of col-
ored and black-and-white maps, which add details
better presented in graphic form than in print.
There being no general atlas of American history
in existence, the series of maps taken together will
show the territorial progress of the country and will
illustrate explorations and many military move-
ments. Some of the maps will be reproductions of
contemporary maps or sketches, but most of them
have been made for the series by the collaboration
of authors and editor.

Each volume has foot-notes, with the triple pur-
pose of backing up the author's statements by the
weight of his authorities, of leading the reader to
further excursions into wider fields, and of furnishing
the investigator with the means of further study.
The citations are condensed as far as is possible
while leaving them unmistakable, and the full
titles of most of the works cited will be found in the
critical essay on bibliography at the end of each
volume. This constant reference to authorities, a
salutary check on the writer and a safeguard to the
reader, is one of the features of the work; and the
bibliographical chapters carefully select from the
immense mass of literature on American history the

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES xix

titles of the most authentic and the most useful
secondary works and sources.

The principle of the whole series is that every book
shall be written by an expert for laymen ; and every
volume must therefore stand the double test of ac-
curacy and of readableness. American history loses
nothing in dramatic cHmax because it is true or be-
cause it is truly told.

As editor of the series I must at least express
my debt to the publishers, who have warmly adopted
the idea that truth and popular interest are insep-
arable ; to the authors, with whom I have discussed
so often the problems of their own volumes and of
the series in general; especially to the members of
the committees of the Massachusetts Historical So-
ciety, Virginia Historical Society, Texas Historical
Society, and Wisconsin State Historical Society,
whose generous interest and suggestions in the
meetings that I have held with them were of such
assistance in the laying out of the work; to the
pubUc, who now have the opportunity of acting as
judges of this performance and whose good - will
alone can prove that the series justifies itself.

Albert Bushnell Hart.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

THIS first volume of the series supplies a needed
link between the history of Europe and the his-
tory of early America ; for whether it came through
a Spanish, French, English, Dutch, or Swedish me-
dium, or through the later immigrants from Ger-
many, from Italy, and from the Slavic countries,
the American conception of society and of govern-
ment was originally derived from the European.
Hence the importance at the outset of knowing what
that civilization was at the time of colonization.
Professor Cheyney (chapters i. and ii.) fitly begins
with an account of mediaeval commerce, especially
between Europe and Asia, and the effect of the in-
terposition of the Turks into the Mediterranean,
and how, by their disturbance of the established
course of Asiatic trade, they turned men's minds
towards other routes to Asia by sea.

Thence he proceeds to show (chapter iii.) how
the Italians in navigation and in map-making ex-
hibited the same pre-eminence as in commerce and
the arts, and why Italy furnished so many of the
explorers of the western seas in the period of dis-
covery. It is an easy transition in chapter iv, to

xxi

xxii EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

the dramatic story of the efforts of the Portuguese
to reach India round Africa.

The next step is to describe in some detail (chap-
ters V. and vi.) the system of government and of
commerce which existed in Spain, France, and
Holland in the sixteenth century ; and the book will
surprise the reader in its account of the effective and
far-reaching administration of the Spanish king-
dom, the mother of so many later colonies. This
discussion is very closely connected with the ac-
count of Spanish institutions in the New World as de-
scribed by Bourne in his Spain in America (volume
III. of the series), and we find the same terms, such
as "audiencia," "corregidor," and "Council of the
Indies" reappearing in colonial history.

A much-neglected subject in American history is
the development of great commercial companies,
which, in the hands of the English, planted their
first permanent colonies. To this subject Professor
Cheyney devotes two illuminating chapters (vii. and
viii.), in which he prints a hst of more than sixty such
companies chartered by various nations, and then
selects as typical the English Virginia Company,
the Dutch West India Company, and the French
Company of New France, which he analyzes and
compares with one another. It is significant that
not one of these companies was Spanish, for that
coimtry retained in its own hands complete control
both of its colonies and of their commerce.

Since English colonization was almost wholly

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION xxiii

Protestant and added a new centre of Protestant in-
fluence, Professor Cheyney has, in two chapters
(ix. and x.), given some account of the Reformation
and of the religious wars of the sixteenth century.
He brings out not only the differences in doctrine but
in spirit, and shows how, by the Thirty Years' War,
Germany was excluded from the possibility of es-
tablishing American colonies, a lack which that
country has found it impossible to repair in our
day.

The mother-country for the American nation was
in greater part England ; even Scotland and Ireland
contributed their numbers and their characteristics
only in the third and fourth generations of the colo-
nies. A considerable part of this volume, therefore
(chapters xi. to xvi.), is given up to a description of
the conditions of England at the time of the de-
parture of the first colonists. Everybody knows,
and nobody knows clearly, the religious questions
in England from Elizabeth to James II. Here will
be found a distinct and vivid account of the struggle
between churchmen. Catholics, Puritans, and In-
dependents for influence on the Church of England
or for supremacy in the state. Why did the Cath-
olics in general remain loyal? Why were the Puri-
tans punished? Why were the Independents at
odds with everybody else? Why did not Presby-
terianism take root in England ? These are all ques-
tions of great moment, and their adjustment by
Professor Cheyney prepares the way for the account

xxiv EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

of the Pilgrims who founded Plymouth colony ia
Tyler's England in America (volume IV. of the
series).

An absolute essential for an understanding of
colonial history before the Revolution is a clear
idea of the political system of England, both in its
larger national form and in its local government.
Hence the importance of Professor Cheyney's chap-
ters on English government. The kings' courts,
council, and Parliament all had their effect upon
the governors' courts, councils, and assemblies of the
various colonies. From the English practice came
the superb, fundamental notion of a right of repre-
sentation and of the effectiveness of a delegated as-
sembly. In local government the likeness was in
some respects even closer; and Professor Cheyney's
accotmt of the English cotmty court, and especially
of the township or parish, will solve many difficulties
in the later colonial history. In some ways Pro-
fessor Cheyney's conclusions make more striking and
original the development of the astonishing New
England town-meetings.

As the volume begins with the rise of the explor-
ing spirit, it is fitting that Prince Henry the Navi-
gator should furnish the frontispiece. The bibli-
ography deals more than those of later volumes
with a literature which has been a tangled thicket,
and win shorten the road for many teachers and
students of these subjects.

The significance of Professor Cheyney's volume is

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION xxv

that, without describing America or narrating Amer-
ican events, it furnishes the necessary point of de-
parture for a knowledge of American history. The
first question to be asked by the reader is, why did
people look westward ? And the answer is, because
of their desire to reach the Orient. The second
question is, what was the impulse to new habits
of hfe and what the desire for settlements in dis-
tant lands ? The answer is, the effect of the Refor-
mation in arousing men's minds and in bringing
about wars which led to emigration. The third
question is, what manner of people were they who
furnished the explorers and the colonists? The
answer is found in these pages, which describe the
Spaniard, the French, the Dutch, and especially
the English, and show us the national and local
institutions which were ready to be transplanted,
and which readily took root across the sea.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THE history of America is a branch of that of
Europe. The discovery, exploration, and set-
tlement of the New World were results of European
movements, and sprang from economic and political
needs, development of enterprise, and increase of
knowledge, in the Old World. The fifteenth cen-
tury was a period of extension of geographical knowl-
edge, of which the discovery of America was a part;
the sixteenth century was a time of preparation,
during which European events were taking place
which were of the first importance to America, even
though none of the colonies which were to make up
the United States were yet in existence.

From the time of the settlement forward, the only
popiolation of America that has counted in history
has been of European origin. The institutions
that characterize the New World are fundamentally
those of Eiirope. People and institutions have been
modified by the material conditions of America ; and
the process of emigration gave a new direction to the
development of American history from the very be-
ginning; but the origin of the people, of their in-
stitutions, and of their history was none the less
a European one. The begirmings of American his-

xxvii

xxviii AUTHOR'S PREFACE

tory are therefore to be found in Etaropean condi-
tions at the time of the fottndation of the colonies.

Similar forces continued to exercise an influence
in later times. The power and policy of home gov-
ernments, successive waves of emigration, and num-
berless events in Europe had effects which were
deeply felt in America. This influence of Europe
upon America, however, became less and less as
time passed on; and the development of the Amer-
ican nation has made its history constantly more
independent. It is, therefore, only with some of the
most important and earliest of these European oc-
currences ^nd conditions that this book is occupied.
The general relation of America to Europe is a sub-
ject that would require a vastly fuller treatment,
and it is a subject which doubtless will increasingly
receive the attention of scholars as our appreciation
of the proper perspective of history becomes more
clear.

In so wide a field as that of this voltmie, it has
been necessary to use secondary materials for many
statements; their aid is acknowledged in the foot-
notes and in the bibliography. Other parts, so far
as space limits allowed, I have been able to work out
from original sources. For much valuable informa-
tion, suggestion, and advice also, I am indebted to
friends and fellow-workers, and here gladly make
acknowledgment for such assistance.

Edward Potts Cheyney.

EUROPEAN BACKGROUND
OF AMERICAN HISTORY

EUROPEAN BACKGROUND
OF AMERICAN HISTORY

CHAPTER I

THE EAST AND THE WEST
(i 200-1500)

TO set forth the conditions in Europe which
favored the work of discovering America and
of exploring, colonizing, and establishing human
institutions there, is the subject and task of this
book. Its period extends from the beginning of
those marked commercial, political, and intellectual
changes of the fifteenth century which initiated a
great series of geographical discoveries, to the close,
in the later years of the seventeenth century, of
the religious wars and persecutions which did so
much to make that century an age of emigration
from Europe. During those three hundred years
few events in European history failed to exercise
some influence upon the fortunes of America. The
relations of the Old World to the New were then
constructive and fundamental to a degree not true

VOL. I. — 3 ■?

4 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1492

of earlier or of later times. Before the fifteenth
century events were only distantly preparing the
way; after the seventeenth the centre of gravity of
American history was transferred to America itself.
The crowding events, the prominent men, the
creative thoughts, and the rapidly changing in-
stitutions which fill the history of western Europe
during these three centuries cannot all be described
in this single volume. It merely attempts to point
out the leading motives for exploration and coloni-
zation, to show what was the equipment for dis-
covery, and to describe the most significant of those
political institutions of Europe which exercised an
influence on forms of government in the colonies,
thus sketching the main outlines of the Etiropean
background of American history.

Many political, economic, intellectual, and per-
sonal factors combined to make the opening of our
modem era an age of geographical discovery. Yet
among these many causes there was one which was
so influential and persistent that it deserves to be
singled out as the predominant incentive to ex-
ploration for almost two hundred years. This
enduring motive was the desire to find new routes
from Europe to the far East.

Columbus sailed, on his great voyage in 1492,
"his object being to reach the Indies."* When

• Columbus's Journal, October 3, 21, 23, 24, etc. Cf. Bourne,
Spain in America, chap. ii.

1498] EAST AND WEST 5

he discovered the first land beyond the Atlantic,
he came to the immediate conclusion that he had
reached the coast of Asia, and identified first Cuba
and then Hayti with Japan. A week after his
first sight of land he reports, " It is certain that this
is the main-land and that I am in front of Zayton
and Guinsay." * Even on his third voyage, in
1498, he is still of the opinion that South America
is the main -land of Asia.^ It was reported all
through Europe that the Genoese captain had
"discovered the coast of the Indies," and "found
that way never before known to the East." ' The
name West Indies still remains as a testimony to the
belief of the early explorers that they had found
the Indies by sailing westward.

When John Cabot, in 1496, obtained permission
from Henry VII. to equip an expedition for westward
exploration, he hoped to reach " the island of Cipango
(Japan) and the lands from which Oriental caravans
brought their goods to Alexandria." * It is true that
he landed on the barren shore of Labrador, and that
what he descried from his vessel as he sailed south-
ward was only the wooded coast of North America ;
but it was reported, and for a while believed, that
the king of England had in this manner "ac-
quired a part of Asia without drawing his sword." ^

' Columbus's Journal, November 1. ' Columbus's will.

' Ramusio, Raccolta di Navigazioni, I., 414.
* Letter of Soncino, 1497, ™ Hart, Contemporaries, I., 70.
f Ibid. Cf. gourne, Sfain w 4mmV(t, chap, v,

6 EUROPEAN BACKGROXTND Iisoi

In 1501 Gaspar Cortereal, in the service of the king
of Portugal, pressed farther into the ice-bound arctic
waters on the same quest, and with his companions
became the first in the dreary list of victims sacri-
ficed to the long search for a northwest passage.'

When the second generation of explorers learned
that the land that had been discovered beyond the
sea was not Asia, their first feeling was not exulta-
tion that a new world had been discovered, but
chagrin that a great barrier, stretching far to the
north and the south, should thus interpose itself
between Europe and the eastern goal on which their
eyes were fixed. Every navigator who sailed along
the coast of North or South America looked eagerly
for some strait by which he might make his way
through, and thus complete the journey to the
Spice Islands, to China, Japan, India, and the other
lands of the ancient East.*

Verrazzano, in 1521, and Jacques Cartier, in 1534,
153s, and 1541, both in the service of the king of
France, and Gomez, in the Spanish service, in 1521,
were engaged in seeking this elusive passage.^ For
more than a hundred years the French traders and
explorers along the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes
were led farther and farther into the wilderness by
hopes of finding some western outlet which would
make it possible for them to reach Cathay and India.

" Harrisse, Les Cortereal.

' Bourne, Spain in America, chap. viii.

' Pigeonneau, Histoire du Commerce de la France, II., 142-148.

i6o9] EAST AND WEST 7

Englishmen, with greater persistence than Span-
iards, Portuguese, or French, pursued the search
for this northwestern route to India. To find such
a passage became a dream and a constantly renewed
effort of the navigators and merchants of the days
of Queen Elizabeth ; the search for it continued into
the next century, even after colonies had been es-
tabUshed in America itself ; and a continuance of the
quest was constantly impressed by the government
and by popular opinion upon the merchants of the
Hudson Bay Company, till the eighteenth century.

A tradition grew up that there was a passage
through the continent somewhere near the fortieth
parallel. It was in the search for this passage that
Hudson was engaged, when, in the service of the
Dutch government, in 1609, he made the famous
voyage in the Half Moon and hit on the Hudson
River; just as in his first voyage he had tried to
reach the Indies by crossing the North Pole, and in
his second by following a northeast route.* Much
of the exploration of the coast of South America
was made with the same purpose. To reach India
was the deliberate object of Magellan when, in 1519
and 1520, he skirted the coast of that continent
and made his way through the southern straits.
The same objective point was intended in the
"Molucca Voyage" of 1526-1530, under the com-
mand of Sebastian Cabot,^ as well as in other

' Asher, Henry Hudson, the Navigator, cxcii.-cxcvi.
' Beazley, John and Sebastian Cabot, 152.

8 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1498

South American voyages of Spanish explorers.
Thus the search for a new route to the East lay at
the back of many of those voyages of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, which gradually made
America familiar to Europe.

The same object was sought in explorations to the
eastward. The earliest voyages of the Portuguese
along the coast of Africa, it is true, had other mo-
tives ; but the desire to reach India grew upon the
navigators and the sovereigns of that nation, and
from the accession of John II., in 1481, every nerve
was strained to find a route to the far East. Within
one twelvemonth, in the years i486 and 1487, three
expeditions left the coast of Portugal seeking access
to the East. The first of these, under Bartholomew
Diaz, discovered the Cape of Good Hope ; the second
was an embassy of Pedro de CavaiUiam and Aifonso
de Paiva through the eastern Mediterranean to seek
Prester John, a search which carried one of them to
the west coast of India, the other to the east coast
of Africa ; the third was an exploring expedition to
the northeast, which reached, for the first time, the
islands of Nova Zembla.* The Portuguese ambi-
tion was finally crowned with success in the exploit
of Vasco da Gama in reaching the coast of India by
way of the southern point of Africa, in 1498; the
Spanish expedition under Magellan reached the
same lands by the westward route twenty years
afterwards. Even after these successes, efforts con-
• Beazley, Henry the Navigator.

\

is\o] EAST AND WEST 9

tintied to be made to reach China and the Indies by
a northeast passage around the northern coast of
Europe. Successive expeditions of Portuguese, Eng-
Hsh, French, and Dutch were sent out only to meet
invariable failure in those icy seas, until the terrible
hardships the explorers endured gradually brought
conviction of the impracticability of this, as of the
northwestern, route.

What was the origin of this eagerness to reach the
Indies? Why did Portuguese, Spaniards, English,
French, and Dutch vie with one another in centuries
of effort not only to discover new lands, but to seek
these sea-routes to the oldest of all lands ? Why were
the old lines of intercourse between the East and the
West almost deserted, and a new group of maritime
nations superseding the old Mediterranean and mid-
European trading peoples? The answer to these
questions will be found in certain changes which were
in progress in those lands east of the Mediterranean
Sea, which lie on the border-line between Europe and
Asia. Through this region trade between Europe
and the far East had flowed from immemorial an-
tiquity; but in the fifteenth century its channels
were obstructed and its stream much diminished.

Mediasval Europe was dependent for her luxuries
on Asia Minor and Syria, Arabia and Persia, India
and the Spice Islands, China and Japan. Precious
stones and fabrics, dyes and perfumes, drugs and
medicaments, woods, gums, and spices reached Eu-
rope by many devious and obscure routes, but all

lo EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

from the eastward. One of the chief luxuries of the
Middle Ages was the edible spices. The monoto-
nous diet, the coarse food, the unskilful cookery of
medieval Europe had all their deficiencies covered
by a charitable mantle of Oriental seasoning. Wines
and ale were constantly used spiced with various
condiments. In Sir Thopas' s forest grew ' ' notemuge
to putte in ale."* The brewster in the Vision of
Piers Plowman declares:

"I have good ale, gossip, Glutton wilt thou essay?
'What hast thou,' quoth he, 'any hot spices?'
I have pepper and peony and a pound of garlic,
A farthing- worth of fennel seed for fasting days."'

Froissart has the king's guests led to "the palace,
where wine and spices were set before them." ^
The dowry of a Marseilles girl, in 1224, makes men-
tion of "mace, ginger, cardamoms, and galangale." *
In the garden in the Romaunt of the Rose,

"Ther was eek wexing many a spyce,
As clow-gelofre, and licoryce,
Gingere, and greyn de paradys,
Canelle, and setewale of prys.
And many a spyce delitable.
To eten when men ryse fro table."'

When John Ball wished to draw a contrast between
the lot of the lords and the peasants, he said, " They

' Chaucer, Sir Thopas, line 52.

* Text C, passus VII., lines 355, etc.

' Froissart, Chronicles, book II., chap. Ixxx,

* Quoted in Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, II., 433, n,
•Chaucer (Skeat's ed.), lines 1367-1372.

iSoo] EAST AND WEST ii

have wines, spices, and fine bread, when we have
only rye and the refuse of the straw." * When old
Latimer was being bound to the stake he handed
nutmegs to his friends as keepsakes.*

Pepper, the most common and at the same time
the most valued of these spices, was frequently
treated as a gift of honor from one sovereign to an-
other, or as a courteous form of payment instead of
money. "Matilda de Chaucer is in the gift of the
king, and her land is worth £8, ad., and i pound of
pepper and i pound of cinnamon and i ounce
of silk," reads a chance record in an old English
survey.* The amount of these spices demanded
and consumed was astonishing. Venetian galleys,
Genoese carracks, and other vessels on the Medi-
terranean brought many a cargo of them westward,
and they were sold in fairs and markets everywhere.
" Pepper-sack" was a derisive and yet not unappre-
ciative epithet applied by German robber-barons to
the merchants whom they plundered as they passed
down the Rhine. For years the Venetians had a
contract to buy from the siultan of Egypt annually
420,000 pounds of pepper. One of the first vessels
to make its way to India brought home 210,000
pounds. A fine of 200,000 pounds of pepper was
imposed upon one petty prince of India by the
Portuguese in 1520, In romances and chronicles, in
cook-books, trades-lists, and customs-tariffs, spices

' Froissart, Chronicles, book II., chap. Ixxiii.

* Froude, History of England. ' Festa de Nevil, p. x6.

12 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

are mentioned with a frequency and consideration
unknown in modem times.

Yet the location of "the isles where the spices
grow" was very distant and obscure to the men of
the Middle Ages. John Cabot, in 1497, said that he
"was once at Mecca, whither the spices are brought
by caravans from distant countries, and having in-
quired from whence they were brought and where
they grew, the merchants answered that they did not
know, but that such merchandise was brought from
distant countries by other caravans to their home;
and they further say that they are also conveyed
from other remote regions." ^ Such lack of knowl-
edge was pardonable, considering that Marco Polo,
one of the most observant of travellers, after spend-
ing years in Asia, believed, mistakenly, that nutmegs
and cloves were produced in Java.^ It was only
after more direct intercourse was opened up with the
East that their true place of production became
familiarly known in Europe. Nutmegs and mace,
cloves and allspice were the native products of but
one little spot on the earth's surface : a group of small
islands, Banda, Amboyna, Temate, Tidore, Pulaway,
and Prelaroon, the southernmost of the Moluccas,
or Spice Islands, just under the equator, in the-
midst of the Malay Archipelago. Their light, vol-
canic soil, kept moist by the constant damp winds
and hot by the beams of an overhead sun, furnished

> Letter of Soncino, in Hart, Contemporaries, I., 70.
' Marco Polo (Yule's ed.), book III., chap, vi., 217, «.

iSoo] EAST AND WEST 13

the natural conditions in which the spice-trees grew.
Here the handsome shrubs that yield the nutmeg
and its covering of mace produced a continuous crop
of flowers and fruit all the year around. Cloves
grew in the same islands, as clusters of scarlet buds,
hanging at the ends of the branches of trees which
rise to a greater height and grow with even a greater
luxuriance than the nutmeg-bushes.'

Pepper had scarcely a wider field of production.
The forests that clothed a stretch of the Malabar
coast of India some two hundred miles in length,
and extending some miles back into the interior,
were filled with an abundant growth of pepper-
vines. One of the earliest of European travellers
in India, Odoric de Pordenone, says: "The province
where pepper grows is named Malabar, and in no
other part of the world does pepper grow except in
this country. The forest where it grows is about
eighteen days in length." ^ John MarignoUi, in
1348, also speaks of this district as "where the
world's pepper is produced." ^ Its habitat was,
however, somewhat more extensive, for in less abun-
dance and of inferior quality the pepper-vines were
raised all the way south to Cape Comorin, and even
in the islands of Ceylon and Sumatra.

Cinnamon-bark was the special product of the

' Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, chap. xix.
' Odoric de Pordenone (d' Avezac's ed.) , chap. x.
' Quoted in Marco Polo (Yule's ed.), II., 314, »., and Sil
John Mandeville, chap, xviii.

14 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

mountain-slopes in the interior of Ceylon, but this
also grew on the Indian coast to the westward,' and,
in the form of cassia of several varieties, was obtained
in Thibet, in the interior provinces of China, and in
some of the islands of the Malay Archipelago. Gin-
ger was produced in many parts of the East; in
Arabia, India, and China. Odoric attributes to a
certain part of India "the best ginger that can be
found in the world;"* and Marco Polo records its
production of good quality in many provinces of
India and China.* A great number of other kinds
of spices were produced in various parts of the Ori-
ent, and consumed there or exported to Europe.

Precious stones were of almost as much interest
to the men of the Middle Ages as were spices. For
personal ornament and for the enrichment of shrines
and religious vestments, all kinds of beautiful stones
exercised an attraction proportioned to the small
number and variety of articles of beauty and taste
in existence.

"No saphir ind, no rub^ riche of price,
There lakked than, nor emeraud so grene."*

These were as much characteristic products of the
East as were spices. Diamonds, before the discov-
ery of the American and African fields of produc-

' Marco Polo (Yule's ed.), book III., chaps, xiv., xxv.
' Odoric de Pordenone (d'Avezac's ed.), chap. x.
'Marco Polo (Yule's ed.), book II., chap. Ixxx., book III.,
chaps, xxii., xxiv., xxv., xxV:i.

• Chaucer, Court of Love, lines 78, 79.

iSoo] EAST AND WEST 15

tion, were found only in certain districts in the
central part of India, especially in the kingdom of
Mutfili or Golconda. Marco Polo tells the same
story of the method of getting them there that is
reported by Sindbad the Sailor.* Rubies, the next
most admired stone of the Middle Ages, were also
found, to some extent, in India, but more largely in
the island of Ceylon, in farther India, and, above all,
in the districts of Kerman, Khorassan, Badakshan,
and other parts of the highlands of Persia along
the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers.^ Sapphires, garnets,
topaz, amethyst, and sardonyx were found in sev-
eral of the same districts and also in the mountains
and streams of the west coast of India, from the
Gulf of Cambay all the way to Ceylon. The great-
est markets in the world for these stones were the
two Indian cities of Pulicat and Calicut ; the former
on the southeastern, the latter on the western shore
of the great peninsula.

Pearls were then, as now, produced only in a very
few places, principally in the strait between Ceylon
and the main-land of India, and in certain parts of
the Persian Gulf. In the native states in the south
of India they were, however, accumulated in enor-
mous quantities, and scarcely a list of Eastern ar-
ticles of merchandise omits mention of them. One
of the early European expeditions brought home

^ Marco Polo (Yule's ed.), book III., chap, xix.; Arabian
Nights.
' Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels, II., App., I.

i6 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

among its freight 400 pearls chosen for their size
and beauty, and forty pounds of an inferior sort.
The passion of the native rajahs of India for
gems had made the treasury of every petty prince
a storehouse where vast numbers of precious
stones had been garnered through thousands of
years of wealth and civilization. This mass served
as the booty of successive conquerors, and from
time to time portions of it came into the hands of
traders, along with stones newly obtained from
natural sources. An early chronicler, in describing
the return of the Polos to Venice from the East, tells
how, from the seams of their garments, they took
out the profits of their journeys in the East, in the
form of "rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds,
and emeralds." '

Drugs, perfumes, gums, dyes, and fragrant woods
had much the same attraction as spices and pre-
cious stones, and came from much the same lands.
The lofty and beautiful trees from which cam-
phor is obtained grew only in Sumatra, Borneo,
and certain provinces of China and Japan. Me-
dicinal rhubarb was native to the mountainous
districts of China, whence it was brought to the
cities and the coast of that country on the backs
of mules. Musk was a product of the border-lands
of China and Thibet. The sugar-cane, although it
grew widely in the East, from India and China to

' Ramusio, Raccolta, cjuot^cl in MarcQ Pop? (Yule's ?d.), \)0o\s
l„ chap, xxxyij,

iSoo] EAST AND WEST 17

Syria and Asia Minor, was successfully managed so
as to produce sugar in quantities that could be ex-
ported only in certain parts of Arabia and Persia.
Bagdad was long famous for its sugar and articles
preserved in sugar. Indigo was grown and prepared
for dyeing purposes in India.*

Brazil wood grew more or less abundantly in all
parts of the peninsula of India and as far east as
Siam and southern China. This wood, from which
was extracted a highly valued dye, made a particu-
larly strong impression on the mediasval imagination.
European travellers in India gave accounts of its
being burned there for firewood, as their strangest
tale of luxury and waste. It gave its name to a
mythical island of Bresil, in the western seas, which
was the subject of much speculation and romance.
The same name was eventually applied to the South
American country that now bears it, because it
produced a similar dye-wood in large quantities.
Sandal-wood and aloe-wood, which were valuable
for their beautiful surface and fragrance when used
in cabinet-work, and for their pleasant odor when
burned as incense, grew only in certain parts of
India.

Many articles of manufacture, attractive for
their material, their workmanship, or their design,
came from the same Eastern lands. Glass, of supe-
rior workmanship to anything known in Europe,
came from Damascus, Samarcand, and Kadesia,

• Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels, II., App., I.

i8 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

near Bagdad. Objects of fine porcelain came from
China, and finally became known by the name of
that country. A great variety of fabrics of silk
and cotton, as well as those fibres in their raw state,
came from Asia to Europe. Dozens of names of
Eastern origin still remain to describe the silk, cotton,
hair, and mixed fabrics which came to Europe from
China, India, Cashmere, and the cities of Persia,
Arabia, Syria, and Asia Minor. Brocade, damask,
taffeta, sendal, satin, camelot, buckram, muslin, and
many varieties of carpets, rugs, and hangings, which
were woven in various parts of those lands, have
always since retained the names of the places which
early became famous for their manufacture. The
metal-work of the East was scarcely less character-
istic or less highly valued in the West, though its
varieties have not left such specific names.*

Europe could feed herself with uhspiced food,
she could clothe herself with plain clothing, but for
luxuries, adornments, refinements, whether in food,
in personal ornament, or in furnishing her palaces,
her manor-houses, her churches, or her wealthy
merchants' dwellings, she must, in the fifteenth
century, still look to Asia, as she had always done.
It is true that in the later Middle Ages many
articles of beauty and ornament were produced in
the more advanced Western countries ; but not spices
nor drugs, nor precious stones, nor any great variety
of dyes. Oriental rugs are even yet superior to

' Heyd, Gesckichte des LevawtehanMs, II., App., 543-699.

isoo] EAST AND WEST

19

any like productions of the West ; and a vast number
of other articles of Eastern origin then held, and
indeed still hold, the markets.

In return for the goods which Europe brought
from Asia a few commodities could be shipped
eastward. European woollen fabrics seem to have
been almost as much valued in certain countries of
Asia as Eastern cotton and silk goods were in Italy,
France, Germany, and England. Certain Western
metals and minerals were highly valued in the East,
especially arsenic, antimony, quicksilver, tin, cop-
per, and lead.* The coral of the Mediterranean was
much admired and sought after in Persia and India,
and even in countries still farther east. Never-
theless the balance of trade was permanently in
favor of the East, and quantities of gold and silver
coin and bullion were used by European merchants
to buy the finer wares in Asiatic markets.

There was much general trading in Eastern marts.
Ntmibers of Oriental merchants, like Sindbad the
Sailor and his company, "passed by island after
island and from sea to sea and from land to land;
and in every place by which we passed we sold and
bought and exchanged merchandise." The articles
entmierated above were almost without exception
in demand throughout the whole East, and were
bought by merchants in one place and sold in an-

' Birdwood, Hand'book to the Indian Collection (Paris Universal
Exhibition, 187S) , Appendix to catalogue of the British Colonies,

pp. I-IIO.

VOL. I. — 4

20 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

other. Marco Polo, in describing the Chinese city
of Zayton, says: "And I assure you that for one
shipload of pepper that goes to Alexandria or else-
where destined for Christendom, there come a hun-
dred such, aye and more too, to this haven of
Zaj^on." ' Even as late as 1515, Giovanni d'Em-
poli, writing about China, says: "Ships carry spices
thither from these parts. Every year there go
thither from Sumatra 60,000 cantars of pepper and
15,000 or 20,000 from Cochin and Malabar — besides
ginger, mace, nutmegs, incense, aloes, velvet, Eu-
ropean gold- wire, coral, woollens, etc." ^

Nevertheless the attraction of the West was clearly
felt in the East. Extensive as were the local purchase
and sale of articles of luxury and use by merchants
throughout India, Persia, Arabia, Central Asia, and
China, yet the export of goods from those countries
to the westward was a form of trade of great im-
portance, and one which had its roots deep in an-
tiquity. A story of the early days tells how the
jealous brothers of Joseph, when they were consider-
ing what disposition to make of him, " lifted up their
eyes and looked, and, behold, a travelling company of
Ishmeelites came from Gilead, with their camels
bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to
carry it down to Egypt." ' When the prophet cries,
"Who is this that cometh from Edom, with gar-

• Marco Polo (Yule's ed.), book II., chap. Ixxxii
' Quoted in ibid., book II., 188.

• Genesis, xxxvii. 25.

iSoo] EAST AND WEST 21

ments dyed red from Bozrah?" he is using two of
the most familiar names on the lines of west Asiatic
trade. Solomon gave proof of his wisdom and made
his kingdom great by seizing the lines of the trade-
routes from Tadmor in the desert and Damascus
in the north to the upper waters of the Red Sea on
the south. The "royal road" of the Persian kings
from Sousa to Ephesus made a long detour through
northern Asia Minor, which was inexplicable to
modern archaeologists until it was perceived that it
was following the line of a trade-route much more
ancient than the Persian monarchy.*

The harbor of Berenice, named after the mother
of Ptolemy Philadelphus, was built by him as a place
of transit for goods from India which were to be'
carried from the Red Sea to the Nile.' Roman
roads followed ancient lines through Asia Minor and
Sjaia, and mediaeval routes in turn, in many places,
passed by the remains of Roman stations. Thus
the East and the West had been drawn together
by a mutual commercial attraction from the earliest
times, an attraction based on the respective natural
productions of the two continents, and favored by
the vast superiority of the East in the creation of
articles of beauty and usefuhiess.

» Ramsay, The Historical Geography of Asia Minor, chap. i.
' Hunter, Hist, of British India, I., 40.

CHAPTER II

ORIENTAL AND OCCIDENTAL TRADE-ROUTES
(i 200-1500)

IN the fifteenth century Eastern goods regularly-
reached the West by one of three general routes
through Asia, Each of these had, of course, its
ramifications and divergences; they were like three
river-systems, changing their courses from time to
time and occasionally running in divided streams,
but never ceasing to follow the general course marked
out for them by great physical features. The south-
ernmost of these three routes was distinguished
by being a sea-route in all except its very latest
stages. Chinese and Japanese junks and Malaysian
proas gathered goods from the coasts of China and
Japan and the islands of the great Malay Archipel-
ago, and bought and sold along the shores of the
China Sea till their westward voyages brought them
into the straits of Malacca and they reached the
ancient city of that name. This was one of the
great trading points of the East. Few Chinese
traders passed beyond it, though the more enter-
prising Malays made that the centre rather than the
western limit of their commerce. Many Arabian

22

iSoo] MEDIEVAL TRADE-ROUTES 23

traders also came there from India to sell their
goods and to buy the products of the islands of the
archipelago, and the goods which the Chinese trad-
ers had brought from still farther East.

The Indian and Arabian merchants who came to
Malacca as buyers were mostly from Calicut and
other ports on the Malabar coast, and to these home
ports they brought back their purchases. To these
markets of southwestern India were also brought
the products of Ceylon, of the eastern coast, and
of the shore of farther India. From port to port
along the Malabar coast passed many coasting
vessels, whose northern and western limit was
usually the port of Ormuz at the entrance to the
Persian Gulf. A great highway of commerce
stretched from this trading and producing region,
and from the Malabar ports directly across the
Arabian Sea to the entrance of the Red Sea. When
these waters were reached, many ports of debarka-
tion from Mecca northward might be used. But
the prevailing north winds made navigation in the
Red Sea difficult, and most of the goods which
eventually reached Europe by this route were
landed on the western coast, to be carried by
caravan to Kus, in Egypt, and then either by car-
avans or in boats down the line of the Nile to
Cairo.

Cairo was a very great city, its population being
occupied largely in the transmission of goods. A
fifteenth-century traveller counted 15,000 boats in

24 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

the Nile at one time;' and another learned that
there were in all some 36,000 boats belonging in
Cairo engaged in traffic up and down the river.'
From Cairo a great part of these goods were taken
for sale to Alexandria, which was in many ways as
much a European as an African city. Thus a reg-
ular route stretched along the southern coasts of
Asia, allowing goods produced in all lands of the
Orient to be gathered up in the course of trade and
transferred as regular articles of commerce to the
southeastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

A second route lay in latitudes to the north of
that just, described. From the ports on the west
coast of India a considerable proportion of the goods
destined ultimately for Europe made their way
northward to the Persian Gulf. A line of trading
cities extending along its shores from Ormuz near
the mouth of the gulf to Bassorah at its head served
as ports of call for the vessels which carried this
merchandise. Several of these coast cities were also
termini of caravan routes entering them from the
eastward, forming a net-work which united the va-
rious provinces of Persia and reached through the
passes of Afghanistan into northern India. From
the head of the Persian Gulf one branch of this
route went up the line of the Tigris to Bagdad.
From this point goods were taken by caravan through
Kurdistan to Tabriz, the great northern capital of

• Piloti, quoted in Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels, II., 43.
' Ibn Batuta, quoted, ibid. '

iSoo] MEDIEVAL TRADE-ROUTES 25

Persia, and thence westward either to the Black Sea
or to Layas on the Mediterranean. Another branch
was followed by the trains of camels which made
their way from Bassorah along the tracks through
the desert which spread like a fan to the westward,
till they reached the Syrian cities of Aleppo, Antioch,
and Damascus. They finally reached the Mediter-
ranean coast at Laodicea, Tripoli, Beirut, or Jaffa,
while some goods were carried even as iat south as
Alexandria.

Far to the north of this complex of lines of trade
lay a third route between the far East and the West,
extending from the inland provinces of China west-
ward across the great desert of Obi, south of the
Celestial mountains to Lake Lop; then passing
through a series of ancient cities, Khotan, Yarkand,
Kashgar, Samarcand, and Bokhara, till it finally
reached the region of the Caspian Sea. This main
northern route was joined by others which crossed
the passes of the Himalayas and the Hindoo-Kush,
and brought into a united stream the products of
India and China.' A journey of eighty to a hun-
dred days over desert, mountain, and steppes lay by
this route between the Chinese wall and the Caspian.
From still farther north in China a parallel road to
this passed to the north of the desert and the moun-
tains, and by way of Lake Balkash, to the same an-
cient and populous land lying to the east of the Cas-
pian Sea. Here the caravan routes again divided.

* Hunter, Hist, of British India, I., 31.

26 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

Some led to the southwestward, where they united
with the more central routes described above and
eventually reached the Black Sea and the Mediter-
ranean through Asia Minor and Syria. Others
passed by land around the northern coast of the
Caspian, or crossed it, reaching a further stage
at Astrakhan. From Astrakhan the way led on
by the Volga and Don rivers, till its terminus
was at last reached on the Black Sea at Tana
near the mouth of the Don, or at KaflEa in the
Crimea.'

Along these devious and dangerous routes, by
junks, by strange Oriental craft, by river-boats, by
caravans of camels, trains of mules, in wagons, on
horses, or on human shoulders, the products of the
East were brought within reach of the merchants
of the West. These routes were insecure, the trans-
portation over them difficult and expensive. They
led over mountains and deserts, through alternate
snow and heat. Mongol conquerors destroyed, from
time to time, the cities which lay along the lines of
trade, and ungovemed wild tribes plundered the
merchants who passed through the regions through
which they wandered. More regularly constituted
powers laid heavy contributions on merchandise,
increasing many-fold the price at which it must ulti-
mately be sold. The routes by sea had many of the
same dangers, along with others peculiar to them-
selves. The storms of the Indian Ocean and its ad-

' Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels, II., 68-254.

iSoo] MEDIEVAL TRADE-ROUTES 27

jacent waters were destructive to vast numbers of
the frail vessels of the East ; piracy vied with storms
in its destructiveness ; and port dues were still higher
than those of inland marts.

With all these impediments, Eastern products,
nevertheless, arrived at the Mediterranean in con-
siderable quantities. The demands of the wealthy
classes of Europe and the enterprise of European
and Asiatic merchants were vigorous enough to
bring about a large and even an increasing trade;
and the three routes along which the products of
the East were brought to those who were able to
pay for them were never, during the Middle Ages, en-
tirely closed. They found their western termini in
a long line of Levantine cities extending along the
shores of the Black Sea and of the eastern Mediterra-
nean from Tana in the north to Alexandria in the
south. In these cities the spices, drugs, dyes, per-
fumes, precious stones, silks, rugs, metal goods, and
other fabrics and materials produced in far Eastern
lands were always obtainable by European mer-
chants.

The merchants who bought these goods in the
market-places of the Levant for the purpose of dis-
tributing them throughout Europe were for the
most part Italians from Pisa, Venice, or Genoa;
Spaniards from Barcelona and Valencia ; or Proven-
gals from Narbonne, Marseilles, and Montpellier.'
They were not merely travelling buyers and sellers,

• Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, II., chap. vi.

28 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

but in many cases were permanent residents of the
eastern Mediterranean lands. In the first half of the
fifteenth century there were settlements of such
merchants in Alexandria in Egypt ; in Acre, Beirut,
Tripoli, and Laodicea on the Syrian coast; at Con-
stantinople, and in a group of cities skirting the
Black Sea, Even in the more inland cities of Syria,
such as Damascus, Aleppo, and Antioch, Italians
were established.' The position of European mer-
chants varied in the different cities on this trading
border between the East and the West, from that of
mere foreign traders, living on bare sufferance in
the midst of a hostile community, to that of citizens
occupying what was practically an outlying Vene-
tian or Genoese or Pisan colony.

In the greater number of cases the Italian and
other European merchants had quarters, or fondachi,
granted to them in the Eastern cities by the Sara-
cen emirs of Egypt and Syria, or by the Greek em-
peror of Asia Minor, Constantinople, and Trebizond.
These fondachi were buildings, or groups of dwellings
and warehouses, often including a market-place,
offices, and church, where the merchants of some
Italian or Provengal city carried on their business
affairs according to their own rules, under permission
granted to them by the local ruler. A Genoese or
Venetian fondaco was usually governed by a consul
or bailiff, appointed by the home government, or
elected among themselves with the approval of the

' Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels, II., 67.

iSoo] MEDIEVAL TRADE-ROUTES 29

senate and doge at home. Two or more advisers
were usually provided by the home government to
act with the consul in negotiations with the local
government. In more important matters embassies
were sent directly from the doge to the ruler on
whose toleration or self-interest the whole settle-
ment was dependent.

For whole centuries Italians had made up an ap-
preciable part of the population of many cities of
the Levant ; the galleys of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa
lay at their wharves discharging produce of the
West and loading the products of the East ; a large
part of the income of the local potentates, or gov-
ernors, was made up of export and import duties,
harbor charges, and other impositions paid by the
Western merchants. The prosperity of these Greek
and Saracen seaboard cities was as largely dependent
on this trade as was that of the merchants who came
there for its sake.*

We have seen how the merchandise of the far
East flowed to the Eastern cities of the Mediterra-
nean, and how it was gathered there into the hands
of European merchants! It remains to follow the
routes by which it was redistributed throughout
Europe. Both Genoa and Venice had possessions
in the Greek Archipelago which formed stepping-
stones between the home cities and their fondachi in
the cities of the Levant. Trading from port to port

' Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels, I., 165, 168, 316, 363,
4i4i 443. etc., II., 430. 43S.etc.

30 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [120°

along these lines of connection, or sometimes carry-
ing cargoes unbroken from their most distant points
of trade, the galleys of the Italian, French, or Span-
ish traders brought Eastern goods along with the
products of the Mediterranean islands and shores to
the home cities. These cities then became new dis-
tributing-points of Eastern and Mediterranean goods
as well as of their own home products.

Venice may fairly be taken as a type of the cities
which subsisted on this trade. Her merchants were
the most numerous, widely spread, and enterprising;
her trade the most firmly organized, her hold on
the East the strongest. To her market-places and
warehouses a vast quantity of goods was constant-
ly brought for home consumption and re-export.
From Venice, yearly fleets of galleys went out des-
tined to various points and carrying various car-
goes. One of these fleets, after calling at successive
ports in lUyria, Italy, Sicily, Spain, and Portugal,
and after detaching some galleys for Southampton,
Sandwich, or London, in England, reached, as its
ultimate destination, Bruges, in Flanders.*

Other goods were taken by Venetian merchants
through Italy and across the mountains by land.
Most of the re-export from Venice by land was done
by foreigners. Over the Alps came German mer-
chants from Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ulm, Regens-
burg, Constance, and other cities of the valleys of the
Danube and the Rhine. They had a large building

* Brown, Cal. of State Pap., Venetian.

iSoo] MEDIiEVAL TRADE-ROUTES 31

in Venice set apart for their use by the senate, the
"Fondaco dei Tedeschi," much like those settle-
ments which the Venetians themselves possessed in
the cities of the Levant.* The goods which thej'
purchased in Venice they carried in turn all through
Germany, to the fairs of France, and to the cities of
the Netherlands. Merchants of the Haiiseatic League
bought these goods at Bruges or Antwerp or in the
south German cities, and carried them, along with
their own northern products, to England, to the
countries on the Baltic, and even into Poland and
Russia, meeting at Kiev a more direct branch o(.
the Eastern trade which proceeded from Astrak-
han and Tana northward up the Volga and the
Don.

Thus the luxuries of the East were distributed
through Europe. With occasional interruptions,
frequent changes in detail, and constant difificulties,
the same general routes and methods of transfer and
exchange had been followed for centuries. It was
the oldest, the most extensive, and the most lucra-
tive trade known to Europe. It stretched over the
whole known world, its lines converging from the
eastward and southward to the cities of Sjnia, Asia
Minor, and the Black Sea coast, and diverging
thence to the westward and northward throughout
Europe.

With the close of the Middle Ages this ancient and
well-established trade showed evident signs of dis-
• Sixnonsfeld, Der Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venedig, II.

32 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1300

organization and decline. The Levant was suffering
from changes which interrupted its commerce and
which made the old trade-routes that passed through
it almost impracticable. The principal cause for
this process of decay and failure was the rise of the
Ottoman Turks as a conquering power. About 1300
a petty group of Turks, in the heart of Asia Minor,
under a chieftain named Osman, began a career of
extension of their dominions by conquering the
other provinces of Turkish or Greek origin and
allegiance in their vicinity.* Little by little the
Osmanli pushed their borders out in every direction
till they reached the Mediterranean, the Sea of Mar-
mora, and the Black Sea. Within a century and a
half, by the close of the reign of Murad IL, in 1451,
they had built vessels on the -^gean, plundered the
Greek islands and laid them under tribute, crossed
the Dardanelles and made conquests far up in the
Balkan Peninsula, pressed close upon the Christian
cities along the south coast of the Black Sea, and
reduced the possessions of the Greek Empire to a
narrow strip of land around Constantinople.^ The
Turkish Empire was admirably organized for mil-
itary and financial purposes and governed by a
series of able sultans.

Thus a great power arose on the border-line be-
tween the Orient and the Occident, of which the
merchant states of Italy and the West evidently had

' Zinkeisen, Geschichte des Osmamschen Reickes in Europa. I.,
6S-132. » Ibid., 184-798.

1453] MEDL^VAL TRADE-ROUTES 33

to take account. But its existence did not at first
appear to be necessarily destructive to their inter-
ests. In many cases comparatively favorable com-
mercial treaties were made with the Turkish sultans,
and the facile Italians modified their trading to
meet the new conditions.* Nevertheless, with the
Turks there could be no such close connection as that
which had existed between the Western traders and
the old-established states in the East, under which
they enjoyed practical independence so long as they
paid the. money. The Turks were not only Moham-
medans, they were barbarians; they added to the
Moslem contempt for the Christian the warrior's
contempt for the mere merchant. They were with-
out appreciation for culture or even for refined
Itixury.

The conquests of the Turks proceeded steadily to
their completion. In 1452 Sultan Mohammed II.
built the fort of Rumili Hissari, on the European side
of the Bosporus, and gave the commander orders to
lay every trading -vessel that passed the straits
under tribute. The, next year saw the final siege,
the heroic resistance, and the fall of Constantinople.

Among its defenders were Venetians, Genoese,
Florentines, and Italian colonists from various set-
tlements, summoned to the help of their coreligion-
ists against the Mohammedans. On its capture all
their goods were plundered, their leaders beheaded,

* Heyd, Gesckichte des Levantehandels, II., 259. 260, 267, 275,
284, etc.

34 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND Ii4S3

those of rank held for ransom, and the common
men slaughtered or sold as slaves.* The neighbor-
ing colony of Pera was left to the Genoese, but
humbled to the rank of a Turkish village with a
sadly restricted trade. Trade was allowed to and
from Constantinople, but all the old privileges were
abrogated, and the city was now the capital of a
semi-barbarous ruler and race, who placed but small
value on things brought by trade and continually
engaged in war.

Especially destructive to trade were the wars be-
tween the Turks and the Italian colonists of the
eastern Mediterranean. Such wars were inevitable.
In the progress of their career of conquest the Otto-
man fleets early attacked the island possessions of
Venice and Genoa in the yEgean and their indepen-
dent or semi-indepettdent settlements on the shores
of the Black Sea. Efforts for the defence of these,
involved war between the home governments and
the rising Eastern power. From 1463 to 1479 war
between the Turkish Empire and Venice raged in
Syria and Asia Minor, in the islands of the eastern
Mediterranean, on the main-land of Greece, and
northward to Albania. The Italian republic lost
some of its best territories, including the Greek isl-
ands, and only obtained permission to take its vessels
through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus on pay-
ment of a heavy annual sum.* The few remaining

' Pears, The Destructiott of the Greek Empire.

* Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels , II., 325-332.

1500 -li

25 Lf^niii'uiiB

iSoo] MEDIEVAL TRADE-ROUTES 35

island possessions of Genoa were also loSt — Lesbos in
1462, Chios in 1466. A brave defence of their island
homes was made by the Italians, but one after an-
other these succumbed to the terrible attacks of the
Turks.^

In the mean time the possessions still farther east
had the same fate. Immediately after the downfall
of Constantinople the Turks placed a fleet upon the
Black Sea and attacked the colonies on the north
coast at Kaffa, Soldaia, and Tana, and on the south
at Trebizond and other ports. One after another
these cities were placed under tribute ; repeated bat-
tles destroyed their possessions; their population
was enslaved and their property plundered . In 1 46 1
Trebizond was captured; in 1500 Kaffa was finally
conquered and the whole Christian population,
after many sufferings, carried oif to live as a subject
race in a suburb of Constantinople. In 1499 and
1500 Venice lost almost all the rest of her posses-
sions.

Some of the cities of the West which had never had
landed possessions in the East fared better under
the Ottoman than did Venice and Genoa. Floren-
tinesi Ragusans, and men of Ancona, for some dec-
ades, took their galleys from port to port of the
Turkish coasts and islands, or passed as individual
traders back along the trade-routes seeking goods
for export. Nevertheless, the flow of Eastern goods
along these routes was becoming less and less; the

> Bury, in Cambridge Modern History, I., 75-81.

VOL. I. — s

36 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1430

internal wars of rival Tartar rulers and those be-
tween Tartars and Turks threw the northern routes
and parts of the central route into even more than
their usual confusion; and the lessened demands at
the ports of the Black Sea and Asia Minor discour-
aged the bringing of goods from the Eastern sources
of supply.

The Turkish thirst for conquest brought under
the control of that race, in the half -century between
1450 aiid 1500, half the western termini of the trade-
routes with the East. It crushed out all semblance
of independence in the settlements of the European
merchants in Asia Minor and on the Black Sea, and
left to them a bare foothold for purposes of trade
under the most burdensome restrictions. These
conquests were very destructive to Hfe and property.
Mercantile firms failed, old families died out, the
mother-states were exhausted, and the flow of mer-
chandise was dried up. The system of trade which
had been in existence in these regions for centuries
was quite destroyed by this violence.

The central and southern routes for a time re-
mained open; indeed, the blocking of the more
northerly outlets sent a greater proportion of the
trade in Eastern products through Syria and through
the Red Sea ports. The markets at Damascus,
Aleppo, Beirut, and Alexandria were better filled
than ever with the products of the East. Even the
Genoese, who had so completely lost their prosperity,
still had a fondaco in Alexandria in 1483 ; while the

1517] MEDIAEVAL TRADE-ROUTES 37

Venetians, notwithstanding their losses in the north-
eastern Mediterranean and their bitter struggles with
the Turks, continued to make closer and closer
trade airangements with the Saracen emirs of the
Syrian cities and the Mameluke sultans of Egypt.
Under heavy financial burdens and amid constant
disputes they still kept up an active trade. Ten
or fifteen galleys came every year from Italy, France,
and Spain to Alexandria, which in the later years of
the fifteenth century was by far the greatest market
for spices in the world. Even Florence, in the later
years of the fifteenth century, opened up a trade
with Egypt and Syria.'

The southeastern Mediterranean was now destined
to be swept by the same storm as the other parts of
the Levant. In the early years of the sixteenth
century the Ottoman army invaded Syria and
Egypt. In 1516 the sultan captured Damascus; in
15 1 7 he entered Cairo as a conqueror. Syria and
Egypt became a part of the Turkish Empire, as
Asia Minor, the Balkan Peninsula, and the coasts
of the Black Sea had already done. Treaties, it is
true, were even yet formed by which Venice, at the
price of humiliating conditions, obtained permission
from the Ottoman government to continue a heavily
burdened trade in the blighted cities of Egypt and
Syria, as she was already doing in Constantinople.
But the process by which Turkish conquest was at-
tained, and the whole spirit and policy of that
» Beyd, Gesfhicte d?? l^antehdwkk, 11-, 427-494-

38 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1350

power, were adverse to trade between the East and
West.

The old trade-routes between Asia and Europe
were eflEectually and permanently blocked by the
Turkish conquests. Not only routes of trade, but
methods of exchange, forms of transportation, and,
in fact, the whole system by which Eastern goods
had been brought to Europe for centuries, were in-
terrupted, undermined, and made almost impractic-
able. During this period the city republics of Italy,
which had been the chief European intermediaries
of this trade, were losing their prosperity, their
wealth, their enterprise, and their vigor. This was
due, as a matter of fact, to a variety of causes, in-
ternal and external, political and economic ; but the
sufferings in the wars with the Turks and the ad-
verse conditions of the Levant trade on which their
prosperity primarily rested were far the most im-
portant causes of their decline.

Thus the demand of European markets for East-
em luxuries could no longer be met satisfactorily
by the old methods; yet that demand was no less
than it had been, and the characteristic products of
the East were still sought for in all the market-places
of Europe. Indeed, the demand was increasing.
As Europe in the fifteenth century became more
wealthy and more familiar with the products of the
whole world, as the nobles learned to demand more
luxuries, and a wealthy merchant class grew up
which was able to gratify the same tastes as the

iSoo] MEDIAEVAL TRADE-ROUTES 39

nobles, the demand of the West upon the East be-
came more insistent than ever. Therefore, the
men, the nation, the government that could find a
new way to the East might claim a trade of inde-
finite extent and extreme profit.

This is the explanation of that eager search for
new routes to the Indies which lay at the bacJf of so
many voyages of discovery of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Southward along the coast of
Africa, in the hope that that continent could be
rounded to the southeast ; northward along the coast
of Europe in search of a northeast passage ; westward
relying on the sphericity of the earth, and hoping
that the distance from the west coast of Europe to
the east coast of Asia would prove not to be inter-
minable; after America was reached, again north-
ward and southward to round and pass beyond that
barrier, and thus reach Asia — such was the progress
of geographical exploration for a century and a half,
during which men gradually became familiar with a
great part of the earth's surface. A study of the
history of trade-routes corroborates the fact dis-
closed by many other lines of study — that the discov-
ery of America was no isolated phenomenon ; it was
simply one step in the development of the world's
history. Changes in the eastern Mediterranean led
men to turn their eyes in other directions looking
for other sea routes to the East. When they had
done so, along with much else that was new, Amer-
ica was disclosed to their vision.

40 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1500

To follow out all the remote effects of the up-
heaval in western Asia and eastern Europe would
lead too far afield: but the diversion of commercial
interest was only a part : the restless energies of the
Latin races of southern Europe turned into a new
channel ; search for trade led to discovery, discovery
to exploration, exploration to permanent settle-
ment ; and settlement to the creation of a new centre
of commercial and political interest, and eventually
to the rise of a new nation.

CHAPTER III

ITALIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO EXPLORATION
(1200-1500)

ALTHOUGH in the fifteenth century Italy lost
r\ the commercial leadership which she had so long
held, she did not cease to be the teacher of the other
coimtries of Europe. In those arts which lay at the
base of exploration, as in so many other fields, Italy
was far in advance of all other Western countries.
Through the Middle Ages she preserved much of the
heritage of ancient skill and learning ; by her Renais-
sance studies she recovered much that had been
temporarily lost; and in geographical science she
early made progress of her own. "The greatness of
the Germans, the courtesy of the French, the valor
of the English, and the wisdom of the Italians" is
the tribute paid by a fifteenth-century Portuguese
chronicler to the nations of his time, and this "wis-
dom of the Italians" he especially connects with ex-
ploration and navigation.'

As a nation Italy played but a slight part in the
discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries;
but through her scattered sons she used her fine in-

■ Azurara, Chronicle of Guinea, chap. ii.
41

42 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1450

telligence to initiate and guide much of the work
that was completed by the ruder but more efficient
and vigorous nations of the Atlantic seaboard.
Educated men from Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Flor-
ence emigrated to other lands, carrying with them
science, skill, and ingenuity unknown except in
the advanced and enterprising Italian city republics
and principalities. Italian mathematicians made
the calculations on which all navigation was based ;
Italian cartographers drew maps and charts ; Italian
ship-builders designed and built the best vessels of
the time; Italian captains commanded them, and
very often Italian sailors made up their crews ; while
at least in the earlier period Italian bankers ad-
vanced the funds with which the expeditions were
equipped and sent out.

Columbus, Cabot, Verrazzano, and Vespucci were
simply the most famous of the Italians who during
this period made discoveries while in the service of
other governments. The Venetian Cadamosto led
repeated and successful expeditions for Prince Henry
of Portugal; Perestrello, the discoverer of Porto
Santo, in the Madeiras, and Antonio de Noli, the
discoverer of the Cape Verd Islands, were both
Italians.' This was no new condition of affairs.
In the time of Edward II. and Edward III., in the
service of England, we find the names of Genoese
such as Pesagno and Uso de Mare. Another Geno-
ese, Emanuel Pesagno, \v^as appointed as the first
' Ruge, Der Zeitalter der Entdeckitngen, 217.

tS2o] ITALIAN EXPLORERS 43

hereditary admiral of the fleet of Portugal, and by
the terms of his engagement was required to keep
the Portuguese navy provided with twenty Genoese
captains of good experience in navigation. Of the
sixty men who made up the complement of Magel-
lan's fleet of 1519, in the service of Spain, twenty-
three tvere ItaUans, mostly Genoese.* At the same
time all Spanish taxes were administered by Genoese
bankers, and they or other Italians had a monopoly
of all loanable capital.^

Long before the great period of discoveries Italians
contributed to the increase of geographical knowl-
edge by travel and narratives of travel over the
world as it was already known, but only known
vaguely and by dim report. Down to the middle of
the thirteenth century the total knowledge of the
lands and waters of the globe possessed by the edu-
cated men of Europe was not appreciably greater
than it had been a thousand years earlier. The
disintegration of the old Roman world, the more
stationary habits of life, and the narrower interests
of men during the early Middle Ages were unfavor-
able to travel.

The later Middle Ages were not lacking in keen
intellect, in large knowledge, in powers of systema-
tization and elaboration of what has already been
acquired ; but they had neither the material equip-
ment nor the mental temperament to carry the

> Navarrete, quoted in Ruge, Zeitalter, 466, n.
* Hume, Spain, Its Greatness and Decay, 87.

44 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [looo

boundaries of knowledge further. What was known
of the world to Ptolemy in the second century made
up the sum of knowledge possessed by the geogra-
phers of all the following centuries to the thirteenth.
Indeed, the mediseval tendency to establish sym-
metrical measurements, to adopt fanciful explana-
tions, and to find analogies in all things, obscured
earlier knowledge and made geographers of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries less correct in their
knowledge of the world than were those of the second
or the third.'

The discoveries, conquests, and settlements of
the Northmen in the north of Europe and the north-
em Atlantic were so detached from the knowledge
of the south and came to a pause so early in time
that notwithstanding their potential value they con-
tributed practically nothiag to the general geograph-
ical knowledge of Europe. Nor did Christian, Jew-
ish, or Arabic accounts of Eastern lands written by
travellers of the eleventh, twelfth, and early thir-
teenth centuries become widely known or influen-
tial.^ Even the knowledge brought home by the
Crusaders was of a restricted territory, most of it
already comparatively familiar; and therefore they
added little to the common stock.

About the middle of the thirteenth century, how-
ever, began a series of journeys which were more
fully recorded in narratives more widely circulated

' Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography,
' Ibid.. II., chaps, i.-iv.

I300] ITALIAN EXPLORERS 45

and in a more receptive period. Three incentives
habitually carry men into distant and unknown
lands — missionary zeal, desire for trade, and curiosity.
Actuated by one or other of these influences, an in-
creasing number of Europeans visited lands far be-
yond the eastern terrninations of the trade-routes,
and some of them brought back reports of which the
influence was wide and lasting.

Among the earliest and most observant were a
succession of Franciscan friars, sent after 1245 on
missionary journeys to the court of the ruler of the
great Tartar Empire, which was then so rapidly
overspreading Asia and eastern Europe. The first
of these was John de Piano Carpini, a native of
Naples, who belonged to a Franciscan house near
Perugia. He went through Bohemia, Poland, south-
ern Russia, and the vast steppes of Turkestan, and
found the Khan at Karakonmi, in Mongolia. He was
two years on the journey, and after his return wrote
an exact and interesting account of his observations
and experiences.'

A few years afterwards William de Rubruquis — a
Fleming in this case, not an Italian — was sent to
visit the Mongol emperor by Louis IX. when he
was in the East. He followed a more southerly
route than Carpini, skirting the northern shores of
the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Sea of Aral, and
then passing northward to Karakorum. Returning
he crossed the Caucasus and passed through Persia

Travels of John de Piano Carpini (d'Avezac's ed.)

46 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1270

and the lands of the Turks, finally reaching the
Mediterranean through Syria. The account which
he wrote of his adventures was much fuller than
that of Piano Carpini, and gives descriptions of
China as well as of the central Asiatic lands.*

Just at the beginning of the next century two
other travellers, John de Monte Corvino' and Odoric
de Pordenone,' both Italians, made journeys
through Persia, India, southern Asia, and China,
and later wrote accounts of these more southern
lands quite as full as were those already mentioned
concerning the northern parts of the great eastern
continent.

The most famous of all mediaeval travellers in the
East were the Venetian merchants Nicolo and
Matteo Polo and their nephew Marco. These en-
terprising traders, leaving their warehouses in Sol-
daia on the Crimea, in two successive journeys made
their way along the northern and central trade-
routes to Pekin, in northern China, or Cathay,
which had become the capital of the Great Khan.
For almost twenty years the Polos were attached to
the court of Kublai Khan, the nephew, Marco, ris-
ing higher and higher in the graces of that ruler.

Marco Polo was one of the well-known type of
Italian adventurers who appeared at foreign courts,
and, with the versatility of their race, made them-

' Travels of William de Rubruquis (d'Avezac's ed.) .
' Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, II., chap. v.
• Ttavels of Odoric de Pordenone (d'Avezac's ed.).

I3I0] ITALIAN EXPLORERS 47

selves useful, and indeed indispensable, to their
masters. He learned the languages of the East, and
went upon missions for the Great Khan to all parts
of his vast empire. When, in 1292, the Polos ob-
tained permission to return home they followed the
longest and most important of the three main trade-
routes which have been described. They sailed
from Zaiton, a seaport of China, and passing along
the shores of Tonquin, Java, and farther India,
made their way from port to port through the Bay
of Bengal to Ceylon, then to the Malabar coast of
India, along which they passed to Cambay, and
thence through the Red Sea to Cairo, and so to
Venice. Their journey homeward from China, with
its long detentions in the East Indies, took almost
three years.

All the world knows of Marco Polo's subsequent
experiences in Venice, his capture and imprison-
ment in Genoa, the stories of his travels with which
he whiled away the weary days of his captivity, and
the gathering of these into a book which spread
widely through Europe within the next few years
and has been eagerly read ever since.'

Neither the travels of Marco Polo nor those of his
predecessors or immediate successors disclosed any
lands the existence of which was not before known
to Europeans; but they gave fuller knowledge of
many countries and nations of which the names only
were known; and they gave this knowledge with

• Marco Polo (Yule's ed.) , Introduction.

48 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1300

astonishing freshness, minuteness, and accuracy.
The writers of these books travelled over many-
thousands of miles, and they described, in the main,
what they saw, although, of course, they repeated,
with more or less of exaggeration, much which
they only knew from conversation or from hearsay.
Besides the written stories of such experiences,
other Europeans who accompanied these travellers,
or who made independent journeys to various parts
of Asia, spread knowledge of the same things.
The author of a later popular volume of travels,
passing under the name of Sir John Mandeville,
managed, by making use of a slight acquaintance
with Asia, of a fuller knowledge of the writings of
other travellers, and, most of all, of the resources of a
fertile imagination, to weave a tissue of mendacious
description which really lessened knowledge.'

Nevertheless, as a result of these travellers' re-
ports, the traditions of earlier times and the knowl-
edge of the nearer East possessed by traders were
supplemented and popularized. The journeys of
the travellers of the later thirteenth and the four-
teenth centuries were. a veritable revelation to Eu-
rope of the condition of Tartary, Persia, India,
China, and many intervening lands. Especially
strong was the impression made by the reports about
China and Japan. The land of the Seres, lying on
the border of the eastern ocean, had indeed been
known to the ancients, and mentioned by tradition
» Trqve}s of Sir John I4qiful^ville (ed. of 1900).

1350] ITALIAN EXPLORERS 49

as the source from which came certain well-known
products; but under the name of Cathay, which
Marco Polo and his contemporaries gave to it, it
attained a new and strong hold on men's imagina-
tions. Its myriad population, its hundreds of cities,
its vast wealth, its advanced civilization, its rivers,
bridges, and ships, its manufactures and active
trade, the fact that it was the easternmost country
of Asia, washed by the waters of the external ocean
— aU made Cathay a land of intense interest to the
rising curiosity of thirteenth-century Europe/

Similarly the great island of Cipangu, or Japan,
lying a thousand miles farther to the eastward,
though never actually visited by Marco Polo, and
described by him with a vague and extravagant
touch, was of equally keen interest to his readers,
as were the "twelve thousand seven hundred isl-
ands " at which he calculates the great archipel-
agoes which lie in the Indian Ocean and the
Pacific.

It was his accounts of "the province of Mangi,"
"the cities of Zaiton and Quinsay," "the Great
Khan," "the island of Cipangu," and of their vast
wealth and active trade that took special hold on
the mind of Columbus. His copy of Marco Polo
may still be seen, its margins filled with annotations
on such passages, made by the great navigator;^
and it was to these that his mind reverted when he

' Pigeonneau, Histoire du Commerce de la France, II., 12, etc.
' Vignaud, Toscanelli and Columbtis, 95.

so EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1270

had discovered in the West Indies, as he believed,
the outlying parts of the Khan's dominions.'

To the westward also ancient knowledge was re-
acquired and made clearer. The " Forttinate Isles"
were rediscovered and identified as the Canaries by
the Italian Lancelot Malocello in 1270,^ then for-
gotten and rediscovered in 1341 ' by some Portu-
guese ships, manned by Genoese, Florentines, Cas-
tilians, and Portuguese. In 1291 Tedisio Doria and
Ugolino Vivaldi, Genoese citizens, equipped two
galleys and sailed out through the Straits of Gibral-
tar and then to the southward, with the object of
reaching the ports of India, but were never heard
of again.* Both the Madeira Islands and the Azores
became known as early as 1330, though perhaps only
in a shadowy way, and were visited from time to
time later in the fourteenth century, before they
were regularly occupied in the fifteenth.'

Through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
therefore, thanks for the most part to Italian trav-
ellers, substantial gains were made in exactitude and
clearness of knowledge of the Old World. Though
the bounds of geographical knowledge were not
carried much farther, and less than one-fourth of

^Columbus's Journal, October 21, 23, 24, 26, 30, Novem-
ber I, etc.

' Beazley, Hakluyt Soc, Publications, 1899, Ixi., Ixxviii.

'Ibid., Ixxx.; Peschel, Zeitalier der Entdeckungen, 37.

* Peschel, ZeitalUr der Entdeckungen, 36.

» Nordenskiold, Periplus, 111-115; Major, Prince Henry the
Navigator, chaps, v., viii., xiv.

I400] ITALIAN EXPLORERS 51

the surface of the globe was as yet known to Eu-
ropeans, within these bounds knowledge became far
more clear.

Ignorance and superstition were still abundant; a
mythical kingdom of Prester John was believed by
one geographer to exist in Africa, by another to be
situated in India, and by still another to be in China ;
the Atlantic was still dreaded by some as the dark,
unknown limit of the world ; ignorant men may still
have beUeve(i that the sea boiled at the equator,
and that men with dogs' heads and other monsters
had each its own part of the earth ; but Italians of
any education, especially those acquainted with the
writings of their cotmtrymen, must have been quite
free from such mediaeval notions. By the year
1400 scientific information, critical habits of thought,
and an interest in all forms of knowledge had reached
in Italy a high degree of development and were fast
spreading through Europe.

The theory that the earth was round was familiar
to the Greeks and Romans, and was supported in
the Middle Ages by the great authority of Aristotle.*
The only difficulties lying in the way of an accept-
ance of this view through the mediaeval period were,
in the first place, the mental effort required to con-
ceive the earth as round when its visual appearance
is flat; and, secondly, the opposition of churchmen,
who interpreted certain texts in the Bible in such a
way as- to forbid the conception of the earth as a

* Aristotle, De Caelo, II., 14.

VOL, I. — 6

52 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1300

sphere. Yet neither of these influences was strong
enough to prevail over the opinions of the majority
of learned men. To them the earth was roimd, as
it was to Aristotle, Ptolemy, and other ancients.'
The ball which the Eastern emperors carried as an
emblem of the world-wide extent of their rule, and
which was borrowed from them by various mediae-
val potentates, had probably not lost jts meaning.
Dante, in the Divina Commedia, not only plans his
Inferno on the supposition of a spherical earth, but
takes for granted the same conception on the part
of his readers.'

The conception of the sphericity of the earth was
really a matter of mental training. In the fifteenth
century those who had gained this knowledge were
fewer than in modem times, but the class who did
so believe were no less sure of it. Astronomers,
philosophers, men of general learning, and even
navigators and pilots were quite familiar with the
idea and quite in the habit of thinking of the earth
as a sphere. In all probability Columbus repre-
sented the beliefs of his class, as well as his own, when
he said, " I have always read that the world, compris-
ing the land and the water, is spherical, as is testi-
fied by the investigations of Ptolemy and others,
who have proved it by the eclipses of the moon
and other observationis made from east to west, as
well as by the elevation of the pole from north to

' Ruge, Zeitalter der Entdecku/ngen.
' Inferno, canto 34, lines 100-108.

i4oo] ITALIAN EXPLORERS 53

south." * Opposition to voyages westward was
based rather on the probabiUty of the enormous
size of the earth and on the supposed difficulty of
sailing up the slope of the sphere than it was upon
any serious doubt of its sphericity.

The habitable world was quite a different con-
ception. It consisted of Europe, Asia, and Africa,
these three continents forming a continuous stretch
of land lying on the surface of the spherical earth,
the rest of its surface being presumably covered with
water. There was more or less speculation about
the existence of other habitable lands on the earth
than those which were known, but the interest in
this possibility was languid at best, and it was de-
nied by learned churchmen on biblical grotmds.

The map-makers of that period continued, like
those of the earlier Middle Ages, to base their work
on mere half - my thical traditions, unrelieved and
uncorrected by the results of actual discoveries.
Their maps are still much like picture-books, filled
with biblical and literary lore, indicating but a
slight attempt to incorporate exact measurements
and outlines. A development more revolutionary
than the mere gradual increase of knowledge was
necessary to break the bonds of academic tradition.^

Just at the beginning of the fourteenth century,

' Hakluyt Soc, Publications, Hist, of Columbus — Third Voyage,
II., 129.

' Santarem, Essai sur VHistoire <U la Cosmographie, I., 75,
167, 178.

S4 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1300

however, a new line was struck out in map-making
by the construction and steady development of sail-
ing charts, or "portolani." These humble attempts
at geographical representation were intended as prac-
tical aids to navigation for Mediterranean mariners,
and were based on practical observation. During
the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries they
reached a wonderful degreee of accuracy. The
coasts, bays, islands, and promontories of the Medi-
terranean were plotted out in them and drawn with
striking correctness. Some four hundred such
sketch-maps remain to us, drawn by Italians from
the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, besides
nearly a htmdred made in other countries.* They
did not imdertake to give the internal features of the
countries whose coast-lines they depicted, and as
their main purpose was to aid Mediterranean trade,
they did not extend so far beyond its shore as the
erudition of the age would have made possible.

The best of the world maps of the fifteenth cen-
tury were based cai these Italian portolani rather
than on mediaeval maps, and at the same time added
such enlarged information as became common in the
Italy of the fifteenth century.*

Thus, at the very beginning of the fifteenth cen-
tury European explorers had the benefit of the
traditional ancient geography, of the new exactness
of knowledge drawn from the observations of recent

' Beazley, in Hakluyt Soc, Publications. .iSqg, cxx.
'Ibid., cxxi., etc.

1400] ITALIAN EXPLORERS

55

travellers, of the accurate but limited portolani of the
Italian navigators, and finally of the more preten-
tious, if vague and often misleading, world maps of
learned geographers. If a sailor wished to navigate
the Mediterranean and its adjacent waters, if he
planned to sail up the coast of Europe to the British
Isles and on into the Baltic, or to pass down the At-
lantic coast of Africa to Cape Nim, he might rely-
on the maps and charts which the Italian geographers
could furnish him. Or if he launched his galleys
on the Red Sea he might use their guidance down
the east coast of Africa to the equator. He would
also find tolerably accurate descriptions of all the
southern coasts of Asia. In the interior a traveller
by land could know beforehand the main features
of the cotmtries he might traverse. Beyond these
limits, either by sea or by land, geographical knowl-
edge must be sought by discovery or followed along
the lines of dim report. If European sailors should
follow the coast of Africa below the twenty-seventh
parallel of north latitude, or of Europe above the
sixtieth, or if they should direct their course into
the western ocean beyond the Azores, they would be
sailing into the unknown, and whatever they should
find would be fresh acquisition.

The two instruments which were the most requi-
site for distant voyaging, the compass and the as-
trolabe (the predecessor of the quadrant), were al-
ready, in 1400, known and used by Mediterranean
navigators. The property of turning towards the

S6 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

north, possessed by a magnetized needle, was cer-
tainly known as early, as the close of the twelfth
century; and even its use by sailors to find their
directions when the sun and stars were obscured.
More than one mediaeval writer describes the process
by which a needle is rubbed on a piece of magnetic
iron, then laid on a straw or attached to a piece of
cork, and floated on water till its point turns tow-
ards the north star.' But its properties savored of
magic; the earlier sailors, who hugged the shore,
scarcely needed it, and it came into general use
as slowly and imperceptibly as most of the other
great inventions of the world.

The introduction of the compass into general use
is, by tradition, ascribed to the Italian city of Amalfi,
and it is easy to believe that the enterprising sailors
of this commercial republic brought it into estab-
lished recognition. By the early years of the fif-
teenth century the compass was provided with the
card, marked with the directions, placed in the com-
pass-box, and made a well-known part of the equip-
ment of the navigator.^ The mariner could now
tell his directions wherever he might be, and the
spider-web net- work of "compass-roses" on many
of the early maps shows how anxious the map-maker

• Alexander Neckham, De Utensilibus ; De Natura Rerum,
book II., chap, xcviii.; Guyot de Prcvins, La Bible; Jacques
de Vitry, Historia Orientalis; Brunette Latini, Epistolm, who
mentions Roger Bacon as showing him a magnet at Oxford
in 1258. Quoted in Beazley, Hakluyt Soc, Publications, 1899,
cxliv., etc. ' Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. ix.

iSoo] ITALIAN EXPLORERS 57

was to provide lines along whicli the navigator
might lay his course according to his compass.
The makers of the better class of portolani evi-
dently had the use of the compass in drawing their
charts.'

The changed position of the heavenly bodies
as. the early traveller passed northward or south-
ward struck him with especial force. Marco Polo,
describing the island of Sumatra, says, "But let
me tell you one marvellous thing, and that is the
fact that this island lies so far to the south that the
north star, little or much, is never to be seen." "
He also notes on his journey northward through
India, when he sees it again, "two cubits above the
water." When Cadamosto, the Venetian, saw the
pole-star at " the third of a lance's length above the
edge of the waves," he recorded it as one of the most
striking phenomena of his journey towards the
equator.

Two instruments were known by which the ele-
vation above the horizon of the pole-star, or any
other heavenly body could be measured. The older
of these was the "cross-stafif," or St. James's staff, a
simple rod marked into degrees, at the end of which
the eye was placed and along which a measured
cross-piece was pushed, till one of its ends hid a
point on the horizon and the other the sun or star
whose height was being measured. The astrolabe

' Santarem, Essai sur I'Histoire de la Cosmographie, I.,
280-305. ' Marco Po/o (Yule's ed.). book III., chap. ix.

S& EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1400

was a somewhat more elaborate instrument, con-
sisting of a brass circle marked with degrees,
against which two movable bars were fastened,
each provided at the ends with a sight or pro-
jecting piece pierced by a hole. This was hung by
a ring from a peg in the mast or from the hand, so
that gravity would make one of its bars horizon-
tal. Then the other bar was sighted to point tow-
ards some heavenly body. Chaucer, in 1400, gave to
his "litel Lowis my sone" an astrolabe calculated
" after the latitude of Oxenford," and wrote a charm-
ing treatise to explain to him in English its use,
"for Latin ne canstow yit but smal, my lyte sone."
In this treatise he described to him, among other
things, "diverse tables of longitudes and latitudes
of sterres." *

By means of either of these instruments latitude
could be measured or calculated. Longitude was a
more difficult problem; it involved the calculation
of the difference of time as well as measurements
of elevation of the heavenly bodies. The calcula-
tions necessary to discover actual locations from
an observation were too long and complicated to
be made on each occasion; and " ephemerides," or
calculated tables of elevations of planets and of
differences of time, were required. Just when the
earliest of such tables were constructed and when
chronometers came into use is obscure, but they

» Chaucer, A Treatise on the Astrolabe, Prologue; Skeat, The
Student's Chaucer, 396.

iSoo] ITALIAN EXPLORERS 59

were in existence in at least a rudimentary form
early in the fifteenth century.*

The condition of Europe early in the fifteenth
century as compared with its condition early in the
thirteenth shows a great advance in those lines
which made extensive exploration possible, and
this advance was chiefly due to Italians. Increased
knowledge, improved equipment, instruments of
astronomical observation, navigating charts, and a
race of educated navigators, made a part of the Eu-
ropean background of American history as truly as
did the incentive to exploration afforded by the
search for new routes to the East. Of course much
progress remained to be accomplished in the making
of maps and globes, in the improvement of instru-
ments, and in the calculation of tables during the
period of discovery. The awakened scientific in-
terest which had already shown itself as part of the
Renaissance found scope in the practical require-
ments of distant voyages. While men were dis-
covering new continents and seas, they were at the
same time solving many problems of geographical
science and perfecting the equipment by which fur-
ther advance was made practicable.

• Humboldt, Examen Critique, I., 274.

CHAPTER IV

PIONEER WORK OF PORTUGAL
(1400-1527)

THE great period of explorations, of which the
discovery of America was a part, lay between
the years 1485 and 1520, between the discovery of
the Cape of Good Hope by Diaz and the circum-
navigation of the globe by the ships of Magellan.
Long before this period of fruition, however, there
was a significant movement of discovery, and an
important acquisition of knowledge, experience, and
boldness in exploration. This early dawn, prepara-
tory to the later day, consisted in a series of dis-
coveries on the west coast of Africa, due to the
energy of the Portuguese and to the enlightenment
of their great Prince Henry.

Portugal was especially fitted to be the pioneer in
modem maritime exploration. Without geograph-
ical or racial separation from the rest of the Iberian
peninsula, the national distinctness of Portugal was
largely a matter of sentiment gathering around the
sovereign. The nationality of Portugal had been
created in the first place by the policy of its rulers,
and preserved by them until the growth of separate

60

i40o] PORTUGUESE PIONEERING 6i

material interests, a national language and literature,
and traditions of glorious achievements confirmed
the separateness of the Portuguese nationality from
that of Spain.

The desire to hold aloof from other Spanish coun-
tries turned the attention of the king of Portugal to
more distant alliances, and the open western sea-
board naturally suggested that these should be with
maritime states. In 1294 a treaty of commerce
was signed with England. A century later, 1386,
a much closer alliance with that country was formed
and a new treaty signed at Windsor.* This was fol-
lowed in the next year by a marriage between the
king of Portugal and Philippa, daughter of the Eng-
lish John of Gaunt and first cousin of King Richard.
This "Treaty of Windsor" was renewed again and
again by succeeding English and Portuguese sov-
ereigns, and remained the fotmdation of their rela-
tionship -until it was superseded long afterwards
by still closer treaty arrangements. With Flanders,
Portugal had frequent peaceful intercourse, both in
trade and in diplomacy. A Venetian fleet also
called from time to time at the harbor of Lisbon on
the way to and from England and Flanders, and
thus brought Portugal into contact with the great
Italian republic, and may have aroused an interest
in the far Eastern trade products of which loaded
the galleys.

The contract before referred to by which Emanuel

' Rymer, Foedera, II., 667, VII., SiSS^S-

62 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1263

Pesagno was made hereditary lord high admiral, in
131 7, continued to be fulfilled by the descendants
of the first great admiral through the whole four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries, and kept up a con-
stant connection with Genoa.* Thus the associa-
tions of Portugal were with a line of seaboard states
extending from England to Italy. After 1263 the
maritime interests of the Portuguese kings became
more distinct by their conquest from the Moors of
the kingdom of Algarves, giving them a southern as
well as a western sea-coast.^

It was at Sagres, on Cape St. Vincent, which juts
out into the open Atlantic Ocean on the extreme
southwest of this province, that Henry, the fifth son
of John II. of Portugal, established his dwelling-place
in 1419, and created a centre of maritime interest
and a base of exploring effort which was of world-
wide influence. Henry was duke of Viseu, lord of
Cavailham, viceroy of Algarves, and grand master
of the Order of Christ. He had no wife or chil-
dren; his private estate was, therefore, available
for the expenses of exploring voyages ; and projects
of geographical discovery became his chief occupa-
tion. Whatever other duties or services were re-
quired of him on account of his membership in the
royal family, he always returned to Sagres and to
his exploring expeditions. He possessed also the

• M. G. Canale, Storia del Commercio, Viaggi, &c., degV Italiani,
book II., chap, x., etc., quoted by Payne, New World, 96.
' Stephens, Hist, of Portugal, 8i,

1420] PORTUGUESE PIONEERING 63

interest and support of his father and brother, who
successively occupied the throne. After his death
his work was carried on by his nephew, King Alfonso
V. The work of Henry was, therefore, substantially
the concern of the whole royal family of Portugal
for three generations.'

Prince Henry "the Navigator," as he has come
to be called, gathered around him a body of men
trained as sailors ; he learned the use of charts and
instruments, taught these arts to his captains, and
ultimately made the neighboring port of Lagos the
most famous point in the world for the departure
and return of exploring expeditions.* During forty
years expedition after expedition was equipped al-
most yearly and sent down along the west coast of
Africa, in the effort to solve its mystery and, if
possible, to sail around its southern extremity.

In the process of exploration Prince Henry was
governed by some of the strongest of human im-
pulses. The crusading spirit was hot within him, and
he hoped to continue in Africa the old struggle of the
Portuguese Christians against the Moorish infidels.
Gentler missionary ideals caused him to plan to
spread Christianity into new lands, and to make
connection with Prester John, the Christian ruler
of the India which lay to the eastward of Africa.'

" Major, Prince Henry the Navigator, chaps, iv., vi., xiii., xvlii.

' Nordensldold, Periplus, 121 A. For discussion of divergent
views of Prince Henry's "school of navigation," see Beazley,
mKaVlMytSoc., Publications, 1899, cvi.-crii.

' Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chaps, vii., xvi.

64 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1415

His interest in trade was equally strong; he was
familiar with the internal trade of Africa, and he
lost no opportiinity of developing traffic along the
sea-coast.'

Yet it was the instinct of the explorer that in-
spired Prince Henry with the steady devotion to
his life work. The fine curiosity which placed geo-
graphical discovery above all material gain, and re-
warded his captains, not in proportion to what they
had accompUshed, but in proportion to the efforts
they had made to carry the boundaries of knowl-
edge farther, kept him and them intent on the work
of exploration.^ Henry possessed, at the beginning
of his explorations, little more than the traditional
geographical conceptions of the later Middle Ages.
Besides some twelve or fourteen extant fourteenth-
century maps drawn by Italian draughtsmen, which
were probably all known to Henry, his brother
Pedro gave him one which has since disappeared,
which had been constructed at Venice, and which
"had all the parts of the world and earth de-
scribed." ' He was probably also familiar with
the classical tales of the circumnavigation of Africa.

Besides this he had some important personal
knowledge. During a Portuguese invasion of the
Barbary states of Africa in 141 5, in which Prince
Henry served with his father and brothers, and

' Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. vii.
' Bourne, " Prince Henry the Navigator," in Essays in His-
torical CriHcism, 173-189. ' Major, Prince Henry, 62.

1430] PORTUGUESE PIONEERING 65

later when he was himself in command, he fotmd
that there were caravan routes whose termini were
at Ceuta and other Mediterranean towns. From
the Sahara and the Soudan, across the desert, came
caravans to the Mediterranean coast bringing gold,
wine, and slaves, and news of trading routes far to
the southward.

Moreover, these routes extended to rivers and sea-
coasts unknown to Europeans, which must, never-
theless, be connected with the open Atlantic Ocean,
and might well be on the southern shore of that
continent. "He got news of the passage of mer-
chants from the coast of Tunis to Timbuctoo and
to Cantor on the Gambia, which inspired him to
seek those lands by way of the sea." ' " The tawny
Moors, his prisoners, told him of certain tall palms
growing at the mouth of the Senegal or western
Nile, by which he was able to guide the caravels
which he sent out to find that river." ^

The first decade of Henry's efforts, from 1420 to
1430, resulted in little in the way of new discovery.
The Madeira and Azores islands were rediscovered
and their full exploration and permanent coloniza-
tion begun. Every year saw one or more caravels
sent from Lagos southward to follow the coast of the
main-land ; but they skirted no shores that were not
desert, and turned back baffled by their own fears.
Cape Boyador long remained a barrier whose imagi-

' Diego Gomez, quoted in Beazley, Introduction to Azurara's
Chronicle (Hakluyt See, Publications, 1899). 'Ibid.

66 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1434

nary dangers of reef and shoal served as an excuse
for the still more unreal horrors of the "Sea of
Darkness."

The next decade saw better results. In 1434
Gil Eannes, one of the boldest of the captains who
were growing up in Prince Henry's service, when he
reached Boyador, sailed far out to sea, doubled the
cape, and, returning to the coast, landed and gath-
ered "St. Mary's roses," and took them home to
the prince as a memento of the "farthest South." '
The greatest barrier had been passed, that of super-
stitious dread, and almost every voyage now brought
its result of progress farther southward. Soon the
botmdaries of Islam were passed, for natives were
found on the coast who were not Mohammedans.

The third decade saw still further advance. In
1441 Nuno Tristam discovered Cape Blanco, the
"White Cape," glistening with the white sand of
the Sahara. In 1445 Dinis Diaz, of Lisbon, saile(?
at last beyond the desert and reached Cape Verd,
the "Green Cape," ^ fifteen htmdred miles down
the African coast, and as far from Gibraltar south
as Constantinople was east. By this time the cap-
tains of Prince Henry had reached the fertile and
populous shores where the western Soudan borders
on the Atlantic Ocean, and a new obstacle to further
exploration revealed itself in the attraction and the
profit of the slave-trade.

' Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. ix.
' Ibid., chap. xxxi.

I44I] PORTUGUESE PIONEERING 67

The first " Moors " or negroes were some ten or
twelve captured and brought home in the year
1 44 1 by An tarn Gongalvez, to satisfy the curiosity
of the prince and to obtain information useful for
the further prosecution of the voyages. Others were
soon brought for other purposes. Of the two hun-
dred and thirty-five- Moors who made up the first
full cargo of human freight, the prince gave away the
fifty-six which fell to his share as one-fifth, although
it is recorded with the somewhat grotesque piety of
the fifteenth century that "he reflected with great
pleasure on the salvation of their souls that before
were lost." *

There is no reason to believe that Henry planned
or wished the development of a trade in slaves ; *
but labor was scarce on the great estates of southern
Portugal, slaves were in demand, and very different
desires from those of the prince might be gratified
by capturing and bringing to the slave-market of
Lagos the unfortunate natives of the newly discov-
ered coasts. Hence one expedition after another,
sent out for purposes of discovery, returned, bring-
ing tales of failure to reach farther points on the
coast, but laden with human booty to be sold. Pri-
vate adventurers sought and obtained the prince's
permission to send out caravels, and these also

' Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. xxv.

' The statement to the contrary in the Cambridge Modern
Hist., I., 10, is not deducible from any contemporary evi-
dence.

VOL. I. — 7

68 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1441

brought home cargoes of slaves. Only the most
vigorous pressure, exercised on the choicest spirits
among the Portuguese captains, served now to carry-
discoveries farther.

Nevertheless, a basis of interest in distant voy-
ages had been f otmd which had not existed before ;
and the further exploration of the African coast was
certain, even in default of the personal enlighten-
ment and enthusiasm of the Navigator. The ex-
peditions sent by the prince and private voyages
made familiar to the mariners of Portugal two thou-
sand miles of coast instead of six hundred as of old.
Guinea was eventually reached.

In 1455 the Venetian Cadamosto entered into
Henry's service; and, followed closely by Diego
Gomez, discovered the Cape Verd Islands and passed
so far around the shoulder of northwestern Africa
as not only to reach the ends of the caravan routes
from Morocco, and to open up trade in gold, ivory,
and the products of the Guinea coast, but to sug-
gest that there was open sea now all the way east-
ward to India. The temporary disappointment of
finding that this was not true was left to the succes-
sors of Prince Henry, for his death occurred in 1460.
But the work was still carried on by his nephew,
Alfonso v., and by the next king of Portugal,
John II.

A series of bold pilots now passed beyond the
whole Guinea coast, crossed the equator, and
made their way down almost two thousand nailes

I486] PORTUGUESE PIONEERING 69

more of the African coast. The belief became as-
sured that "ships which sailed down the coast of
Guinea might be sure to reach the end of the land by
persisting to the south"; and stone pillars six feet
high were ordered to be erected at landing-places to
indicate possession and mark the stages of the route
to the Indies.

Finally, in i486, Bartholomew Diaz, the third
member of his family to take part in the discov-
eries of Prince Henry, with two vessels sailed the
remaining distance on the coast, and passed so far
to the eastward that his sailors mutinied and re-
fused to go farther. Diaz then suddenly realized
that, notwithstanding the necessity for his return,
he had at last found the passage-way to India
dreamed of through so many ages and sought for
at such heavy cost.

A period of still greater discoveries was already
at hand. " It was in Portugal," says Ferdinand Co-
lumbus, "that the admiral began to surmise that if
men could sail so far south, one might also sail west
and find lands in that direction." The Portuguese
were so wedded to the search for the southeast route,
and it was so nearly achieved at this time, that their
interest was but languid in the plans for a search to
the westward. Another people therefore took it up,
and soon the exploration of the New World was in
full tide, and the period of pioneer effort passed into
the era of great accomplishment.

MeanwMe Pprtugal saw tUe fruition Qi Pringe

70 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1480

Henry's work in the circumnavigation of Africa.
Ten years later than the exploit of Diaz, in 1496, a
fleet sailed from Lisbon under Vasco da Gama which
was destined to round the Cape, make its way up
the east coast of Africa till famiUar parts of the
Indian Ocean were reached ; then to sail across to
India, cast anchor, and secure cargo in Calicut and
many other ancient ports; and to return thence
safely to its port of departure.' The Portuguese
search for a new route to the lands of Eastern prod-
ucts was thus successful; and once fotmd, this path
became familiar. The fleet of Cabral in 1500 im-
mediately followed that of Da Gama, and, driven
to the westward as it sailed to the south, dis-
covered Brazil, as a casual incident of its success-
ful voyage to India. Thus, if the voyage of Co-
lumbus had never been undertaken, America would
have been found within less than a decade.

Albuquerque followed around the southeast pas-
sage in 1503; a permanent traffic between Portugal
and India was established, and thereafter yearly
fleets of merchant and war vessels roimded the Cape.
Soon most of the points of vantage of the Indies
were in Portuguese control — Ormuz, Diu, Goa,
Ceylon, Malacca — and the enterprising little western
state had trade settlements in Burma, China, and
Japan. ^ The private path of the Portuguese ul-

• The First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, in Haklu}rt Soc, Pub-
lications, 1898.

•Hunter, Hist, of British India, I., 110-133.

POBTUfiUESE DI8C0VEB1ES

ON THE COAST OF AFBICii

1810 - 1«98

SCALE OF MILES
« IW BOO (M T«n

BOTIWff*'CO-f I*-'-

U.|j>rf. S<>^ t««r 1«~

0* Loicliada. 1&* But SO* Aom 8(K OrMa«llib'<'iO'

72 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1434

timately became the public highway of the nations.
Spain, Holland, England, and Prance sent fleets
around the Cape of Good Hope, and made use of
the route to the East which the Portuguese had dis-
covered.

The actual progress of scientific knowledge and
practical equipment for navigation made at Sagres,
Lagos, Lisbon, and on the seas, during the voyages
sent out by Prince Henry and his immediate suc-
cessors, is unforttmately not accurately known ; but
some glimpses of it may be obtained. " In his wish
to gain a prosperous result of his efforts," says an
almost contemporary historian, "the Prince de-
voted great industry and thought to the matter, and
at great expense procured the aid of one Master
Jacome from Majorca, a man skilled in the art of
navigation and in the making of maps and instru-
ments, and who was sent for, with certain of the
Arab and Jewish mathematicians, to instruct the
Portuguese." *

When trained Italian navigators applied to Henry,
as was the case with the Venetian Cadamosto, they
were readily taken into his service, and he sent word
by them that he would heartily welcome any other
such volunteers. When the prince's work fell into
the hands of his nephew, King John, the latter ap-
pointed the German Behaim, of Nuremberg, who
lived in Lisbon from 1480 to 1484, to be one of the

' De Barros, Decadas da Asia, quoted in Beazley, Henry the
Navigator, 161.

1489] PORTUGUESE PIONEERING 73

four members of his " Junto de Mathematicos." It
was Behaim who introduced to the Portuguese the
improved ephemerides calculated by the German
Regiomontanus, and printed at Nuremberg in 1474.
He also improved the astrolabe and the staff, drew
charts and made globes, and accompanied one of
the West-African expeditions in 1489.'

Diego Gomez, one of Henry's captains, remarks, in
describing his voyage of 1460, "I had a quadrant
with me and wrote on the table of it the altitude of
the arctic pole, and I found it better than the chart ;
for though you see your course of sailing on the
chart well enough, yet if once you get wrong it is
hard by map alone to work back into the right
course." ^ Azurara also contrasts the incorrect
charts with which Henry's sailors were provided
before their explorations with those corrected by
the later observations.' His navigators, therefore,
used the compass, the quadrant, and carefully con-
structed charts ; but their advances in the use of this
equipment are not recorded.

The first portolano to note the discoveries on the
coast of. Africa made by the Portuguese was that
of Gabriele de Valsecca, of Majorca (1434-1439).
A map drawn by Andrea Bianco, of Venice, at Lon-
don in 1448, seems to have been intended especially
to indicate them, as it gives twenty-seven new names

' Major, Prince Henry ike Navigator, 326-328.

• Quoted, in Beazley, Henry the Navigator, 297, 298.

' Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, cbap. Ixxvi.

74 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1457

along the coast to the south of Cape Boyador. But
the map which was distinctively the outcome of the
new discoveries was the so-called " Camaldolese map
of Fra Mauro," drawn by Mauro, Bianco, and other
draughtsmen during the year 1457, in the convent
of Murano in Venice. King Alfonso of Portugal
himself paid the expenses of its construction, and
sent charts showing the recent discoveries. It in-
cluded all the new knowledge obtained up to that
time by Prince Henry's explorers. It is the first
large map drawn with the exactness and the reliance
on observed facts of the portolano, notwithstanding
the fact that it included a larger part of the earth's
surface in its field than any earlier map. Though
disappointing in some respects, it stands in the fore-
front of improved modem maps, and not unworthily
represents the advance made in the knowledge of
the world's surface as a result of the Portuguese
efforts up to that time.

The scientific importance of the discoveries of
the Portuguese and the intellectual alertness of
the Italians are aUke illustrated by an incident that
occurred at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella in
1 49 1. Columbus having explained to the sover-
eigns his scheme for a western voyage to reach the
Indies, most of the Spanish prelates who were pres-
ent declared his ideas heretical, supporting them-
selves upon the authority of St. Augustine and
Nicholas de Lyra. Alessandro Geraldini, an Italian,
preceptor of the royal children, who was standing be-

iSoo] PORTUGUESE PIONEERING 75

hind Cardinal Mendoza at the time, "represented to
him that Nichola^ de Lyra and St. Augustine had
been, without doubt, excellent theologians but only
mediocre geographers, since the Portuguese had
reached a point of the other hemisphere where they
had ceased to see the pole-star and discovered an-
other star at the opposite pole, and that they had
even found all the countries situated under the
torrid zone fully peopled." *

In ship-building Henry and his navigators made
positive progress. The Venetian Cadamosto testi-
fies that "his caravels did much excel all other
sailing ships afloat." Many varieties of vessels are
mentioned in the records of Prince Henry's time —
the barca, barinel, caravel, nau, fusta; the galley,
galiot, galeass, and galleon ; the brigantine and car-
rack. Of all these the caravel became the favor-
ite for the long, exploring voyages. It was usually
from sixty to one hundred feet long and eighteen
to twenty-five feet broad, and of about two hundred
tons burden. It had three masts with lateen sails
stretched on the oblique yards which were swung
from the masthead, and was steered, at least partly,
by the turning of these great, swinging sails.^ John II.
encouraged the immigration of English and Danish
ship-builders and carried improvements still further.

• Mari^jol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle, 96.

' Revista Portuguesa Colonial (May 20, 1898), 32-59, quoted
in Beazley, Introduction to Azurara's Chronicle (Hakluyt Soc,
Publications, 1899, p. cxiij.

76 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1470

The greatest service to navigation done by Prince
Henry and his successors was that of providing a
school of sea-training. Not only were the whole
group of early Portuguese explorers, Henry's own
captains, "brought up from boyhood in the house-
hold 6i the Infant," * but there was scarcely a
name great in navigation in the succeeding period
which had not in some way been connected with
these voyages. Diaz, Da Gama, Albuquerque, Da
Cunha, Cabral, and the other captains who made the
Portuguese empire in the East ; Magellan, who found
still another way to India by the southwest; EstCT
vam Gomez, who sailed to the arctic seas ; Bartholo-
mew and Christopher Columbus, — ^were all taught or
practised in that school. Columbus lived in Lisbon
from 1470 to 1484, married there the daughter of
Bartholomew Perestrello, the discoverer and cap-
tain-general under Prince Henry of Porto Santo in
the Madeiras ; and, besides his voyages on the Med-
iterranean and to England and Iceland, went re-
peatedly to the coast of Guinea and lived for some
years in the Madeiras. Between 1477 and 1484 he
was regularly engaged in the maritime service of
the Portuguese crown.

Besides these great names, many navigators who
had only local reput^ or have remained nameless were
Portuguese in birth and training, and belonged to
the same maritime school. In 1502, close upon the
English grants of exploring and trading rights to the
* Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. xiii.

1527] PORTUGUESE PIONEERING 77

Cabots, came a similar concesdon to " Hugh Elliott
and Thomas Ashehiirst, merchants of Bristol, and
to John Gunsalus and Francis Fernandez, Esq., Sub-
jects of the king of Portugal."* The expedition of
the French captain De Gonneville to Brazil, in 1503,
was guided by two Portuguese pilots;* and twenty
of the sailors on Magellan's Spanish fleet of 1519,
besides the commander, were Portuguese.' Three
vessels from Dieppe, ttnder Portuguese pilotage, in
1527, rovmded the Cape of Good Hope and visited
Madagascar, Sumatra, and the coast of India.*

Actual skill in navigating vessels was increased
and developed to a high degree in the struggle with
the adverse maritime conditions on the coast of
Africa. The violent and disturbing currents, the
terrible surf of the beaches, the cyclones of the
Guinea coast, the trade-winds, which were always
head-winds to the mariners returning from the south-
west, the uncharted reefs and bars, all favored a
school of seamanship which trained the Portuguese
and Italian sailors to meet far worse difficulties than
those likely to confront them in the later and more
distant voyages to the westward.

Other experiences of the Portuguese were later
utilized by the Spaniards in their American colonies.
The slave-trade was a sombre precedent, followed

' Rymer, Fasdera. ' Pigeonneau, Hist, du Commerce, II., 50,
" Navarrete, Coleccion, II., 12.

* De Barros, Decadas da Asia (Madrid ed., 1615), 42 decade,
book v., chap, vi., 296.

78 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1527

only too readily ; the system of grants of newly dis-
covered territory to captains or contractors who
would continue its discovery or conquest, exploit its
resources, and pay to the crown a large share of its
products was followed, somewhat intermittently, in
the West Indies and Central and South America.'

One of the permanent lessons of the Portuguese
explorations was the need for and efEectiveness of
royal or quasi-royal patronage. Italian expeditions
bore no fruit and could bear none, for this require-
ment of patronage was but ill-afforded by her mer-
chant cities or even by her merchant princes. It
was impossible for Venice or Genoa to take a part
in the new discoveries and follow the new lines of
trade, not only because of their tmfavorable geo-
graphical position, not only because they were then
engaged in a desperate military and economic strug-
gle to retain their old Levantine trade conquests
and connections, not only because their wealth and
prosperity were deeply smitten by their mutual
struggles and their common losses from the repeated
blows of the Ottoman conquest, but because Italy
had no royai family to take tmder its patronage dis-
tant discovery, conquest, trade, and colonization.
Italy furnished most of the knowledge, the skill, and
the individual enterprise that made the great period
of explorations; but Portugal, under the leadership
of her great prince, was its true pioneer.

' Botime, Spain in America, chap. xiv.

CHAPTER V

THE SPANISH MONARCHY IN THE AGE OF
COLUMBUS

(1474-1525)

THE limits of Portuguese discovery and domin-
ion were soon reached ; and as the fifteenth cen-
tury advanced, Spain emerged not only as one of the
great powers of Europe but as the first exploring,
conquering, and colonizing nation of America. A
century before any other European state obtained a
permanent foothold in the New World, Spain began
the creation of a great colonial empire there, which
was soon occupied by her settlers, administered by
a department of her government, converted by her
missionaries, and made famous throughout Europe
for the wealth which it brought to the mother-
country. Such a work at such a time could only be
accomplished by a vigorous and rising nation, and,
in fact, Spanish advancement in Europe during this
period corresponded closely with her achievements
in America. There are few recorded instances of a
development so rapid and a transformation so com-
plete as that which took place in Spain tmder Fer-
dinand and Isabella, between 1474 and 1516.

79

1479] SPANISH MONARCHY 8i

For a career destined to be scarcely inferior to that
of any of the great empires of history, Spain had at
the beginning of this period an inadequate and un-
developed political organization. Even that royal
power which was the condition precedent to distant
conquest and colonial organization was new. Span-
ish national unity, royal absolutism, and religious
uniformity, which were famous throughout Europe
in the sixteenth century, were all of recent growth;
the centralized control over all parts of her widely
scattered colonies which Spain, above all colonizing
countries, exercised, was a power attained and a
policy adopted only at the moment of the acquisition
of those colonies.

When, in 1474, Isabella inherited the crown of
Castile, and, in 1479, her husband, Ferdinand, be-
came king of Aragon, they united, by close personal
and political bonds, what had formerly been near a
score of domains, variously joined or detached.

The king of Aragon had already incorporated
into a personal union, three separate countries— the
kingdom of Aragon, the kingdom of Valencia, and
the ancient principality of Catalonia, each with its
own body of representatives, its own law, its pecul-
liar customs, and its separate administrative sys-
tem. Castile was in name a poHtical unity, having
one monarch and one body of estates. Neverthe-
less, its provinces represented well-marked ancient
divisions. Leon had once been a separate kingdom,
and was still coupled with Castile itself in the full

82 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1479

title of that monarchy ; while Galicia, Asturias, and
the three Basque provinces were inhabited by peo-
ples of different political history, of different stock,
and living under different customs. Navarre, Gra-
nada, and Portugal, although within the Ibman
peninsula, were, at the accession of Ferdinand and
Isabella, still independent ; though the first was des-
tined to be united to Aragon, the second to Castile,
and even the third was to be amalgamated for eigh-
ty critical years with the greater monarchy. Thus
Spain was a congeries of states, joined by the mar-
riage bond of the two rulers of its principal divisions,
but by no means yet a single monarchy or a united
nation. It was the work of the Catholic sovereigns
to carry this unification far towards completion by
following common aims, by achieving success in
many fields of common national interest, and by
imposing the common royal power upon all diver-
gent and warring classes and interests in the various
Spanish states.

The personality of Ferdinand and Isabella was the
first great factor in the strengthening of the mon-
archy; for they were both individuals of authority,
energy, and ability.* Their union was the next
element; f or «the royal power of the united mon-
archies could be used to break down opposition in
either. Great achievements in Spain and in Eu-
rope increased their authority and power by the
prestige of success. Finally, the discoveries, con-

' Bergenroth, Col. Letters and State Papers, Spain, I., 34, etc.

iSoo] SPANISH MONARCHY 83

quests, and colonization of America gave a unique
position to the rulers of these distant possessions.
Not only did the products of the American mines
and American commercial taxation furnish a mate-
rial basis of strength and influence ; not only did a
great commercial marine and a great navy grow up
around the needs of intercourse with the colonies;
but the romantic interest of the discoveries, the wild
adventures, and the wonderful success of the con-
quistadores, and the extent of the colonies, filled the
imagination and gave an ideal greatness to the mon-
archs in whose name these conquests were made, and
by whom the New World was ruled.

There was need for all the authority of the new
sovereigns at the time of their accession in 1474.
Under the weak rule of Isabella's brother, Castile
had become a prey to disorder amounting almost to
anarchy ; in Galicia brigandage was so common as to
be unresisted, except by townsmen staying within
their walls ; in Andalusia private warfare among the
great noble houses had let loose all the forces of
disorder and violence ; Isabella's claim to the crown
was disputed and her rival upheld by foreign sup-
port.* The imited sovereigns met these difiSculties
with vigor, and the first two years of Isabella's rule
in Castile gave repeated instances of victorious war-
fare, of successful assertion of authority, and of harsh
justice. The turbulent districts were reduced to
order and the foreign invader expelled.

' Maurenbrecher, Studien und Skizzen, 45, 46.

VOL. I. — 8

84 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1477

The disorder in Andalusia seemed to demand per-
sonal action. In 1477, therefore, the two sovereigns
made a formal entry into Seville, and the queen
asserted her royal power in a way that could not
be misunderstood. In true patriarchal fashion she
established her tribunal in the Alcazar, sitting in a
chair on an elevated platform surrounded by her
cotincil and officers, in all solemnity and according
to traditional forms, listening to the complaints of
high and low, rich and poor, and granting summary
justice to all who claimed it, irrespective of rank or
means. Her decrees were carried out, ill-doers forced
to make amends, and turbulent nobles reduced to
promising to keep the peace. The visit of Isabella
to Seville may well be taken as the beginning of the
Work of the new monarchy in Spain.*

The next step towards an enforcement of royal
authority taken by the new monarchs involved the
acknowledgment of an institution seemingly inde-
pendent of the monarchy. Spanish cities and com-
munes had at various times formed hermandads,
leagues or brotherhoods, to enforce order, to support
themselves against great nobles, or to strengthen
themselves for the carrying out of some object of
common policy. Instances could be found in which
their combined strength had been used against the
king himself or his officials. On the other hand,
their united power had been used efficaciously to
form a sort of rural police, each city undertaking

• Perez, Los Reyes Catolicos in Sevilla, 1477-1478, p. 13.

1477] SPANISH MONARCHY 85

the protection of certain roads and stretches of
country.^

Two influential ministers, with the approval of
Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1476, obtained the agree-
ment of the Cortes of Castile and of a junta of the
towns for the formation of a santa hermandad,
or "holy brotherhood," for three years, for which
rules were drawn up, submitted to the monarchs, and
finally promulgated. The nobles gave a reluctant
assent to the requirements of these rules, so far as
they affected their estates and vassals. Altogether
two thousand horsemen were to be equipped, each
horseman supported by a body of one hundred
households. These were grouped into companies
under eight captains and placed in detachments at
certain distances along all the roads. Besides
the armed soldiers of the brotherhood, a whole
system of alcaldes was organized with exclusive
jurisdiction over certain kinds of offences. A
common treasury existed for the support of ex-
penses.

When any theft, assault, arson, or rape was dis-
covered or complained of, immediately the bells
were rung, and the nearest detachment of soldiers
of the brotherhood started on a pursuit which was
carried to the boundaries of the next district, where
its detachment took up the pursuit, and so on tin-
til the culprit was seized or the boundaries of the
kingdom reached. No town, house, or castle could
> Antequera, Hisf, de la Legislacwn Esfanola, i94-i95r.

86 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1476

refuse the right of search. When arrested, a de-
cision of the nearest alcalde was given within five
days. If convicted, the culprit had hand or foot cut
off or was put to death. The favorite mode of exe-
cution in earlier times had been to bind the offender
to a stake, and shoot him with arrows "till he died
naturally" ; but Isabella required that he should be
hanged first, and that only then might his body be
used as a target and a warning for others. The
rapidity of pursuit and the certainty of capture of
offenders, the promptitude of justice, and the bar-
barism of the punishments made a strong impres-
sion; and the combination of popular vengeance
with official sanction made the hermandad an effec-
tive form of national police. It was introduced
into Aragon in 1488.

Although this system seemed to emanate from
the people, the general control over it was preserved
by Ferdinand and Isabella by placing in influential
positions in its administration trusted ministers of
their own, and by joining themselves in its organi-
zation. When its work of insuring order was meas-
urably accomplished and the people began to com-
plain of its expense, the sovereigns were able to
transfer the military force into a contingent for the
Moorish war, and the treasury into an addition to
the commissariat for the same purpose. In 1498
it was reduced to the proportions of a petty and
inexpensive local police. It had proved itself, as
utilized by these strong monarchs, a means of ob-

1498] SPANISH MONARCHY 87

taining order and recruiting an army without cost
to the royal treasury.

The vigor of the royal administration, however,
expressed itself rather in the development of purely
royal organs than in those which were so largely
popular as the hermandad. A group of royal coun-
cils became, under Ferdinand and Isabella, the most
powerful instruments of the royal will, the most
effective means for obtaining additional power and
beating down all opposition. Early in the reign,
the old royal council, which traditionally consisted
of twelve members, including representatives of
each of the three orders of the state, was reconsti-
tuted so as to consist of one ecclesiastic, three nobles,
and eight or nine letrados, or lawyers.' The last
class, who made up its majority, were men learned
in the Roman law, and therefore devoted to the
idea of absolute monarchy; without connection
with the church or the nobility, and therefore in-
terested in the strengthening of the kingship against
both; shrewd, trained, capable, and hard working.

From this time forward the council, in constant
attendance on the king, well organized, provided
with a corps of clerks and officers, and holding
daily sessions, became the serviceable and effective
auxiliary of royal power. It had duties of consulta-
tion, advice, and in some cases decision, on matters
of internal and external policy, of legislation and
administration ; and, in fact, of action in the whole

' Cortes de los Antiguos Reinos, 112, etc.

88 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1476

sphere of the affairs of state. In time the council
was gradually subdivided into three bodies; the
Council of Justice, the Council of State, and the
Council of the Finances, whose fimctions were in-
dicated by their titles. The first of these was, in a
certain sense, the direct representative of the old
single royal council, and was frequently known as
the Council of Castile. Its president was always
considered the highest personage in the kingdom,
next the king; its members were of that class of
letrados whom the king could most securely rely
on, and to it fell the duty of enforcing the royal
supremacy as against all ancient claims, privileges,
and liberties.

In addition to these outgrowths from the prim-
itive council of the king, new councils were created
from time to time, analogous in powers, but holding
oversight over special spheres of national interest.
Some of these were temporary, others permanent.
Among them were the Council of the Hermandad,
which lasted only for the twenty-two years of the
existence of that institution; the Cotmcil of the
Suprema, or of the Inquisition ; the Council of the
Military Orders, the Cotincil of the Indies, and the
Council of Aragon.' These great administrative
boards were a characteristic part of the Spanish
system of government, a natural outgrowth of its
wide-spread fields of action.

The Council of the Indies was constituted in 15 11,

• Antequera, Hist, de la Legislacion Espanola, 347, 348.

igii] SPANISH MONARCHY 89

under the presidency of Juan de Fonseca, arch-
deacon of Seville, and was exactly analogous to the
other councils. It accompanied the king, and had
vinder him all ultimate control in policy, in juris-
diction, and in legislation over the Spanish posses-
sions in America and in the East. Its members
were habitually drawn from those men who had
had experience as public servants in the West Indies
or in the Philippines. The more direct oversight
of individual voyages to the Indies, the regulation
of details of colonial affairs, and a large sphere of
general activity were possessed by the powerful Casa
de Contractadon at Seville. A Bureau of Pilots
also existed, whose office it was to collect nautical
information, provide charts, and give assistance to
Spanish navigators. But both of these offices were
imder the control of the Council of the Indies.*

All these cotmcils were stronger in discussion than
in execution; their archives came to include a vast
mass of records and special reports on subjects fall-
ing within their respective fields, and their procedure
favored penetrating investigation and full debate.
But decision was hard to come at, and the con-
sciousness that final decision afte;r all rested with the
king paralyzed effectiveness. The custom of sub-
mitting all questions of poUcy to investigation by
the appropriate council became invariable in later
Spanish history, and it resulted in cumbrous in-

' J. de Veitia Linage, The Spanish Rule of Trade to the West
Indies, trans, by Captain J. Stevens, book I., chap. iii.

90 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1480

effectiveness. Interminable inquiry and discussion
ended frequently only in suspension of judgment or
a divided report. Points of policy of imminent
importance had to await a dilatory investigation and
equivocal conclusions. This impotence of the central
organs of government did not come in the time of
Ferdinand and Isabella and their immediate suc-
cessors, and the growing inefficiency of the councils
was long overcome by the resolution of the mon-
archs. Nevertheless the system was part of the
price paid for centralized government, acting in-
dependently of local initiative or independence.

The preponderance of power that was being ob-
tained by the sovereigns in the affairs of central
government by means of the royal councils was
gained in the local affairs of provinces, towns,
and commtmes, by the appointment of corregidores.
Such officials were appointed from time to time
by earlier sovereigns to represent them in various
towns, but the system had never been extended
widely. In 1480 the king and queen sent one or
more corregidores into every self-governing town
and city in Castile where such officials did not exist
already.* They were to act alongside of the older
local regidores and alcaldes as special representa-
tives of the crown, defending its rights and claims,
and fulfilling its duties of general oversight and
protection. As a matter of fact, the great work
they accomplished was the enforcement of royal
' Pulgar, Cronica de los Reyes, II., chap. xcv.

iSoo] SPANISH MONARCHY 91

supremacy over local privileges. Little by little
they extended their powers and encroached upon the
old bcal self-government, bringing to, bear all the
weight of the central government upotji local con-
ditions.* The steady pressure of the corregidores
was supplemented by the periodical visits of the
pesquidores, veidores, or inspectors, whose duty it
was from time to time to visit the various locali-
ties, examining into the conduct of the corregi-
dores and other officials, listening to complaints
against them, reporting on the revenues, condi-
tion of the roads, and other local conditions and
needs.

Councils, corregidores, inspectors, and various
other instruments of royal power fast sapped the
strength of older institutions and gave authority
and efficiency to the royal government; but they
were expensive and the crown was poor. More-
over, these institutions were only the permanent
elements in a policy which had a thousand tempo-
rary occasions of expense. Not even Ferdinand
and Isabella could carry out so vigorous a regime
unless provided with larger revenues. They de-
termined, therefore, to emancipate the crown from
its poverty. A few years after their accession they
felt themselves strong enough, supported by the
representatives of the towns, in the Cortes of Toledo,
to convoke the great nobles and churchmen of the
kingdom and demand from them an investigation

' Mari^jol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle, 172-174.

92 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1479

into the conditions under which the ancient domains
of the crown had been ahenated.* The Cardinal
Pedro de Mendoza and the queen's confessor,
Ferdinand de Talavera, were appointed to judge
of the propriety of the gifts of former sovereigns.
They did their work so adequately that pension
after pension, estate after estate, endowment after
endowment, were resumed by the crown. These
resumptions were principally to the loss of the great
noble families which had enriched themselves at
the expense of the crown. None, it is true, were
impoverished thereby, but a more normal relation
of comparative income between sovereign and sub-
ject was established in the process.*

Another, and more permanent addition to the
royal income was made by the absorption into the
crown of the grand masterships of the three miUtary
orders which existed in Castile, the Knights of Santi-
ago, of Calatrava, and of Alcantara. In the course
of three centuries of conquest from the Moslems
these orders had added estate to estate, territory to
territory, town to town, benefice to benefice, till
their possessions extended widely through Spain,
their income perhaps equalled, that of the king,
and their rule as landlords extended over almost a
million people, or one-third the population of Castile.'

' Pulgar, Cronica de los Reyes, II., chap, xcv.; Ca.lmeiro, In-
troduction to Cortes de los Antiguos Reinos, II., 63, 64.
' Marifijol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle, vi., 24.
' Vicente de la Fuente, Hist. Generale de Espana, V., 79.

1494] SPANISH MONARCHY 93

At the head of each of these orders was a grand
master, whose rich income, military following, and
prestige made him one of the greatest nobles in
Europe. There was reason in the claim that these
grand masterships were antagonistic to royalty.
Those who held them were the most turbulent nobles
of Spain, and in earlier times had been the leaders
in many a revolt against the crown. Their military
system was co-ordinate with, and sometimes in con-
flict with, that of the king ; their estates surround-
ed royal fortresses and sometimes excluded royal
forces from frontier districts.

In 1487 when the grand mastership of the order
of Calatrava became vacant, Ferdinand presented
himself in the chapter of the commanders of the
order, exhibited a papal bull giving him the admin-
istration of the order, and forced the assembly to
elect him grand master. In 1494, with less formal-
ity, the grand master of Alcantara was induced to
resign to the king his office, receiving, in recom-
pense, the dignity of archbishop of Seville. Two
years later, when the grand master of the order of
Santiago died, Ferdinand had himself elected with-
out difificulty.' Some time after this Isabella is-
sued a pragmatic decree, declaring that the grand
masterships of the orders should always be annexed
to the crown. These dignities were of great value;
not only did they bring in a princely income, but
they practically extended the estates and patronage

' Maurenbrecher, Studien und Skizzen, 54.

94 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1479

of the crown by all the broad lands, cities, and vil-
lages, the offices, honors, and benefices with which
the piety and chivalry of three centuries had en-
dowed the orders.

When once such foundations had been laid, the
crown extended rapidly its aggressions upon the old
powers, privileges, and customs of classes and local
bodies. To the nobility were interdicted the pos-
session of fortified castles, the practice of private
warfare, the use of artillery, the duel,' the use of
quasi-royal formulas in their documents,' and other
proud old feudal customs. No slight influence was
exercised upon the nobility by the increasing cere-
mony, size, and expenditure of the court, to which
they came to be attached in positions of nominal
service and honorable dependence, a position alto-
gether favorable to the supremacy of the monarchs
and unfavorable to the independence of the no-
bility.

Side by side with the consolidation of royal power
went the creation of the territorial unity of the
Spanish peninsula. The greatest step was the con-
quest of Granada. Rich, warlike, and proud, this
ancient Moorish state resisted the persistent attacks
of the Catholic sovereigns for eleven years, from
1 48 1 to 1492.' At least once Ferdinand wearied
of the struggle and the expense, and longed to turn

' Mari^jol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle, 35.
' Cortes de los Aniiguos Reinos, IV., ipi, 192.
' Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella, chap. ix.

ISI2] SPANISH MONARCHY 95

the efforts of the united Castilian and Aragonese
arms eastward, where the natural ambitions of his
own kingdom drew him towards Franqe, Italy, and
the islands of the Mediterranean.* Isabella's de-
termination, however, never wavered, and in 1492
Granada opened her gates to her conquerors, the
Moorish dynasty disappeared from Spain, and their
mountains and plains were added to the kingdom of
Castile.

In the very next year Ferdinand reunited to his
dominions, by amicable treaty with the king of
France, the two northern provinces of Catalonia,
Cerdagne and Roussillon — ^which had been detached
for thirty years. There remained Portugal and
Navarre. The first of these independent kingdoms
had already attained a degree of national inde-
pendence, power, and wealth which prevented its
absorption, though it was in the days of Spain's
greatest power to be dragged for eighty years in her
train. Navarre, balanced on the Pyrenees, had long
been drawn alternately to France and to Aragon.
In the closing years of the fifteenth and the opening
years of the sixteenth century, neutrality became im-
possible ; and in 1 5 1 2 a powerful Spanish army under
the duke of Alva marched into Navarre ; its castles
and towns capitulated, the latter under a promise
of the maintenance of their privileges ; the king re-
treated to the trans - Pyrenean part of his kingdom,
and Ferdinand added to his other titles that of king

• Mari€jol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle, 63.

96 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1479

of Navarre.' By the time of the death of Ferdi-
nand, the unity of the peninsula, except for Portu-
gal, was complete. The immediate successors of
the Catholic sovereigns wore the crowns of all the
countries that ever have made part of Spain.

Just as Spain became territorially one, she was
made homogeneous in race and religion so as ulti-
mately to become a land of one race and one faith.
The Jew and the Moor were both destined to dis-
appear ; every element alien in blood and every ele-
ment unorthodox in religion to be driven out
of the land. This complete purity of blood and
unity of belief were only attained long afterwards,
in a period when Spain had little else than her or-
thodoxy to pride herself upon, but they were well
begvm in the time of the Catholic sovereigns.

The Jews were the first to meet with serious
persecution. They were very numerous: in one
town, Ciudad Real, an assessment at one time
showed 8828 heads of families, or other adult males
of the Jewish race.^ They were famous as phy-
sicians and merchants, and, as in other lands,
were often money-lenders. From time to time
waves of religious antagonism swept over the coun-
try, and tmder the terrible pressure of slaughter
and imminent danger, great numbers of Jews
were baptized and became con versos, or "New
Christians." These converts, freed from the dis-

• Boissonade, Reunion de la Navarre d la Castille.
» Lea, The Moriscos of Sfam, 383.

i48ol SPANISH MONARCHY 97

abilities of their religion and gifted with superior
natural abilities, rapidly attained to high positions
in church and state. Intermarriages between the
New Christians and those of CastiUan blood were fre-
quent, and many families of great eminence had
Jewish blood in their veins.

The converses were under constant suspicion of
being Christians only formally ; it was believed that
iti their hearts they retained their ancient faith
and secretly performed its rites ; they were credited
with antagonism to Christianity and suspected of
practising sorcery to destroy the "Old Christians."
There was some basis for the first, at least, of these
suspicions. Many doubtless failed to abandon com-
pletely their ancestral ceremonies; and not only
they but even some Old Christians felt the attraction
of their mysterious and ancient traditions.* The
practice of Jewish rites, known as "Judaizing,"
under the wide relationships and high connections
of the conversos, long went on unchecked. In 1475
the pope conferred on his legate in Castile full in-
quisitorial powers to prosecute and punish "Ju-
daizing" Christians; but the mandate was not car-
ried out.^

In 1480, however, the Catholic sovereigns re-
quested from the pope authorization for the ap-
pointment by themselves of inquisitors to root out
this heresy. A bull for the purpose was grarited

' Mari^jol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle, 44.
' Lea, in Am. Hist. Rev., October, 1895, p. 48.

98 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [14S0

them, and on September 27, 1480, the Spanish In-
quisition was established at Seville. In January,
1 48 1, it began its work, and branches were gradually-
established in other centres till it had extended its
tribunals to cover all Castile. Its work proved
heavy ; in its first eight years the tribunal of Seville
alone put to death seven hundred persons and con-
demned five thousand more to severe penalties.*
One of the great councils of the realm was formed to
direct its operations, at the head of which was the
inquisitor-general. The third in the line of inquis-
itors-general extended the Inquisition to America.

The authority of the Inquisition extended only
over baptized persons; and, therefore, Jews who had
never given up their religion, although under many
disabilities, were not subject to its jurisdiction ; but
immunity to unconverted Jews could not consist-
ently be continued during a harsh persecution of Ju-
daizing Christians, and from the commencement of
the work of the Inquisition pressure was brought to
bear by clergy and populace upon the sovereigns
to force all Jews either to be baptized or to emi-
grate.' The policy of enforced conversion or ex-
pulsion was steadily advocated by the inquisitors;
since, if the Jews were baptized they would come
under the jvuisdiction of the Inquisition ; if they left
the country, Spain would be free from the reproach
of harboring heretics.

' Bernaldez, Hist, de los Reyes, chap, xliv., quoted by Mari^jol,
L'Espagne, 46. ' Lea, Religious History of Spain, 437.

1492] SPANISH MONARCHY 99

Isabella seems to have hesitated to carry out this
policy, as well she might. But the tide of popular
hatred rose higher and higher, driven on by the
famous case of El Santo Nino de la Guardia, the
reputed murder of a Christian child by Jews to
obtain its heart for purposes of sorcery.' Finally,
by the edict of March 31, 1492, all Jews were ex-
pelled from Spain, as they had been from England
as early as 1290, and successively from many other
states of Europe at intervening periods.' The same
year that saw the discovery of America and the
capture of Granada saw the expulsion of some one
htmdred thousand Jews and the enforced baptism
of the fifty thousand that remained.' One great
and costly step had been made in the direction of
unity of race and religion in Spain.

The Moors in Spain were still more numerous than
the Jews, though more concentrated. Through
the later mediaeval centuries, in the process of recon-
quest, Moorish populations which made formal sur-
render were preserved as subjects of the Christian
kings; while those that were taken prisoners in
battle were retained as slaves. Both classes, pro-
tected by the laws in their religion and their prop-
erty,* frequently still practised their Mohammedan ,

' Lea, Religious History of Spain, 437-468.

' Amador de los 'R\os,LosJudios de Espana y Portugal, III. ,603.

' Isidore Loeb, in Revue des Etudes Juives, 1887, p. 182,
quoted in Lea, The Moriscos of Spain, 16.

* Las Siete Partidas, pt. i., tit. v., ley 23, etc., quoted in Lea,
The Moriscos of Spain, 2.

V»L. I. — »

loo EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1492

faith. Practically the whole rural population of
the kingdom of Valencia was Moorish, and in the
cities of the southern provinces of Castile they made
a considerable part of the population. In the cen-
tury and a half of peace just preceding the war with
Granada they increased steadily in numbers and in
economic value to Spain.

The conquest of Granada, in 1492, brought the
population of that country under the rule of Ferdi-
nand and Isabella. The old body of Moorish sub-
jects of Aragon and Castile, now reinfprced by all
the teeming population of the south, made an ele-
ment of the population of united Spain of infinite
promise. They were skilful, industrious, temper-
ate, and moral; their agriculture and manufactures
were far more advanced than those of the Christians ;
and they were more laborious, thrifty, and peaceable.
They might be reHed upon to furnish through tax-
ation a steady and abundant income to the crown,
and through their labor to make the landed estates
of the nobles profitable.

Though treaty guarantees and the permanent
material interests of the new sovereigns alike fa-
vored the protection and pacification of the Moorish
inhabitants of Granada, other motives antagonized
this policy. Religious enthusiasm and racial an-
tipathy, as well as immediate greed, urged a dis-
regard of the terms of capitulation, or, at least, such
an interpretation of them as would drive the Moors
either to conversion or exile. The latitudinarian-

1 525] SPANISH MONARCHY loi

ism of earlier centuries had disappeared. The whole
spirit of the time was now averse to tolerance or
anything approaching local, national, or religious
independence. At first, under Talavera, a sincere,
earnest, and partially successful effort was made to
convert the Moors individually to Christianity ; but
soon a demand arose and became ever more urgent
that the Moors, like the Jews, should be given the
simple and immediate alternative of baptism or
exile. In 1500 this policy was adopted in Granada;
in 1502, by royal edict signed by Isabella, it was ap-
plied to all the dominions of the Castilian crown;
and in 1525 it was promulgated in Aragon, Valencia,
and Catalonia. As a result many of the Moors em-
igrated to Africa; the rest became Moriscos — that
is to say. Christians in religion, although Moors in
blood. Thus religious uniformity was attained in
Spain. In theoiy, at least, every inhabitant of the
united kingdom was a Catholic Christian. But the
enforced Christianity required of the Moriscos pro-
duced oiily an outward and imperfect conformity,
and the problem of this alien element remained long
unsolved to plague the Spanish monarchs, and to
bring untold misery on the Moriscos themselves.*

Thus the fragmentary and embryonic group of
Iberian nations of the fifteenth century grew into
the powerful Spanish monarchy of the sixteenth.
A single centralized government was created, and
the divided currents of national life were gathered by

' Lea, The Moriscos of Spain, chaps, v.-xi.

I02 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1479

it into one great stream. Notwithstanding many
survivals of mediaeval conditions and later reversions
to the earlier type, internal warfare and domestic
disorder disappeared from the peninsula, and diver-
gence of foreign policy no longer weakened its in-
fluence in Europe. The absolute monarchy was
founded, and whatever there was of ability, enter-
prise, and wealth in Spain came imder its control.
The sovereign was in a position to give patronage to
voyages of adventure, to legislate for distant do-
minions, and to make the most remote Spanish
possessions contributory to the general objects of
Spanish policy.

Spain stood out as one of the greatest states in
Europe. With her close approximation to a united
nationality, her all-powerful monarchy, her highly
elaborate bureaucracy, her increasing body of law,
soon to be codified into a great wholp, her nascent
literature, her military gifts and resources, the wealth
and romance of the Indies, she stood on the threshold
of the sixteenth century with imposing power and
dignity. The part she played during that century
was a conspicuous one. Her generals and her troops
became the most famous and the most successful in
Europe. Her diplomatic representatives were able
to take the highest tone and to win most successes
among European states, in the international intrigues
of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
She was rich er;iough to pension or bribe the ministers
and courtiers of half the courts of Europe, and even

ISI6J SPANISH MONARCHY 103

to dazzle the eyes and impose upon the judgment of
such a sovereign as James I. of England. Her litera-
ture and her art flourished with her political great-
ness, and she had all the external appearance of a
great, cultured, and flourishing nation.

We know now, as was recognized by some observers
even then, that Spain was a hollow shell. After the
reign of Charles V. population stood stationary, or
decUred, and wealth decreased. Philip II. enforced
orthodoxy, excluded all non-Catholic literature, and
summoned home all Spanish students in foreign
universities, thus dooming Spain to intellectual
stagnation. She exhausted her resources in unwise
or hopeless foreign struggles, like the war of con-
quest of Italy and the effort to reconquer the Neth-
erlands; she wasted her peculiar opportunities b^'
driving from her borders the enterprising Jews and
industrious Moriscos, and by allowing commerce
and finance to fall into the hands of foreigners.
But most of these errors were, at the death of Ferdi-
nand, in 1516, still in the future; and the Spanish
monarchy and nation had much of the reality as
well as the appearance of greatness.

CHAPTER VI

POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF CENTRAL EUROPE
(1400-1650)

AMERICA'S political and social institutions are
unquestionably founded upon those of England,
and these will be described in their proper place in
this volume. But the institutions of three other Eu-
ropean nations were for considerable periods domi-
nant in certain parts of the New World, and have left
an impress that is even yet far from being effaced.
They are those of Spain, France, and Holland.

Since the Indies were, in theory, an outlying part
of the kingdom of Castile, they naturally reflected
the recently achieved absolutism of the Spanish mon-
archy. This absolutism in Castile extended over all
fields — legislation, judicial action, and administra-
tive control. Although the most formal and per-
manent statutes were drawn up by the king with
the consent of the cortes, or even at its request, yet
the custom of issuing pragmatica, or ordinances
enacted by royal authority, grew until their provi-
sions filled a large sphere. They were promulgated
on all sorts of subjects, and became, immediately
on their issue, authoritative rules of action. The

104

i^o] EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS 105

whole subsequent legislation for the American colo-
nies, springing as it did from the mere will of the
sovereign, was an outcome of this custom.

The king was the fotmtain of justice, in whose
name or by whose grant all. temporal jurisdiction
was exercised. In no country of Europe was this
principle more clearly acknowledged than in Spain,
Immediately attending upon him was an audiencia,
or group of judicial officers whose duty it was to
carry out these ftmctions in the most immediate
cases. The audiencia was a high court of law and
equity, deciding both civil and criminal cases ; and,
as is always the case in early stages of government,
exercising much administrative and financial con-
trol through the forms of judicial action. The in-
sufficiency for these ends of a peripatetic body bound
to follow the king in all his movements was early
recognized, and the royal audiencia was made sta-
tionary at Valladolid. Later a second such court
was established, first at Ciudad Real, jbhen, after the
conquest, at Granada. Ultimately others were or-
ganized in Galicia, Seville, Madrid, Burgos, and
several additional centres. The system was early
transported and extensively developed in the Amer-
ican possessions,- where twelve independent audien-
cias existed. There, as at home, this court system
gradually superseded the more individual and mil-
itary rule of the adelantado, which had been charac-
teristic of the early conquest period.^

' Moses, Spanish Rule in America, 66, etc.

io6 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1479

The adelantado was the representative of the ad-
ministrative powers of the crown. Five such offi-
cials in the fifteenth century governed respectively
the provinces of Castile, Leon, GaUcia, Andalusia,
and Murcia; another was appointed over Granada
when it was conquered; and still another admin-
istered the temporal affairs of the vast estates of the
archbishopric of Toledo. Their duties were partly
military, partly civil, and under them were subordi-
nate royal officers with a great variety of titles such
as sarjento mayor, alferez real, alcalde. The title of
adelantado was naturally given to Columbus, Pizarro,
and several of the other early conquistadores as the
nearest equivalent to their position as civil and
military governors of the wide-spreading, newly con-
quered lands of America.'

The supremacy of the croAvn extended to the
church as well as to the state. Spain, in the Middle
Ages and far into modem times, presented the
anomaly of a nation and government most ardently
devoted to orthodox Christianity and to the church,
and yet jealous and impatient of the powers of the
Pope. In 1482 Isabella protested against the use of
a papal provision for the appointment of a foreign
cardinal to a Castilian bishopric,' and claimed a
right to be consulted in all ecclesiastical appoint-
ments. A serious contest ensued, the ultimate
result of which was that the queen obtained a
clear right of appointment, which, in the reign of
' Moses, Spanish Rule in America, 68, 69, 112.

i6so] EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS 107

Charles V., was formally recognized as such by the
pope.'

This position of the monarchs at home made easy
and natural the adoption of their position of supreme
patrons of the church in Spanish America. In the
colonies conquered, settled, and Christianized under
their influence they had a completeness of control,
not only over appointments, but over the establish-
ment of new church centres and the disposition of
the titles to ecclesiastical property generally, which
was quite unknown anywhere in Europe.

The supremacy of the crown in Spain is evidenced
in no way more markedly than by its entire freedom
from dependence on the military and landed classes
of the country. Yet the nobility were numerous,
rich, and distinguished. In the sixteenth century
there were twelve dukes, thirteen marquises, and
thirty-six counts in Castile, some of whom had
princely estates and power. The heads of such
families as that of Mendoza or Guzman or Lara or
Haro or Medina Celi were among the greatest men
in Europe. Yet the highest of these nobles was still
at an immeasurable distance below the king. The
resumption of royal estates, the seizure of the grand
masterships, the enforcement and extension of all
the latent powers of the monarchy had freed the
Spanish kings from all danger of control by the
great nobility.

' Vicente de la Fuente, Hist. Generate de Espana, V., 150,
quoted in Mari^jol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle, 28.

io8 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND fi479

The chief characteristic of the Castihan nobiHty,
however, was not its wealth, but its numbers. Next
in rank to the great nobles, or ricos hombres, were the
caballeros, the knights, and below them was a vast
number of hidalgos, mere gentlemen. In Castile all
were accounted gentlemen who were sons of gentle-
men, legitimate or illegitimate; all those who took
up their residence in a city newly conquered from
the Moors, providing themselves with horse and
arms without engaging in trade; those who lived
without trade in certain provinces aind cities which
had that privilege. Whether rich or poor, those
who belonged to the noble class had many privi-
leges : they paid none of the general taxes ; they were
free from imprisonment for debt ; they had the pref-
erence in appointments to office in state and church ;
they had precedence on all public occasions; and,
except in case of treason or heresy, they had the
privilege in case of execution of being decapitated
instead of hanged.'

These hidalgos and caballeros, many of them poor,
living on inadequate estates, in service to other no-
bles or in irregular ways in> the towns, furnished
promising material for volunteer forces in war, for
distant conquest, and for an expanding government
service ; but they were weak elements of economic
progress. The conquistadores of Spanish America,
the soldiers in Italy and the Netherlands, and the
drones of Spain were all to be found among the

' Mari^jol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et I sabelle, 278-284.

tb^o] EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS 109

teeming lower Spanish nobility and gentry. They
made admirable soldiers. With 9.II their pride and
all their indolence, Spanish gentlemen were not too
proud to fight, even in the ranks and afoot; or too
lazy to endure effort and privation when they were
for a military end. The Spaniards as a race were
then, as now, abstemious, and could make long
marches on a slender commissariat. Many of them
were used to the extremes of heat and cold of the
mountainous regions of their native country, and
were fitted for the most trying of long campaigns.
All the material was ready to the hand of the king
for use in his European campaigns, or to be let loose
for adventure in America. With this acknowl-
edged position of legislative, judicial, administra-
tive, and ecclesiastical supremacy at home ; with the
headship of a numerous, loyal, and warlike nobility ;
with the possession of a numerous trained official
class, it was easy for the Spanish monarchs to im-
pose a centralized and homogeneous system of
despotic government upon the distant and wide-
spread colonies of America.

The assertion of the absolute authority of the
king over the Indies was never neglected or allowed
tp lapse. The adventurers who discovered and ex-
plored the West Indies, Central and South America,
Mexico, and much of what is now territory of the
United States; the captains who conquered these
lands ; the governors who organized and ruled them ;
the colonists who occupied them — all drew their per-

no EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1479

mission so to act from the king, or if they went be-
yond their commissions quickly legitimated their ac-
tions by an appeal to him for an act of indemnity
and a more adequate commission. Foreigners were
by the edict of the king excluded from the Spanish
possessions, or permitted a narrow field of action
there ; the policy of the colonies in matters of trade,
relations with the natives, religion, and finance was
dictated by the king. Upon the advice of his Coun-
cil of the Indies he issued a continuous series of
rules and ordinances, and finally drew up for the
American possessions the "New Laws."

Yet supreme over her colonies as was the absolute
monarchy of Spain, a false idea of their condition
would be obtained if it were forgotten that the
monarchy was only one of the national institutions.
Other political habits of the people were firmly es-
tablished as well as that of subserviency to the
crown. Spain was the classic land of participation
of all classes in government through the cortes ; al-
most as old as the monarchy were the fueros, or fran-
chises and charters ; protected by these fueros, the
cities and towns had become numerous, powerful,
and almost self-governing ; and even rural communi-
ties had in many cases a complicated and semi-
independent system of control of their own affairs.

The cortes may be neglected here, since no such
representative body ever arose in the colonies ; but
the same is not true of local self-governing munici-
palities. Not only were they characteristic of

i6so] EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS iii

Spain, but analogous institutions were established
as a Spanish population grew up and was organized
in the Indies, where there was a strong tendency
to revert to practical self-government and thus to
defeat the centralizing policy of the monarchy.

Several hundred cities, towns, and rural com-
munities in Spain held fueros granted to them by
the king, a great noble, or some ecclesiastical body.
These charters in many cases dated from the
eleventh or twelfth century and conceded the most
extensive rights and privileges. Under them towns-
men could surround themselves with a wall, organ-
ize a military force, elect their own magistrates,
judge their own inhabitants, collect their own taxes,
pay only a fixed sum to the crown, and in other
ways live almost as a separate political body under
the general protection only of the king.'

Notwithstanding many differences among the
towns in size, character, and political privileges,
among those of Castile there was a certain similar-
ity of organization which may be described as fol-
lows, and may be looked upon as the type on which
all mvmicipalities in Spanish America were origi-
nally constructed.^

The citizens who possessed full political rights
were known in the most general sense as vecinos;
when acting as electors they were spoken of as form-
ing the concejo, cabildo, or council. The actual

' Antequera, Hist, de la Legislacion Espanola, 128-139.
* Bourne, Spain in America, chap. xv.

112 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1479

body which met and directed municipal affairs was
the ayuntamiento, made tip of the more important
magistrates and officials, of whom there was usually
a considerable number and variety. The alcaldes
exercised judicial functions, both civil and criminal;
the regidores had charge of the administrative work
of the community; the corregidores of its oversight
in the interest of the king ; the alguazil mayor com-
manded the military forces; the mayor domo had
the oversight of the town property. In some
towns one or more of the alcaldes had the title of
alcalde mayor, and held a presiding function. There
were various lower officials, such as alarifes, rayones,
and others in great variety.* The town officials
were in some cases appointed by the king, in others
elected by the vecinos, in still others divided between
royal and local appointment. They were usually
drawn from the body of the citizens, but in some cases
from gentlemen or even noblemen who had houses
in the town or simply owned property there.

This municipal organization and certain other an-
cient institutions tended to reappear in the colonies,
and thus to modify and limit that absolutism of the
central government which was without doubt the
leading characteristic of the Spanish colonial sys-
tem. The provincial interests of the colonists also
opposed the monarchy. The great distance of the
colonies from Spain, the rigidity of official custom,,
the difference between the interests of the colonists

' Antequera, Hist, de la Legislacion Espanola, App. ix., 542.

i6so] EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS 113

and the desires of the government, and the lack of
vigor at home combined to prevent a really effec-
tive control of the colonies. " Obedezcase, pero no se
cumpla" (Let it be obeyed, but not enforced) was
a saying sufficiently descriptive of the attitude of
the colonies towards unpopular decrees from home.

The servitude of men of dependent races, which
became such a fundamental characteristic of Span-
ish America, is an instance of this incompleteness
of control by the central government. Slavery was
a product of American conditions and was not gen-
eral in the mother - country. A small number of
Moorish slaves captured in war and of negroes im-
ported through Portugal were scattered through
Spain, but they did not form a class, and were pro-
tected rather than depressed by the law.^

Slavery in America was always distasteful to the
home government, and only reluctantly permitted
because of the apparent necessities of the case and in
the hope of ameliorating the lot of the Indians. The
whole plan of the asiento was based on the princi-
ple of regulating and limiting slavery. The shame-
ful extermination of the native races of the West
Indies is a long, sad history of kindly intentions and
wise regulations on the part of the home govern-
ment, made nugatory by the determined self-inter-
est and heartless cruelty of the colonists.^ The

' Lea, Tke Moriscos of Spain, 2.

' Lea, " The Indian Policy of Spain " (in Yale Review, August,
1899) ; Bourne, Spain in America, chap, xviii.

114 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1500

fervor of Las Casas could readily obtain from the
Spanish monarchs proclamations declaring the free-
dom of the Indians and even definite statutes pro-
viding for their good treatment ; but neither his fer-
vor nor the monarch's power could secure the en-
forcement of the laws or save the miserable natives.'

In theory the Spanish sovereigns ruled the Indies
with an autocratic sway. In practice the colonies
were governed by a bureaucracy or, more commonly,
allowed to drift. Yet by the forms of Spanish rule
they were deprived of all wholesome local freedom,
of all power of independent action, and of all delib-
erate choice of their own poUcy. They did not,
therefore, develop during their colonial period a
robust provincial life and character; and only late
and with great difficulty did they struggle into in-
dependence and obtain self-government.*

The institutions of France which were transferred
to the New World or which exercised a direct in-
fluence on its political development belong to a
period a century or a century and a half later than
those of Spain which have just been described.
Yet during that period there had been no essential
alteration in the general direction of political de-
velopment in France, and the system which Canada
reflected in the seventeenth century was a more
elaborate rather than a different system from that of

' Lea, " The Indian Policy of Spain " (,Yale Review, August,
1899), 133, 13s, 138, 141. i43> etc.

' Paxson, The Independence of the South-American Republics,
chap. i.

i6so] EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS 115

the sixteenth. This development had, indeed, been
in progress since the Hundred Years' War, and con-
sisted in the steady rise of the power of the central-
ized monarchy. In Spain we have seen a sudden
growth of absolutism and centralization within one
reign. In France the foundation of the absolute
monarchy was laid earlier, it was constructed more
uniformly, and the resulting edifice was more firm
and symmecrical.

The extension of the royal household, the sub-
division of the royal councils, the creation of the
parlements,' the appointment of governors of prov-
inces, bailiffs, and intendants, and the establish-
ment of a complicated hierarchy of financial and ju-
dicial officers and official bodies,' were processes
whieh arose from the fundamental conditions of
France and from the genius of her government. In
this development there were periods of rapid growth,
as that of Francis I. ; of temporary reaction, as that
of the religious wars. Of the periods of the former
class none was more important and definitive than
that which was in progress during the y^ars in which
Canada was struggling into existence — that is to
say, the reigns of Henry IV. and Louis XIII., from
1589 to 1643. By the latter date, that of the ac-
cession of Louis XIV., the work was accomplished.

France was, in theory and in practice, a despot-
ism. It was so in theory, for Louis himself could

• Lavisse, Histoire de France, V., pt. i., 215.
' Ibid., v., 247.

VOL. I 10

ii6 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1500

declare, "All power, all authority, are in the hand of
the king, and there can be none other in the king-
dom than those which be established there." The
epigram attributed to that monarch, "L'^tat, c'est
moi," was not an exaggerated description of the
royal functions, according to the views of the king
and of his most thoughtful ministers. "The ruler
ought not to render accounts to any one of what he
ordains. ... No one can say to him, 'Why d6
you do thus?' " said Bossuet. In his copy-book as
a child Louis XIV. was taught to write, "To kings
homage is due; they do what they please." In
practice the absolute power was no less a reality,
since by royal decree the king not only made war
and peace, determined upon foreign and internal
policy, established religion, and codified law, but also
disposed of the property of his subjects through
arbitrary taxation. A systematic scheme of gov-
ernment, in which all lines should converge upward
to the sovereign, could be drawn more justly for
France in the seventeenth century than for any
poHtical structure since the Notitia Dignitatum was
drawn up for the later Roman Empire.

The royal government was as simple territorial-
ly as it was in functions. It extended over all the
territory of France and of the French possessions
beyond the seas. Instead of a collection of prov-
inces, of some of which the king was direct ruler,
of others only feudal lord, as had been his position
in the fourteenth century, he was now king equally

i6so] EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS 117

over every one of his subjects in every part of his
dominions. The administration of this territory
had been transferred from its feudal lords to the
king by the appointment in the fifteenth century
of governors of the provinces, whose position was
almost that of viceroys.

An even more effective instrument of royal con-
trol was afterwards created in the form of the in-
tendants. Dating in their beginning from the mid-
dle of the sixteenth century, reintroduced by Henry
IV. in his reconstruction of France after the religious
wars,' these officials were settled upon by Richelieu
in the period between 1624 and 1641 as the prin-
cipal agents and representatives of royal power.
Eventually each province had its intendant along-
side of the governor, and these thirty-four officials
exercised the real government over France. They
were drawn not from the great nobility, as were the
governors, but from the petty nobility or purely
official class; they had no local connections or in-
terests apart from the crown which they served;
they could be removed at will; they exercised
powers only by consent and direction of the crown ;
they were, therefore, absolutely dependent. On the
other hand, they were habitually invested with
powers of almost unbounded extent. They could
withdraw cases from the ordinary judges and hear
and decide them themselves; they recruited and
organized the army; they had oversight of the
' Rambaud, Hist, de la Civilisation Frangaise, I., 537.

ii8 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1550

churches, the schools, roads, canals, agriculture,
trade, and industries ; they must see that peace was
kept; and they must watch over and report on the
actions of all other royal officials in the province,
including the governor. It was the intendant who
made the despotic government of the king a reality.
John Law declared, in a letter to D'Argenson, that
"this kingdom of France is governed by thirty
intendants."

This despotism undoubtedly made France great,
but it cost a terrible price. Like all supreme powers,
it was jealous, and suflferfed no other public institu-
tions to exist alongside of it. In competition with
its power all older bodies became weak. The
Estates Greneral did not meet again after 1614; the
parlements humbled themselves ; provincial, munic-
ipal, and communal governments dropped into
obscurity; the individual man, unless he was a
functionary, lost all habit of political initiative, in-
dependence, or criticism. The mighty machine of
the government was too vast, too complicated, and
too distant for the common man to do aught but
submit himself to it and lose much of his individual
force thereby.

Enforced orthodoxy in religion was a natural out-
come of the unity and symmetry of government;
hence, notwithstanding the large number of Hugue-
nots, the economic value of the Protestant element
in the population, and the tolerance which might
be expected from so enlightened a government, the

1 6 8s] EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS 119

Edict of Naxites was repealed in 1685, and, theo-
retically at least, all the population of France and
of the French possessions were after this time ortho-
dox Catholic Christians, thus again obtaining uni-
formity, but at the price of almost irreparable loss
of population and of activity of mind.

Yet alongside this supreme despotic government
had been preserved certain relics of feudalism.
The sovereigns and great ministers who had hum-
bled the aristocracy did not wish to humiliate it.
While depriving the nobles of all political power
they had carefully preserved to them their social
privileges. This was done partly by giving them a
favored position in the administration of the great
machine of centralized royal government, partly by
allowing the continuance of old feudal privileges.
To the nobles were reserved all the higher positions
in the army, navy, civil service, administration of
the provinces, and in the church;' and the govern-
ment of French possessions beyond the seas was in
almost all cases given to noblemen.

Of the feudal privileges of the nobility a number
were profitable in money or gratifying to pride.
Every landed noble had some degree of jurisdiction,
frequently that of "high, mean, and petty justice "
— that is to say, the right of tiying and settling a
large variety of judicial matters among his tenants ;
his right of punishment extending in some cases
even to the infliction of the death penalty. He had

' Rambaud, Hist, de la Civilisation Franfaise, II., 75-78.

I20 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1500

the right to receive certain payments upon every
sale or lease of the lands of any inhabita,nt of his
fief.; he received fees upon sales of cattle, grain, wine,
meat, and.other articles within the limits of his lands ;
he alone had the privilege of himting and fishing
or of collecting a fee for granting the privilege to
others ; and he alone could keep a dove-cote or a
rabbit-warren; he had the banalit^s — i.e., the right
of requiring all tenants on his estates to grind their
grain at his mill and to bake at his oven; he had
corv6es — rthe right to a certain amount of unpaid
labor from his tenants ; his land was exempt from
the taille, the most burdensome of taxes ; and he had
many other and diverse seigneurial rights, often,
indeed, more vexatious to the tenant than they were
profitable to the seigneur.' These rights of land-
holders were survivals from an earlier period; but
they were survivals which still had great value and
considerable vitality. Although permitted to exist
by the absolute monarchy, they were in reality an-
tagonistic to it in spirit, and might at any time, and
actually did, become a serious disadvantage to it.
Among the more primitive_surrovindings of Canada
these privileges of a landed aristocracy~ obtai ned
new life and vigor, and feudalism played a con-
spicuous if not a leading part in the troubled his-
tory of that colony.^

Of the political institutions of Holland not so

' Rambaud, Hist, de la Civilisation Franfaise, II., 84-90.
' Parkman, The Old Regime in Canada, chaps, xii.-xv.

1 6 so] EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS 121

much need be said, for New Netherland was a
commercial not a political creation, the factory of
a trading company, not a self - governing colony.
Yet, under the general control of the West India
Company, mtmicipal institutions were established
at Manhattan, and in the form of the patroonships
feudal powers were granted to large landholders
along the Hudson and Long Island Sound ; and in
both these cases the models were drawn in large
part from the home land. ,

The United Netherlands was a confederation of
seven provinces, Holland being far the most influ-
ential. But Holland itself, as was true of the others,
was in many respects a confederation of municipal-
ities. The peculiar history of the country had been
such that from a comparatively early period the
towns and cities had obtained charters from their
overlord, the count of Holland, or from lesser noble-
men, granting them the most extensive rights and
privileges. These rights had continued to be ex-
tended tin the power of the count within the towns
was narrowly restricted. His representative was the
schout, but that official exercised rather a prosecut-
ing and executing than an independent power, bring-
ing offenders before a town court, ^ and carrying out
its judgments.

The schepens who made up this court, with two
or more burgomasters and a certain number of
prominent citizens, organized as a council or vroed-

' Davies, History of Holland, I., 77.

122 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1650

schap, carried on the affairs of the city, making its
laws, exercising its jurisdiction, and administering
its finances in almost entire independence of the
central government.* The representatives of the
larger towns, along with the deputies of the nobles,
also made up the states of Holland, any one city
having the right of veto in any proposed national
action.^

Outside of the towns the open country was either
domains of the count, or fiefs held from him by
church corporations or nobles. On the latter many
old feudal powers survived through the sixteenth
century. The nobles exercised always low and
sometimes high jurisdiction, they taxed their own
tenants, they carried on private war with other
nobles, and they enjoyed an exemption from the
payment of taxes. The feudal conditions in these
rural domains and the highly developed internal
organization of the cities seem at first glance dia-
metrically opposed ; but, after all, their relation to
the central government was much the same, the
city being treated as a fief held by its coiuicil;" and
as a matter of fact it was these two institutions
which were introduced into New Netherland.*

' Fruin, Geschiedniss der Staatsinstellingen in Nederland,
68, 69. ' Davies, History of Holland, I., 85.

' Jameson, in Magazine of Am. Hist., VIIL, chap, i., 316.
* O'Callaghan, Documentary History of New York, I., 385-394.

C.o/ Go oc

CHAPTER VII

THE SYSTEM OF CHARTERED COMMERCIAL
COMPANIES

(1550-1700)

THE priority of Portugal and Spain in distant
adventure did not secure them from the com-
petition of the other nations of Europe, whose
awakening activity, ambition, and enterprise per-
ceived clearly the advantages of the New World
and of the new routes to the south and east. Al-
most within the first decade of the sixteenth cen-
tury an Englishman cries out: "The Indies are dis-
covered and vast treasures brought from thence
every day. Let us, therefore, bend our endeavors
thitherwards, and if the Spaniards or Portuguese
suffer us not to join with them, there will be yet
region enough for all to enjoy." ^ Soon England,
France, and the Netherlands were sending exploring
and trading expeditions abroad, and somewhat later
they all aimed at colonial empires comparable with
that of Spain. These colonial settlements were
chiefly made for commercial profit and depended

• Lord Herbert (i 5 1 1) , quoted in Macpherson, Annals of Com-
merce, n., 39.

123

124 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND (1400

closely on a new and peculiar type of commercial
organization, the well-known chartered companies.
It was these companies which established the greater
number of American colonies, and the ideals, regula-
tions, and administrative methods of corporate trad-
ing were interwoven into their political fabric.

Revolutions in commerce have been as frequent,
as complete, and, in the long run, as influential as
have been revolutions in political government. Eu-
rope in the fifteenth century had a clearly marked
and well-established method of international com-
merce ; yet before the sixteenth century was over
a fundamentally different system grew up, which
was destined not only to characterize trade during
the next two hundred years, but, as has been said,
to exercise a deep influence on the settlement and
government of colonies in general and on the policy
of their home governments. .

A complete contrast exists between international
trade in 1400 and 1600. The type of commerce
characteristic of the earlier period was carried on
by individual merchants; that belonging to the
later period by joint-stock companies. Under the
former, merchants depended on municipal support
and encouragement; under the latter they acted
under charters received from national governments.
The individual merchants of the earlier period had
only trading privileges; the organized companies of
the later time had political powers also. In the
fifteenth century the merchants from any one city

iSoo] COMMERCIAL COMPANIES 125

or group of cities occupied a building, a quarter,
or fondaco, in each of the foreign cities with which
they traded ; in the seventeenth they more usually
possessed independent colonies or fortified estab-
lishments of their own on the coasts of foreign
countries. In the earlier period trading operations
were restricted to Europe; in the later they ex-
tended over the whole world.

The essential elements of the organization of
trade at the period chosen for this description are
its individual character, its restriction to well-
marked European limits, and its foundation upon
concessions obtained by town governments.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century there
were five principal groups of trading cities, whose
merchants carried on probably nine-tenths of the
commerce of Europe. These groups were situated :
(i) in northern Italy; (2) in southern France and
Catalonia; (3) in southern Germany; (4) in northern
France and Flanders; (5) in northern Germany.
Two of them were in the south of Europe, and found
their most considerable function in transmitting
goods between the Levant and Europe; the Hanse
towns of northern Germany, at the other extremity
of Europe, carried the productions of the Baltic
lands to the centre and south; the Flemish and
south German groups, intermediate between the
two, exchanged among themselves and transmitted
goods from one part of Europe to another. There
were, of course, vast differences of organization

126 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1400

among the trading towns. Venice and Cologne,
Barcelona and Augsburg, Bruges and Lubeck were
too far separated in distance, nationality, the nature
of their trade, and the degree of their development
to have the same institutions. And yet there were
many similarities.

The city authorities obtained for their citizens
the privileges of buying and selling within certain
districts and under certain restrictions, and very
frequently of having their own warehouses, dwelling
houses, and selling - places. Examples are to be
found in the fondachi of Venice, Genoa, and other
Italian, French, and Catalan cities, established in the
Greek and Mohammedan districts of the eastern
Mediterranean, on the basis of grants given by the
rulers of those lands and cities. Just as character-
istic examples can be found in western Europe; in
London the " Steelyard " was a group of warehouses,
offices, dwellings, and court-yards owned jointly by
the towns of the Hanseatic League, and occupied by
merchants from those towns who came to England
to trade under the concessions granted them by the
English government.' The south Germans had
their fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice, and the north
Germans their "St. Peter's Yard" in Novgorod.
The Venetian merchants trading to the city of
Bruges usually met for mercantile purposes in the
house of a Flemish family named Van de Burse, a

' Lappenberg, Gesckichte des Hansischen Stahlhofes zu
London.

iSOo] COMMERCIAL COMPANIES 12^

name which is said to have given the word " bourse "
to the languages of modem Europe.'

The union among the merchants of any one city
or league was one for joint trading privileges only,
not for corporate investment or syndicated busi-
ness. Each merchant or firm traded separately and
independently, simply using the warehouse and
office facilities secured by the efforts of the home
government, and enjoying the permission to trade,
exemption from duties, and whatever other privi-
leges might have been obtained for its merchants
by the same power. The necessity for obtaining
such concessions arose from the habit of looking at
all international intercourse as to a certain degree
abnormal, and of disliking and ill-treating foreigners.
Hence the Germans in London, the Venetians in
Alexandria, the Genoese in Constantinople, for in-
stance, needed to have permission respectively from
the English, the Mameluke, and the Greek govern-
ments to carry on their trade. Although they
found it highly desirable for many reasons to hold
a local settlement of their own in those cities,
stich a possession was not a necessary accom-
paniment of the individual and municipally reg-
ulated commerce of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and
fifteenth centuries. Where but a few traders made
their way to any one market, and that only irre-
gularly, they lodged with natives, sold their goods
in the open market-place, organized no permanent

' Mayr, in Helmolt, History of the World, VII., 81.

128 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1400

establishment, and had no consulate. On the other
hand, where trade was extensive and constant, the
settlement was like a part of the home land located
in the midst of a foreign population.

As the fifteenth century progressed many influ-
ences combitied to bring about a change in this sys-
tem. The most important one of these influences
was the growth of centralized states in the north,
centre, and west of Europe. As Russia, Denmark,
Sweden, England, Burgundy, and France became
strong, the self-governing cities within these coun-
tries necessarily became politically weak; and the
trading arrangements they had made among them-
selves became insecure. Strong nationalities were
impatient of the claims of privilege made by for-
eigners settled or habitually trading in their cities;
the interests of their own international policy often
indicated the desirability of either favoring or oppos-
ing bodies of merchants, which in the time of their
weakness the governments had treated with exactly
the opposite policy; finally, the desire of their own
citizens for the advantages of their own foreign
trade often commended itself to the rulers as an
object of settled policy.* In other words, national
interests and municipal interests were often opposed
to one another.

Internal difficulties in many cities and internal
dissensions in the leagues of cities helped to weaken
the towns as guarantors of the trade of their citizens.
' gchanz, Englische HandelspoUUk.

i6oo] COMMERCIAL COMPANIES 129

As a result of these political influences, before the
fifteenth century was over the distribution of com-
merce was much changed and municipal control was
distinctly weakened. The Italian and the German
cities became less active and wealthy, while London,
Lisbon, Antwerp, and many other centres grew
richer. Individual cities and even leagues of cities
ceased to be able to negotiate with other municipal-
ities or with potentates to obtain trading privileges
for their citizens, since such matters were now pro-
vided for by commercial treaties formed by national
governments. One of the main characteristics of
earlier commerce, its dependence on city govern-
ments, thus passed away.

Then came the opening up of direct commerce by
sea with the East Indies, the discovery of America,
and the awakening of ambition, enterprise, and effort
on the part of new nations to make still further ex-
plorations and to develop new lines of commerce.
The old organization of commerce was profoundly
altered when its centre of gravity was shifted west-
ward to the Atlantic seaboard, and Europe got its
Oriental products for the most part by an ocean
route. Cities which had for ages had the advantage
of a good situation were now unfavorably placed.
Venice, Augsburg, Cologne, and a hundred other
towns which had been on the main highways of
trade were now on its byways. Many of these
towns made strenuous, and in some cases and for a
time successful, efforts to conform to the new con-

I30 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

ditions.' Vigorous industry, trade, and commerce
continued to exist in many of the old centres, and
some of the most famous "merchant princes" of
history, such as the Fuggers and the Medici, built
up their fortunes in the old commercial cities in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nevertheless,
these were the exception rather than the rule; and
such successes were due to financial rather than
commercial operations. In a general sense the old
commerce of Europe, so far as it followed its ac-
customed lines, suffered a grievous decline.

More important than the decay of the old method
was the growth of the new. A vast mass of new
trade came into existence ; spices and other Oriental
products, now that they were imported by the Port-
uguese and afterwards by Spanish, Dutch, French,
and English, by direct routes and by water carriage,
were greatly cheapened in price, and thus made at-
tainable by many more people and much more ex-
tensively consumed. The early explorers of Amer-
ica failed to find either the route to the East or the
Eastern goods which they sought, but they foimd
other articles for which a demand in Europe either
already existed or was ultimately created. Sea-fish
abounded on the northeastern coasts of America to
a degree that partially made up their loss to the dis-
appointed seekers for a northwest passage. Whale
oil and whalebone were obtained in the same waters.
Dye-woods, timber, and ship stores were fotmd on
• Mayr, in Helmolt, History of the World, VII., 64-66.

i6oo] COMMERCIAL COMPANIES 131

the coasts farther south. Furs became one of the
most valued and most permanent imports from
America. Gradually, as habits in Europe changed,
other products came to be of enormous production
and value. Sugar stands in the first rank of these
later products; tobacco, cocoa, and many others
followed close upon it. As colonists from Eu-
rope became established in the New World they
must be provided with European and Asiatic
goods, and this gave additional material for com-
merce.

Besides creating an increased commerce with the
East and a new commerce with the West, the awa-
kened spirit of enterprise and the new discoveries
widened the radius of trade of each nation. Men
learned to be bold, and the merchants of each Eu-
ropean country carried their national commerce over
all parts of Europe and far beyond its limits to the
newly discovered lands. English, Dutch, French,
and Danish merchants met in the ports of the White
Sea g,nd in those of the Mediterranean, and com-
peted with one another for the commerce of the East
and the New World. Trading to a distance was the
chief commercial phenomenon of the sixteenth cen-
tury, and was more influential than any other one
factor in the transformation of commerce then in
progress. Distant trading proved to have different
requirements from anything that had gone before:
it needed the political backing of some strong nation-
al government; it needed, or was considered to need,

VOL. I. — II

132 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1500

a monopoly of trade ; and it needed the capital of
many men.

These requirements were not felt in Portugal and
Spain as they were in the other countries of Europe,
because each of those countries had control of an ex-
tensive and lucrative field of commerce, and because
in them government itself took the direction of all
distant trading. The Portuguese monopoly of the
trade with the coast of India and with the Spice
Islands was practically complete. Through most
of the sixteenth century her ships alone rounded the
Cape of Good Hope; her only rivals in trade in the
East were the Arabs, who had been there long before
her, and their traffic was restricted to a continually
diminishing field.

Until Portugal was united with Spain in 1580, and
after that until Holland broke in on the Portuguese-
Spanish monopoly of the East Indies in 1595, her
control of Eastern commerce was as nearly perfect
as could be wished.* Government regulation of
this commerce extended almost to the entire ex-
clusion of individual enterprise. The fleets which
sailed to the East Indies were determined upon,
fitted out, and officered by the government, just as
those of Venice were.^ The Portuguese annual
fleet sent to the Indies counted sometimes as many
as twenty vessels. In the one hundred and fifteen

• Cunningliain, Western Civilization, II., 183-190.
' Saalfeld, Geschichte des Portugessche Kolonialwesens, 138,
etc., quoted in Cunningham, II., 187.

IS9S] COMMERCIAL COMPANIES 133

years between 1497 ^nd 161 2 eight hundred, axid
six ships were sent from Portugal to India,* all
equipped for the voyage and fitted out by the gov-
ernment with cannon and provided with armed
forces.

The management of the fleet was in the hands of
the government office known as the Casa da India.
The merchants who shipped goods in these vessels
and brought cargoes home in them were, it is true,
independent traders, carrying on their business as a
matter of private enterprise;^ but they were sub-
ject to government regulations at every turn and
supported by government at every step. At first
foreign merchants were admitted to the Eastern
trade imder these conditions, but subsequently it
was restricted to Portuguese, and ultimately became
a government monopoly. Under this system Lisbon
became one of the greatest commercial cities of the
world. Venetian, Florentine, German, Spanish,
French, Dutch, and Hanse merchants took up their
residence in Lisbon, purchased East Indian goods
from the merchants who imported them, and dealt
in other imports and exports resulting from this
activity of trade.'

In Spain the government regulation of commerce
was scarcely less close. All goods which were sent
from Spain to America must be shipped from the one

' Hunter, Hist, of British India, I., 165.

' Cunningham, Western Civilization, II., 187.

' Mayr, in Hehnolt, History of the World, VII., 70.

134 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1500

port of Seville, and they must be landed at either
one or other of wo American ports — ^Vera Cruz, in
Mexico, or Portobello, on the Isthmus of Panama.
Two fleets were sent from Seville each j'ear, one for
each of these destinations. All arrangements for
these fleets, all licenses for those who shipped goods
in them, and all jurisdiction over offences committed
upon them were in the hands of the government es-
tablishment of the Casa de Contractacion at Seville.*
No intruders were allowed in the Spanish colonies;
the only persons who could take part in the trade
were merchants of Seville, native or foreign, who
were specially licensed by the government. Monopoly
as well as government support was thus secured to
the distant traders between Spain and her colonies
in the West and in the East Indies.

For two hundred years this system of govern-
ment fleets in Portugal and Spain was kept almost
intact. Since the government provided merchants
with military defence and economic regulation,
since it minimized competition among them and
guaranteed to them a monopoly of commerce in the
regions with which they traded, there was small
need of organization or of a union of forces among
them. Consequently commercial companies are al-
most unknown in Portuguese and Spanish history."

In Spain and Portugal government control of

* Veitia Linage, Spanish Rule of Trade to the West Indies,
book I., chap. iii.

' Moses, Sparlish Rule in America, 166-171.

i6so] COMMERCIAL COMPANIES 135

trade was at a maximum. In the other countries
of Europe, notwithstanding occasional plans for
such control, as in the Netherlands in 1608,* the
part which government took in commercial matters
was much less, the part taken by private merchants
was far greater. In fact, many of the earliest trad-
ing ventures were of an almost purely individual
character. The patent given by Henry VII. to the
Cabots in 1497, similar letters granted in 1502 to
certain merchants of Bristol,^ a grant to Robert
Thome in 1527, the long series of authorized ex-
peditions from 1575 to 1632 in search of the north-
west passage, the charters given to Humphrey Gil-
bert in 1578 and to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584,
and many other patents made out in the sixteenth
century to, prospective colony builders, all were
granted to individuals or to groups of loosely or-
ganized adventurers.'

In contrast both with government - controlled
commerce and with purely private trading and en-
terprise, the chartered companies of England, Hol-
land, France,^ Sweden, and Denmark arose. They
were by no means self -controlled and independent
companies; they were dependent on their govern-
ments for many rights and privileges and for con-
stant support, protection, and subsidy. On the
other hand, the governments expected them not only
to develop a profitable trade but to furnish certain

'Jameson, Usselinx,43. ' 'Rymer, Fcedera (2d ed.), XIII. ,37.
•Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 1-28.

136 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1554

advantages to the nation, such as the creation of
colonies, the increase of shipping, the provision of
materials for use in the navy, the humiliation of
political rivals, the preservation of a favorable bal-
ance of trade, and ultimately the payment of im-
posts and the loan of funds. They stood, therefore,
midway between unregulated individual trading, in
which the government took no especial interest, and
that complete government organization and control
of trade which has been described as characterizing
the policy of Portugal and Spain.

Some fifty or sixty such companies, nearly con-
temporaneous, and on the same broad lines of or-
ganization, are recorded as having been chartered
by the five governments mentioned above, a few
in the second half of the sixteenth century, the great
proportion within the seventeenth century.' Of
course, some of these companies were still-bom,
never having gone beyond the charter received
from the government ; some existed only for a few
years ; and some were simply reorganizations. The
formation of these companies marks a distinct
stage of commercial development, and furnishes a
valuable clew to the foundation and early govern-
ment of European colonies in America,

England, Holland, France, Sweden, and Denmark,
as well as Scotland and Prussia, each had an "East

' Some are enumerated in Cawston and Keane, Early
English Chartered Companies; a still larger number in Bonnas-
sieux, Les Grcmdes Compagnies du Commerce.

i6o4] COMMERCIAL COMPANIES 137

India Company"; Holland, France, Sweden, and
Denmark each had a "West India Company" ; Eng-
land, Holland, and France each had a " Levant " or
"Turkey Company"; England and France each
had an "African Company"; and a date might
readUy be found in the seventeenth century when
all these were in existence at the same time. The
following list of such companies shows their number
and simultaneity. The list cannot claim to be ex-
haustive or absolutely accurate, for the history of
many such organizations is extremely obscure, the
dates of their foundations questionable, and some
companies chartered at the time were, perhaps, not
commercial in their nature.

1554. (English) Russia or Muscovy Company.

1576. (English) Cathay Company (first).

1579. (English) Baltic or Eastland Company.

1 5 81. (English) Turkey or Levant Company.

1585. (English) Morocco or Barbary Company.

1588. (English) African Company (first).

1594. (Dutch) Company for Distant Lands.

1596. (Dutch) Greenland Company.
1 597-1 S99. (Dutch) East India Companies (early) .
1 598-1 599. (French) Canadian Companies (early) .

1600. (English) East India Company.

1602. (Dutch) East India Company.

1602. (French) Company of New France.

1604. (French) North African Company (first).

1604. (French) East India Company (first).

138 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1606

1 606 . (English) London, and Plymouth Companies.

1609. (English) Guiana Company,

1 6 10. (English) Newfoundland Company.

161 1. (French) East India Company (second).

161 2. (English) Bermuda Company. i

1614. (Dutch) Company of the North, or Green-

land Company.

161 5. (French) East India Company (third).

1616. (Danish) East India Company (first).

1 6 1 8 . (English) African Company (second) .

1619. (Danish) Iceland Company (first).

1620. (English) New England Company.

1620. (French) Montmorency Company.

162 1. (Dutch) West India Company.

1624. (Swedish) Company for Asia, Africa, Amer-
ica, and Magellania.

1626. (French) Company of Senegal (first).

1626. (French) Company of Morbihan (first).

1626. (French) Company of Saint Christopher
(first).

1626. (Swedish) South Sea Company.

1626. (Swedish) East India Company.

1628, (French) Company of One Hundred As-
sociates of New France.

1628. (French) North African Company (second).

1629. (English) Company of Massachusetts Bay.
1629. (Dutch) Levant Company (first).

1631. (English) African Company (third).

1633. (French) West Africa Company (first).

1634. (Dutch) Surinam Company.

1698] COMMERCIAX COMPANIES 139

1634. (Danish) East India Company (second).

1635. (English) China or Cathay Company.
1635. (French) Company of West India Islands.
1640. (French) Company of East Africa.

1643. (French) Company of North Cape of South

America.

1644. (French) Company of St. Jean de Luz.
1644. (French) Baltic Company.

1647. (Danish) Iceland Company (second).

1650. (Dutch) Levant Company (second).

1 6 5 1 . (French) Cayenne Company.

1655. (French) West Africa Company (second).

1660. (French) China Company.

1662. (English) African Company (fourth).

1664. (French) East India Company (last).

1664. (French) West India Company (last).

1664. (English) Canary Company.

1669. (French) Northern Company (last).

1670. (French) Levant Company.

1670. (English) Hudson Bay Company.

1 67 1. (Danish) West India Company.

1 67 1. (French) Bordeaux-Canada Company.

1672. (English) African Company (last).

1673. (French) Senegal Company (last).

1683. (French) Acadia Company.

1684. (French) Louisiana Company.
1684. (French) Guinea Company.

1686. (Danish) East India Company (last).

1697. (French) China Company (last).

1698. (French) Santo Domingo Company.

I40 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1500

When the English commercial companies were to
be chartered, it was not necessary to invent an en-
tirely new type of organization. A model already
existed ready to hand in the Society of Merchants
Adventurers, of which the origin goes back cer-
tainly to the fifteenth century, perhaps still ear-
lier.' The sphere of trade of this body of export-
ing merchants extended along the coasts of France,
the Netherlands, and Germany, opposite England,
and some distance into the interior.^ It is true
that the Merchants Adventurers had many mediaeval
features which assimilated them more to the old
merchant and craft guilds than to the more modem
type of chartered commercial companies which were
about to come into existence. They had, like the
craft guilds, a system of apprenticeship and different
degrees of advancement in their membership.'

The members were all controlled by a "stint,"
according to which an apprentice in the last year
of his term might ship one hundred pieces of cloth
in the year ; while a full freeman in the society could
ship from four hundred to one thousand pieces a
year, according to the length of time he had been
a member.* They were tmder strict regulations
against forestalling and undue competition. They

' Lingelbach, Brief Hist, of the Merchant Adventurers, xxi.-xxv.

' Ibid., xxvii.

' Lingelbach, Internal Organization of the Merchant Adventurers,
8-18.

* Lingelbach, Laws and Ordinances of the Merchant Adventurers,
67-74.

i6oo] COMMERCIAL COMPANIES 141

could display and sell their cloth only upon Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays, and "No person shall
stand watchinge at the comers or ends of streetes, or
at other mens' Packhouses or at the house or place
where anie clothe merchant or draper ys lodged, nor
seeinge anie such in the street shall run or follow
after hym with Intent to Entyce or lead hym to his
packhouse, upon pain of fyve pounds ster." *

In many respects, on the other hand, the Mer-
chants Adventurers were quite similar to the later
chartered companies, whose period of existence
their own Overlapped. In fact, considering the
early date of their origin, the tardy development of
English economic life, and the obstacles to trading
in a foreign country even so near as the continental
seaboard, the conditions which confronted them
were much the same as those which the later com-
panies had to meet, and they met them in much
the same way. They obtained a charter of in-
corporation from the king; they possessed a monop-
oly of trade in a certain territory, as against other
men of their own nation; they had a common
treasury for joint expenses ; and they acted as, and
were even called, " the English nation," in the foreign
country which was their abiding-place.^

The Merchants Adventurers, therefore, might be

■■ Lingelbacb, Laws and Ordinances of the Merchant Adventu-
rers, 89, 91.

' Lingelbach, Internal Organization, 29-34; Laws and Ordi-
nances, passim; and Charters of 146s and 1564.

142 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1580

looked upon as a late surviving mediaeval merchant
guild, modified in form by the necessity of adapting
itself to trading in a foreign country ; or it might
be considered as the earliest of the modem chartered
commercial companies, still retaining in the seven-
teenth century some of its mediasval features.
Viewed in either aspect, the Merchants Adventurers
were a living model for the organization of the new
type of companies, and the powers and form of gov-
ernment of the latter show a similarity to the older
company which is certainly not accidental.

The five or six English companies whose dates
of foundation lie within the sixteenth century all
yield in importance, interest, and later influence to
the East India Company, which was destined to an
almost imperial existence of two centuries and a
half, and which may well serve as the representa-
tive of the English chartered companies. Its origin
was closely connected with the international rela-
tions of the last decades of the sixteenth century.

The availability of the port of Lisbon as the west-
em distributing centre for Eastem goods ceased in
1580, when Portugal became a part of the dominions
of the king of Spain. As war already existed be-
tween Spain and the Netherlands, and was soon to
break out between Spain and England, commerce was
much disturbed; and after a few years of troubled
intercourse that port was closed to the merchants
of Holland and England. The union of the crowns
of Spain and Portugal at this time had much the

i6o2] COMMERCIAL COMPANIES 143

same effect on the supply of Eastern goods to
these two Protestant seaboard states that the con-
quests of the Turks in the eastern Mediterranean
had had for the Italian cities a century before.

It was not likely that the two most vigorous, free,
and commercially enterprising states of Europe
would allow themselves long to be excluded from
the most attractive and lucrative trade in the
world. After England, in her resistance to the
Armada in 1588, applied the touchstone to the
naval prestige of Spain and showed its hollowness,
her merchants and mariners took heart and pressed
directly to the East. In 1591 an English squadron
of three ships, under Captains Raymond and Lan-
caster, with the queen's leave, sailed down the west-
em coast of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope,
followed the east coast to Zanzibar, and then passed
across to Cape Comorin, Ceylon, and the Malay
peninsula. They had mixed fortune, but one vessel
returned home laden with pepper, obtained for the
most part from the hold of a Portuguese prize. In
1595 the first direct Dutch voyage was made along
much the same route. Other English and Dutch
voyages followed; and in 1600 and 1602, respective-
ly, the English and Dutch East India companies
were chartered. The following analysis of the charter
of the former of these companies will give the main
characteristics of the new commercial system : '

I. The charter, granted by Queen Elizabeth on

' Charters Granted to the East India Company, 3-26.

144 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

December 31, 1600, was addressed by name to the
earl of Cumberland and two hundred and fifteen
knights and merchants, whom it created a cor-
poration and a body politic tmder the name of
*'The Governor and Company of Merchants of
London Trading to the East Indies."

2. The territory to which they were given priv-
ileges of trade consisted of all continents and islands
lying between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits
of Magellan — that is to say, the east coast of Africa,
the southern shore of Asia, the islands of the Indian
Ocean, and the west coast of America; so long as
they made no attempt to trade with any port at
the time of the charter in the possession of any
prince in league with Elizabeth, who should protest
against such trade.

3. The corporation was for all time; but the priv-
ileges of trade under the charter were granted for
fifteen years, with a pronuse; if they should seem
profitable to the crown and the realm, to extend
them for fifteen years more ; and with a reservation,
on the other hand, of the power to terminate them
on two years' notice.

4. The powers of the company were those of an
ordinary corporation and body politic. The mem-
bers of the company and their employees possessed
a complete monopoly of trade in the regions de-
scribed, so far as English subjects were concerned,
having, moreover, the right to grant licenses to non-
members to trade within their limits.

i6oo] COMMERCIAL COMPANIES 145

5. They could buy land without limitation in
amount, and as a matter of fact the company gained
its first foothold in each of its stations in the East
by buying a small piece of land from the native
government.

6. The company could send out yearly "six good
ships and six pinnaces with five hundred mariners,
unless the royal navy goes forth," and these ships
should not be seized even in times of special naval
restraint, unless the queen's need was extreme and
was announced to the company three months be-
fore the ships were impressed.

7. They had the right, in assemblies of the com-
pany held in any part of the queen's dominions or
outside of them, to make all reasonable laws for
their government not in opposition to the laws of
England, and they could punish by fine and im-
prisonment all offenders against these laws.

8. Nothing is said in the original charter of the
powers of offence and defence, alliance and military
organization; but these were probably taken for
granted, as they were so generally used by mer-
chants and navigators at the time, and were, as a
matter of fact, exercised without limitation by the
company from its first voyage.

9. Especial privileges and exemptions were grant-
ed to the company by freeing its members from the
payment of customs for the first four voyages, by
giving them from six to twelve months' postpone-
ment of the payment of subsequent import duties.

146 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [i6oo

and by allowing them re-export of Indian goods free
from customs duties. The laws against the export
of bullion were also suspended in their favor to the
extent of allowing them to send out on each voyage
;i£3o,ooo in coin.

lo. The organization of this company was com-
paratively simple, consisting of a governor, deputy
governor, and twenty-four members of a directing
board, " to be called committees," ' all to be elected
annually in a general assembly or court of the
company. The governor and committees must
all take the oath of allegiance to the English sov-
ereign.

The East India Company remained for some years
a somewhat variable body, as each voyage was made
on the basis of a separate investment, by different
stockholders, and in varying amotmts. But in 1609
the charter was renewed, and in 161 2 a longer joint-
stock investment fixed the membership more def-
initely. By this time the company had become, in
fact, as permitted by its charter, a closely organized
corporation, with well -understood and clearly de-
fined rights and powers, and it was soon started on
its career of trade, settlement, conquest, and domina-
tion.* A new type of commercial organization had
become clearly dominant.

' The word "committee " at that time was used for a single
person, as in the case of "trustee," "nominee," "employee," and
similar terms.

' Hunter, Hist, of British India, I., 270-305.

CHAPTER VIII

TYPICAL AMERICAN COLONIZING COMPANIES
(1600-1628)

AN exactly typical chartered commercial com-
Jx pany, which combined all the characteristics
of sttch companies, of coiirse did not exist. The
countries with which they expected to trade ranged
all the way from India to Canada; the political ser-
vices which their governments imposed upon them
varied from the production of tar, pitch, and tur-
pentine to the weakening of naval rivals ; while the
personal qualities of the fotmders of the companies
and the sovereigns or ministers who gave the char-
ters differed widely. Moreover, the later devel-
opment of many of these companies had but little
to do with the settlement of America. Neverthe-
less, three companies may be chosen which exerted
a deep influence on American colonization, and which,
with the English East India Company described in
the last chapter, are fairly tj^jical of the general
system. These are the English Virginia Company,
the Dutch West India Company, and the French
Company of New France.

The charter of 1606 granted to the London and

vot. I.— ij 147 ,

148 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1609

Plymouth companies was of an incomplete and
transitional character;' the second Virginia char-
ter,* however, which was granted at the request
of the company, May 23, 1609, created a corporate
trading and colonizing company closely analogous
to the East India Company, as will appear from the
following analysis:

1. The company was chartered under the name,
"The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and
Planters of the City of London for the First Colony
in Virginia." It was fully incorporated, with a seal
and all legal corporate powers and liabilities. In the
charter itself were named some twenty-one peers,
ninety-six knights, eighty-six of the lesser gentry, a
large number of citizens, merchants, sea-captains,
and others, and fifty -six of the London companies —
in all, seven hundred and fifteen persons and organi-
zations. They included a large proportion of the en-
lightenment, enterprise, and wealth of the capital,
and, indeed, of all England. The grant was made
to the company in perpetuity, although, as will be
seen, some of its special exemptions and privileges
were for a shorter term only.

2. The region to which the grant applied was the

' H. L. Osgood, " The Gjlonial Corporation " {Political Scisnce
Quarterly, XI., 264-268) . This charter is printed in Stith, Hist,
of Virginia, App. I.; in Brown, Genesis of the United States, and
elsewhere.

* Printed in full in Stith, Hist, of Virginia, App. 11., and,
with a few omissions, in Brown, Genesis of the United States,
I., 208-237.

i6o9] COLONIZING COMPANIES 149

territory stretching four hundred miles along the
coast, north and south from Chesapeake Bay, and
"up into the land from sea to sea westward and
northward."

The possession of the soil was given to the com-
pany by the most complete title known to the Eng-
lish law, but with the reqtiirement that it be dis-
tributed by the company to those who should have
contributed money, services, or their presence to the
colony.

3. Its commercial powers extended to the ex-
ploitation of all the resources of the country, in-
cluding mines, fisheries, and forests, as well as agri-
cultural products; and to the requirement that all
Englishmen not members of the company should
pay a subsidy of five per cent, of the value of all
goods brought into or taken out of the company's
territory, and aU foreigners ten per cent, of the
value of the goods. The company might send to
Virginia all shipping, weapons, victuals, articles of
trade, and other equipment that might be necessary,
and also all such colonists as should be willing to go.

4. Powers of government in its territory were
granted to the company with considerable com-
pleteness, the charter declaring that it might make
all orders, laws, directions, and other provisions fit
and necessary for the government of the colony, and
that the governor and other officers might, "within
the said precincts of Virginia or in the way by sea
thither and from thence, have full and absolute

ISO EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1609

power and authority to correct, ptinish, pardon,
govern, and rule" all the inhabitants of the colony,
in accordance with its laws already made.

As to offensive and defensive powers, it had the
right to repel or expel by military force all persons
attempting to force their way into its territories
and all persons attempting any hurt or annoyance
to the colony. The governor might exercise mar-
tial law in the colony, and was provided with the
general military powers of a lord-lieutenant of one
of the English coimties. Thus the company and
its colony were organized not exactly as an imperium
in imperio, but at least as an outlying imperium.

5. As for special subsidies and privileges, the gov-
ernment of King James was scarcely in a position to
make money contributions for such an enterprise,
or to give to it ships such as the continental gov-
ernments might give to their companies; but for
seven years the company was allowed to take out
all that was necessary for the support, equipment,
and defence of its colonists, and for trade with the
natives, free of all tax or duty ; and for twenty years
it should be free from customs on goods imported
into Virginia, and should forever pay only five per
cent, import duty on goods brought from Virginia to
England. Among privileges of less material value,
but long after remembered for other reasons, the
charter promised to the company that all the king's
subjects whom it should take to inhabit the colony,
with their children and their posterity, should have

i6o9] COLONIZING COMPANIES 151

and enjoy all liberties, franchises, and immunities
of free-bom Englishmen and natural subjects of the
king just as if they had remained or been bom in
England itself.

6. The duties to be performed by the company as
respects the government were very few. In recog-
nition of the socage tenure on which the land was
held, a payment of one-tenth of all gold and silver
was required; and the members of the council of
the company were required to take an oath of
allegiance to the king in the name of the com-
pany. The main reqtiirement from the company
was colonization. It was fully anticipated, and in
the preamble expressed, that the process of taking
out settlers should be a continuous one ; and a fail-
ure to transport colonists by the company's efforts
would certainly have been a failure to fulfil the con-
ditions of its charter.

7. Although there was no requirement of absolute
conformity with the established chiirch of England,
yet on the ground of the desire to carry only true
religion to the natives it was made the duty of the
officials of the company to tender the oath of su-
premacy to every prospective colonist before he
sailed, and thus to insure the Protestantism of the
settlers.

8. The form of govemment of the company in
England received much attention in the charter, as
well it might, after the failure of the arrangements
of the former charter. The membership, quarterly

IS 2 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1609

assemblies of the general body of the members,
more frequent meetings of a governing cotmcil of
fifty-three officers, and their duties, were all minute-
ly formulated ; and the supremacy of this council,
so consonant with the ideas of King James, and
so opposed to the needs and the tendencies of the
times, was carefully but, as it proved, unsuccessfully
provided for.'

The charter of the Dutch West India Company
was granted by "The High and Mighty Lords, the
Lords States -General of the United Netherlands,"
June 3, 1 62 1. It had already been under discus-
sion in the various representative bodies of the
Netherlands for fifteen years, and had been a fixed
idea in the brain of its projector, William UsseUnx,
for at least fourteen years before that,' advocated
in a dozen pamphlets and a hundred memorials and
communications, written and oral, to the States-
General; and it had the advantage of the state's
experience with the Dutch East India Company.
The shape given to the West India Company in its
charter was not, therefore, merely an outcome of
the plans of an individual, but a resultant also of the
influence of the earlier commercial companies, of the
political conditions of the time, and of the ambitions,
economic and political, of the influential merchant-
rulers of the Netherlands.'

'Osgood, "The Colonial Corporation" (Political Science
Quarterly, XI., 269-273). ' Jameson, Usselinx, 21, 28, 70.

Uhid., 2-4.

i6ai] COLONIZING COMPANIES 153

1. The company was given for twenty-four years,
dtiring which no stockholders could withdraw and
no new subscriptions would be received, the monop-
oly of the Dutch trade on the west coast of Africa,
from^ Cape Verd to the Cape of Good Hope ; in all the
islands lying in the Atlantic Ocean ; on the east coast
of America from Newfoundland to the Straits of
Magellan; and even beyond the straits on its west
coast, and in the southern lands which at that
time were still believed to stretch from Cape Horn
across the South Pacific to New Guinea. All the
non-European regions of the globe were thus divided
by the States-General, with even greater boldness
than by Pope Alexander, between the East and West
India Dutch chartered companies.

2. Its commercial privileges included a general
monopoly and extended to all forms of advance-
ment of trade.

3. As to colonization, the charter provided that
the company " may advance the peopling of fruitful
and unsettled parts." Usselinx, the original author
and the persistent advocate of the plan, would gladly
have made more adequate provision for the estab-
lishment of colonies, the stimulation of agriculture
and mining, good government in these colonies, their
religious life, and the conversion of the natives.
He had a picture in his mind of a great commercial
dominion, settled from Holland and other countries,
forming a market for European manufactures, and
producing colonial goods for the use of the Nether-

154 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1621

lands.* But the charter was granted in war time,
and by a body of aristocratic traders, who, as Bacoi
says, "look ever to the present gain"; so that the
capture of Spanish plate-fleets and the sacking of
West Indian settlements are contemplated with as
much assurance and interest as are colonization and
more legitimate commerce.

4. In view of later disputes between England and
her colonies, it is worthy of note that even such an
enlightened advocate of a prosperous, self-governing
colonial empire as Usselinx should have insisted, in
1618, that the colonists were to pay taxes to the
home government, to trade with the Netherlands
only, and to have no manufactures that would com-
pete with those of the mother-cotmtry.'

5. The political or semi -public powers of the com-
pany, according to the charter, were very extensive:
it could form alliances and make war, so long as the
war was defensive or retaliatory, could build forts,
maintain troops, appoint officers, capture prizes,
and arrest offenders on the high seas.

6. By way of subsidy the company was given one
million florins, the use of sixteen government ships
and four yachts, and exemption from all tolls and
license dues on its ships.

7. The duties required of the company were an
oath of fidelity to Prince Maurice, the stadtholder,
and to the States-General, on the part of its officers ;
the provision of a number of vessels equal at least

' Jameson, Usselinx, 43. » Ibid., 63.

i63i] COLONIZING COMPANIES 155

to those provided by the government ; the return of
its ships whenever practicable to the ports from
which they had set out ; the preservation for mili-
tary purposes of all prizes captured from enemies
of the States-General; the periodical publishing of
accounts; and the division, after six years, of all
surplus over ten per cent, in such a way that, in ad-
dition to what the shareholders received, one-tenth
should go to the States - General and one-thirtieth
to Cotmt Maurice.

The government of the Dutch West India Com-
pany was very complicated, reflecting the political
arrangements of the Netherlands and the jealousies
of a merchant aristocracy distributed in provinces
and cities. There was a govemor-in-chief of the
company's colonial possessions, but his powers were
dependent on a general board of nineteen directors,
who were the supreme authority in the regulation
of the company's affairs. Below this central body
were five territorial chambers, with a combined
membership of seventy-eight. The numbers, pow-
ers, and influence on the policy of the company of
these chambers were in proportion to the wealth of
the cities they represented and to the amoimt of
the stock subscribed from these cities. The Am-
sterdam chamber, which was to subscribe one-half
the capital stock, was far the most influential and
had the largest number of directors ; after it in order
came the chambers of Zealand, of the cities on the
Meuse, of the cities of North Holland, and of the

iS6 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1624

cities of Friesland and Groningen. These local
boards elected the general board, one-third of their
number, chosen by lot, retiring each year.*

When RicheUeu became prime-minister of France
in 1624, one of the earliest definite lines of policy
he initiated was the formation of privileged commer-
cial companies.^ He saw with great clearness and
formulated in a state paper ^ the reasons for recog-
nizing the superiority for distant commerce, under
the conditions of that period, of chartered conipanies
over individual traders. He was also much im-
pressed with the power and success of the great East
India companies of England and Holland. His first
plan was a general French company of commerce,
to include all the outlying sections of the world, and
at least two such companies were chartered in suc-
cession. They came to nothing, and soon gave place
to companies authorized each to carry on commerce
with a specified part of America, Africa, Europe, or
Asia.* The most important of these was the com-
pany of Canada, chartered in 1628 on the plans of
Champlain, and intended to take the place of all
earlier companies and individual grantees having
privileges in that region. The chartered powers and
privileges of this company may be analyzed as fol-
lows:

' Jameson, Usselinx, 33, 34.

' Edict of Reformation of 1627, art. 429; Isambert, Recueil
GSrUral des Anciennes Lois Franfaises, XVI., 329.

' Michaud et Poujoulat, Mimoires, I., chap, xviii., 438.
' Pigeonneau, Hist, du Commerce, II., 426-431.

i638] COLONIZING COMPANIES 157

1. The region to which they extended was "the
fort and settlement of Quebec, with all the coun-
try of New France, called Canada." ' It was de-
scribed as extending along the Atlantic coast from
Florida to the arctic circle, and from Newfoundland
westward to the sources of the farthest rivers which
fell into the St. Lawrence or the "Fresh Sea."

2. The power of the company over the soil was
complete. It was allowed to sell or dispose of it in
such portions and on such terms as it should see fit,
except that if it should grant great fiefs such as
duchies or baronies, letters of confirmation to the
grantees should be sought from the crown.

3. The continuance of the company in its full
form with all powers and duties was to be for fif-
teen years, while for other purposes its life was to
be perpetual.

4. Its commercial privileges extended during this
term of fifteen years to the complete monopoly of
all kinds of commerce by sea or land, all former
grants being withdrawn ; and the company was em-
powered to confiscate any French or other vessels
coming to trade within its dominions. The value
of Canada as a source of supply for furs was already
known, and the fur trade was placed under the spe-
cial control of the company forever. The whale and
seal fisheries, on the other hand, were exempted from
its control, even for the fifteen years, and left free
to all Frenchmen.

' Isambert, Recueil G4n4ral, XVI., 216-222.

158 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1628

5. As a form of subsidy the king agreed to give
the company two war -vessels of two hundred to
three hundred tons, armed and equipped for a voy-
age ; but they were to be victualled, supported, and,
in case of loss, replaced by the company. He also
presented them with certain cannon formerly the
property of the East India Company. The nature
of these gifts seems to intimate the possibility of
warlike expeditions of the company against the
king's enemies and its own, and prizes are referred
to repeatedly as a possible source of income.

6. All goods of all kinds brought from New France
were to be exempted for fifteen years from all duties
and imposts ; and all victuals, mvmitions of war, and
all other necessaries exported from France to the
colony should be likewise exempt. Other privileges
were permission to nobles, clergymen, and officers to
join the company without derogation from their
rank, and an agreement to ennoble twelve prominent
members of the company; full naturalization as
French citizens of all colonists and converted na-
tives; and the advancement of all artisans who
should pursue their trades in the colony for six
years, to full mastership in their respective occupa-
tions.

7. The duties the company was bound to fulfil
in return for these concessions were primarily those
of colonization. The company engaged to take
over to New France two or three hundred colonists
of both sexes within the year 1628, and altogether

i628] COLONIZING COMPANIES 159

four thousand -within fifteen years; to lodge, feed,
and provide them with the necessaries of life for
three years after their emigration; and then to as-
sign to them enough cleared land for their support
and enough grain to sow it and to feed them till the
first harvest. These provisions showed a clear in-
sight into the difficulties of settlement of a new
cotmtry, but they also imposed upon the company
a crushing burden of expense which required true
Gallic optimism to contemplate with any assurance
of success.

8. Next to peopling of the colony came the con-
version of the heathen. Indeed, this object, with
proper piety, was placed in the forefront of the
edict creating the company. In each settlement the
company was bound to provide at least three priests
and give them support for fifteen years, or else pro-
vide them with cleared land sufficient for their sup-
port. After the expiration of the fifteen years, and
for further missionary efforts, the religious needs of
the colony were commended to the charity and
devotion of the company and the colonists.

9. It was required that all colonists should be
nattu'al-bom Frenchmen and Catholics. The abso-
lute orthodoxy of this colony from its inception was
in striking contrast with the freedom from religious
restriction of the colonies planned by Coligny before
the civil wars had forced the government to intro-
duce rigorous conformity.

10. The company's rights over the colony were

i6o EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1609

great: they could appoint officers of sovereign jus-
tice, who should be commissioned by the crown;
and nominate military officials by sea and land over
ships, troops, and fortresses, the king agreeing to
appoint their nominees. They were empowered to
build forts, forge cannon, make gunpowder, and do
all things necessary for the security of the colony
and its commerce.

II. The charter contained no provisions for the
internal government of the company, simply recog-
nizing the existing voluntary organization of one
hundred associates, whom it describes as a "strong
company for the establishment of a colony of native
Frenchmen." As far as membership extends, they
were allowed to join to themselves any additional
number up to another hundred.

Thus was organized the company which, through
the genius of Champlain and with much tribulation,
laid the foundations of the colony of Canada.

Considering as types these four companies dating
from 1600, 1609, 1621, and 1628, and representing
England, Holland, and France, a comparison of their
main characteristics leads to the following general-
izations :

I. It is evident that there was in early modem
times a movement for the organization and char-
tering of companies for distant commerce, closely
dependent on their respective governments. These
companies had their period of rise in the sixteenth
genturjr; a rapid and wide-spread development in

i628] COLONIZING COMPANIES i6i

the seventeenth; and a subsequent decline and
discredit in the eighteenth. The movement was
European; every country whose situation or ambi-
tions would at all admit of distant trading, and
whose system of commerce was not, like that of
Spain and Portugal, already stereotyped under gov-
ernment control, adopted approximately the same
policy.

2. To each of these companies was secured by its
charter the monopoly of trade in a particular region.
Its members alone had power or right to carry on
commerce with a specified people, over a specified
extent of coasts or lands, and during a definite
period of years. This monopoly might be only as
against the fellow-countrymen of the members of
the company; but an effort, generally successful,
was made to exclude all other Europeans from each
reserved field of commerce.

3. The companies were based on unions of the
capital of many merchants or other adventurers.
An official Dutch letter on the trade with America
speaks of "knowing by experience that without
the common assistance of a general company navi-
gation and commerce could not be practised, main-
tained, and defended in the regions and quarters
designated above, because of the great risks from
corsairs, pirates, and other extortions which are
met with upon such voyages." * The preliminary
equipment of ships, the purchase of supplies and

» Letters to the Dutch West India Company, June 9, 162 1.

i62 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1609

merchandise, the acquisition of land, the building
of forts and the supply of weapons and military
material ; the payment of a military force to protect
their commerce against natives or interloping Euro-
peans ; the expenses, in many cases, of transporting
and supporting colonists ; and, finally, the long wait-
ing before returns could be reasonably hoped for
— some or all of these expenses were inseparable
from the whole plan of establishing distant trade.
It was no wonder that individual traders gave place
to great unions of the merchants of London, Amster-
dam, or Dieppe, who risked part of their means and
united their resources to form companies to trade
with the East and West Indies, Africa, and other
outlying parts of the world.

4. Neither the possession of a monopoly nor the
creation of a large, joint capital was considered
enough to launch an enterprise of this kind. The
grant of public or political powers by government
was necessary to make its economic objects attain-
able, and these were given with a free hand. The
companies very generally received, explicitly or by
implication, rights of peace and war, of supreme
justice, of administrative independence, and of 1^-
islation for their own territory, members, and ser-
vants. A chartered company was in many cases
the holder from the crown of a wide fief in which it
possessed more than feudal powers. As a matter of
fact, the companies generally remained quite de-
pendent on the home authorities, but this resulted

i628] COLONIZING COMPANIES 163

from the desire to save expense, from the supremacy
of commercial ideals, or from patriotism, rather than
from deficiencies in their charters.

5. In the grant of these extensive political powers
the home governments had ulterior motives. The
seventeenth century was a period of intense inter-
national rivalry, and the chartered commercial com-
panies were pieces in the game. It was not mere
profit in povuads, shillings, and pence which Eliza-
beth hoped to obtain from the voyages of the ships
of the East India Company, but a weakening of the
power and wealth 'and colonial dominion of Spain.
Even in the more peaceful times of James, the Span-
iards saw, and were justified in seeing, in the popular
interest in Virginia another phase of the national
hatred of Spain.* It was at the close of the twelve
years' truce between the Netherlands and Spain,
just when the war was being resumed, that the Dutch
West India Company was formed, and its greatest
activity was in a warhke rivalry with its great op-
ponent in South America. "The reputation of this
crown " was combined with " the glory of God " in
the charter of the Canada Company; and most of
the commercial and colonizing projects of France in
the seventeenth as in the nineteenth century, had a
large element of political pride behind them. Some-
times it was warlike conquest, sometimes the ex-
pulsion of a rival, sometimes the acquisition of a

' Letters from Zufiiga to Philip III., in Brown, Genesis of the
United States, docs, xxviii.-xxxiii., etc.

TOL. I. — li

i64 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1609

new base of operations, sometimes the obtaining of
a more favofable balance of trade, sometimes mere
international rivalry; but whatever the other ele-
ments, there were always some poUtical objects in
addition to the hope of obtaining dividends from
trade.

6. For the history of America, the most important
characteristic common to the chartered companies
of the seventeenth century is the territorial foot-
hold they obtained in the regions where they pos-
sessed their monopolies. It might be only a few
acres of ground used for a fort, stotehotises, and
dwellings, which was all the English East India Com-
pany possessed for the first century and a half of its
existence; or it might be the almost limitless do-
mains of the Canada or Virgiaia Company. There
was no distinction between two kinds of companies,
one for commerce, the other for colonization, but
simply one of relative attention given to the two in-
terests, according to the character of the regions for
which the companies had obtained their concessions.
All the companies expected to carry on commerce;
all expected to plant some of their fellow-country-
men on the soil of the country with which they
meant to trade. If the region of their activity was
the ancient, wealthy, thickly settled, and firmly
governed coast of India, the settlers were only a few
servants of the company. If, on the other hand,
the region for which the monopoly of the company
was granted was a broad and temperate tract, occu-

i68o] COLONIZING COMPANIES 165

pied by a sparse population of savages, and offering
only such objects of trade or profit as could be col-
lected slowly or wrested by European labor from the
soil or the forest, the quickest way to a commercial
profit was the establishment on the distant soil of a
large body of colonists from the home land.

This necessity for colonization in order to carry
out their other objects makes the chartered com-
mercial companies of the seventeenth century
fundamental factors in American history. The
proprietary companies of Virginia, Massachusetts,
New Netherland, Canada, and other colonies were
primarily commercial bodies seeking dividends, and
only secondarily colonization societies sending over
settlers. This distinction, and the gradual pre-
dominance of the latter over the former, is the
clew to much of the early history of settlement
in America. The commercial object could only be
carried out by employing the plan of colonization,
but new motives were soon added. The patriotic 1
and religious conditions of the times created an j
interest in the American settlements as places
where men could begin life anew with new possi-
bilities. Hence the company, the home govern-
ment, dissatisfied religious bodies, and many in-
dividuals, looked to the settlements in America with
other than a commercial interest. The policy of the
companies was modified and eventually transformed
by the influence of these non-commercial interests.

As financial enterprises, the chartered commercial

166 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1609

companies were subject to such great practical diffi-
culties that few of them survived for any great
length of time or repaid their original investment
to the shareholders. Some were reorganized time
and again, each time on a more extensive scale, and
each time to suffer heavier losses.' They experi-
enced much mismanagement and some peculation
and fraud on the part of their directors; in some
cases false dividends were declared for the purpose
of temporarily raising the value of the stock. Their
credit was bad, and they sometimes had to borrow
money at fifty and even seventy-five per cent, in-
terest.^

They encountered other difificulties quite apart
from the incompetency or dishonesty of their direc-
tors. Parliaments and States - General were op-
posed to monopolistic and privileged companies, and
threw what obstacles they could in their way ; and
political exigencies often forced even the sovereigns
who had given them their charters to disavow and
discourage them.' Their greatest difficulties, how-
ever, arose from the very nature of the problem
which they were trying to solve. Distant commerce
with barbarous races, amid jealous rivals, carried
on with insufficient capital; the persuasion of re-
luctant emigrants to establish themselves in the

' W. R. Scott, "The Royal African Company" (Am. Hist.
Review, VIII., 2).

' Bonnassieux, Les Grandes Compagnies de Commerce, 494, etc.

' Letter of October 8, 1607, from Zufiiga to the king of Spain,
in Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 121.

1700] COLONIZING COMPANIES 167

wilderness at a time when the mother-cotmtry was
not yet overcrowded; the long waiting for returns
and the failure of one dream after another — it was
these difRculties in the very work itself that led to
the failure of most of the companies and' the scanty
success of the others.

Nevertheless, the companies played a very im-
portant part in the advancement of civilization dur-
ing the period of their existence. They enriched
Europe with many products of the New World and
the more distant Old World, which could hardly
have reached it, or reached it in such abundance,
except for the organized voyages of the chartered
companies. The formation of chartered companies
reUeved certain nations of their dependence upon
other nations for some of the necessities and many
of the luxuries of life. National independence was
furthered, at the same time that foreign products
were made much cheaper. Spices, sugar, coffee, tea,
chocolate, tobacco, cotton, silk, drugs, and other
articles were made accessible to all. New shipping
was built by the companies and additional com-
mercial intercourse created.* New territories were
made valuable and new centres of activity created in
old and stagnant as well as in new and undeveloped
coimtries. Above all, the chartered companies were
the actual instruments by which many colonies were
founded, and a strong impress given to the institu-
tions of these colonies through all their later history.

' Bonnassieux, Les Grandes Compagnies de Commerce, 514.

CHAPTER IX

THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION ON THE
CONTINENT

(1500-1625)

IN analyzing the fdrces which affected the colo-
nization of America, the depth of the impression
made upon Europe by the Protestant Reformation
can hardly be overestimated. Although the direct
and immediate influence of this great movement
upon the fortunes of America was great, its indirect
and remote effects have been still more impor-
tant. One of these effects was the creation of a
religious motive for emigration which, in conjunc-
tion with other incentives, was one of the earliest
and most constant causes for the. peopling of Amer-
ica.

It is true that the desire for religious freedom
was only one among many such impelling forces.
The desire to better their fortunes was perhaps the
Kwst fundamental and enduring consideration that
influenced emigrants. Many settlers came because
at home they had failed or were burdened with
debt, or had become involved in ill repute or crime,
and hoped to make a new start in a new land. Many

168

i662] PROTESTANT REFORMATION 169

sought the New World as many still press to the
frontier, from sheer restlessness and recklessness,
from the love of adventure, the hope that luck will
do better for them than labor. Many came as a re-
sult of urgent inducements offered by projectors
of colonies or agents of shipmasters, as in the case
of the early "company servants" or the later "re-
demptioners" or "indentured servants."

No inconsiderable number came because they
were forced to come : the earlier planters of colonies
and patentees of lands received permission to seize
for their uses men and women of the lower classes,
much as men were pressed into naval service;
paupers were handed over to the colonizing com-
panies to be shipped to their settlements ; repeatedly
the prisons were emptied to provide colonists, and
commissions were appointed, as in England in
1633, "to reprieve able-bodied persons convicted
of certain felonies, and to bestow them to be used
in discoveries and other foreign employments." '
Somewhat later, transportation to the colonies to
labor for a fixed number of years became a familiar
form of commutation of the death penalty, and
after 1662 it was made the statutory penalty for
certain offences.

Yet among this multiplicity of motives for emi-
gration to the colonies religion held a peculiar place.
Many men for whom the dominant inducement was
a more material one were partly led by religious

*Cal. of State Pap., Domestic, 1631-1633, p. 547.

I70 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1517/

motives; many of the changes in Europe that uij-
settled men and made them more ready to leaife
their old homes were results of the Reformatipn.
Religious motives were the earliest to send any really
large body of settlers to the English colonies, and
they remained for more than a century probably
the most eilective motives.

During the first twenty years of the settlement of
Virginia, where the religious incentive was least
strong, less than six thousand settlers came over;
during the first twenty years of the settlement of
New England, where it was strongest, there were
more than twenty thousand. The later churchmen
of Virginia and the Carolinas, the Catholics of Mary-
land, the Quakers of Pennsylvania and New Jersey,
and a great body of Presbyterians, Huguenots,
Mennonites, Moravians, and adherents of other sects
which were products of the Reformation, sought
under the more liberal laws of the colonies the re-
ligious liberty which they could not find at home.

The working of this influence in England will ap-
pear in a later chapter on the reUgious history of
that country during this period ; its peculiar develop-
ment in Germany seems to demand a further word
of explanation here. Three forms of reformed doc-
triiie and organization — Lutheranism, Calvinism,
and Zwinglianism — grew up on German soil in the
years between 1517 and 1555, and obtained more or
less extensive recognition and power from imperial,
princely, or city authorities. Lutheranism, the

iSSo] PROTESTANT REFORMATION 171

most moderate and widely accepted form of Prot-
estantism, was officially established in most of the
central and northern and in some of the southern
states and cities; Calvinism, less widely extended
but more strictly organized, held a similar position
in the southwest; while the doctrines of Zwingli,
which had been adopted and were enforced in the
greater part of Switzerland, spread to a number of
those southern regions of Germany from which
Switzerland was as yet indistinctly separated.*

A vast number of earnest souls were not satisfied
with any of these forms of official religion, and even
in the earliest days of the Reformation, preachers
arose who went beyond the moderate reforms of
Luther, Zwingli, or Calvin, and whose teachings
gained a ready acceptance. In Saxony, in Hesse, in
South Germany, and in Moravia; in the cities of
Constance, Strasburg, Augsburg, and Nuremberg ; in
the Netherlands and in Switzerland, there was much
preaching and formation of independent religious
communities quite apart from, and indeed in oppo-
sition to, the official Reformation.' These radical
preachers and their followers represented very dif-
ferent beliefs and practices. That which was com-
mon to them all was an acceptance of the Bible
literally interpreted as a guide both to doctrine and
to church organization. The effort to return to the

'Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V., I., 228-231.
' Moeller, Hist, of the Christian Church (English trans.), III.,
36, 64, 88, 94.

172 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1521

apostolic organization of the chutch led them tq
reject any but an tinpaid ministry, and to insist that
none should be members of their congregations ex-
cept such as were personally converted and who
conformed their lives to the teachings of the Bible.

Their idea was, therefore, the formation of little
companies separated from the surrounding people
of the world rather than the Lutheran or Zwing-
lian plan of a reorganization of the national church
on Protestant lines en masse. An austere piety,
the wearing of plain clothes, the avoidance of forms
of social respect, the refusal to take an oath or to
hold civil office, an assertion of the sinfulness of
paying or receiving tithes or interest, an approach
to communistic practice in matters of property —
some or all of these were widely disseminated among
the lower classes of the people to whom such teach-
ings principally appealed.

The doctrine which came nearest to being a point
of uniformity and a possible bond of union among
these reformers was their objection to infant bap-
tism. To them baptism was the mark of a person-
ally attained relation to Christ, and was, therefore,
meaningless when administered to an unconscious
infant. Certain "prophets" who came to Witten-
berg from Zwickau confronted Luther and Melanc-
thon with this principle as early as 1521 ; and radical
reformers proclaimed it in opposition to Zwingli at
Zurich. in 1523. Ever5rwhere advocacy of an exact
adherence to the verbal teaching of Holy Writ and

IS351 PROTESTANT REFORMATION 173

a rejection of the claims of an established church,
were accompanied by opposition to infant baptism.
In 1525 for the first time the logical deduction from
their premises was made; those baptized only in
their infancy were asserted not to have been effec-
tively baptized at all, and were rebaptized as a sign
of their conversion.' From this time onward re-
baptism, or, from the point of view of its advocates,
the first valid baptism, became the test and mark
of adoption into many communities of true believers.
Those who practised this rite were, therefore, called
"Anabaptists " — that is to say, those who baptized
a second time-i-or, more frequently, merely " Bap-
tists."

The rebaptism of a person who had been already
once baptized was not only in the eyes of the es-
tablished church an impiety, it was in the eyes
of the established law a capital crime, and the his-
tory of Anabaptism in Germany is the history of a
long martyrdom. In Catholic and Protestant coun-
tries alike these radicals were persecuted. From
Strasburg and Nuremberg they were expelled, in
Zurich their leaders were drowned, in Augsburg they
were beheaded, in Austria, Wittenberg, Bavaria,
and the Palatinate they were burned at the stake.

In 1534 their sect was brought into sudden and
fatal prominence by the revolt in Munster and its
vicinity. Here a body of adherents of radical re-
ligious doctrines added to their creed a tenet not

' Moeller, Hist, of the Christian Church (English trans.) , III., 65.

174 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1535

common to the general body of Anabaptists — that
is to say, the duty of taking up temporal arms to
overthrow the existing powers and to introduce the
New Jerusalem. The old episcopal city was seized
by the Anabaptist leaders, bloody battles were
fought, and after a six months' orgy of fanaticism,
libertinism, and violence the rebels were defeated by
the united troops of Catholic and Lutheran powers
and a terrible vengeance taken.

Anabaptists everywhere, no matter how peaceable
and moderate their principles, suffered under the
imputation of holding such doctrines as had led to
the terrible excesses at Mtinster, as they had long
before been held to sympathize with the Peasants'
Revolt; and their persecutions became correspond-
ingly harsher. Nevertheless, they continued to
form commtmities and to spread through Germany,
the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The attractive-
ness of the teachings of wandering Anabaptist
preachers long continued tmabated, and their regu-
larly organized congregations or communities, be-
cause of their thrift, honesty, and plainness of life,
survived and flourished, wherever they could ob-
tain even the barest and most temporary toleration.

They were necessarily a people without a national
home. Seldom for a whole generation did any con-
siderable body of Anabaptists or Pietists remain
undisturbed in any one locality. Expelled by im-
perial edict from Bohemia, they made their way to
Hungary and Transylvania; fined, imprisoned, and

I700] PROTESTANT REFORMATION 175

in danger of death in Protestant Switzerland, they
migrated to the Tyrol, to the Palatinate, and to the
south German cities, only soon to be visited there
with still worse persecution. During the two great
religious wars they suffered especial hardships, and
in the midst of the Thirty Years' War they were
rigorously expelled by the emperor from all his
hereditary dominions, even from Moravia, where
they had been allowed to exist for almost a cen-
tury.'

Either from original differences of doctrine and
personal influence, or from later divisions and re-
organization, grew up those bodies which, although
often, as has been seen, grouped under the general
head of Anabaptists, have become known in Europe
and America as Mennonites, Amish, and Dunkers;
and each of these bodies has experienced various
divisions. The Schwenkfelders, Boehmists, and
other mystics or pietists, are habitually grouped
with these sects, rather because of their similar
historical origin and attitude to the established
churches than of any identity of religious belief.

By the close of the seventeenth century the con-
dition of these dissenters from the established
churches had become more tolerable ; but they were
at best a remnant, narrowed in spirit by persecu-
tion, repeatedly separated from their earlier homes,
still imder the ban of ecclesiastical disapproval, and

' Moeller, Hist, of the Christian Church (English trails.) , III.,
437-442-

176 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1517

even where tolei'ated living tinder burdensome re-
strictions. The rising colonies of the New World,
especially those which promised religious liberty,
and above all that one of them whose Quaker founder
held doctrines so like their own, must have exerted,
notwithstanding their alien race and tongue, an al-
most irresistible attraction upon them, In view of
the political and religious history of Germany in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is therefore
no wonder that a vast number of Germans emigrated
to America, and that in Pennsylvania were soon to
be found numerous representatives of every religious
sect that existed in the fatherland.

The religious divisions which sprang from the
Protestant Reformation were not restricted to the
Old World. In America, also, religion was a cen-
trifugal influence, splitting up old colonies, and es-
tablishing new centres of population, which in turn
attracted other groups of emigrants from Europe,
and brought into existence still other tjrpes of
government and society.' The results were shown
in the characteristics of Rhode Island and
Connecticut, of Germantown and Bethlehem, in
some of the principal contrasts between New
France and New England, and in many of the
lesser diversities that have distinguished different
sections of America in their subsequent history.
Many influences combined to give form and
character to each American settlement: its race
' Egglestop, Be^innfr^ of a Nation, ?66-346.

i68o] PROTESTANT REFORMATION 177

elements, the commercial requirements of the con-
trolling chartered company, the demands of the
home government, the theoretical ideas of the
founder, the habitudes of the colonists in the lands
from which they came. Among these influences,
as among the motives for emigration, the religious
experiences and desires of the settlers were a prime
factor.

The Reformation indirectly affected America by
wars which soon led to the rise of some nations, the
fall of others; they pitted Catholic states against
Protestant states, they weakened Germany, France,
and the southern Netherlands by a sanguinary civil
struggle, and were avoided in England only by
harsh persecution.

In the Iberian peninsula the progress of Protes-
tantism was so slight and so quickly crushed out
that it played no part in the colonization of Portu-
guese or Spanish America. It is true that the some-
what outworn machinery of the Inquisition was re-
juvenated in the sixteenth century, so as to reach a
Protestant movement in Seville, the sailing-point for
the American fleets ; and this was made an excuse for
the introduction of a stricter and more vigorous policy
of orthodox uniformity in Spain. The Inquisition
also found occupation in looking after heretic for-
eign merchants and sailors in Spanish seaports, and
Jews and Protestant Germans in the American colo-
nies ; but no Spaniards ever emigrated to America
to escape religious persecution.

178 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1560

As for France, the terrible religious wars of the
sixteenth century weakened her projects of coloni-
zation, as they did all her other activities, and
divided her people into two hostile parties, one
of which must ultimately crush out the other.
The short-lived colonies established in the middle
years of the sixteenth century in Brazil and in
Florida were due largely to the hope that they
might be places of refuge for oppressed Huguenots.
The first French colonies which had any successful
outcome, however, were the creation of the other
religious party; for Richelieu, when he took up
the establishment of colonies in 1624, insisted on
Catholic orthodoxy in the religion of the colonists.
This precaution was doubtless due to the Huguenot
efforts for independence and their treasonable
negotiations in France. In fotmding distant colo-
nies as extensions of the power of the home govern-
ment, a minister could hardly permit the domina-
tion in the new colonies of a party with which he
was in deadly conflict at home. Whatever his mo-
tive, orthodoxy was insisted on ; and New France,
like New Spain, beca:me tmbrokenly Catholic.

The English colonies, however, ultimately profited
by what the French colonies had lost. After the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, persecu-
tion sent a stream of Huguenots to the various
English colonies of America, and added thereby a
valuable and interesting strain to the richly mingled
blood of the American race.

CHAPTER X

RELIGIOUS WARS IN THE NETHERLANDS AND
GERMANY

(1520-1648)

THE revolt of the Netherlands, which created a
new and vigorous European state in the six-
teenth century, and a great commercial and coloniz-
ing world-power in the seventeenth, was as much a
reUgious as a political movement. The centraliz-
ing, autocratic, and unconciliatory policy of Philip
II. was probably enough in itself to have caused re-
bellion in the Netherlands; while the religious con-
flict was so bitter that it would almost certainly
have caused a revolt, even if there had been no polit-
ical friction. The revolt of 1568 and the war which
lasted till 1609, as a matter of fact, turned on causes
belonging equally to both fields.

When Charles V. visited the Netherlands in 1520,
on his way to claim the imperial crown, the twenty-
two pro\'inces then gathered into his hands were
all nominally Catholic; and the large majority of
the population were sincerely attached to Rome.
Yet reformed doctrines soon made their way into
the country in several forms. In the southern and

VOL I. — 14 lyo

l8o EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [rsai

central states, Flanders, Brabant, Hainault, Holland,
and Zealand, Calvinism entered from France; into
Friesland and North Holland came many Mennon-
ites; in some of the towns there were Anabaptists;
in the great commercial cities, such as Antwerp and
Amsterdam, Lutherans were numerous, some of
them immigrants from Germany, some converted
to that faith through the communications between
lower Germany and the adjacent provinces of the
Netherlands.' Even the Catholics of the Nether-
lands were not of a bigoted or militant type ; heresy
had been wide-spread there since the thirteenth
century., and the inhabitants had not the horror of
it that was felt in some more orthodox countries.''
Among the wealthy, turbulent, strong-minded,
and patriotic Netherland burghers and peasantry
Reformation doctrines and principles readily spread
and gained acceptance; yet they were met by the
most determined and harsh opposition from the gov-
ernment which now held the Netherlands in the hol-
low of its hand. In 1521 Charles V. issued from
Worms an edict dooming to loss of property and
death every Dutch, Flemish, or Walloon adherent
of the teachings of Luther; and in 1523 two monks
were burned at Brussels as first-fruits of the long and
miserable harvest which was so abundantly reaped
afterwards.

> Blok, Hist, of the People of the Netherlands (Eaglish trans.),
III., 22.
• Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, I., Introd., xii.

1S59] RELIGIOUS WARS i8i

A series of edicts known as the "Placards" was
now issued by Charles, prohibiting private meetings
for religious worship, reading of the Scripture by lay-
men, discussions on questions of faith, the destruc-
tion of religious emblems, the harboring of heretics,
the possession of heretical books, and, in general, all
heretic or non-Cathohc opinions and practices.
These edicts were enforced by all the power of the
civil government, and by the activity of four inquisi-
tors. The " Placards" reached their culmination in
the edict of 1550, renewing and making more severe
all punishments for religious offences. When Charles,
in 1 556, laid down the burden of government in favor
of his son, the persecutions had numbered their
hundreds, if not thousands, of victims; but heresy
had spread only the more widely, and Protestantism
in its various forms had become only the stronger.

Philip II. entered upon the struggle with heresy
even more vigorously than his father. Even the
Catholics of the Netherlands were opposed to the
enforcement of the "Placards," while the heretics
who were suffering and multiplying under it were
looking forward almost desperately to some change
that would make their position more tolerable. The
States-General, the nearest approach to a national
l^slature that the Netherlands possessed, in 1559
pleaded for mildness. It was only the Spanish ruler
who was determined to apply the heresy laws in all
their vigor ; and when he left the Netherlands and
began to direct their administration from Spain, t^^

i82 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1560

religious question became more and more the great
unifying element in national resistance to his policy.
William of Orange, in the council of state, took the
lead in drawing up a petition to the king for the
amelioration of the " Placards " and for the suspen-
sion of the decrees for an inflexible orthodoxy which
had just been promulgated from Trent. He pointed
out the necessity of recognizing the proximity and
influence of Lutheran Germany upon the Nether-
lands, the actual extension of Protestantism in the
provinces, and the degree to which the old church
had lost its authority over the hearts of men. In
words that rose in dignity and significance far above
the ordinary contests of Catholics and Protestants,
he declared : " I am Catholic, and will not deviate
from religion; but I cannot approve the custom of
kings to confine men's creed and religion within
arbitrary limits." * Philip replied to this petition
of the Catholic nobles of the Netherlands by the
edict of Segovia, dated October 17, 1565, insisting
more vehemently than ever before on the enforce-
ment of the laws against heresy in all their severity,
including what was practically the introduction of
the Spanish Inquisition. On the other hand, the
Reformation pressed on with rapid strides; vast
crowds gathered outside of Toumai, Harlem, Ant-
werp, and other cities to listen to Calvinist preach-
ers. Ten, twelve, and twenty thousand of the pop-

' Blok, Hist, of the People of the Netherlands (English trans.),
III.. 14.

1572] RELIGIOUS WARS 183

ulace assembled at a time to sing psalms and hymns
and to listen to the appeals of teachers eloquent and
devout, but almost invariably heretical.

The inevitable crisis was now hastening on. The
lesser nobles, including some Calvinists, soon formed
the " Confederation," sent their petition to the king,
and in 1567 broke out in fruitless rebellion. Al-
most at the same time the mob rose in the image-
breaking riots which spread Hke wild-fire over all
the provinces except the most southern. Then
came Alva, with his unlimited powers, his veteran
troops, his "Council of Blood," his more than ten
thousand victims of political and religious persecu-
tion, and the awful severity and barbarity that have
made his name a synonym of cruelty and heartless
despotism. William of Orange brought an army
into Brabant in 1568, and revolt was soon in full
progress. Even under Charles V. there had been
much emigration from the Netherlands to Germany
and England, to escape religious persecution. Now
the barbarities of Alva increased the number many-
fold. It was estimated that there were at one time
sixty thousand Dutch and Walloon refugees living
in England. By 1568 the emigrants were said to
number four hundred thousand.

As the revolt progressed and the various cities
expelled the officers of the Spanish governor and put
themselves under the banner of Orange, they be-
came little oases of toleration. The instructions of
William to his lieutenants in the north in 1572 or-

i84 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1572

dered them " to restore fugitives and the banished
for conscience' sake — and to see that the Word of
God is preached, without, however, suffering any
hindrance to the Roman Church in the exercise of
its religion."* By November, 1576, when the
treaty known as the Pacification of Ghent was made
between Holland and Zealand on the one hand and
the fifteen southern provinces on the other, liberaUsm
in religious views had progressed as far as the power
of the patriotic party extended; and all " Placards"
and edicts on the subject of religion were suspended
till a national assembly should take final action on
the subject. At the same time it was provided that
there should be no action against the CathoHc re-
ligion, outside the territory of Holland and Zealand.*
Soon the Flemish provinces, where Protestantism
had made least headway and where distrust of the
north was strong, were "pacified" by Don John of
Austria and Alexander of Parma. The Union of
Arras, of January 6, 1579, became a centre of union
and reconciliation to Spain and CathoUcism for the
fifteen southern provinces. Just three weeks after-
wards the Union of Utrecht was formed, which
united the seven northern provinces and became the
basis of the free repubUc of the United Netherlands :
each province was to make its own religious ar-
rangements, though toleration was secured by the

• Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, pt. iii.
' Blok, Hist, of the People of the Netherlands (English trans.),
III., 105, 106.

iSSi] RELIGIOUS WARS 185

provision that no one should be molested or ques-
tioned on the subject of divine worship,' Thus
while the southern provinces set their feet in the
path of a return to Roman CathoHc unifdrmity, the
northern provinces pledged themselves to toleration
of Catholics and of all sects of Protestants alike.

Toleration is to the modem student the chief in-
terest and glory of the foundation of the United
Netherlands ; but it was not toleration but Protes-
tantism which then gave the young republic its
peculiar strength, vigor, and enterprise. Even in
the Pacification of Ghent and the Union of Utrecht,
Holland aijd Zealand were recognized as Protestant
states. As the bitter struggle progressed, their
Protestantism became more pronounced and more
militant. Bxiled Calvinists from the south flocked
to Amsterdam, Middleburg, Rotterdam, and othei*
northern cities in great numbers, intensifying the
Protestant character of these communities and en-
riching them with capital, business ability, and
an astonishingly large proportion of gifted men.'
The formal abjuaration of Philip by the United
Provinces in 1581, on groxmds so largely religious,
could not but bring into still greater prominence the
Protestantism of the country which now claimed its
independence. The long - continued warfare that
followed the assassination of the beloved prince of
Orange, the sieges, mutinies, and battles by land and

* Arts. 5, 9, 10, II, 12, 13, quoted in Motley, pt. vi., chap.i.
' Jameson, Usselinx, 27.

i86 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1576

sea, steadily deepened the religious and political
hatred between the Netherlands and Spain.

By the year 1596 internal theological struggles
between Remonstrants and Contra - Remonstrants
approached the proportions of a civil war ; and the
victory gained by the latter party through the inter-
vention of the stadtholder Maurice connected relig-
ion and politics, church and state, even more clearly,
and made still more intense the fiery Protestantism
of the Dutch government/ Strengthened by her
efforts, hardened by her struggles, awakened to
vigorous life by the exhilaration of the long and ar-
duous conflict, the little Protestant state approached
the end of the sixteenth century, enterprising in
internal plans and eager for new fields of foreign
commerce. The probability that commercial ex-
pansion would bring her into conflict with Spain
added zest to the prospect and gave promise that in
extending trade, conquering distant possessions, and
establishing colonies, she would at the same time be
weakening her bitterest enemy.

Hence the early Dutch expeditions to the Indies,
the formation of the East and West India Companies,
the estabHshment of the colonies in Brazil, Guiana,
and North America, and of commercial factories in the
East Indies, were all of them in a certain sense part
of the religious and political struggle between the
Netherlands and Spain. When the twelve years'

• Blok, Hist, of the People of the Netherlands (English trans.),
III., 398-447-

i6so] RELIGIOUS WARS 187

truce was signed, in 1609, those provinces which had
rettimed to the Spanish obedience were uniformly
CathoUc, but their prosperity and international
significance had disappeared. The independent
provinces, on the other hand, were, for all their tol-
eration, almost imiformly Protestant, and they were
already one of the great maritime and commercial
powers of Europe.^

The United Netherlands speedily colonized New
Amsterdam, Guiana, Cape Colony, Java, and other
places, with a population persistent in Protestantism
and in many race characteristics. Unfortunately
for Holland the number of her emigrants was never
great enough to enable her permanently to play a
great part in the history of colonization. The"]
Dutch are not an emigrating people. Yet those
who did emigrate carried with them such an asser-
tive character and so highly developed a group of
institutions that they exercised a deep and per-
manent influence over communities Hke New York,
in which they soon ceased to be the dominant ele-
ment; while their institutions in. Holland made
such a strong impression upon English sojourners
in their midst that some of their characteristics re-
appeared long afterwards in American colonies in
which no Dutchman had ever settled.^

The Reformation, with the wars to which it gave
rise, made Germany for a time the most conspicu-

' Blok, Hist, of the People of the Netherlands (English trans.),
III., 326-334. ' Douglas Campbell, Puritan in Holland.

i88 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1523

ous state in Europe, but its ultimate effect was to
reduce that state to a degree of material poverty;
political insignificance, and intellectual torpidity
unknown before in her experience. Civil war was
long delayed ; the political necessities and the astute
policy of Charles V., the conservative instincts and
patriotic scruples of Luther, and the doubtful posi-
tion of many of the German provinces and cities,
long prevented any attempt by the emperor to en-
force the orthodoxy required by the Diet of Worms,
and induced the Lutherans to go more than half-
way in accepting the policy of postponement.* Yet
even this early period was troubled by successive
minor outbreaks of violence. The " Knights' War"
of 1523, the Peasants' Revolt of 1524 and 1525,
the Zwinglian wars in Switzerland in 1531, and the
Anabaptist outbreak at Munster in 1534 were all
connected with the religious ferment of the times.

From 1530, when the League of Schmalkald was
formed to unite the Protestant princes and cities,
Germany really belonged to two camps, and civil war
was only a question of time. The time came in
1546, the year of Luther's death, when Charles
was at last free from foreign complications and
could make the attempt to reintroduce conformity
into Germany. The Schmalkaldic War, although
marked by a series of imperial successes and tem-
porarily closed by a triumphant truce in 1548, was

* Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V., I., 201-203, 240-256.
319-327-

iSSSl RELIGIOUS WARS 189

soon renewed, and the Peace of Passau of 1552
was a general compromise, representing rather the
weariness of war and the jealousies of the various
powers of Grermany than any permanent political
or religious equilibrium. An attempt was made to
establish a more lasting settlement in the conference
of Augsburg in 1555. Here the terms of the recent
treaty were put in moi e formal shape : Lutheranism
was given legal recognition; all religious disputes
should be settled by peaceful means ; in legal causes
between a Protestant and a Catholic the Imperial
Hight Court of Justice should be composed of an
equal number of Catholics and Protestants.

On the other hand, certain compromises were then
introduced which were destined to be fatal to the
permanency of the religious and political settlement.

1. Instead of individual toleration, as was orig-
inally proposed, the principle was adopted which
has become known as cujus regio ejus religio — that
is to say, each prince or imperial city should choose
between Catholicism and Lutheranism; and there-
after all inhabitants must conform, or, if unwilling
to do so, must expatriate themselves. The unstable
equilibrium of the empire was thus transferred to
the individual states, and each was threatened with
internal revolution whenever there was a change
in the prevailing religious views of the inhabitants
or the personal beUefs of the prince.

2. A second compromise was reached by provid-
ing that all ecclesiastical property seized by tem-

igo EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1553

poral governments down to the close of the late
war should be guaranteed to its new possessors;
but that for the future the process of seculariza-
tion should cease. Thus an artificial obstacle was
placed in the way of the avarice or the desire for
reform of the Protestant princes, at the very time
they were given increased control in their own states.

3. The "ecclesiastical reservation" made an ex-
ception to the right of territorial independence in
religion in the case of the ecclesiastical states, which
were so numerous in Germany. If any archbishop,
bishop, or abbot, who was also a secular prince,
should become a Lutheran, he must resign his office
and divest himself of his power and jurisdiction,
which would pass to his Catholic successor. This
provision deprived Protestant subjects of ecclesias-
tical princes of all prospect of religious freedom, and
doomed them to compulsory reconciliation with the
Catholic Church or to exile, except for certain rights
guaranteed to them by the treaty.

4. The compromises of Augsburg were compro-
mises between Catholics and Lutherans only, and
neither Calvinists nor Zwinglians were given recog-
nition in its terms, although Calvinism was destined
to be the great aggressive force of the Reformation,
making an appeal to the masses of the people and
taking a fundamental hold upon its adherents be-
yond anything which Lutheranism, or indeed any
other form of the Reformation, ever obtained.

The agreement reached in 1555, incomplete and.

i634] RELIGIOUS WARS 191

unstable as it seemed, remained the foundation of
an outward if somewhat troubled religiotis peace for
more than sixty years. Yet a renewal of the con-
flict was threatened from time to time, and in 1618
the terrible Thirty Years' War broke out. The ear-
lier contests had been civil wars only ; the renewed
war was no longer merely a German struggle. In
1625 Christian IV., king of Denmark, entered the
war as leader on the Protestant side, only to yield
to the perseverance of Tilly, the general of the Cath-
olic armies, and to the genius of Wallenstein, the
representative of Emperor Ferdinand ; and to retire
in 1629, leaving north Germany more completely
than before at the mercy of the emperor and of the
Catholic party. Scarcely a year later Grustavus
Adolphus, full of enthusiasm for the Protestant
cause and provided with funds from France, brought
his veteran regiments and his military ability from
Sweden into Germany, and fought in consecutive
years his three wonderful campaigns. After the
death of the "Lion of the North," in 1632, the
"Swedish period" endured still two years; and
when, in 1634, Catholic and Protestant princes en-
tered upon a truce they made terms upon an equal-
ity, though there was even yet but little promise
of a permanent settlement.

Just before the fatal battle of Lutzen, in the
midst of military preparations, a decisive step was
taken by Gustavus which ultimately led to the crea-
tion of one more American colony. Ever since the

192 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1624

regener|,tion, of Sweden tinder the kings of the house
of Vasa, and still more markedly after the adop-
tion of the Reformation, efforts had been made to
extend Swedish relations with other countries.*
Therefore when William Usselinx, who had been so
influential in the establishment of the Dutch West
India Company, left Holland in 1624, and presented
himself to Gustavus Adolphus in Gothenburg, he
received a ready welcome, and was engaged by the
king to organize a similar company for Swedish
trade with the distant parts of the world.'* Sweden
was poor, the king was much absorbed in his mili-
tary operations, and the plans for a "General Com-
mercial Company of the Kingdom of Sweden"
dragged along slowly, only stirred into life from
time to time when there was a prospect that a naval
war might enable the company to add the profits
of privateering to the ordinary reward of commerce.
The untiling efforts of the promoter of the plan,
however, and the sincere interest taken in it by
the king, kept the proposal still in existence; and
in his camp at Nuremberg, October, 1632, three
weeks before his death, Gustavus gave his approval,
though not his actual signattire, to an extended
and ampUfied charter of the Swedish West India
Company.

Six months later, at Heilbronn, the charter was
signed by Chancellor Oxenstjema, creating it a
company with powers of trade, settlement, and gov-

» Jftmeso», U$?eUn}c, 95-97- ' Ibid., 88-94.

1648] RELIGIOUS WARS 193

emment on the coasts of America, Africa, and Asia.'
There was after this time, as before, a close con-
nection between the progress of the great war and
the forttmes of the Swedish colonizing company.
It was the exaltation produced by the prominent
part taken by the northern kingdom in that strug-
gle that gave its rulers and merchants courage and
ambition for such distant enterprises. It was the
war that brought Sweden into close relations with
other and more advanced countries of Europe, es-
pecially with the Netherlands, which was already
playing a part in distant commerce and settlement.
It was a momentary renewal of her triumphs in
Germany and a temporary combination of Swedish
and Dutch capital that led to the sending out of
the Kalmar Nyckel and the Gripen, under the aus-
pices of the company, and the founding of New
Sweden on the Delaware in 1638.^

The peace of 1634 was of short duration, and the
"French period" ensued, when for twelve years
armies of Swedes, French, Spaniards, and Danes,
besides those of the German states themselves,
fought to and fro through the empire. Nor was it
till the definitive peace of Westphalia, in 1648, that
the war actually came to an end. Thus through a
whole generation Germany was torn by warfare,
humiliated by foreign interference, and confused by

■ Jameson, Usselinx, 168.

' Odhner (trans, by G. B. Keen), in Pa. Magazine of Hist,
and Biog., III., 269-284.

194 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1648

the introduction of new issues. One after another,
foreign states were drawn into the struggle ttntil a
mere German civil war had developed into a general
European conflict, in which foreigners were strug-
gling for German territory. Catholics made alli-
ances with Lutherans and with Calvinists, until what
had begun as a religious struggle became a purely
political contest among unpatriotic German princes
and ambitious neighbors of Germany contending for
power and prestige.

When, at the peace of 1648, political questions
had been settled, territorial changes agreed upon,
the Netherlands and Switzerland definitely separated
from the empire, Alsace surrendered to France, and
much of Pomerania to Sweden, the religious con-
flict was brought to an end as far as possible by re-
turning to the old plan of the treaty of Augsburg,
except that such toleration as was then granted to
Catholics and Lutherans was now extended to Cal-
vinists also. To these provisions some further ex-
tensions of religious liberty were added by secur-
ing guarantees of protection to subjects differing in
their religion from their princes and by including
in the highest imperial tribunal a certain number of
Protestants.*

The material sufferings and losses of Germany
during the war were almost beyond description.'

' Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte, V., sect ii., 764.
' Erdmannsdorffer, Deutsche Geschichte, i648-.-i74o, I., 100-
»i5-

1648] RELIGIOUS WARS 195

The armies, made up largely of soldiers ot different
nationalities, without attachment to the countries
through which they marched, without interest in
the questions at issue, without a regular commis-
sariat, often without pay, brutalized by long cam-
paigning and repeated sacks of cities, followed by
an immense rabble of non-combatant men, women,
and children, were a barbarian horde, and ravaged
the lands in which they were established like a fire
or a pestilence. The tortures they, inflicted' upon
the peasantry and the citizens, the robbery, the out-
rages, the wanton destruction, pressed close to the
limits of human endurance, and seemed almost to
threaten the extermination of the population. The
prosperity of the cities was crushed by war contribu-
tions, even when they escaped being plundered like
Magdeburg; and the debasement of the coinage prac-
tised by the emperor and the princes bore hardly
upon all who bought or sold.* During the later
campaigns of the war military operations in many
regions became almost impracticable from the very
impoverishment of the country; no sustenance ex-
isted for friend or for enemy; population in some
parts was almost destroyed, and it was every-
where extensively displaced.'' The conservatism,
the settled rooting of the people in the soil, acquired
and inherited property, moral and material fixity,
were all alike disturbed.

* Gindeley, History of tht Thirty Years' War (English trans.),
II-. 390-395- ' ^^i<^- 398-

156 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1648

The half -century that followed 1648 did but little
to restore prosperity or repose to Germany. The
western provinces especially were the scene of fre-
quently renewed warfare. The territorial ambi-
tions of Louis XIV. were directed to the German
lands which lay on the eastern border of France, and
there was no strength in the empire to resist his ag-
gressions or to make him fear either defeat or re-
prisals. Even the European coalitions which forced
upon him successive treaties did not prevent re-
newed attacks or heal the scars of the repeated de-
vastations of the lower and the upper Rhine coun-
try. The culmination of this period of suffering
was the terrible ravaging of the Palatinate, in 1688,
when the fertile region about Heidelberg, Mannheim,
Speyer, and Worms was harried and burned and
pillaged by the soldiers of Louis, with the same
brutality and more destructiveness than the "Wild
Swedish and mercenary armies of the Thirty Years'
War had used.

A people with an experience such as that of the
Germans in the seventeenth century was thence-
forth easily drawn away from home. One genera-
tion of continuous warfare throughout all Germany,
followed by another generation of intermittent
invasion from France, and closed by a crisis of
rapine and devastation, made hundreds of thou-
sands of the German people homeless, despair-
ing, and eager for escape. It was this situation of
the people, combined with the religious condition

i6oo] RELIGIOUS WARS 197

before described, that made Germany the best re-
cruiting-ground for American colonists to be found
in Europe. Before the close of the seventeenth
century a stream of emigration set from Germany
towards America which furnished to Pennsylvania
one-third of her pre-Revolutionary inhabitants, and
made a considerable part of the population of several
of the other colonies. ,

A second effect of the Thirty Years' War was the
practical dissolution of the empire and the loss by
the emperor of all centralized control over its pol-
icy. This was a cumulative result of the war rather
than a definite provision of the peace. The princes,
nobles, and cities had so frequently allied them-
selves with foreign states against the emperor and
against one another, their policy had been so con-
stantly regulated by their own interests alone, in
entire disregard of those of the nation at large, and
the religious divisions had been settled on such a
sectional basis, that there was now no thought of
derogating from their independence for the sake of
the central power of Germany. By Article VIII. of
the treaty of peace all German states were definite-
ly permitted to form independent alliances among
themselves and with foreign states, so long as these
were not directed against either the emperor or the
empire.* As a matter of fact, the bond of union
among the states of Germany had become so weak
as to be almost non-existent. The emperor was the
» Lamprecbt, Deutsche Geschichte, V., § 2, pp. 765, 766.

198 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1500

actual ruler of the Hapsburg dominions and the
nominal head of the empire; but Germany was a
geographical rather than a national expression, and
its head could play no part as a national ruler out-
side of his immediate hereditary dominions.

Germany had many interests in America. Martin
Behaim, Regiomontanus, and other German scien-
tists contributed largely to the development of the
science of navigation during the period of dis-
covery ; WaldseemuUer suggested the name that has
been universally accepted for the New World; the
"numerous printing-presses of Germany did much to
make known to Europe the history of the ex-
ploration and early conquests and the wonders of
the Indies; under Charles V. the empire was brought
closely into connection with Spain, the greatest
colonizing power of the seventeenth centvuy; her
Fuggers, Welsers, and other capitalists provided
much of the means for the early Spanish voyages,
and for a time held extensive grants in Venezuela
under the Spanish crown; and her teeming emi-
grants furnished a large part of the colonial pop-
ulation. Yet Germany as a nation has, of all the
nations of Europe, exercised the least influence on
the fortunes of America. Neither the emperor nor
any German prince has ever exercised any direct
or indirect power over any American territory.
Many causes may have contributed to this failure,
but the most effective was doubtless the Thirty
Years' War. The religious disunion, the material

1648] RELIGIOUS WARS 199

impoverishment, and the political insignificance
which this war caused, during the most important
colonizing century, excluded Germany as a nation
from a r61e among the European powers which have
held control over parts of the New World.

CHAPTER XI

THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND THE CATHOLICS
(1534-1660)

ENGLAND passed through the crisis of the Ref-
ormation without a civil war, yet no coun-
try of Europe found greater difficulty in coming to
a religious equilibrium after that change. Though
actual rebellion was nipped in the bud wherever it
appeared, as in the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536 and
in the Rising of the North of 1569, yet between
those years, and long after the second rising, religious
passions were embittered to the very verge of out-
break. In the early period' of the Reformation
changes were rapid and violent, and during more
than a century and a half after Protestantism was
established hostile legislation irriposed heavy bur-
dens upon all those who differed from the dominant
party in religious faith.

When England became a colonizing country at
the opening of the seventeenth century, the effect of
the religious changes up to that time had been to
produce four well-marked reKgious parties among
her people — Churchmen, CathoHcs, Puritans, and
Independents. First in order came the adherents of

200

iSS8] ENGLISH CHURCH 201

the established church, a church which was in a very-
real sense the creation of Queen Elizabeth and of
her times — for aU that had gone before was unstable
and tentative, and might readily have been altered
by a ruler of different character or policy. When
Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558 the great body
of the people of England, from a religious point of
view, was still a fluid mass, a sea accustomed to be
drawn, like the tide, by the planet that ruled the
sky, whether an Erastian Henry VIII., a Catholic
Mary, or a Protestant Protector Somerset.

Elizabeth declared at her accession that she would
not allow her people to swerve to the right hand or
the left from the religion established by law ; and in
the main she succeeded in carrying out this policy.
The prayer-book, the articles of religion, the su-
premacy of the queen, the uniformity of service, the
practices and doctrines of the official English church
during the long reign of Elizabeth, meant something
very definite and made the established church an
objective reality. Of course she learned, as other
sovereigns have learned, that even the will of a
king may break against the rock of religious convic-
tion ; and large numbers of the people of England
during her reign remained, or became, dissatisfied
with the established church.

Nevertheless, when Elizabeth died Anglicanism
was the national church in a sense in which it had
not been before, and in exactly the same sense as
that in which the Roman Catholic church was the

202 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1535

church of Spain. A generation had grown up
which had seen no other religious system in au-
thority, whose beliefs and duties were taught them
by its clergy, and whose sentiments and devotion
naturally gathered around it as their object. This
religious system, therefore, was strongly intrenched:
it had all the authoritativeness of law, all the sanc-
tion of patriotic feeling in a period of intense patriot-
ism, and the support of much sound learning; be-
sides, the church was fast becoming hallowed by
tradition and beautified to the imagination by sen-
timent. Yet for various reasons the Anglican
church failed to obtain the allegiance of the whole
EngHsh nation.

The second of the four great religious classes, the
Catholics, held allegiance to a still older and more
imposing organization. However clear the argu-
ment of English churchmen that the Anglican
body was the church founded by the apostles
and enduring continuously in England through
all the intervening centuries, the "old church"
was still to many 4;he church of which the pope
was the earthly head. From the time that Henry
Vni. attacked the supremacy of the pope and
many of the characteristic doctrines and practices
of the mediaeval church, a party separate from the
national church came into being, which clung faith-
fully to that system.

The existence of the English Roman Catholics
as a separate body from the established English

1558] ENGLISH CHURCH 203

church may be considered to date from the res-
ignation of Sir Thomas More from the chancellor-
ship in 1532. During the remainder of Henry's
reign their position was equivocal and dangerous,
a number of conspicuous Catholics accepting martyr-
dom under the laws against treason, when brought to
the test of the acceptance or rejection of the king's
claim to the headship of the English church. Under
the enUghtened rule of Somerset they were not
persecuted; but under his successor, and under the
personal rule of Edward VI., they fared much
worse.* The time of consolation came under Queen
Mary, when for a space of five years (1553-1558)
the English church and English Catholicism again
became identical.

Elizabeth on her accession had no antagonism to
the Roman Catholics as such. Neither in doctrine
nor in ceremonial was there any essential breach
between Elizabeth and the Catholic church ; and for
a moment the world watched to see what her deci-
sion would be.^ Yet the nature of her position
dictated to her a return to the ecclesiastical position
of her father, and an acquiescence in the main results
of the Protestant development tmder Edward VI.
She accepted the requirements of the policy readily
enough, and by the Acts of Supremacy and Uniform-

' Pollard, England Under Protector Somerset, 110-120, 258-
264, 322.
« Maitland, " Defender of the Faith " {Eng. Hist. Review, XV.,

I20).

204 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1559

ity of 1559' the English Catholics again became a
proscribed body, living in disobedience to the law,
subject to severe pains and penalties for any speech
or action against the established church, and even
for the negative ofEence of absence from its religious
services.

The disabilities of the Catholics according to the
laws passed at the opening of the reign of Elizabeth
were as follows: i. No Catholic could hold any
office or employment under the croivn, or any eccle-
siastical office in England, or receive any university
degree: for all such persons were required to take an
oath renouncing the authority of the pope, and ac-
knowledging the headship of the queen in ecclesias-
tical matters.'' 2. No Catholic could attend mass:
the service of the prayer-book being required at all
meetings for worship in England.' 3. No Catholic
could remain away from the regular services of the
established church: as the law required that "all
and every person and persons inhabiting within the
realm or any other the queen's majesty's dominions
shall diligently and faithfully, having no lawful or
reasonable excuse to be absent, endeavor themselves
to resort to their parish church or chapel accustomed
. . . upon every Sttnday and other days ordained and
used to be kept as holy days, and then and there to
abide orderly and soberly during the time of the
common prayer, preachings, or other service of

• I Eliz., chaps, i., ii. ' Ibid., chap, ii., §§ 19-25.

' Ibid., cha.p. il, §§ 3-8.

i689] ENGLISH CHURCH 205

God there to be used and ministered." ' 4. No
Catholic could speak, write, or circulate any argu-
ments or appeals in favor of the ecclesiastical claims
of the CathoUc church or in derogation of the royal
supremacy or of the prayer-book.

The penalties for Ariolation of these laws varied
from a fine of one shilling for absence from chtu'ch
on a Sunday or holy day to the terrible customary
ptmishment for treason in the case of repeated con-
viction for supporting the claims of the pope. These
fimdamental disabihties remained in existence dur-
ing the whole of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies. They were added to from time to time
as the religious conflict in England, and in Europe
at large, became more embittered; although, on the
other hand, there were occasional periods when the
exigencies of policy or the sympathies of the
sovereign temporarily suspended their enforcement.
They remained the fundamental law long after the
Act of Toleration of 1689 made easy the burdens of
other Nonconformists, and until the gradual prog-
ress of enlightenment in the eighteenth century led
to a willing neglect to enforce them ; and they disap-
peared only in 1829.

The tendency during the reign of Elizabeth was
constantly towards an increase in the severity of
the laws against "popish recusants," as those who
refused to conform to the established church were
called, and to greater rigor in their application. At

' I Eliz., chap, ii., § 14.

2o6 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1563

four successive periods during that reign additions
were made to the disabihties and sufferings imposed
by law upon Roman Cathohcs.

1. An act of 1563 extended the lines of restriction
so that the oath of supremacy must be taken bj' a
much greater number of officials — ^by all school-
masters, lawyers, and petty officers of court, and by
all members of the House of Commons ; and so that
the first refusal of any person to take it, as well as
the Gjrst occasion on which any one should in writing
or speech support the claims of the pope, should be
punished by confiscation and outlawry, the second
offence by the penalties of treason.*

2. The difficulties of the CathoKcs were increased
by the coming, in 1568, of Mary Queen of Scots to
England, where she became a permanent centre of
Catholic disaffection and hopes ; by the Rebellion of
the North in 1569 ; and by the papal bull of deposi-
tion of the queen in 1570. The laws at once re-
flected the anger and alarm of Parliament and min-
isters, and their care "for the surety and preserva-
tion of the queen's most royal person, in whom
consisteth all the happiness and comfort of the whole
state and subjects of the realm."* From 15 71 to
1575 four new treason laws,' directed against sympa-
thizers with Mary and bringers of bulls from Rome,
recall the savage legislation of Henry VIII. under
somewhat similar circumstances.

' S Eliz., chap. i. ' 13 Eliz., chap, i., § i.

' Ibid., chaps, i., ii.; 14 Eliz., chaps, i., ii.

iS8s] ENGLISH CHURCH 207

3. A third series of additions to the anti-CathoKc
code was called out by the eflEorts of the Jesuits, from
1579 onward, to reconquer the heretical nations and
especially England, for the church. Hence, in 1581,
the mere attempt to convert any subject of the
queen to Roman Catholicism, as well as the accept-
ance of such reconciliation with the church, was
made treason; the saying or hearing of the mass
was forbidden tinder penalty of heavy fine and long
imprisonment; recusants who were absent from
church a month at a time were fined ;£2o a month
for the length of time for which they stayed
away;' and by a later law the crown was allowed,
in case of recusancy, instead of the fine, to seize
two-thirds of the property of the offender.^

Certain offences which Catholics might be espe-
cially expected to commit, such as "by setting or
erecting any figure or by casting of nativities or by
calculations or by an}'- prophesying, witchcraft,
conjuration, or other like unlawful means whatso-
ever, seek to know, and shall set forth by express
words, deeds, or writings how long her majesty shall
live, or who shall reign king or queen of this realm
of England after her highness's decease," were made
punishable by death and confiscation of goods. In
1585 all Jesuits and Catholic priests trained abroad
were banished on pain of death, and all English
subjects studying abroad in one of those Jesuit
schools, which had already become famous as the

■ 23 Eliz., chap. i. ' Jbid., chap. ii.

2o8 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1593

best schools in Christendom, were required to re-
turn to England immediately and take the oath of
supremacy or sufier the penalties of treason.

4. Within the next few years came the execution
of Mary, the war with Spain, the defeat of the Ar-
mada, and the definite passing of the crisis of Eliza-
beth's reign. Nevertheless, the year 1593 was mark-
ed by an "act against popish recusants," which re-
quired all English Catholics to remain within five
miles of their homes, and provided for a still closer
search for Jesuits and priests.'

Thus an augmenting body of oppressive law, in
addition to their fundamental disabilities, burdened
the English Catholics at the accession of Jam,es I.
in 1603. That event they may well have looked
forward to and welcomed with joy. James was the
son of Mary of Scotland, for whom many of them
had made such deep personal sacrifices and on whose
account all had been made to suffer. He was known
to be a man of moderate spirit, easy good-nature,
and philosophic breadth of mind. Circumstances,
by reheving England from the fear of invasion from
Spain, and by establishing the Protestant succes-
sion, might be considered to have left the way open
for the admission of a more generous and tolerant
treatment of the Catholic minority. The king con-
trolled the enforcement or the non-enforcement of
the law; his word could put the machinery of the
courts, high and low, into motion for purposes of per-
' 35 Eli?., chap. ii.

i6o5] ENGLISH CHURCH 209

secution ; or, on the other hand, could open the prison
doors to those already incarcerated, and restrain the
indictment of those amenable to the law. James
might fairly be expected to have the wiH, as he un-
doubtedly had the power, to treat the Catholics with
greater leniency.

On the other hand, parliamentary and popular
antagonism to the Roman Catholics had to be con-
tended T\rith. Notwithstanding the legal suprem-
acy and complete predominance of the Anglican
church, there was still a wide - spread fear of the
" usurped power and jurisdiction of the bishop of
JRome"; and much patriotic hatred of the Catholic
enemies of England and of their sympathizers with-
in the realm. This national sentiment was strongly
reinforced by the fanatical Puritan fervor of oppo-
sition to "the devilish positions and doctrines
whereon popery is built and taught." The Gun-
powder Plot of 1605, in which Catesby, Guy Fawkes,
and other Catholic conspirators showed themselves
ready to sacrifice the king, his family, his ministers,
and members of Parliament, filled James for a while
with fears for his own safety. If James, therefore,
should favor the Catholics he must do so in oppo-
sition to the overwhelming public opinion of the
people of England and to his own timidity. What
would be his policy ? Would the persecuted minor-
ity be taken under the protection of the crown?
Or would their position remain as it had been for
half a century, or even be made worse ?

2IO EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1605

Upon the answer to this question depended the
happiness or unhappiness of the Catholics in Eng-
land and the likelihood or unlikelihood that many
of them would emigrate. Should their position be-
come intolerable, those who could would either take
refuge in one of the Catholic states of the continent
or find an asylimi in those boundless lands claimed
by England across the sea. The minds of men
through all Europe were turning towards Amer-
ica, not only as a sphere for trade and a base for the
fighting out of Old-World quarrels,* but as a place
of settlement for men who could not conform to
■ftieir Old- World reHgious surroundings.

Before the reign of James was over Sir George
Calvert obtained a charter for Avalon, in Newfotmd-
land, the ambiguity of whose term's made it possi-
ble to take Catholic priests and settlers there; and
in 1632 he received in exchange for this a charter for
Maryland, under which Catholics held all official
positions and Jesuit missionaries carried on their
work. The British island of Montserrat, in the
West Indies, appears to have been settled in 1634
by Catholic refugees from Virginia;^ and there were
other floating proposals to colonize English and
Irish Catholics in America.* It was evidently
quite within the bounds of possibility that Catholic

' Zuniga to the king of Spain, December 24, 1606, and Sep-
tember 22, 1607, in Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 88-90,
116-118.

' Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 261, n. 9.

" Col. of State Pap., 1628, p. 95.

io'32] ENGLISH CHURCH 211

colonies should be established in those "other your
highness' s dominions," from which the House of
Commons in 1623 especially petitioned that Ro-
manists sho'uld be excluded/

As a matter of fact, the policy of James and of his
son and successor Charles towards the Catholics
had little consistency, and shows an alternation of
leniency and increased severity, reflecting the vary-
ing inclinations of the king and the changing exi-
gencies of external and internal politics. During the
first two years of his reign James lightened their
burdens, in accordance with the promises of his
first speech in Parliament, "so much as time, occa-
sion, or law should permit." ^ The Gunpowder Plot
then thoroughly frightened and angered the king
and justified the House of Commons in its protests
against leniency to the Catholics. In 1606 two
long detailed statutes' were enacted, carrying much
further in principle the persecuting provisions of
the law under Elizabeth, increasing the burdens
upon the conscience, the purse, and the liberty of
Catholics, and specifying the most minute arrange-
ments for the enforcement of the law and the dis-
covery of those who were secretly Romanists.

Before many years a change came, due princi-
pally to the interest of James in the scheme of ob-
taining a Spanish bride for his son, and to his in-

' Rushworth, Historical Collections, I., 141.

' Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents, 284.

• 3 and 4 James I., chaps, iv., v.

VOL. I. — 16

212 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1622

creasing subserviency to Gondomar, the shrewd
Spanish minister. The king of Spain would not
listen to any negotiations for the hand of his sister,
unless the persecution of his co-reUgionists in Eng-
land was stopped ; ard James, in order to carry out
his foreign' policy, blinded by his admiration for
the Spaniard, and always prone to follow the line of
least resistance, promised what he certainly could
not perform, the parliamentary repeal of the anti-
Catholic laws.

Nevertheless, he performed what he could, and
ordered the suspension of their enforcement. In
1622 the lord keeper of the privy seal wrote to
the judges that "it is his majesty's pleasure that
they make no niceness or difficulty to extend the
princely favor to all such as they shall find prisoners
in the jails of their circuits for any church recusancy
or refusing the oath of supremacy or dispensing of
popish books, or any other point of recusancy that
shall concern religion only and not matters of state." '
A vast number of Catholics were, in this year, re-
leased on bail or freed completely from prosecution.
When the Spanish marriage negotiations failed, just
before the close of the reign of James, Parliament
again petitioned the king to enforce the old penal
laws, at last with success ; and a momentary wave
of severity towards the CathoHes spread over Eng-
land.

Spain was not the only Catholic country with
' Rtishworth, Historical Collections, I., 63.

i64o] ENGLISH CHURCH 213

which England was in negotiation. The marriage
of Charles with Henrietta Maria of France followed
close upon his accession to the throne. The condi-
tions of the marriage treaty called for greater leni-
ency to the Catholics, and the influence of the queen
secured it, though not in the degree promised. Yet
on the whole the attitude of the crown and of the
judges during the period from 1625 to 1640 was
favorable to the Catholics; and although Laud was
not plotting to hand over the EngUsh church to
Rome, as was the popular beHef, he was too sym-
pathetic with the spirit of Roman Catholicism to
put into force the savage laws against it which were
upon the statute-book.

In 1640 Laud fell, the hand of the king was re-
moved from the helm, and the domination of the
Long Parliament and the protectorate for the next
twenty years meant the bitter persecution of the
Catholics; while the Restoration, in 1660, saw a par-
tial toleration of them, preparatory to the Declara-
tion of Indulgence and the active efforts of James II.
in their favor twenty-five years later.

Through all this succession of alternately rig-
orous and lenient applications of the harsh laws of
the statute-book, as a matter of fact few Catholics
left England, and no American colony remained for
any considerable length of time a Catholic commu-
nity. The reasons for this result are not hard to find.
In the first place, it may well be questioned whether
the position of the Catholics in England was ever so

214 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1603

bad as one would expect to find it from reading the
laws and parliamentary proceedings. In all Tudor
and Stuart legislation there was a wide chasm be-
tween the passage of the law and its enforcement;
the statute-book is loaded with laws that were never
carried out, or were put into force only to the most
limited extent. The laws against the Catholics cer-
tainly remained largely unenforced.

Secondly, the English CathoUcs were never with-
out hope of an amelioration of their state at home.
The most natural time for a great Catholic exodus
was in the later years of the reign of James I. and the
early years of Charles I., when the fovindations alike
of Virginia and New England were being laid, and
when Maryland was offering a basis on which either
a Catholic or a Protestant community might pre-
sumably have been built up; but this was just the
period when the influence of the crown was most con-
sistently used in favor of the Catholics at home.
They might fairly hope that a better day was dawn-
ing for them, when the powerful interposition of
Spain and France was willingly accepted by James
and Charles in their favor. The special time when
emigration seemed most practicable was also the
time when the occasion for it was least.

Again, it is to be noted that no American colony
ever reached the position in which it could provide
a positively secure refuge to Catholics. Maryland
wavered from toleration to Catholicism, then to Ang-
licanism and to Puritanism, and then back to tol-

1640] ENGLISH CHURCH 215

eration ; but never at any time was it a Catholic set-
tlement in the sense in which Massachusetts be-
longed to the Puritans or Pennsylvania was the
special home of the Quakers. English CathoKcs,
hesitating between emigration and the further en-
durance of their ills at home, would feel no irresist-
ible attraction in the dubious toleration of any of
the colonies.*

Lastly, it is to be noticed that the great propor-
tion of the EngUsh Catholics were not of the emi-
grating classes. Many of them were of the nobility
and gentry, and therefore not of the ordinary stuff
of which colonists were made. It is quite possible
that the same conservative tendencies which held
them to the old church held them to their old homes.
If they had been as easily detached from their na-
tive soil as the Puritans and Quakers, one cannot
doubt that some great migration comparable to that
of those two bodies would have taken place.

' Tyler, England in America, chaps, vii., viii.

CHAPTER XII

THE ENGLISH PURITANS AND THE SECTS
(1550-1689)

THE multitude of Englishmen other than Cath-
olics, who, at the opening of the seventeenth
century, were dissatisfied with the church of England
as by law established, may be grouped under the
general name of Puritans; although as time passed
on various newly organized religious bodies formed
themselves from among them, so that two more
religious classes, at least, have to be differentiated.
The roots of Puritanism are to be found in the
characteristics of htunan temperament. Conserva-
tives and radicals will always exist ; the Puritans were
those who carried or tried to carry the principles and
ideas of the Reformation to their logical and rigor-
ous conclusion. Such men as Latimer, Cranmer,
and many of the theologians of the reign of Edward
VI., were already steadily approaching the funda-
mental position of the Puritans, as their thought
developed, long before the foreign influence of the
reign of Queen Mary became effective and the modi-
fied Protestantism of Elizabeth was introduced.
If the government had kept its hands off, England

216

iSSS] PURITANS 217

would have divided into two camps, that of the
Catholics and that of a Puritanically reformed
church. The Anglican system was an artificial one,
a compromise established under the influence of the
crown and kept in power by royal determination till
it eventually won the devotion, the loyalty, or at
least the dehberate acceptance of the great body of
moderate and conservative Englishmen. Catholics
and Puritans were the logical opposites, and not
Cathohcs and Anglicans, nor yet Anglicans and
Pxxritans.

Yet in a more immediate sense Mary gave occa-
sion to the rise of Puritanism by driving into ban-
ishment many of the more devout Protestants of her
day. At Frankfort, Strasburg, Basel, Zurich, and
Geneva groups of these English exiles gathered,
formed congregations worshipping together; devel-
oped, apart from the restrictions of government, the
logical tendencies of their religious ideas; and in
many cases came under the powerful influence of
continental reformers. Especially at Frankfort * and
at Geneva was the religious life of these Protestant
commtonities at white heat ; and controversies were
then begun and principles adopted which dominated
all the later life of these Englishmen, and were hand-
ed down to their successors in England and America
as party cries through more than a century. When
the ordeal of Mary's reign was over, the exiled for
conscience' sake returned to England, but they

• Hinds, The England of Elizabeth, 12-67.

2i8 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1558

formed already a body divergent from the church
as it was then established.

During Elizabeth's reign three stages of the devel-
opment of Puritanism gave occasion for correspond-
ing conflicts with the crown and for making more
clear the differences between AngHcan and Puritan.
During the first decade of the reign, Puritanism
meant a protest against certain of the ceremonies
and formulas and vestments required of clergymen
by the law. The sign of the cross on the child's
forehead in baptism, the celebration of saints' days,
insistence on kneeling to receive the communion,
the use of church organs, the changing of robes
during the service, and even the wearing of a sur-
plice or a square cap, were to many earnest souls
survivals of "popery" and temptations to supersti-
tion. The clergy who held such beliefs tried by
resolutions in convocation to change the practices
of the church : but notwithstanding the large votes
in their favor they were still in the niinority and
were defeated.*

Theia individual ministers began to disregard the
law, and either to neglect the use of certain require-
ments of the prayer-book altogether or to change the
forms there laid down. The archbishop and the
Court of High Commission issued detailed instruc-
tions insisting on observance of the authorized form
of worship;^ but the ministers declared that they

' Strype, Annals, I., 500-505.

' Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents, 191-194.

1572] PURITANS 219

owed obedience to God rather than to man, and
either resigned their pastorates or, encouraged by
their congregations, continued to disobey the law
and the archiepiscopal injunctions. It was at this
time and in this connection that the word "Puritan "
came into use, as a term of reproach for those who
insisted on an ultra-pure ritual, purged from all
traces of the old religion. "Puritan" was used as
" Pharisee" might have been.'

From 1570 onward Puritanism entered upon a
second stage, in the form of a contest for changes
in the organization of the established church. In
the main the same men who were dissatisfied with
the liturgy of the church began to oppose the sys-
tem of its government by bishops and archbishops.^
The "Admonition to Parliament" of 1572 declares
that "as the names of archbishops, archdeacons,
lord bishops, chancellors, etc., are drawn out of the
pope's shop, together with their offices, so the gov-
ernment which they use ... is anti-Christian and
devilish and contrary to the Scriptures. And as
safely may we, by the warrant of God's words, sub-
scribe to allow the dominion of the pope uni-
versally to rule over the word of God as an arch-
bishop over a whole province or a lord bishop over
a diocese which containeth many shires and parishes.
For the dominion that they exercise ... is un-

• Camden, Annals, year 1568.

' Letter from Sampson, formerly dean of Christ Church, to
Lord Btirleigh, March 8, 1574. in Str3rpe, Annals, III., 373.

220 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1572

lawful and expressly forbidden by the word of
God."»

The greater number of those who attacked the
episcopal organization of the church advocated the
system of Presbyterianism which had been exten-
sively adopted on the Continent and recently in-
troduced into Scotland by the Book of Discipline.
November 20, 1572, was erected at Wandsworth,
in Surrey, the first presbytery in England;' from
this time forward presbyteries were established here
and there by groups of neighboring parishes. Some
ten or fifteen years later the larger group, known as
the "classis," was introduced; provincial and na-
tional "synods" were contemplated by many of the
Puritan clergy ; and the English church bade fair to
be reorganized on Presbyterian lines, without the
authority of the law.

This action met the stem opposition of the queen
and the Court of High Commission. In 1583 Eliza-
beth appointed Whitgift archbishop of Canterbury,
and tmder him the law was enforced with rigor.
Individual clergymen were deposed or forced to con-
form; the devotional practices called "exercises,"
on which Puritanism throve, were forbidden; and
although the contest continued, the introduction of
Presbyterianism was held in check.

The latter years of Elizabeth's reign saw Puritan-

' Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents, 199.
' Bancroft, Dangerous Positions, chap, i., quoted in Prothero,
Statutes and Constitutional Docuinents, 247.

1583] PURITANS 221

ism within the church talcing on a new activity, by
ttirning from questions of ceremony and church gov-
ernment to questions of morals. The Puritans al-
ways stood for greater earnestness and for the abo-
htion of abuses in the church, but as time passed on
they brought into greater prominence the ascetic
ideal of life; the strict keeping of the Sabbath bor-
rowed from the Jewish ritual became customary;^
prevailing immoralities and extravagances were
more bitterly reprobated in books, sermons, and
parhamentary statutes; and Puritanism took on
that tmlovely aspect of exaggerated austerity which
characterized its most conspicuous manifestations
in the seventeenth centtuy.

The great body of men of Puritan tendencies, both
clerg5mien and laymen, were deeply interested in
reforming the chtirch of England in liturgy, in or-
ganization, and in practices ; but they had no wish or
intention to break it up, to divide it into different
bodies, or to withdraw individually from its mem-
bership. They were as completely dominated by
the ideal of a single united national church, one in
doctrine, organization, and form of worship, as was
the queen herself. Nevertheless, a group of men
arose among them, vmder the general name of Inde-
pendents, to whom the very idea of a national
church seemed idolatrous; who found in the Script-
ures, or were driven by the logic of their posi-
tion, to one plan of chtirch government only — the

• Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 123-132.

222 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1581

absolute independence of each congregation of
Christian believers. They looked back to the little
groups of chosen believers in Syria and Asia Minor,
the shadowy outlines of whose organization are
found in the New Testament ; their imagination gave
definite shape and their reverence for the Scriptures
gave divine authority to these as examples. Ac-
cording to the analogy of biblical times, they looked
upon themselves as a remnant of saints, sacred and
set apart from a wicked and persecuting world.

Some of these extreme Puritans were tmder the
influence of Robert Browne, a zealous advocate,
whose activity lay principally between 15 81 and
1586. Others came under the somewhat more sys-
tematic teachings of Barrow and Greenwood. Thus
it became a fundamental principle of several thou-
sand persons, between 1580 and 1600, to separate
themselves from the established church. They
are, therefore, known as " Separatists," though they
were more commonly called at that time, as a
term of reproach, by the names of their leaders,
" Brownists" or " Barrowists." They met in "con-
venticles," and even strove to form more perma-
nent congregations by gathering in secret places,
or sometimes openly, in defiance of the authorities,
A chtirchman of the time says that they teach
"that the worship of the English church is flat
idolatry; that we admit into our church persons
unsanctified; that our preachers have no lawful
calling; that our government is tmgodly; that no

i6o3] PURITANS 223

bishop or preacher preacheth Christ sincerely and
truly, that the people of every parish ought to
choose their bishop, and that every elder, though
he be no doctor nor pastor, is a bishop." '

In times when church and state were one, such
teaching could not be endured. If the Piu"itans
were scourged with whips the Separatists were lashed
with scorpions. Their teachers were silenced and
imprisoned, and Barrow and Greenwood were, in
1587, hanged at Tybvun. Their congregations were
broken up and attendants at their conventicles were
fined, deprived of their property, and thrown into
prison, where they died by the score. Before Eliz-
abeth's reign was over, the Separatists had gone into
exile or become but a persecuted remnant, so far, at
least, as outward manifestation extended; though
one can scarcely doubt that among Puritans gener-
ally, and even, perhaps, among those who still ad-
hered to the established church, were many who
shared their convictions. It is to be remembered
that the Independents and all the new sects which
were formed in England later in the seventeenth
century, as well as the Puritans of New England,
organized themselves on the basis of independent
congregations of Christian believers.

The close of the sixteenth century saw the contrast
between the Anglican churchman on the one hand
and the Puritan and Separatist on the other becom-

■ Paule, Life of Whitgift (1612), 43, quoted in Prothero,
Statutes and Constitutional Documents, 223.

224 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1580

ing more harsh, their incompatibility more evident.
Fifty years earlier episcopacy and ceremonialism
seemed to most Anglicans comparatively unimpor-
tant in themselves. They rather blamed the Puri-
tans for making a diflSculty about matters indiffer-
ent, and for opposing the civil authority in things
pertaining to conscience; but did not quarrel with
them on religious questions. But a generation of
disputes, the development of fundamental princi-
ples, the need for justification of a position already
taken, drove both parties into a more dogmatic
attitude. The high -church party in the estab-
lished church now began to assert the divine ap-
pointment of the episcopal office, to lay stresB
on the doctrine of the apostolic succession, and
gradually to reintroduce much symbolic ceremo-
nial.

The Puritans, on the other hand, were more than
ever convinced that the system they advanced was
based upon divine authority ; and that the church as
it stood was founded upon human regulation only
and must be forced, if it could not be persuaded, to
change its system. Still greater clearness was given
to this division of parties by the theological contest
that came into existence between 1600 and 1620. The
Puritans were almost completely Calvinist, and they
claimed that the established church itself had al-
ways been so. On the other hand, the Anglican
leaders of the early seventeenth century were Ar-
n}i;iian, and this form of theological doctrine was as-

i629] PURITANS 225

serted by all those who defended the existing organ-
ization and ceremonial practices of the church/

Thus the breach between the Puritan and the
churchman was now so wide that James I., indolent
and arrogant for all his toleration and learning, did
nothing — perhaps could do nothing — towards its
closing. He said of the Puritans, at the Conference
at Hampton Court in 1604 : " I shall make them con-
form themselves or I will harry them out of this
land, or else do worse." ^ He disappointed and an-
gered them, drove them into opposition to his civil
rule as well as to his church policy, and strength-
ened their number and their position by his treat-
ment of ParUament, whose interests and theirs had
come to be inseparable.

All the antagonisms, religious and political, of the
reign of James were intensified in that of Charles I.
The new king was more autocratic and more unsym-
pathetic with his subjects ; Parliament was more self-
assertive and more determined to impose its wishes
upon king and ministers; the authorities of the es-
tablished church were more intolerant towards jfche
Puritans and milder towards the Catholics. The
Puritans, on the other hand, were more convinced
that the Anglican church was retrograding towards
Catholicism, and more determined to destroy epis-
copacy if they should ever be able to do so.

The freest opportunity of the established church

' Makower, Constitutional Hi^ry of the Church of England, 75.
' Gardiner, Hist, of England, I., 157-

226 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1597

to destroy Puritanism came during the period of
the personal government of Charles, from 1629 to
1640, when ParUament had no meetings, and when
the Court of Star Chamber, the High Commission,
and the Privy Council were the all-powerful in-
struments of an administration sympathetic with
the high -church party. The oppressions of the
Puritans were now at their height, and the pros-
pect of ever obtaining freedom to worship as they
chose seemed the darkest. With the most promi-
nent liberal and Puritan leaders imprisoned for their
political opinions, like Sir John Eliot, or lying in
prison, crushed under enormous fines, like Prynne;
with the courts subservient to the royal will;
with court preachers declaring the duty of passive
obedience to the government; with Laud guiding
the policy of the king in all ecclesiastical matters, —
the state of the Puritans might well seem hopeless,
and they might well look towards some distant land
as a place for the estabHshment of a purified na-
tional church.

Archbishop Laud typified and embodied the spirit
of the dominant church, and in addition he had un-
wearied energy, industry, and determination. Sin-
cere, practical, and brave, but narrow-minded and
unsympathetic, he set about the work of reducing
the church of England to absolute uniformity in
accordance with the law as he interpreted it. The
Nonconformists had no rest; Puritan clergymen
must conform; Puritan laymen must suffer under

i64o] PURITANS 227

the power of the church, which, dominated by
its bishops and wedded to its idols, was becom-
ing steadily more powerful and all-inclusive. The
reign of Charles was not marked by the passage
of harsher laws against the Puritans, but it was
distinguished from all periods that preceded or
followed it by the continuous, steady, and thor-
ough-going application of those already in ex-
istence.

It was under this regime that the great Puritan
migration to America took place. The Puritans
represented a class of society which was much more
ready to emigrate than the Catholics. As early as
1597 some imprisoned Brownists sent a petition to
the Privy Council asking that they might be al-
lowed to settle in America; and four men of the
same persuasion even went on a voyage to examine
the land.' In 1608 many Puritans seem to have
prepared to emigrate to Virginia, when by Arch-
bishop Bancroft's influence they were forbidden by
the king to go, except with his express permission
in each individual case.*

The Separatists early became wanderers on the
face of the earth, a now famous group of them leav-
ing their English homes for Amsterdam, migrating
thence to Leyden, and then, after hesitating between
a Dutch and an English colony and between North
and South America, a portion settling themselves

* Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 167.
' Stitb, Hist, of Virginia, book II., year 1608.
vol. I. — 17

228 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1628

on Plymouth Harbor.* In all the history of early
colonization there have been few such occasions as
that of the year 1638, when fourteen ships bound
for New England lay in the Thames at one time,
and when three thousand settlers reached Boston
within the same year.^ Almost all the Englishmen
who were ever to emigrate to New England left
their homes dtiring the twelve years between 1628
and 1640. Unfavorable economic conditions at
home and the prospect of greater prosperity in the
colony doubtless had their influence; but of the
more than twenty thousand who passed from the
old England to New England during that time, it is
fair to presimie that by far the greater number were
more or less influenced by their Puritan opinions.

The most decisive proof of this motive tor emigra-
tion is the slacking of the tide of Puritan expa-
triation after 1640. When Parliament, after eleven
years of intermission, met in that year at West-
minster in the full appreciation of its power, one
of its first actions was to order the impeachment and
arrest of Archbishop Laud. At last the Puritans
had their turn, and the assembling of Parliament
fotmd them no longer a scattered, disorganized, di-
versified element in the English choirch and nation;
but, thanks to long persecution, a compact body,
austere in morals, dogmatic in religious belief, ready

' Griffis, Pilgrims in Their Three Homes.
' Authorities quoted in Egglestoij, The Beginners of a Nation,
344-

i642] PURITANS 229

to make use of political means for religious ends,
and determined to impose their asceticism and their
orthodoxy on the English people so far as they
might be able.'

A majority of Parliament, small but sufficient,
were Puritans, as had probably been true of every
Parliament for many years, had ^they been free
to act. Their intentions showed themselves in a
prompt inception of reforms in the church, and the
burdens of official ecclesiastical oppression were
rapidly transferred to the shoulders of those who
had previously boimd the loads upon Puritan backs.
In 1 64 1 orders were issued by the House of Commons
for the demolition of all images, altars, and crucifixes.*
A commission known as the "Committee of Scan-
dalous Ministers" was appointed, and proceeded to
discipline the clergy and to harass the universities.
Demands for the harsher treatment of priests and
Jesuits were soon followed by plans for the diminu-
tion of the power of archbishops and bishops of the
established church. The Court of High Commission
was abolished July 5, 1641.' The archbishops and
bishops were removed from the House of Lords
and the Privy Council by the act of February 13,
1642.*

The Solemn League and Covenant of September
25, 1643, pledged Parliament and the leaders of the

' Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 133.

' Commons Journals, II., 279.

» f6 Cb^. I,, chap, ii, * /W., chap, xxvjj.

230 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1643

now dominant party to extirpate "church govern-
ment by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and
commissaries, deans, deans and chapters, arch-
deacons, and all other ecclesiastical officers depend-
ing on that hierarchy"; and to reform religion in
England "in doctrine, worship, discipline, and gov-
ernment, according to the word of God and the ex-
ample of the best reformed churches." '

By this time the quarrel between Charles and
Parliament had been put to the arbitrament of the
sword, and the distinction of Cavalier and Round-
head to a certain extent superseded that between An-
glican and Puritan. In 1645 came the catastrophe
of Naseby, then the long series of futile negotiations
ending in the execution of the king at Whitehall
in 1649. From the general confusion emerged the
commonwealth, "without any king or House of
Lords," the church organized on Presbyterian lines,
the spirit of Puritanism dominating, although there
was toleration for every form of Christian belief,
"provided this liberty be not extended to popery or
prelacy." ^ For full twenty years the Anglican
church was under a cloud, first Presbyterianism and
then Independency being the official form of the
church of England. The ill-fortunes of the royalist
party in the civil war and under the commonwealth,
and the religious oppression imposed by the Puritans
upon churchmen, now combined to send to the colo-

^ League and Covenant, §§ i, 2.
' Instrument of Government, § 37.

i6s9] PURITANS 231

nies the very classes which had so recently been the
persecutors. From 1640 to 1660 Virginia, Mary-
land, and the Carolinas received an influx of English
churchmen escaping from conditions at home as
intolerable to them as those which drove the Pil-
grims and Puritans to New England during the pre-
vious decades.

The commonwealth was not merely a triumph
of Puritanism, it was a birth-time of new religious
sects. The excitement of a period of civil war, the
breaking down of old standards, the disappearance
of old authority, the opportimities offered by the
quasi - democracy of the commonwealth, the pre-
occupation of the seventeenth -century mind with
questions of religion, all combined to cause almost
a complete disintegration of religious organization.
Here and there a man began to preach religious
truth and duty as they looked to him; he ob-
tained adherents, a congregation was organized,
the tenets of this body spread, and branches
were formed; till shortly a new religious society
had come into existence, with its creed, organiza-
tion, missionary spirit, and more or less vigorous
hope of converting all men and absorbing all other
religious organizations. An almost indefinite ntim-
ber of such religious bodies arose during the mid-
dle years of the seventeenth century — Millenarians
or Fifth Monarchy Men, Baptists or Anabaptists,
Quakers, Ranters, Notionists, Familists, Perfectists,
and others. Most of them died out within the brief

232 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1648

period which gave them birth, but some survived
to become great reHgious denominations, extending
into America as well as throughout England.*

Of these the Quakers are the most interesting
in their relations to the New World. The spirit
from which they arose was closely similar to that
which gave birth to the Baptists of England, the
Anabaptists, Mennonites, Pietists, and Quietists of
the Continent. Their movement was an extreme
revolt against the formalism, corporate character,
and externality of established religion. It contained
a deep element of mysticism. The Quakers de-
clared all believers, irrespective of learning, sex, or
official appointment, to be priests.' They asserted
the adequacy of the "inner light" to guide every
man in his faith and in his actions. They opposed
all forms and ceremonies, even many of those of
ordinary courtesy and fashion, such as removing
the hat or conforming the garb to changing custom.

George Fox, the representative of these ideas,
began his public preaching in 1648, and his doctrines
at once fotmd wide acceptance. In 1652 there were
said to be twenty - five Quaker preachers passing
through the country ; by 1654 there were sixty, some
of whom were women, who, by the principles of
their teachings, should preach as freely as men.
Their missionary journeys led them to Scotland and
Ireland, and later even to Holland and Germany

' Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century,
chap. viii. ' Fox, Letters, No. 249.

i6S9] PURITANS 233

and the far east of Europe. Organization among
the Quakers proceeded somewhat slowly. This was
due partly to the individualist character of their
beliefs, partly to the lack of constructive interest
on the part of Fox and the other leaders during
the early period of their missionary work. Never-
theless, "meetings" were gradually organized, took
definite shape, and kept Up regular communica-
tion with one another, so that there came to be a
net-work of such bodies over the whole country. In
1659 it is estimated that there were thirty thousand
Quakers in England.

Notwithstanding the religious liberty guaranteed
by the Instrument of Government of 1653, the
teachings and practices of the Quaker preachers
brought them into much turmoil. Their vituper-
ation of the clergy, their intrusion into church ser-
vices and ceremonies, already reduced only too fre-
quently to confusion by the rapid changes of the
time, their objection to the payment of tithes, their
refusal to take an oath, their outspoken denuncia-
tion of all whose actions they disapproved, the
prominence of women in their propaganda, and, in
early times, suspicions that they were connected
with political plots, could not but subject them to
ridicule, abuse, and actual persecution. They ha-
bitually violated numerous laws on the statute-
book, ranging from those requiring good order to
those forbidding what was construed as blasphemy.
They were, therefore, beaten and stoned by the

234 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1660

mob; abused, fined, and imprisoned by the magis-
trates; ridiculed and prosecuted by the clergy; sub-
jected to starvation, exposure, and other hardships
by sheriffs and jailers.'

In 1660 Charles II. was recalled to the throne.
This event was a restoration of the church even more
than a restoration of the monarchy. The royal
power could never again be what it had been before
the civil war, the execution of a king, and the estab-
lishment of a republic. But the church, with the
longevity and recuperative power of all religious
organizations, arose again to a life apparently as
vigorous and despotic as in the times of Laud. The
year 1662 found four thousand two hundred Quak-
ers in the jails of England;' and the popular re-
action against the austerity of the Puritan regime
subjected Quakers to much ill-treatment by the
rabble.

Yet just at this juncture the dignity of the body
was strengthened and its power of self-assertion in-
creased by the adherence to it of men of higher edu-
cation and social position. The Quakers of the com-
monwealth period were almost all of the middle and
lower-middle or trading classes. Soon after the Res-
toration a number of men of good family and some
means threw in their fortunes with the persecuted
sect. One of them, Robert Barclay, reduced to or-
der and system the scattered and incoherent state-

' Besse, Sufferings of the Quakers, I., chaps, iii., iv., xi., xviii.,
II., chap, i., etc. ' SeWel, Hist, of the Quakers, 346.

i688] PURITANS 235

ments of its theology. In his Apology, published in
167s, he set forth a logical and consistent statement
of beliefs, couched in clear and graceful language and
supported by calm reasoning and example/ Of the
same class was William Penn, an educated, wealthy,
polished, and genial English gentleman. Yet he was
also a serious-minded and devout Quaker preacher,
missionary, and writer, and as he saw and shared
in the sufferings of the faithful he might well despair
of better conditions in England and think of a " Holy
Experiment" in America, where Quakers from 1675
onward were settling in West New Jersey.*

Under Charles II. the attitude of the king was
favorable to the Quakers, while in the short reign of
James II. they had the great advantage of the per-
sonal friendship of the king for Penn. Yet no mat-
ter what should be the favor of the king, or even
their more moderate treatment by the authorities of
the established church, Quakers could not hope for
material comfort or ease of mind in surrotmdings
so alien to their ideals as England was in the last
decades of the seventeenth century. They, still
more than the Puritans in the time of Laud or
the churchmen in the time of Cromwell, suffered
because of the incongruity of the ordinary law and
custom with their ideals. It was the realization of

* Thomas, Hist, of the Society of Friends in America, chap, ii.,
200, 201.

' Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies, II., 99, 167; Andrews,
Colonial Self -Government, chap. vii.

236 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1611

this incompatibility, along with the attraction of a
community under Quaker government, cheap and
abundant land, a promise of a growing population
and lucrative business opportunities that set flowing
to Pennsylvania the tide of Quaker emigration and
created in a few years a great Quaker common-
wealth in America.

Besides Puritans, Anglicans, and Quakers, anoth-
er great stream of emigration poured into the cen-
tral colonies of America — the Presbyterian Scotch-
Irish. To understand their coming, it is necessary
to return to the early years of the seventeenth cen-
tury and to consider the policy of James I. towards
rebellious Ireland; At the opening of his reign
James found in Ireland an opportunity to plant a
colony near home.' When Englishmen and Scotch-
men had been established in Ireland, the Irish sore
would be healed, and that restless Catholic com-
munity be transformed into an outlying district
of England. The "Plantation of Ulster" began in
161 1. The titles of the natives were ruthlessly for-
feited, the six counties of the ' province of Ulster
were redivided, and the land was regranted to pro-
prietors who engaged to settle colonists from Eng-
land and Scotland upon it according to a fixed
system.

This system was skilfully devised and rigidly car-
ried out. It required the new land-owners to es-
tablish freeholders, small tenants, laborers, and
' Walpole, Kingdom of Ireland, 130-135.

i689] PURITANS 237

artisans upon the soil in proportion to the amount
of land they received, allowing only a certain mini-
mum number of the Irish natives to be retained as
laborers. The proprietors were largely merchants
of London and merchandising noblemen of the cotirt ;
the tenants they introduced were mostly from the
towns and country districts of the north of England
and the lowlands of Scotland. Men of Puritan ten-
dencies showed the same readiness to emigrate to
Ireland that they showed soon afterwards as to New
England, and as a result the settlers of Ulster, dur-
ing the first two decades of the seventeenth century,
were almost universally Presbyterians.

Under these new and somewhat anomalous con-
ditions a population grew up in the north of Ireland
which was almost as distinct in race and religious
organization from the people of England and Scot-
land as it was from the Catholic and Celtic popula-
tion which it had displaced. Its religion, without
being proscribed, was not acknowledged, for Angli-
canism was the established church of Ireland,
though it numbered but few adherents. Ulster's in-
dustrial interests were, from the beginning, subor-
dinated to those of England, as completely as were
those of the natives.*

As the century progressed the economic evils
under which the Scotch-Irish suffered became more
pronounced. The navigation acts were so inter-

» Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, II.,
136.

238 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [i66o

preted as to exclude Ireland from all their advan-
tages and to cut her off from any direct trade with
the colonies. Tobacco-growing was forbidden, and
the exportation of cattle to England placed under
prohibitory duties. The wool manufacture was
crushed by heavy export taxes, and the linen manu-
facture neglected or discouraged. In 1642 and again
in 1689 came war and new conquests of the cotmtry,
to add to its disorganization and chronic sufferings.
Kidnapping, enforced service in the coloniies, and
traffic in poUticat prisoners were indulged in by the
government. Ireland, as a dwelling-place for Cath-
olics or Protestants, for Celts or Saxons, for natives
or English and Scotch settlers, was a country of
ever-renewed distress.

To economic disabilities is to be added religious
persecution of a mild type, especially after 1689.
All the laws that interfered with the religious equal-
ity of the Presbyterians in England were extended
to Ireland; and they seemed more vexatious there
because in Ulster the Presbyterians were in the vast
majority and the established church almost unrep-
resented, except by tithe collectors and absentee
landlords. At the close of the seventeenth century
there were more than a million Ulster Presbyterians.
But soon, as a result of this combined economic and
religious oppression, they began to migrate in a
narrow stream which by 1720 became a wide river.
They formed the largest body of emigrants that
left Europe for the American colonies. Before the

lyao] PURITANS 239

eighteenth century was over the Presbyterian pop-
ulation of Ireland was reduced by at least a half;'
and the missing moiety was to be found scattered
along the whole line of the Appalachian mountain-
chain, at the backbone of the English colonies, ex-
■ tending eastward and westward and forming a pro-
lific and influential element of the American people.

' Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, II., 354.

CHAPTER XIII

THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF ENGLAND
(1500-1689)

AN earlier chapter of this work has been devoted
-Tito the political institutions of Spain, France,
and the Netherlands, and each had its share of in-
fluence on American history ; but it is England from
which the American nation really sprang, of which
it was for more than a century and a half a depen-
dency, and to whose traditions, institutions, . and
government we must look back for the origins of our
own. The oldest political institution in England is
the monarchy. Older than Parliament, older than
the law-courts, older than the division of the coun-
try into shires, the monarchy dates back to the con-
solidation of the petty Anglo-Saxon states in the
ninth century — and these were themselves king-
doms.

At no time in this long course of English history
were the claims of the monarchy more exorbitant than
under James I. and Charles I., from 1603 to 1642, just
when the tide of immigration began to flow towards
America, and when the governments of the colonies
were being estalplished. "What Qo4 li9.th joined,

§40

i6p4] ENGLISH GOVERNMENT 241

then, let no man separate. I am the husband and
all the whole isle is my lawful wife. I am the head
and it is my body. I am the shepherd and it is my
flock. . . ." ' So King James wove metaphors,
when he addressed Parhament at its opening in
1604. When disputes had arisen in 16 10 he de-
clared: "The state of monarchy is the supremest
thing upon earth, for kings are not only God's lieu-
tenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne, but
even by God himself they are called gods. ... As to
dispute what God may do is blasphemy, ... so is it
sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do
in the height of his power." "Encroach not upon
the prerogative of the crown; if there falls out a
question that concerns my prerogative or mystery
of state, deal not with it till you consult with the
king or his council, or both, for they are transcen-
dent matters." *

This absolute prerogative of the king was at-
tributed to him by others, as well as claimed by
himself. Dr. Cowell, professor of civil law at Cam-
bridge, declared that the king "is above the law
by his absolute power";' and Sir Walter Raleigh
wrote that attempts to bind the king by law jus-
tified his breach of it, " his charters and other instru-
ments being no other than the surviving witnesses
of tmconstrained will." * But this definition of the

> Prothero, Select Statutes, 283. ' Ibid., 293, 294.

• Cowell, Interpreter, under word "king."

* Raleigh, Prerogative of Parliament, Preface.

242 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [looo

prerogative of the king was an exaggerated descrip-
tion of his real position in the English system of
government, and was either academic or argument-
ative. As properly used, absolute monarchy mere-
ly meant an all-powerful not an autocratic govern-
ment; government was supreme, but the king was
not necessarily supreme in the government. As
government had been developed in England, in the
course of time it had grown up around the monarchy
as its centre and found in it its embodiment.

In Anglo-Saxon England government was crude
and embryonic, but even then the king held a gen-
eral oversight over the exercise of its few fuiictions.
In the later Middle Ages, when government was
somewhat more highly developed, its more numer-
ous functions, in so far as they were not performed
by feudal lords or church officials, were fulfilled by
the king. It was by the monarchy that the law-
courts were formed and commissioned, that Parlia-
ment was summoned and given the opportimity for
self-development, that the system of taxation and
of military life was organized. The great advance
in the organization and effectiveness of govern-
ment which marked the reigns of the Tudor rulers
consisted in the elaboration and increased activity
of the administrative or royal element in the gov-
ernment.

The royal prerogative might, therefore, be con-
ceived of as the function of keeping the machine of
government running. The king was the director

i6oo] ENGLISH GOVERNMENT 243

and controller of an aggregate of governmental pow-
ers. All officials were commissioned in his name,
and those of higher rank were actually selected and
appointed by him. All foreign intercourse was car-
ried on in his name, and in the main directed by
him; Parliament was called, prorogued, and ad-
journed at his will, and he kept at least a negative
control over its actions. All justice was exercised in
his name, and his interests and known wishes some-
times influenced decisions. All charters, whether
to cities, to guilds, to possessors of mercantile
monopolies, or to commercial and colonizing com-
panies, were issued under his name and seal, and the
powers granted in them could not be in opposition j
to his will.'

The powers of the king were, therefore, very real,
even if the philosophic contentions of James and
other theorists be disregarded ; but they were pow-
ers restricted in every direction by actual conditions,
and exercised through ministers whose familiarity
with precedent, whose control over the details of
adrhinistration, whose dignified offices, and whose
personal weight of judgment and character made
them, though nominally servants of the king, a real
power in the government.

Much of the royal power was exercised through
the three great law-courts. King's Bench, Exchequer,
and Common Pleas; through the courts of equity,

' Smith, The Commowwealth of England, book I., chap, ix.,
book II., chap. iv.

VOL. 1. iS

244 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1550

held by the chancellor, the master of the rolls, and
the master of requests; through the half -adminis-
trative, half -judicial bodies, the council of the
north and the council of the marches of Wales,
and through the circuit courts of assize. Much was
exercised through higher and lower administrative
officers, through the Exchequer, and through lower
offices such as the wardrobe and the admiralty.

But the real centre of gravity of the executive
powers of the government at this time is to be f oimd
in the Council or Privy Council, two terms which
are used indiscriminately.* This body was made up
of seventeen or eighteen members, including all the
great ministers of state, the lord chancellor, or, as
he was sometimes called, lord keeper of the great
seal, the high treasurer, the two secretaries, the
great master and the comptroller of the household,
the chamberlain and the great admiral, besides a
certain number chosen as members of the Privy
Council without otherwise occupying office.* There
were usually from six to ten members of the council
present, the membership of some of the ministers
being somewhat perfunctory.

As a body, however, its services were as fax from
perfunctory as can well be conceived. Its sessions
were held almost daily and its sphere of activity
was apparently coextensive with the life of England
and of all its dependencies. Scarcely an interest,

' Dicey, The Privy Council, 80.

* Acts of the Privy Council, 1594-1597.

i6oo] ENGLISH GOVERNMENT 245

public or private, escapes its attention, whether it
is the organization of a campaign in France or the
settlement of a family quarrel between father and
son ; ' whether it is " Sir John Norreis, knight, and
Thomas Diggs, esquire, " or a Lord Morley, or the
chief baron of the Court of Exchequer, Lord Man-
wood, or some merchants or poor artisans or an
"EUce Gailer, of Berton, yeoman," that appear be-
fore the cotmcil at its summons; whether it is en-
gaged in formtilating rules for articles contraband
of war, or trying to put an end to illicit coinage on
the borders of Wales; whether engaged in one or
other of a hundred different interests, the council
is always active, intrusive, and high-handed.' It
regulated manufactures and trade, protected for-
eigners, discipUned recusants, kept the oversight of
customs and other officials, settled disputes between
colleges and their tenants, bishops, deans, and gov-
ernment officers, instructed sheriffs and justices of
the peace as to their duty, made provision for the
keeping up of military and naval forces, and per-
formed other duties so numerous and varied as to
defy entmieration or classification.

A special duty of the Privy Council was to keep up
correspondence with the officials of outlying dis-
tricts rmder the dominion of the crown and not
within the systematic administration of sheriffs,
assize courts, justices of the peace, or other regular

' Acts of the Privy Council, 1591-1592, pp. 160, 193, 256-258,
J92, 327, 414, 476, etv. ' Ibid; 231, 305, 314, ^78, 449, §7?,

246 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [149S

governance. These regions included the marches
of Wales and of Scotland, certain counties of Eng-
land, Ireland, and the Channel Islands, the last
two of these having been placed under the direct
supervision of the Privy Council by statute.* As
colonies grew up they fell, naturally, under the special
care of the Privy Council. The duty of hearing ap-
peals from colonial courts became and is still a duty
of the council; to the Privy Council were referred
colonial laws for approval or veto ; and the successive
bodies formed for the oversight of the colonies, cul-
minating in the Board of Trade and Plantations of
1696, were either committees of the Privy Coun-
cil or boards acting under its control and reporting
to it.

Although most of this control over the colonies
was still far in the future, the power exercised by the
cotmcil over England's nearest dependency, Ireland,
may fairly be taken as anticipatory of it. Irish mat-
ters during the later years of Queen Elizabeth and the
early years of James I. demanded much attention
and time frbm the Privy Council, notwithstanding
the existence of an Irish Parliament, a lord deputy,
various provincial officials, and the whole frame-
work of a subordinate government in Ireland. All
the variety of cases that came before the council
from England were duplicated from Ireland. In
fact, Ireland was treated much as if it were an Eng-
lish county, or better, perhaps, one of those regions
* Poynings's Act (1495), Dicey, The Privy Council, 90.

iSS6] ENGLISH GOVERNMENT 247

of England, like the marches of Wales, which had a
somewhat peculiar jurisdiction.

The most important form of oversight of Ireland
exercised by the Privy Council was that based upon
" Poynings's Act" of 1495. Sir Edward Poynings, a
type of that class of vigorous officials of middle rank
which were such useful instruments of the Tudor
government, was sent, in 1494, to Ireland as lord
deputy; the next year he called a parliament at
Drogheda and obtained its assent to a ntmiber of
statutes designed to introduce order into that dis-
turbed country, and to make real the power of
English government by diminishing that of the
turbulent lords of the Pale/ As a means of reach-
ing the latter object, the Irish Parliament, which
had long been under their control and which
had lately made some assertion of its right of in-
dependent action,^ was to be curbed, and that by
its own ordinance.

It was therefore enacted that in the future no
bill should be introduced into the Irish Parliament
•unless its heads had first been submitted to the
English Privy Council and obtained the approval of
that body and of the king.' Moreover, this ap-
proval must be given before Parliament met. This
reduced the Irish Parliament to a mere registering
body for royal enactments. In 1556 an explanatory

* Morris, Hist, of Ireland, I4g6-i868, pp. 58-63.
' Irish Statutes, 37 Henry VI.

• Irish Statutes, 10 Henry VII., chap. iv.

248 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1556

act was passed* amending Poynings's Act so far as
to make it allowable for the Irish Parliament to pass
any bills which had received the approval of the
crown and of the English Privy Cotmcil at any time
during its session. The regular practice of Irish
legislation under these acts was as follows: any
member of either house of the Irish Parliament
might bring in heads of a bill, which, if approved by
both houses, were submitted to the viceroy, who
referred them to the Irish Privy Cotmcil; that body
sent them, altered or unaltered, to the king, who re-
ferred them to the English Privy Council; this body
then approved, rejected, or modified them ; and they
were returned, through the viceroy, to the Irish Par-
liament in the form of a bill, to be accepted or re-
jected as a whole, but not to be further modified.*
By this cumbrous method only could the Irish
ParHament legislate. It was, moreover, subject not
only to the English Privy Council, but to the English
Parliament. One of the clauses of Poynings's Act
had provided that all statutes which up to that time
had been passed by the English Parliament should
bind Ireland also.' Many laws were subsequently
passed by the English Parliament for Ireland, thus
ignoring the Irish Parliament; but it was not till
later than the period we are considering that a
claim of the superiority of the English Parliament

• Irish Statutes, 3 and 4 Philip and Mary, chap. iv.
' Walpole, Kingdom of Ireland, 253, 254.
' Irish Statutes, 10 Henry VII., chap. xxii.

1720] ENGLISH GOVERNMENT 249

was definitely made. In the eighteenth century a
member of the Irish Parliament published a book
called The Case of Ireland Being Bound by Acts of
Parliament in England Stated. This was formally
condemned by the English Parliament and ordered
to be burned by the common hangman.* When
stiU later the Irish House of Lords protested against
the reversal of one of its judgments, on appeal, by
the English House of Lords, the English Parliament,
in 1720, passed an act depriving the Irish House of
Lords of any appellate jurisdiction, and declaring
that " the English Parliament had, hath, and of
right ought to have ftdl power and authority to make
laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to
bind the people of Ireland"* — a precedent of por-
tentous applicability to the American colonies when
a similar question came up in regard to them a
half-century later.

The power of Parliament over external depen-
dencies was destined to come into greater promi-
nence in the future. The question at issue at the
beginning of the seventeenth century was the ex-
tent of its power over England itself. Was it, like
the Privy Coimcil, the law-courts, and other such
bodies, merely a creation and dependency of the
crown? Or was it, although in form an assembly of
royal councillors, meeting only when the king sum-
moned it and ceasing to exist when he ordered its
dissolution, a branch of the government co-ordi-

• Walpole, Kingdom of Ireland, 252. ' 6 George I,, chap. v.

2SO EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

nate with or even in certain relations superior to
him?

In the organization of Parliament there were sev-
eral grave deficiencies, if it were to be considered an
independent body. It was a composite assembly of
two ill-related parts. The House of Lords, which con-
sisted at this time of some fifty members,* had an
existence as a royal council quite apart from the
House of Commons, and there were still many evi-
dences that it was the original body and the House
of Commons a later accretion. In 1 601, when Eliza-
beth appeared in the House of Lords to open her
last Parliament, the Commons, who were waiting in
their own chamber, did not hear of her presence
promptly, and when they hastened to the Lords'
chamber the door was closed and they could not
obtain admission, so they "returned back again
into their own House much discontented." ^ The
Lords had various privileges and constitutional
rights of their own : as individuals, of trial by peers,
of being represented by proxies, of entering indi-
vidual protests, of audience with the sovereign, of
certain advantages of procedure in the courts of
common law; as a body, of trying impeachments
brought by the House of Commons, and of acting as
a final court of appeal for all lower courts whether
of law or equity."

' D'Ewes, Journals, 599. 'Ibid., 620.

' Pike, Constitutional History of the House of Lords, chaps.
ix., xi.-xiv.

1700] ENGLISH GOVERNMENT 251

The House of Commons was composed of two
knights or gentlemen elected for each shire; and
one or two representatives for each of nearly three
hundred cities and boroughs. The system of rep-
resentation was crude and antiquated. The knights
of the shire were elected by the " forty -shilling free-
holders" — that is to say, by all who had a tenure
approaching ownership in lands whose annual rental
value reached that sum. This was an electorate
that reached far down in the social scale, but it was
limited by the tendency of English land to remain in
the hands of large owners, and by the influence,
legitimate and illegitimate, of the gentry, the great
county noble families, and the crown. The knights
of the shire, therefore, as a matter of fact, not only
belonged to, but were elected by and reflected the
interests and feelings of, the great body of rural
gentry; while the yeomen exercised little influence
in Parliament, as the laboring classes certainly
exercised none at all. —

There were vast differences in the system of elec-
tion by the towns which were represented in Parlia-
ment, varying all the way from appointment by pa-
trons, in some towns, down through divers grades
of extension of the franchise to an almost universal
suffrage in a few. Nevertheless, from the towns, as
from the counties, it was representatives of the
upper and middle classes that sat in the Commons.
There was no approach to equality in the constitu-
encies represented in the House of Commons ; mem-

252 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

bers were elected often by outside influence and al-
ways by a narrow constituency, and no control was
possessed by the electors over their representatives.

Yet these defects were more apparent than real.
The special powers of the House of Lords were be-
coming shadowy, and almost the only real signif-
icance of the peerage was when it was vinited with
the House of Commons and made a part of the
larger whole of Parliament.'

In the House of Commons was the real source of
power of Parliament. Whatever the imperfections
in the method of election, whatever the irregularity
of constituencies, whatever the crudity of the idea
of representation, the five hundred or more knights,
country gentlemen, lawyers, and merchants who
made up the Commons at this time^ were con-
vinced that in some way they stood for the whole
nation. When Parliament had been once sum-
moned and organized, it became a body with three
hundred years of precedent back of it; and in the
days of the Stuarts it confronted the king with
claims to a very different position and power from
those he was inclined to concede to it. So far from
assimilating their position to that of the law-courts,
Privy Council, and other such bodies, at the very
opening of the reign of James the Commons de-
clared "there is not the highest standing court in

' 36 and 37 Henry VIII., f. 60 (Dyer, Reports, pt. i., 327).
' Names of Members Returned to Serve in Parliament, pt, i.,
442-448.

i6a6] ENGLISH GOVERNMENT 253

this land that ought to enter into competency either
for dignity or authority with this high court of
Parliament which with your Majesty's royal assent
gives laws to other courts, but from other courts re-
ceives neither laws nor orders." *

The course of time intensified this difference of
opinion. "Set chairs for the ambassadors," James
cried, mockingly, when the deputies from the House
of Commons visited him with a petition during the
dispute of 1 62 1. To the king Parliament seemed
to be making a claim to sovereignty against which
the only proper argument was a jest. Shortly after-
wards he wrote to the speaker of the House of Com-
mons, "These are, therefore, to command you to
make known in our name unto the House that none
therein shall presiime henceforth to meddle with
anything concerning our government or deep mat-
ters of state." He insisted that "these are unfit
things to be handled in Parliament except your
king requires it of you. ..." As to the privileges of
Parliament James wrote, "We cannot allow of the
style calling it your ancient and tmdoubted right
and inheritance, but could rather have wished that
ye had said that your privileges were derived from
the grace and permission of our ancestors and
us."'

The Commons, on the other hand, a week later,

• Apology of the Commons, 1604; Petyt, Jus Parliamentarium,
927-247.

* Letter of the king to the House of Commons, December 10,1621.

254 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

placed this protestation on their minutes : " That the
liberties, privileges, and jurisdictions of Parliament
are the ancient and undoubted birthright and in-
heritance of the subjects of England, and that the
arduous and urgent affairs concerning the king,
state, and defence of the realm, and of the church
of England and the maintenance and making of
laws, and redress of mischiefs and grievances which
daily happen within this realm, are proper subjects
and matters of counsel and debate in Parliament;
and that in the handling and proceeding of those
businesses every member of the House of Parlia-
ment hath and of right ought to have freedom of
speech to propound, treat, reason, and bring to con-
clusion the same." * It is true that James sent
for the Journal and tore this page from its records,
but he could not tear the belief in its statements
from the hearts of a great part of the people of Eng-
land.

King and Parliament held diametrically opposite
views of their relative powers, and both appealed to
the past in justification of their opinions. But Eng-
land's past was a long story, and its successive chap-
ters read very variously. James appealed to the
immediate past to justify his possession of the " in-
separable rights and prerogatives annexed to our
imperial crown, whereof, not only in the times of
other our progenitors, but in the blessed reign of our
late predecessor, that renowned queen Elizabeth,
• Rushworth, Historical Collections, I., 53.

i64o] ENGLISH GOVERNMENT 255

we found our crown actually possessed.'" The
leaders of the House of Commons, on the other hand,
were looking back to a more remote past, the birth-
time and period of acknowledgment by the crown
of the parliamentary privileges and English liberties
which now seemed to them endangered.

As a matter of fact, Parliament, like all other
political institutions in England, had grown up
around the monarchy. Primarily, the Houses were
a body of advisers of the king, siunmoned by him
to give their counsel in matters in which he needed
the advice of the various classes of his subjects ; and
to give their consent to taxation, which would re-
quire sacrifice on the part of the people. Once or-
ganized, however, Parliament gathered into itself
all the shadowy survivals of self-government com-
ing down from a still earlier period ; it reflected the
local independence of the towns and counties which
sent members to the House of Commons, and the
corporate rights of the church and individual priv-
ileges of the nobility, which constituted its upper
house ; it served as the instrument by which the na-
tion at various times protected itself against bad
government ; it embodied the fifteenth-century ideal
of a government conjointly by king and estates of
the realm.

Moreover, Parliament gained by repeated use

and acknowledgment an established procediire and

powers, well - understood rights, and precedents

• King's proclamation on dissolving Parliament, JanvLary 6, i6at.

2S6 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1550

frequently invoked. The four fundamental privi-
leges of members of Parliament were: (i) freedom
of elections; (2) freedom from arrest during the ses-
sions ; (3) freedom of speech in debate ; (4) freedom
of access to the sovereign for their speaker, if not
for all individually. These were frequently acknowl-
edged by the sovereign at the opening of Parliament
and enrolled upon its records, and still more frequent-
ly asserted in the House.* The powers of Parlia-
ment were less clearly defined than its privileges;
but its control over taxation and legislation, its
right to impeach the king's ministers and to dis-
cuss all matters of interest to the nation, were fre-
quently asserted and usually conceded.'

Thus Parliament was much more than a royal
council; it was a body with claims to co-ordinate
powers of government. How far, at any one time,
these privileges and powers were conceded, how far
they were denied or encroached upon by the crown,
was largely dependent on circumstances. These
circtunstances during Tudor times had been such as
to put the initiative and much of the actual power
of government in the hands of the king, and parlia-
mentary powers were largely in abeyance. Parlia-
ment during this time was a conservative body ; the
monarchy was the innovating element of the state.

' D'Ewes, Journals, 65. <5<5. i7Si 236. 259. 411, 460, etc.;
Petyt, Jus Parliamentarium, 227 - 243, quoted in Prothero,
Select Statutes, 289; Commons Journals, I., 431, etc.

' Qnejst, Hist, of the English Qop^titt^tipn, chaps, v., xxxij,

i6so] ENGLISH GOVERNMENT 257

Circtimstances changed with the closing years of
the sixteenth century and favored an increase of
parliamentary participation in government. With
all her prestige the old queen herself had to feel it.'
With the accession of the half-foreign Stuarts, with
the cessation of danger of invasion from abroad,
with the increasing weight of exactions of an un-
wise and unpopular personal government, with the
growing interest of the seventeenth century in mat-
ters of politics, and, above all, with the development
of Puritanism, individualistic and self-assertive in
its very essence. Parliament was sure to reassert all
the powers which it had ever possessed, and likely
to seek to extend them. ' The king was now the
conservative element, while Parliament, if recent
conditions be taken as the standard, was the in-
novating party.

It was exactly at this period of contest and of
unsettled balance of powers that the early settle-
ments were made in America. The colonists repre-
sented almost without exception what might be
called the parhamentarian view. It was not the
king, the courtiers, the nobles, the judges, the higher
clergy, the official classes, and the fellows of the
universities that emigrated. Among these the roy-
alist spirit was strong, but they remained in Eng-
land. It was rather from the middle and lower
classes, from those who were on poor terms with
the king, whatever their position in society, from the

» D'Ewes, Journals, 602,

2S8 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

persecuted, the dissatisfied, the restless, that the
great body of colonists was drawn ; and among these
classes the views upheld by the House of Commons
were wide -spread. The same thing was true of
those companies which, remaining in England, yet
had so much influence over the destinies of the
American colonies. The most influential elements
in the Virginia Company, the Massachusetts Bay
Company, and other similar bodies were distinctly
opposed to the high claims of the king. Yet una-
nimity did not exist even among those who left Eng-
land ; and strong as the predilection was among the
fotmders of America for self-government and repre-
sentative institutions, the Old-World differences of
view were transferred to the colonies and played
apart in local struggles there.

Much of the disputation between James and the
House of Commons concerned the privileges of Par-
liament, and might be suspected of being largely
the natural jealousy of its own rights felt and as-
serted by an ancient corporation. But Parliament
was waging war for larger objects than' the rights
of its own body ; it felt itself to be defending in its
own privileges the personal rights of all English-
men. In the contested election case of 1604 a
member declared that "the case of Sir John For-
tescue and Sir Francis Goodwin has become the
case of the whole kingdom."* "The rights and
liberties of your subjects of England and th« privi-

' Commons Journals, I., 159, Itfarch 30, 1604.

1629] ENGLISH GOVERNMENT 259

leges of this House," is a formula that appears fre-
quently in the doctiments of the time, and combines
the two objects of the contest, in which the latter
were upheld largely because they supported and
protected the former.

These ancient rights of the people were less defi-
nite than either the privileges or the powers of Parlia-
ment. They were, perhaps, attractive and valued
somewhat in proportion to their vagueness. They
certainly included right of freedom from arrest or
imprisonment except on a definite charge and by
due process of law; they included exemption from
taxation except after consent of Parliament;* they
included protection against violence and injustice;
they included the right of petition to the king
against any grievance,' and in general a right to
have the laws enforced, yet to have nothing done to
their disadvantage which was not in the law. It
was the spirit rather than the letter of Magna Carta
that was valued by the English people.

As time passed and under Charles I. the conflict
between the parliamentary and the royal claims be-
came more intense, the upholders of the former fell
back more and more on the ancient rights and
liberties of the people, and relatively less is said of
parliamentary privileges. In the Petition of Right

' Hakewell's argument in the Bates case of 1610 (State Trials,
ed. 1779, XI.); Petition of Right of 1628.

' Coke's speech on Petition of Right (Parliamentary History,
VIII., 104).

VOL. I. — 19

26o EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1629

of 1629, Parliament appeals to the Great Charter,
to the Confirmation of the Charters, and to other
early statements of personal liberties. Pym de-
clared that "the liberties of this House are inferior
to the liberties of this kingdom." When the civil
war was actually imminent, in December, 1641, the
Grand Remonstrance was issued as a statement of
the contentions of the leaders in Parliament. In
this document "the people," "the liberties of sub-
jects," "rights of the nation," and other popular
expressions are constantly used or implied.*

Ultimately, as a result of the struggles of the
later years of the seventeenth century, the more im-
portant of such rights were formulated in the Bill
of Rights of 1689. Thus the heritage of civil free-
dom which the people of England had traditionally
enjoyed was neither taken from them by the strong
monarchy of the sixteenth century nor forgotten
in the struggle of Parliament for its own privileges
in the seventeenth. It was reasserted with con-
stantly new insistence in England, and was carried
to America by the colonists as an acknowledged
and valued possession.

* Grand Remonstrance, §§ 11, 19, 28, 40, 53, 57, 98, 130, etc.,
in Rushworth, Historical Collections, IV., 438.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ENGLISH COUNTY AND ITS OFFICERS
(1600-1650)

THE ordinary Englishman in the seventeenth
century had much more to do with local than
with national government. Only a few score men
served the king as ministers, councillors, or judges;
only a few htmdred attended Parliament; while
as lords heutenant, sheriffs, justices of the peace,
constables, church-wardens, mayors, aldermen, and
in other capacities of local and limited but real
power, many thousands must have taken a part in
public affairs. National government was remote
from the ordinary man ; local government came close
to him. The political institutions which surrounded
him on all sides, insensibly controlling every action
and forming the world to which his outward life
conformed, were familiar to him and affected his
habits and ideas, whether he remained at home or
emigrated to the colonies, far more directly than
did the political institutions of the nation.

The oldest, most stable, and most important
unit of local government was the shire, or coxmty.
The conspicuous official and historic head of the

261

262 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

county was the sherifif. As Camden says, "Every
year some one of the gentlemen inhabitants is made
ruler of the county wherein he dwelleth." '

Though no longer relatively so powerful as in the
Middle Ages, his position was even yet one of much
dignity and importance. On occasions of public
ceremony he had an imposing personal retinue, car-
ried a white rod of office, and wore official robes.'
Richard Evelyn, when sheriff, " had one hundred and
sixteen servants in liverys, every one liveryed in
greene sattin doubliets; divers gentlemen and per-
sons of quality waited on him in the same garbe
and habit." ' William Ffarrington, sheriff of Lan-
cashire in 1636, kept up the following household: a
steward, a clerk of the kitchen, two yeomen of the
plate cupboard, a yeoman of the wine-cellar, two
attendants on the sheriff's chamber, an usher of
the hall, two chamberlains, four butlers and but-
ler's assistants, eight cooks, five scullions, a porter,
a baker, a caterer, a slaughterman, a poulterer, two
watchmen for the horses, two men to attend the
docket door each day by turns, twenty men to at-
tend upon the prisoners each day by turns — alto-
gether a household of fifty-six servants.*

' Camden, Britannia (ed. r637), 160.

• King, The Vale-Royall, 40; North, Examen, quoted in Diet.
Nat. Biog., XII., izi. » Evelyn, Diary, 1634.

* The Shrievalty of William Ffarrington, 17 (Chetham Society).
This reference and a number of those which follow I owe to the
industry and good scholarship of Mr. Charles Burrows, a young
man of great promise, who, after studying at the universities

i6so] ENGLISH COUNTY 263

With the need for such official outlays, it is no
wonder that a long series of statutes should have
provided that the sheriff should be one who had
land in the county "sufficient to answer king and
people." ' In fact, he was usually a knight or a man
of such rank as might be made a knight. A list of
the sheriffs of the county of Chester during the
reigns of James I. and Charles I. shows twenty-
three knights and twenty-three without title, but
presumably of equal rank in society.' Many of the
best-known men of this period, such as Sir Thomas
Wentworth, Sir Ralph Vemey, Sir Willi9.m Selby,
and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, afterwards earl of
Shaftesbury, acted at various times as sheriffs of
their respective counties. They were direct succes-
sors of Chaucer's Franklyn, of whom we are told,

"A schir-reeve had he been."

With some exceptions, such as those cities which
had their own elective sheriffs, and those pairs of
counties which were conjoined under one sheriff,
each shire had one sheriff, appointed in the follow-
ing manner: every year, on November i, a special
meeting of the Privy Council was held at the ex-
chequer, a number of the higher government officials
being especially required to be present; here a list

of Chicago and Pennsylvania, and beginning the preparation of
a thesis on the subject of this chapter, went abroad for further
study and died in 1902.

* 9 Ed. II., St. 2; 4 Ed. III., chap, ix.; 5 Ed. III., chaps, iv.,
xiii., xiv. ' King, The Vale-Royall, 233,

264 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

of three persons of distinction from each county,
qualified to fill the office of sheriff, was made up and
submitted to the king, who "pricked" one from each
three ; the men thus chosen were then bound to seek
letters-patent, and take their oaths as sheriffs for
the ensuing year in their respective counties.'

By law the same man could not be appointed for
two successive years/ This was probably a wel-
come restriction, as the appointees bore somewhat
unwillingly the burdens and expenditures of the
office.^ In 1630 we find Sir Francis Coke writing to
ask Sir J. Coke "to keep my loving neighbour and
friend Edward Revell of Brookhill from being sherifi
this year" ; * and in 1663 Evelyn enters in his diary,
"To court to get Sir John Evelyn, of Gk)dstone,.ofI
from being sheriff of Surrey." *
^ It is true that the office brought with it many
small fees. A long list of customary payments for
the issue of various writs and the performance of
various services by the sheriff is given in the manuals
of the time.' On the other hand, the fees payable
by the sheriff to the officials of the exchequer on his
appointment and discharge,^ the expenses of his of-
fice, and the requirements of his position for social
expenditure were very considerable, and the com-
ment of a contemporary law-writer was, no doubt,

' Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliee, chap. xxiv.

' 14 Ed. III., chap, vii., etc.

' Hist. MSS. Commission, Report VII., App., 3-9, 25-

* Ibid., Report XII., App. I., 414. ' November 6, 1663.

' Greenwood, The County Court, 183. ' Ibid., 122.

1650] ENGLISH COUNTY 265

in most cases, justified: " But the sheriff is at much
more charge, which is laid out and is disbursed
during his sheriffwick, as experience will inform
him." »

Another burden of the sheriff's office was enforced
residence in his own county during his term of ser-
vice. The records are overspread with fines for the
violation of this requirement and with requests for
dispensations from conformity to it.^ A person-
age in an old play says of the ladies of his time,
" I think they would rather marry a London jailer
than a high-sheriff of a county, since neither can stir
from his employment." ^

The title high-sheriff, frequently used instead of
the simple term sheriff, had no especial significance
and was probably suggested by a desire to dis-
criminate him from the under-sheriff. The exact-
ing duties of the office led the sheriff very frequently
to appoint, at his own cost, such a subordinate and
to empower him to perform such services as could
be legally transferred to another. He was usually
a man of some position, " learned somewhat in the
law, especially if the sheriff be not learned him^
selfe." * He was a source of considerable expense

' Greenwood, The County Court, 187.

'Hist. MSS. Commission, Report VII., App., 5; Rushworth,
Historical Collections, II., App., 27; Deputy Keeper of the Pub-
lic Records, Reports, XLIII., 151; Cal. of State Pap., Dom., 1628-
1629, pp., 396, 403, etc.

' Wycherly, The Country Wife, act iv., sc. r.

* Smith, Commonwealth of England, book II., chap. xvii.

266 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [;rfoo

to his superior, an estimate of annual cost mdde in
1628 amounting to £352 185. 6d. He relieved the
sheriff, however, of his more onerous and invidious
duties. North declared that "Clifford and Shaftes-
bury looked like high-sheriff and under-sheriff. The
former held the white staff and had his name to all
returns, but all the business, e&pecially the knavish
part, was done by the latter." *

The duties of the sheriff were many and varied;
some of them old judicial and administrative func-
tions, others new and irregular services demanded
of him by the innovating Tudor and Stuart sover-
eigns. Every month he must hold a county court,
at which were brought suits for debts of less than
forty shillings, suits for damages, for breach of con-
tract, for non-payment of wages, for not returning
borrowed or pledged articles, and a hundred other
petty causes.* In this court also, and at some
other times and places, he must proclaim certain
ancient statutes and new laws and ordinances for
the information and warning of the people.

The county court as a judicial body was, in the
seventeenth century, a waning institution, its com-
petence and ftinctions becoming rapidly obsolete;
but occasionally it awakened suddenly to life, took
on a new aspect, and became of unwonted impor-
tance. This occurred when a summons was issued
for a new parliament, for the county court was the

Examen, 8, quoted xaDict. Nat. Biog., XII., 113.
Fitzherbert, Natura Brevium, 28 d, etc.

i6so] ENGLISH COUNTY 267

electing body of the knights of the shire, and to the
next session after the writs for the parliament had
been issued came the gentry and freeholders of the
county to elect their representatives.* There was
often a great concourse and much excitement, and
the petty disputes of poor suitors and the labors of
obsctire officials were for the time completely super-
seded.

The sheriff, as presiding oflficial at this election,
as the returning officer of the elected members, and
as the official charged with levying money for the
payment of their wages aftd expenses, had an ac-
tive and influential connection with the choice of
members of Parliament. A long series of statutes
checked the abuses connected with this influence;
but even yet the sheriff exercised some power over
the selection made, especially when he was a man
of large influence in his county apart from his
office.*

There was great irregularity in the process of
election. Sometimes the members were elected by
acclamation, sometimes by show of hands, some-
times by a poll, one voter after another expressing
orally his preference. The election should, by law,
be held between eight and eleven o'clock in the
morning, but a sheriff sometimes postponed the
election, or refused to acknowledge the candidate
insisted on by the electors, or threw out votes which
he claimed were not properly given, or closed the

' iJalton, Officium Vicecomitum, chap. xcji. ' Ibid

268 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

election when his preferred candidate was in an ad-
vantageous position. The journals of the House
of Commons are filled with reports of contested
elections, and sheriffs are repeatedly found kneeling
at the bar of the House to receive censtire or pardon
for such offences.'

A period of scarcely less responsibility for the'
sheriff was the semi-annual assizes, when the judges
in their robes, on their circuit, with all the dignity
of the judicial representatives of the crown, visited
the covinty,^ It was the duty of the sheriff to see
that grand and petty jtiries were ready to perform
the services required of them by these judges, and
to carry out the mandates and judgments of the
court. These judgments, which he had to execute
either in person or by his under-sheriff or bailiffs,
varied in character from the serving of writs or
levying upon property for debt to the infliction of
the death penalty.' The sheriff had also the
supervision of the jail and the appointment of jail-
ers. His presence at the two assizes of the year
was considered one of his most fundamental duties,
and heavy fines were imposed when occasionally a
sheriff was absent from his post at that time.* He
not only met the judges with his retinue and fur-

' Commons Journals, I., 511, 556, 801, 854, 884, etc.

' Rushworth, Historical Collections, I., 294.

' Greenwood, 133; Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Angliee,
chap. xxiv.

* Rushworth, Historical Collections, II., App., 27; Cal. of State
Pap., Dom., 1628-1629, p. 396.

i6so] ENGLISH COUNTY 269

nished them a guard, but feasted them and acted as
a sort of local host to the circtdt court so long as it
was in session in his county.

Closely analogous to this duty of the sheriff was
the reqtiirement that he should be present, provide
jurymen, and carry out the behests of the justices
of the peace at their quarter-sessions; but the jus-
tices were, like himself, local officers belonging to
the cotmty, not visitors from the capital, so that
their sessions had Kttle of the ceremony and excite-
ment of the assizes; and, in fact, the sheriff was ,
usually represented there by the under-sheriff act- J
ing as his deputy/

In addition to these and many less conspicuous
regular duties the sheriff in the early seventeenth
century was utilized from time to time by the cen-
tral government in irregular and somewhat question-
able services. When James revived the distraint of
knighthood it was the sheriffs who were required
to make out Usts of all who had £40 a year of lands
or rents and to order them to appear at court and
receive knighthood. When Charles I. revived the
imposition of ship-money it was to the sheriff of
each county that the writ was sent, stating the
amount to be paid by his county and ordering him
to arrange with the lower officials for its assess-
ment and collection.

The patriotic resistance of Hampden found a par-

■ Lister, Two Earliest Sessions Rolls of West Riding of
Yorkshire, 1597-1602, IlL, 28, 44, 64, etc.

ayo EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

allel in the passive opposition of some of the sheriffs
to this demand upon them. On June 30, 1640, the
King's Council wrote to the sheriff of Huntingdon-
shire: "We have read and considered of your letter
of the 24th of the present, wherein we perceive that
you have been rather industrious to represent the
difficulties which, as you say, you find in the exe-
cution of his majesty's writ, than circumspect or
careful, as you ought to have been, in overcoming
and removing them, . . . and we cannot but make
this judgment upon your proceedings, that instead
of doing your duty in person and compelling others
subordinate to you to do theirs, you endeavor to
make excuses both for yourself and them."*

Alongside of the sheriff at the head of the shire
was another officer, the lord-lieutenant, whose po-
sition, although but recently attained, was in some
ways more conspicuous and in certain exigencies
more powerful than his. No statute or other formal
action provided for the original creation of the lord-
lieutenancy, and it is probable that Henry VIII.
simply began the habit of delegating his military
power in the shires to such officers. Early in the
reign of Edward VI., October, 1549, they are men-
tioned as existing in the counties, and by 1600 their
office was fully established.'' This position was
usually held by the greatest nobleman with estates
in the county, and he appointed as his deputies

* Rushworth, Historical Collections, I., 1203.

• 3 and 4 Ed. VI., chap, v., in Statutes, of the Realm. IV,, 107.

i6so] ENGLISH COUNTY 271

various knights and gentlemen of high position ; as
when, in 1626, the duke of Buckingham was lord-
lieutenant of Bucks, and Sir Edward Verney and
five others were his deputies in that county. Al-
though purely honorary, the appointment was one of
much dignity and responsibility in miUtary matters.

It was the duty of the lord-lieutenant in times of
peace to see that the musters of the trained bands
were regularly held, that the militia-men had their
arms, and that men of higher rank who owed military
service to the crown were prepared to perform it ; in
time of war to levy, muster, and train soldiers, fix
the quotas of the hundreds and townships, see to
the payment of troops, the collection of horses, and
equipment generally, until the recruits were actually
handed over to their officers. It was also their
duty to see that the beacons were kept in order.
The lords-lieutenant must be present, by an order of
16 1 5, nine months in the year* in their cotmties;
but there was no such rigorous requirement of con-
stant residence as in the case of the sheriff, nor was
the appointment restricted to a single year.

Such an official as the lord-lieutenant was not
likely to be left unburdened with other duties when
the government was struggling to obtain the enforce-
ment of its laws, and, as a matter of fact, functions
quite unmilitary were imposed upon him. In 1637
the council orders the lords-lieutenant of six of the
eastern cotmties to assist in the better enforcement

' Cal. of State Pap., Dom., 1611-1618, p. 337.

272 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

of the acts for the drainage of the marshes.* In
162 1 they are to investigate frauds of his majesty's
carters.* They are asked to help collect subsidies
and benevolences, to search for popish recusants, to
oversee ale-houses, slaughter-houses, and the assize
of bread and ale, to assist in the administration of
poor relief and the suppression of vagrancy.' In
161 9 the Lords of the Council write to the lieutenant
of Surrey asking him to urge co-operation in a lot-
tery for the success of " the English colonies planted
in Virginia, to accept the sums adventured, and to
report to the treasurer and council of Virginia." *
f Much less dignified in position than either the
I lord - lieutenant or the sheriff, and yet filling an
old and important office, was the coroner. He
was elected by the freeholders of the county in the
county court, and his oath was administered by the
county clerk. He was, therefore, more distinctly
local and representative than the other county
officers, who were appointed by the crown ; and as a
result he was the only officer whose office did not
terminate with the death of the king. Notwith-
standing the generality of duties indicated by his
name, "custos placitarum cor ones," his fimctions were
few beyond the fundamental duty of investigating
sudden deaths and binding over for trial such per-

' Cal. of State Pap., Dom., 1637, p. 92.
' Hist. MSS. Commission, Report VII., App., 670.
' Chetham Society, Lancashire Lieutenancy, I., Int., ig; Cam*
den Society, Verney Papers, 37, 88.
• Hist. MSS. Commission, Report VIl., App., 670.

i6so] ENGLISH COUNTY 273

sons as were indicated by the jury through which
he made his inquest.' Under some circumstances
the coroner took the place of the sheriff, and in
general his position looked back to a time when it
was of greater significance than it had become in the [
seventeenth century/

• Smith, Commonwealth of England, book II., chap. xxiv.

* Greenwood, The County Court, 258.

CHAPTER XV

ENGLISH JUSTICES OF THE PEACE
(1600-1650)

HOWEVER extensive the duties of the officers
whose functions are described above, the real
men-of-all-work in the counties at this time were
the justices of the peace. The law required that a
justice of the peace must have lands and tenements
to the value of ;£20 a year, the amount of the legal
knight's fee;' but ordinarily he had much greater
property. John Evelyn's father, who has been so
often referred to as a typical country gentleman of
the early seventeenth century, had an estate of
;^4ooo a year when he was successively sheriff and
justice of the peace.^ The justice of the peace,
like the sheriff, the lord-lieutenant, and the coroner,
was expected to perform his public services as part
of his patriotic duty. It is true that certain statutes
provided that part of the fines for any violation
should go to the justices before whom the violators
were prosecuted; two or three others gave small
fees to the justice for affixing his seal or signing a

' rS Henry VI., chap. xi.
' Evelyn, Diary, year 1634.

274

i6so] JUSTICES OF THE PEACE 275

document ; but these were apparently casual efforts
to secure enforcement, and can have brought no ap-
preciable return to the justices. The law gave each
justice 25. for each day of quarter -sessions up to
three days; but this could have produced at most
only 6s., and seems to have been usually jointly ex-
pended by the magistrates in a dinner.

In an interesting speech by a Mr. Glascock in
the House of Commons, December 16, 1601, two
equally undesirable justices are described — first,
the one "who from base stock and lineage by his
wealth is gotten to be within the commission"; the
other "a gentleman bom, virtuous, discreet, and
wise, yet poor and needy. And so only for his
virtues and qualities put into the commission. This
man I hold unfit to be a justice, though I think him
to be a good member in the commonwealth. Be-
cause I hold this for a ground infallible — that no
poor man ought to be in authority. My reason is
this: he will so bribe you and extort you that the
sweet scent of riches and gain taketh away and con-
foundeth the true taste of justice and equity." *

But burdensome as the duties of a justice must
have been, and almost unpaid as they were, the
office does not seem to have been avoided as was
that of sheriff. Probably such service was taken
as a matter of course by the gentry, and compensa-
tion was found in the stamp of social position it
placed upon them, and in the sense of power, as well

• Townshend, Proceedings, 953, 954.

VOL. I. — »o

276 EUROl>EAN BACKGROUND [1600

as of a patriotic fulfilment of duty. It was some-
times a matter of complaint that "with us these
magistrates have been so unsuitably appointed that
a county justice is made a jest in comedies, and his
character the subject of biiffoonery and laughter." '
This is an obvious reference to Justice Shallow and
other worthies of the dramatists. It is dangerous
to make too serious an inference from contemporary
comedies, because certain personages soon became
stock characters and ceased to have any very close
relation to actual life; and in this particular in-
stance Shakespeare was probably gratifying an old
grudge.

Nevertheless, there was evidently some fotmda-
tion for this picture of the cotmty justice. Dorothy
Osborne, in one of her delightful letters to Sir Will-
iam Temple, in giving her requirements for a husband,
pokes fun at such ambitions. " He must not be so
much of a country gentleman as to tmderstand noth-
ing but hawks and dogs, and be fonder of either than
his wife; nor of the next sort of them whose aim
reaches no further than to be Justice of the Peace,
and once in his life High Sheriff, who reads no book
but statutes, and studies nothing but how to make
a speech interlarded with Latin that may amaze his
disagreeing poor neighboturs, and fright them rather
than persuade them into quietness." *

• Carey, English Liberties, 275.

» Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, letter 36
(ed. by Parry), p. 171.

i6so] JUSTICES OP THE PEACE 277

With all these criticisms, and in the face of occa-
sional ineptitude, the body of justices of the peace
included much ability. It was scarcely possible for
a justice to act without some knowledge of Latin,
as almost all the records and documents which he
would have to make, read, or sign were in that lan-
guage. A succession of text-books on the duties
of the office, the more important of them appearing
in many successive editions, proves an intelligent
interest and demand for instruction in their duties.
Moreover, the men who served as justices were often
well known in other ways, many of them as sheriffs,
as members of Parliament, and in still other capac-
ities. They were of families who provided the active
men of enterprise of the period. The list of Devon-
shire justices in 1592 includes Sir Francis Drake, Sir
Ferdinando Gorges, Gilberts, Carews, Seymours,
Courtenays, and other names prominent among
the men who laid the foundations of the maritime
greatness of England and of the existence of America.
Of the fifty-five, twenty-eight were at one time or
another high-sheriffs of the county, twenty more
were then, or became afterwards, knights, six sat
in the House of Commons, and three in the House
of Lords.*

The justices of the peace were fair represent-
atives of that great class of rural gentry which
exercised so strong an influence over the destinies
of England in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
• Hamilton, Devonshire Quarter-Sessions, 3, 330-348.

278 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1590

eighteenth centuries. From this class were drawn
all the cotinty officials who have been named, ex-
cept the lord-lieutenant; from it were chosen the
cotmty representatives to Parliament; and in it
were found the strength and the weakness of the
English political system, James I., in appealing to
the country gentry to continue to Hve on their
estates in their counties, said to them, " Gentlemen,
at London you are like ships in a sea, which shew
like nothing, but in your country villages you are
like ships in a river, which look Uke great things." *

Out of this body of rural gentry from twenty to
sixty in each county were chosen by the lord-chan-
cellor to serve as justices of the peace.'' The "com-
mission of the peace," by which the justices were
appointed and from which they drew their powers,
was a formula well known and constantly quoted
and commented upon, and added to from time to time
tmtil late in the sixteenth century. In was then,
in 1590, revised and formulated anew by Sir Chris-
topher May, Chief -Justice, with the advice of all the
other judges of the time, and has not been changed
from that day to this.'

The justices of the peace performed some of their
duties separately, acting individually as circum-
stances required, or as proved convenient to them-
selves. Other powers they could exercise only when

' Bacon, Apothegms, in Works (Spedding and Heath ed.),
VII., 125. ' Lambard, Eirenarcha, book I., chap. v.

• Ibid., book 11., chap. vii.

1650] JUSTICES OF THE PEACE 279

two or more acted together and concurrently. Still
others, and those far the most important and dig-
nified, they performed in a body at their "quarter-
sessions." What things a justice might do singly,
what two, three, or fo\ir justices might do together,
and what they might do only in the formal sessions
of the whole body of justices of the peace of the
coimty were defined partly in the statutes, partly in
the commission under which they acted.

The regular or quarter-sessions were meetings held
four times a year — in October, midwinter, spring,
and midstmimer — at which all the justices of the
peace of the county were supposed to be present.
There were, besides, occasional irregular sessions, or
meetings of the regular sessions adjourned from one
time to another. In corporate towns the city offi-
cers acted as justices of the peace, reinforced usually
by some others especially appointed ; and each town
followed its own customs as to meeting in general
sessions.

Although the law contemplated the attendance
of all the justices of the county at each quarter-
sessions, as a matter of fact the attendance was very
irregular and incomplete, few of the records, so far
as published, showing an attendance of as many as a
dozen out of perhaps forty or fifty. Most of them
evidently came riding up to quarter-sessions if it
suited their convenience and remained away if it
did not, restricting their services to those duties
which could be performed in their own neighbor-

28o EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

hoods, and leaving to a few active, regular, and hard-
working magistrates the responsibilities of the higher
work.*

Of those who made up quarter-sessions one at
least must be "of the quorum." This expression is
taken from the commission of the justices of the
peace, which in the clause giving to the justices the
power to inquire and determine by oath of the
jurors as to felonies and other offences and to punish
them, after naming all those to whom the commis-
sion for that county is issued, says, quorum aliquant
vestrum, A, B,C, etc., unum esse volumus (of whom
we wish you. A, B, C, etc., to be one), naming pre-
sumably such as were learned in the law or other-
wise especially trustworthy.^ As without the pres-
ence of one of the "quorum" no quarter-sessions
could be held, to be a "justice of the peace and of
the quortmi " was to be one of a select list of the
justices. One-third or one-half of the Ust of those
in the commission were usually named also in the
quorum.

In addition to the justices there should, according
to law, be present at quarter-sessions, in the first
place, the custos rotulorum, or keeper of the rolls of
the sessions, the " cust-alorum" of Justice Shallow.'
This was always one of the justices of high rank
indicated to the lord-chancellor for appointment

' West Riding Sessions Rolls; Manchester Quarter - Sessions,
passim. ' Lambarde, Eirenarcha, book I., chap. ix.

' Merry Wives of Windsor, act i., sc. i.

i6so] JUSTICES OF THE PEACE 281

by the king himself,* and was very apt to be the
lord-lieutenant of the county. He could be, and
probably was, usually represented at the sessions
by a deputy, who was a person of considerable im-
portance and influence, upon whom much respon-
sibility was placed by the statutes, and whose abil-
ities must have been constantly relied upon by the
magistrates. The title of this deputy was " clerk of
the peace," the predecessor apparently of the Amer-
ican cotmty clerk. He was usually familiar with
the law, and his knowledge of precedents and pro-
cedure must often have stood the unlearned jus-
tices in good stead, besides the work which he per-
formed in drawing up indictments, writing orders,
and keeping records.

Besides the custos and the clerk, the sheriff or his
deputy were bound to be present prepared to em-
panel jurors and execute process; as well as the
jailer ready to produce his prisoners; the superin-
tendent of the county house of correction ; all jurors
who had been summoned by the sheriff ; all persons
who had been bound over by single justices to ap-
pear at quarter-sessions; all high constables and
bailiffs of hundreds; and the coroners.'' The quar-
ter-sessions should, by law, be kept for three con-
tinuous days if there was any need;' but, as a
matter of fact, sessions seldom lasted more than a

* 37 Henry VIII., chap. i.

' Dalton, Ofpcium Vicecotmtum, chaps, xxxiv., clxxxv.

' 12 Richard II., chap. x.

282 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

day, and a contemporary complains that "many
doe scantly afford them three whole hotirs, besides
the time which is spent in calling of the county and
giving of the charge." *

The powers and duties of the justices of the peace
in quarter-sessions and separately were so consider-
able and varied as to tax the ability of an Eliza-
bethan or Jacobean text-book writer to reduce them
to simplicity of statement, or to the compass of five
or six hundred pages of enumeration. Many of
these powers were general, arising from the nature of
the office for the "conservation of the peace" ; but
the great mass of their duties was placed upon them
by statutes. Ten early statutes are enumerated
in the commission itself, before coming to the in-
clusive "and cause to be kept all other ordinances
and statutes made for the good of our peace and the
quiet rule and government of our people." From
the middle of the fifteenth century forward, the en-
forcement of the greater number of new laws was
placed primarily in the hands of the justices of the
peace.

As time passed on legislation became more and
more minute and inclusive. Few interests in hu-
man life escaped the paternal attention of govern-
ment under the Tudors and Stuarts, and this great
mass of enactment it became the duty of the groups
of country gentry in the counties and of the civic
magistrates of the towns to put into force. A
' Lambarde, Eirenarcha, book IV., chap. xix.

i6So] JUSTICES OF THE PEACE 283

writer of the time entimerates two hundred and
ninety -three statutes passed previous to 1603 in
which justices of the peace are mentioned and given
some jurisdiction or duties.* Under Elizabeth alone
there were seventy-eight, ranging from the "preser-
vation of spawn and frie of fish" to those " touching
bulls from Rome." The infrequent and short-lived
parliaments of James I. added thirty -six to the list.'

Although many of these laws are repetitions,
some others temporary or local, still others insig-
nificant, yet, on the other hand, some of them opened
up whole new fields of activity to the justices: as,
for instance, those placing upon them, after 1563,
the administration of the Act of Apprentice ; and,
after 1581, the responsibility for the search for and
punishment of popish recusants. A whole code of
law, procedure, and precedent grew up on these two
subjects, besides others scarcely less extensive.

Quarter-sessions had nothing to do with civil suits,
and cases of treason, murder, and certain other high
crimes were excluded from their competence. Apart
from this restriction and these offences, there was
little difference between sessions and assizes, be-
tween the jurisdiction of the learned judges of the
king in their half-yearly circuit and that of the
county magistrates in their quarter-sessions. Be-
fore them both grand and petty juries were empan-
elled, indictments drawn up, prisoners tried for

' Lambarde, Eirenarcha, book IV., chap, xix., Table, App.
' Dalton, The Country Justice, Table of Contents.

284 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

assault, burglary, horse-stealing, witchcraft, pocket-
picking, keeping up nuisances, cheating, failure to
attend church, and almost all other offences of
which seventeenth-century Englishmen were capa-
ble. If convicted they were placed in the stocks,
whipped, or hanged. In Devonshire, in the mid-
winter sessions of 1598, out of sixty-five culprits who
were tried eight were hanged ; at midsummer, out of
forty-five eight were hanged, thirteen flogged, seven
acquitted, and seven, on account of their claim of
benefit of clergy, were branded and then released.'

The justices in sessions or singly also performed
much administrative work, such as the oversight
and repair of bridges, the granting of licenses to
ale-houses, the establishment of wages, the binding
out of apprentices, and the relief of wounded soldiers.
Many laws passed under Elizabeth and James I.
admitted of exceptions when approved by one or
more justices of the peace, and there was thus con-
stant occasion for granting to individual persons or
at special times permission to export grain, to turn
their barley into malt, to build cottages without
land attached, to carry hand-guns, to buy and sell
out of market-hours, to beg, and other dispensa-
tions from the rigorous application of the law.*

The punishing of recusants and the discipline of
those who refused or neglected to go to church was,
as already stated, an active occupation of the jus-

' Hamilton, Devonshire Quarter-Sessions, 33.
' Ibid., 27, 164, etc.

1650] JUSTICES OF THE PEACE 285

tices. At certain times, such as the period just fol-
lowing the Gunpowder Plot, when the search was
for Catholics, and somewhat later, when the search
was for Puritans and Separatists, the Privy Coun-
cil brought severe pressure upon the justices to
fulfil these duties, and numerous prosecutions were
brought by them. In Middlesex during the reign of
James I, the indictments averaged eighty-five per
year for religious offences, and sometimes at one
session there were as many as one hundred and
fifty persons indicted.' _

The justices were constantly called upon to act in '
special emergencies or to give special relief. If a
man's thatched cottage were burned, the nearest
justice might authorize him to make an appeal to
his neighbors for help to rebuild; if a whole village
or town suffered from a more extensive fire, the
justices in their sessions quartered the homeless peo-
ple in various parishes, announced a subscription,
and, calling constables and leading villagers before
them, exhorted them to Kberal voluntary gifts, and
appointed a subcommittee to administer the ftmds
for relief; if a pestilence appeared, a tax-rate for
immediate assistance was levied, and the justices
supported the sick and enforced the quarantine;
if food became scarce and high-priced the justices
forbade its export from the covin ty or conversion,

• Middlesex County Sessions Rolls, II., III.; Hamilton, Devon-
shire Quarter-Sessions, 27, 74, etc. ; Cal. of State Pap.,Dom., 1633-'
1634. p. 531-

286 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1590

into malt, and even announced a maximum market-
price for it. When weavers or other artificers were
out of work the justices set to work to induce mas-
ters to employ them or merchants to buy their
goods, or, as a last resort, levied a rate for their sup-
port. If news came of the capture of a number of
English sailors or merchants by Barbary pirates,
collections were taken up by the justices of the
maritime coimties for their redemption. In all
such exigencies it was the justices of the peace
who were expected to tide over the special tem-
porary difficulty or need.

""■-Besides the ancient regulative duties of the jus-
tices, and besides those that were definitely given
them by successive statutes, they were constantly
subject to the commands and instructions of the
Privy Council. In 1592, soon after the remodelling
of the commission, a circular letter was sent by the
Privy Council to certain commissioners in each
county requiring them to call a special meeting of
all justices of the peace, at which the oath of office
and the oath of supremacy must be taken by each,
or they must retire from the commission of the
peace.* This seems to have been preparatory to
a more strict discipline and oversight of their ac-
tions, for communications from the council now
became more frequent and more drastic.

' Hamilton, Devonshire Quarter-Sessions, 36, 48; Nichols, Hist,
of the Poor Law, 252; Hist. MSS. Commission, Report XIV.,
App. IV., 42.

1631] JUSTICES OF THE PEACE 287

In requiring them to fulfil their duties as magis-
trates the Privy Council spoke categorically in the
name of the king in a constant series of letters,
couched often in such harsh terms of reproof as to
make it hard to realize that the justices were gentle-
men of rank and dignity, fulfilling laborious services
practically without compensation. In 1598 vig-
orous letters were sent to the various cotmties call-
ing the attention of the justices to the recently
enacted poor law, and requiring them to see it put
into execution.' From this time forward to the
outbreak of the civil war the pressure of the coimcil
on the justices became stronger and stronger. In
January, 1631, a Book of Orders was issued by the
Privy Cotmcil giving instructions in greater detail
to the justices as to their duties, especially in regard
to the poor law, and requiring them to make re-
ports every three months to the sheriffs, who were
to transmit these reports to the justices of assize,
who were in turn to send them to certain members
of the Privy Coimcil deputed for the purpose. The
judges of assize were also to report directly to the
king if they learned of the negligence of any of the
justices of the peace.^ The Book of Orders was
reissued from time to time and its requirements
followed up.

An attempt was made by these means to intro-
duce a system of "thorough" in the affairs of local
government during the period of the personal gov-

' Leonard, The Poor Law, 143. ' Jhid., 158, etc.

288 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1631

emment of Charles I., analogous to that attempted
in the higher ranges of government by Wentworth,
Laud, and their fellow-members of the Privy Council.
The great instruments of this plan were the justices
of the peace, acting within the limits of their re-
spective counties, carrying out the manifold duties
imposed upon them by law, under constant pressiire
from the Privy Cotmcil and the king. After even
this partial enimieration of the services of the jus-
tices of the peace and of the supervision kept over
them, one can readily appreciate the feeling of the
justices of Nottingham who complained that they
had " httle rest at home or abroad." *

The centre of gravity of local government in Eng-
land was in the coxmty. The power which put its
machinery in motion was that of the central gov-
ernment; but the actual administration was in the
hands of the sheriff, the lord-lieutenant, the coroner,
and the justices of the peace. ' The county bounded
the sphere of activity of all these oiScials. The
commission of any group of justices named the
cotmty in which they were to exercise their functions,
and outside of its boundaries all their powers dropped
from them. The coroner could not hold an inquest
outside of his own county, and even the lord-lieu-
tenant could exercise his miHtary functions only
within the shire or shires named in his commission.
When, in 1603, James I. rode southward from Edin-
burgh on the news of the death of Elizabeth, and

' Qal. of State Pap., Dom., 1^31-1633, p. 18.

i6so] JUSTICES OF THE PEACE 289

crossed the border at Berwick, he was met by the
sheriff of Northumberland and escorted by him to
the borders of Diirham, where he was met by the
sheriff of that cdunty, and so from shire to shire
through the whole length of England till he reached
London.

The basis of representation in Parliament was the
county : the counties formed the districts for all the
circuit covirts; national taxation was largely dis-
tributed by cotmties, and, as has been seen, local
jurisdiction and administration were largely in the
hands of county officials.

CHAPTER XVI

ENGLISH PARISH OR TOWNSHIP GOVERNMENT
(1500-1650)

NEXT below the county as a political sub-
division of England came the hundred, or
wapentake, as it was called in the northern shires.
One of the oldest poUtical units of the country, per-
haps the very oldest, it had become the least impor-
tant of all. Its ancient significance as the primary
organization of the community for judicial purposes
disappeared long before the beginning of the seven-
teenth century, leaving only a desultory practice of
holding a sheriff's semi-annual "toum" through the
hundreds of the shire; and some traditional pay-
ments of fees to the noblemen who held the hundred
coturt as a "liberty," or to the crown. Apart from
its existence as a unit of jurisdiction, the htmdred
was still put to some use as a subdivision of the
county for purposes of taxation, for miHtary organi-
zation and service, for the preservation of order, and
as the sphere of activity of the high-constable.' The
high-constables were, indeed, the only officers of the

> Lambarde, Constables, § 25; Cal. of State Pap., Bom., 1637,
pp. 39, 104.

2 go

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 291

hundreds, one or more being chosen annually by
the justices of the peace in quarter-sessions from the
same class of rural gentry as we have already seen
fiumishing the cotmty local officials. The hundred,
for some reason, took but slight root in colonial soil,
though it was established in a few of the colonies,
and in such places many of its English functions
reappeared.*

An ancient Latin law writer says, "England is
divided into coimties, counties are divided into hun-
dreds (which in some parts of England are called
wapentakes), and hundreds are again subdivided
into villas."^ By using the general word villas
(" vills ") he evaded one of the greatest difficulties in
the description of English local government in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the confusing
and conflicting use of terms for the smallest sub-
division of civil government. Shall we use parish,
town, township, manor, or tithing when we speak of
a neighborhood organized for the affairs of petty
government ? All these terms are used abundantly
in the records of the time and to a great extent
are used indiscriminately.

This lack of consistency is quite natural and ex-
plicable. In the first place, local organization as it
existed at this time was the residuxmi of several suc-
cessive systems of custom and law, and contained

' Howard, Local Constitutional History of the U. S., 272-
886; Wilheluai, Local Institutions of Maryland, 60, n. 5.
* Fortescue, De Laudibus Legvm / ngliee, chap, cxxiv.

VOL. I. — a'

292 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

survivals from the nomenclature of each. "Town-
ship" or. "town" was a term belonging to a far-
distant Anglo-Saxon past, and had been long ob-
scured by the later institution of tithings and the
still later manors. Secondly, the union of church
and state, the mutual interpenetration of the eccle-
siastical, and civil systems, served to complicate the
matter still further by confusing the word "parish"
with terms which appHed in a non - ecclesiastical
sense to the same little group of people and the
same tract of land.

Of all these terms, three — manor, town (or. town-
ship) , and parish — are the most usual. A manor was
a group of inhabitants and the land they occupied
(usually a single village) , so far as these people were
connected with and dependent upon a certain "lord
of the manor," who had various rights over the
people and their lands. Aside from his position as
landlord, the most important of these rights was
that of holding a court^baron and a court-leet and
view of frank-pledge.

Various powers and activities had long gathered
around these petty courts, but the whole group of
manorial rights and duties of jurisdiction and admin-
istration was, in 1600, fast becoming an obsolete and
insignificant institution. Yet the terms connected
with it had worked themselves inseparably into lo-
cal life. Courts-baron were held in but few places,
and almost solely for the purpose of makiiig land
transfers; courts-leet were held only infrequently

1650] ENGLISH PARISH 293

and irregularly, many lords of manors who possessed
the right exercising it but once a year or less fre-
quently ; the whole system df frank-pledges had long
gone into desuetude. Grants of manorial powers,
"court-leet, court-baron, and view of frank-pledge,"
were made in several of the colonial charters; but
these institutions showed little inclination to renew
in America a vitality they had lost in England.

The English word town or township is the nearest
equivalent -to the Latin word villa or vill, which is a
generic term used in the records, without very ex-
act connotation, for one of. those country villages
in which the rural population of England was dis-
tributed, including the land connected with the vil-
lage. Town and township meant the same thing,
except when the former was applied to an urban
community. Over and over again to the same
locality first the term " town " and then " township "
is applied;' and a careful search fails to find any
distinction drawn between them. In the north of
England the term town or township seems to have
been especially familiar and frequently used as a
subdivision of some of the other local units;' and
it was in common use everywhere as a synonyta for
manor or parish.

While all these terms meet us frequently in the
records of the seventeenth century, the term parish,
notwithstanding its ecclesiastical connotation, was,

' West Riding Sessions Rolls, passim.
' Fishwick, Hist, of Preston, 2.

294 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

in fact, superseding all others as the most usual ap-
pellation to give to the unit of local government.
Terms strictly applicable to other phases of the
local organization were apt to be applied to the par-
ish. For instance, we hear of the "constable of a
parish," * although that oflficer was an official of a
township; proprietors of "free" and "copy -hold"
lands of a parish are spoken of, though those terms
properly applied only to a manor ; the same is true
of an order for a court to be held every three weeks
in certain parishes,' the term ' ' court ' ' being properly
manorial. These expressions show the tendency of
the time to substitute the term "parish" for more
exact terms applied to the local governing body in
its different aspects. It was the "parish" that was
usually sued, taxed, and fined, that received property
by bequest, and that was ordered by the govern-
ment to perform various duties.

Our colonial forefathers, according to the locality
of their origin or the particular phase of local gov-
ernment that applied to their new conditions, used
sometimes one term, sometimes another ; but in this
study of English conditions the parish and the offi-
cers whose sphere of action was the parish may be
taken to include all that is necessary, with the tm-
derstanding that our use of the term parish is broad,
in conformity with seventeenth-century usage.

The knowledge of the boundaries of the parish

' ArchcBological Review, IV., 344.
' Saalkeld, Reports, III., 98.

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 295

was kept alive by the traditional ceremony of per-
ambulation. From time to time, usually once a
year, a procession was formed which went the rounds
of the outer boundary, stopping from time to time
at well-marked points for various commemorative
ceremonies. In pre - Reformation times the cere-
mony was a religious one, the priest leading and the
parishioners following with cross, banners, bells,
lights, and sacred emblems, successive points being
blessed and sprinkled with holy water.' When re-
ligious processions were forbidden at the Reforma-
tion, this ceremony came under the condemnation of
the law; and Queen Elizabeth found it necessary, in
order to perpetuate the useful civil element in it, to
direct by proclamation a certain form of renewal of
the processions. "The people should, once in the
year, at the time appointed, with the curate and
substantial men of the parish, walk about the par-
ish, and at their return to the church make their
common prayers. And the curate in the said per-
ambulation was, at certain convenient places, to
admonish the people to give thanks to God in the
beholding of His benefits, and for the increase and
abundance of his fruits upon the face of the earth,
with the saying of the one hundred and third
Psalm." '

The custom survived in this or other forms,*
because there were no surveyed boimdaries, and re-

* Bum, Ecclesiastical Law, II., 133, 134. ' Gibson, Code*, 213.
' Sbillingfleet, Ecclesiastical Cases, I., 244,

296 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

liance had to be placed on marked stones and
trees, hill-tops, watercourses, and such indications,
interpreted and defined only by human tradition.
In some remote districts it is still preserved.
From the practice of performing, the perambula-
tion in rogation week it was often called "the ro-
gation," and conversely rogation daj'^s were some-
times called "gang -days"* In the seventeenth
century, as the men who afterwards practised it in
New England and Virginia must have remembered,
it was still a festivity. In the church-wardens' ac-
counts for the parish of St. Clements, Ipswich, in
1638, is the item "fifor bread and beare given to the
boyes when they wente the boundes of the par-
ishe, 125."^ Boys were taken as those whose life
and memory would nattirally be the longest, and the
poorer boys were often especially included as a
treat. In Chelsea, Middlesex, at a somewhat later
time, a more official feast is suggested by the entry :
"Spent at the perambulation dinner, £3 10s." '

No material obstacle was allowed to interfere
with the progress of the perambulators. They
could, by law, enter all dwellings on the boundary
and pass through and even break down all enclos-
ures which lay across it. Private persons whose
houses lay in the line of march of the perambula-
tors sometimes provided food and drink for them,

' Bum, Ecclesiastical Law, II., 133.
' East Anglian, IV., 2d series, 5.
• Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 473.

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 297

and this became so customary that efforts were
made, though unsuccessfully, to enforce this cus-
tom by law.*

In describing the officers of the parish we pass
from the class of country gentry, from which the
sheriffs, coroners, justices of the peace, and high-
constables were drawn, to a group of lower social
rank. In the towns they may have been of some-
what higher or at least more varied status, but in
the rural parishes the officers were of very humble
position. In the invaluable description of England
written by Harrison in the latter part of the reign
of Elizabeth, from which we have had occasion to
quote so frequently, the author says: "The fourth
and last sort of people in England are day-labourers,
poor husbandmen, and some retailers (which have
no free land), copyholders, and all artificers, as tail-
ors, shoemakers, carpenters, brickmakers, masons,
etc. . . . This fourth and last sort .of people therefore
have neither voice nor authority in the common-
wealth, but are to be ruled and not to rule others',
yet they are not altogether neglected, for . . . in
villages they are commonly made chtirchwardens,
sidesmen, aleconners, now and then constables,
and many times enjoy the name of head bor-
oughs." ^

The most active and conspicuous officer of the
parish or township was the constable, or petty con-

* Bum, Ecclesiastical Law, II., 133.

' Harrison, Description of England (Camelot ed.), 13.

298 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

stable, as he is often called, to distinguish hitn from
the high-constable of the hundred. He was appoint-
ed by the court-leet, where this was still held; in
other cases by the steward of the lord of the man-
or, the vestry of the parish, or, as a part of their
residuary duties, by the justices of the peace. The
regular form of oath of the constable may be quoted
in some fulness to show the nature of his duties.
"You shall swear that you shall well and truly serve
our sovereign lord, the king, in the office of a con-
stable. You shall see and cause his majesty's peace
to be well and duly kept and preserved, according
to your power. You shall arrest all such persons
as in your sight and presence shall ride or go armed
offensively, or shall commit or make any riot, affray,
or other breach of his majesty's peace. You shall
do your best endeavor to apprehend all felons, bar-
rators, and rioters, or persons riotously assembled;
and if any such offenders shall make resistance you
shall levy hue and cry and shall pursue them until
they be taken. You shall do your best endeavors
that the watch in and about your town be duly kept
for the apprehending of rogues, vagabonds, night-
walkers, eavesdroppers, and other suspected per-
sons, and of such as go armed and the like. . . . You
shall well and duly execute all precepts and war-
rants to you directed from the justices of the peace
of the county or higher officers. In time of hay or
com harvest you shall cause all meet persons to
serve by the day for the mowing, reaping, and getting

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 299

in of com or hay. You shall, in Easter week, cause
your parishioners to chuse surveyors for the mending
of the highways in your parish. . . . And you shall
well and duly, according to your knowledge, power,
and ability, do and execute all things belonging to
the office of a constable so long as you shall continue
in this office. So help you God." '

The constable, among the other duties prescribed
by his oath, had to "raise the hue and cry" when it
was demanded — that is to say, if any one were as-
saulted or robbed and appealed to the constable of
the parish in which the injury occurred, the constable
must summon out his neighbors, whether it were by
day or by night, to seek the culprit. If not successful
he must give notice to the constables of the adjacent
parishes, who were similarly to raise the hue and
cry in their neighborhoods. If the offender was not
then discovered the person who stiffered the loss
might bring suit for its recovery from the whole
hundred in which the attack occurred.^

In practice hue and cry was a very ineffective
method of capturing ill-doers. Harrison says: "I
have known by my own experience felons being
taken to have escaped out of the stocks, being res-
cujftd by others for want of watch and guard, that
thieves have been let pass, because the covetous
and greedy parishioners would neither take the
pains nor be at the charge to carry them to prison,

' Dalton, The Country Justice, chap, clxxiv.
' Ihid., chap. Ixxxiv.

300 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

if it were far off ; that when hue and cry have been
made even to the faces of some constables, they have
said : ' God restore your loss ! I have other business at
this time.' " ' To prosecute petty offenders, to force
laborers to serve during harvest-time, to sign their
testimonials when they wished to leave the parish,
and to see that innkeepers refused no travellers,
gave the constable considerable duties of local su-
pervision.

The constable must, with the advice of the minister
and of one other inhabitant of the parish, whip any
rogue, vagabond, or sturdy beggar who appeared
in the parish, and then send him, with a testimonial
to the fact of the whipping, back to his native par-
ish. The word rogue was a comprehensive term as
used in the laws of Elizabeth, including wandering
sailors, fortune-tellers, collectors of money for char-
ities, fencers, bearwards, minstrels, common players
of interludes, jugglers, tinkers, peddlers, and many
others, and adequate whipping of them and starting
them in the direct route homeward must have been
no sinecure.'*

A contemporary testimonial with which such a
person was provided may not be without interest
as an illustration of the manners of the time. "A,
B., a sturdy rogue of tall stature, red-haired and
bearded, about the age of thirty years, and having
a wart neere imder his right eie, born (as he confess-

' Harrison, Description of England (Camelot ed,), 247.
' Lambarde, Duties of Constables, § 45.

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 301

eth) at East Tilberie, in Essex, was taken begging at
Shome in this county of Kent, the tenth of March,
1598, and was then and there lawfully whipped
therefor, and hee is appointed to goe to East Tilberie
aforesaid, the direct way by Gravesend, over the
river of Thamise ; for which hee is allowed one whole
day, and no more at his peril ; subscribed and sealed
the day and yeare aforesaid. By us " (signed by the
minister, the constable, and a parishioner).' It is
no wonder that constables are advised "in every
comer to have a readie hand and whip."

The constable was also the warden of such arms
and armor as each parish kept, or was supposed to
keep, in obedience to the miUtia requirements. A
writer of Elizabeth's time says: "The said armour
and mtmition likewise is kept in one several place of
every town, appointed by the consent of the whole
parish, where it is always ready to be had and worn
within an hour's warning. . . . Certes there is almost
no village so poor . . . that hath not sufficient furniture
in a readiness to set forth three or four soldiers, as
one archer, one gunner, one pike, and a bilknan." ^

An account of the armor kept in a parish in Mid-
dlesex is entered in the vestry accounts of the year
1583. "Note of the armour for the parish of Ful-
ham: first, a corslet, with a pyke, sworde, and
daiger, furnished in all points, a gyrdle only except-
ed. Item, two hargobushes, with flaskes and touch-

> Lambarde, Duties of Constables, § 45.

' Harrison, Description of England (Camelot ed.), 224.

302 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

boxes to the same; two morryons; two swords, and
two daigers, which are all for Fulham side only.
All which armore are, and do remayne in the posses-
sion and appointment of John Palton, of Northend,
being constable of Fulhamsyde the yere above
wrytten." * One may easily imagine the natvire and
value of such accoutrements, and of the villagers
who were occasionally pressed into the service to
wear them. Mouldy and BuUcalf, Wart, Shadow,
and Feeble, and FalstaflE's whole company of "can-
kers of a calm world and a long peace" may readily
enough have been drawn from the Hfe.

These duties the constable must fulfil at his own
initiation or upon the recurrence of the occasion for
them. But the great part of his duties were those
imposed upon him from above in special cases — that
is to say, in carrying out the warrants and precepts
of the justices of the peace, or occasionally of the
coroner, sheriff, lord-lieutenant, or still higher offi-
cials. If the justice of the peace was the man-of -all-
work, as has been said, of the government of the
time,, the constable was the tool and instrument with
which he worked. The constable was required to
arrest all persons who were to be botind over by
the justices to keep the peace, and all felons and
other ill - doers for whom a warrant had been
issued, and to bring them before the justices into
jail. And woe be to him if he allowed such a pris-
oner to escape. The justices might construe his

' Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 473.

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 303

inactivity as participation in the crime of the pris-
oner, or he might be fined to the extent of all his
property.'

The constable must carry out the lesser sentences
of the justices, inflicting the punishment ordered and
collecting the fines imposed. For instance, when a
certain poor woman, EHzabeth Armistead, was con-
victed of petty larceny at the West Riding Sessions,
in 1598, it was ordered by the justices that " she shall
nowe be delivered to the constable of Keerbie, and
he to cause her to be stripped naked from the middle
upward and soundly whipped thorowe the said town
of Keerbie, and by hym delivered to the constable
of Kirkby and he to see Uke execution within his
town, and the next markett att Weatherbie to de-
lyver her to the constables of Weatherbie, and they
to see like punishment of her executed thorow their
towns." ^

In assessing and collecting taxes and in obtaining
information the constables were at the command of
county and htmdred authorities. They were used
as the active or at least the most available inter-
mediaries between the justices of the peace and the
individuals whom it was desirable to reach.' They
were by no means ideal instnunents ; many were
extremely ignorant — as, for instance, the constable
of Collingboume Ducis, who in 1650 prays to be

' Lambarde, Duties of Constables, § 15.

■' West Riding Sessions Rolls, 58.

' Hist. MSS. Commission, Report XIV., App., pt. iv., 28, 67.

304 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

relieved from his office because he can neither read
nor write, and is obliged to go to the minister and
divers others to get Jiis warrants read.* They were
constantly being fined by the justices for neglect of
their duties or for inefficiency.'

The most important remaining ancient parochial
officers were the church -wardens. Their position
and ftmctions were not so purely ecclesiastical as
the name would suggest. Their duties included, it is
true, the care of the parish church and the provision
of other material requirements for religious services.
But they also included many things which were
quite clearly temporal or civil in their nature.
Coke says of their position, "The office is mere tem-
poral." ' That is to say, the church-wardens rep-
resented the parishioners, not the minister or the
ecclesiastical authorities. They formed a quasi-cor-
poration for the holding of the personal property
that belonged to the parish, and could sue and be
sued as trustees for the parish.*

The almost invariable custom was for the body
of the parishioners at a vestry meeting in Easter
week to choose two chtirch-wardens for the next year.
But neither the number nor the mode of appoint-
ment was at this time quite fixed. During the first
half of the seventeenth century clergymen were in-

' Hist. MSS. Commission, Report I., 121
' Middlesex County Records, II., 36, 41, 139.
° Lambarde, Duties of Constables, §§ 57-60.
* Lambarde, Duties of Church-wardens, § i.

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 305

clined to magnify their office, and the canons of
1603 and 1639 gave to the minister of the parish
some control over the choice of the wardens; al-
though whenever the rights of the parishioners were
asserted and an established custom shown, the
courts upheld this custom against ecclesiastical en-
croachments/

The financial powers of the church-wardens were
considerable, though exercised in most cases along
with the constable, and in many only after the ap-
proval of the whole body of parishioners at a vestry
meeting. They had, of course, the duty of provid-
ing for the repairs of the church and of taxing their
neighbors for this purpose. Unless previously set-
tled upon by the parishioners themselves, they levied
and collected the local taxes already described as
being imposed by the justices upon the parishes for
various purposes. They had the power to seize and
sell the property of such parishioners as refused or
neglected to pay the amounts assessed upon them.
Many of the parishes also received considerable
sums by gift or bequest, which were invested, and
the income expended for the poor or other parish
objects.'

Property in land and houses, also belonged to some
parishes, apart from the minister's glebe, and the
renting and accounts fell within the church-warden's
duties. Various means of combining the securing of
funds with much neighborhood merriment, even in
> Toulmin Smith, The Parish, 78-87. ' Ibid., chap, v., App.

3o6 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

those days of militant Puritanism, were used by the
parish authorities, such as "church-ales," "pigeon-
holes," Hock-tide games, Easter games, processions,
and festive gatherings, at all of which farthings,
pence, and shillings were gathered.' Such accounts
of these various funds and the record of the thousand
and one petty expenditures for local purposes as
were kept were usually the work of the church-
wardens and made their office one of real local im-
portance. In fact, a whole cycle of parish Hfe passes
before us in these accounts. "Paid the carpenters
55, for a barrow to carry the people that died of the
sickness to church to bury them." " For a coat for
the whipper, and making, 35." "For too payre of
glovys for Robin Hode and Mayde Maryan, ^d."
" Received for the May -pole, £1 4s." " Paid Robert
Warden, the constable, which he disbursed for car-
rying away the witches, iis." ^

The church - wardens, under a law of Queen
Mary,' with the constables and parishioners, select-
ed the surveyors of highways ; and under two statutes
of Queen Elizabeth^ every year appointed two men
who should be named "the distributers of the pro-
vision for the destruction of noisome f owle and ver-
mine." A tax was levied upon the parishioners to
provide these officers with fxmds, and it then became

' Various quotations in Toulmin Smith, The Parish, chap, vii,,
{ 12. ' Ibid., 465-472.

' 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, chap. viii.
' 8 EHz., chap, xv., and 14 EUz., chap. xi.

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 307

their duty to pay bounties for the heads and eggs
of crows, rooks, starlings, and many other birds.
A long list of four-footed beasts is also included in
the definition of " vermine," and rates ranging from
a shilling for a fox to a halfpenny for a mole were
established.* The mole-catcher was a regular em-
ploy6 of some parishes.^

Finally, the church-wardens were ex-officio over-
seers of the poor. By the great poor law of 1597
the church-wardens, along with four overseers of the
poor appointed each year at Easter by the justices,
had the whole charge of the relief of the poor.'
They were to estimate the annual costs and to tax
their fellow-townsmen for this purpose. From this
time forward taxation for the poor under the con-
trol of parish officers became the most important,
as it was the heaviest, of local charges. The con-
stant efforts of the Privy Council, through the jus-
tices of the peace, to enforce the poor law, kept
church-wardens and other overseers of the poor up
to their duties and engaged them in constant con-
ferences with the justices and in making reports, as
well as in the actual work of poor relief.

A vestry clerk existed in some parishes, and later
such an office became quite general and influential,
but at this period the records were generally pre-
served by one of the church-wardens or by the min-

' Lambarde, Offke of Distributers, etc., 93.
'Hist. MSS. Commission, Report III., App., 331; V., App.,
597. ' Leonard, The Poor Law, 76, etc.

Vol. I. — aa

3o8 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

ister. The vestry-clerk is of special interest as
being apparently the prototype of the town-clerk
in the American colonies.'

Various other petty officers existed, but their
duties were either identical with those already de-
scribed, or insignificant, or so exceptional as not to
reward inquiry and description here. Such were the
beadle, sexton, haywards, ale-conners, waymen, way-
wardens, sidesmen, synodsmen, swornmen, quest-
men, and perhaps some others.^

Such being the officers whose sphere of activity
was the parish, it remains to describe the general
assembly of the people of the parish, the vestry.
This name arose apparently from the practice of
meeting in the part of the church in which the vest-
ments were kept. Ordinarily, all who held house or
land in a parish, no matter on what tenure, were
members of the vestry of the parish. All inhabi-
tants, therefore^land-owners, free tenants, copy-
holders, laborers occupying cottages, even those who
held land in the parish but lived somewTiere else—
were by law at liberty to attend the meetings of the
parishioners and to join in the exercise of their
functions.

Such a body is of great interest.' Those officials
whose positions and fimctions have been discussed

' Howard, Loccd. Constitutional History of the U. S., 39.

' Discussed in Channing, Town and County Government in the
English Colonies (Johns Hopkins University Studies, II.), N6. 10,
p. 18, etc. ' Coke, 5 Report, 66, 67.

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 309

in the two preceding chapters drew all their powers
from the crown, and the duties that they performed
were imposed upon them by statute law or by royal
instruction. The same is true of a considerable part
of the activity of constables and chtirch - wardens.
But the vestry of the parish existed as a body which
within certain limits had powers of government of
its own, and could impose duties upon parish offi-
cials, appoint committees and require services from
them, adopt by-laws which bound all the inhabi-
tants, and impose taxes upon the landholders of
the parish which they were bound to pay.

Yet evidences of anything like regular meetings of
the parishioners are, in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, so scanty as to leave considerable doubt
as to whether they occurred at all generally. They
are not mentioned in the legal text-books of the
time, which were, of course, written by men who
looked from above downward and were not inter-
ested in local institutions as such. A few accotmts
of such vestry meetings remain,* but the action
taken at them was apparently restricted to the choice
of parish officers, the adoption of by-laws for the
carrying out of necessary taxation and other dis-
tribution of burdens, and for matters connected
with the building or repair of the church. The at-
tendance probably consisted only of the more sub-
stantial members of the parish and of those who

' E.g., those of Steeple Ashton, quoted in Toulmin Smith,
The Parish, chap, vii., | la.

310 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [:6co

held office and must present reports. The parish
life resided more in the activity of its officials than
of its assembly. Vigorous local self-government
could not have existed without leaving more dis-
tinct traces than it has done, and our study
of the political system of the time will have
made it clear that much local independence was
not suited to the period of the Tudors and Stu-
arts.*

Such was the provision for the carrying out of
those matters of local concern in the county, the hun-
dred, and rural parish which were not performed by
immediate officials or commissioners of the central
government. It is evident that in the early seven-
teenth century the motive power for almost all gov-
ernment, local as well as general, emanated from the
national government — ^from the king. Privy Coun-
cil, and Parliament. It was a vigorous, assertive,
centralized administration, eager to carry out its
will and enforce order, uniformity, and its own ideas
upon all persons and bodies in England. No shade
of doubt of their own wisdom or reluctance to over-
ride local or individual liberty of action troubled the
thought or weakened the resolution of the Tudor
and Stuart sovereigns and their ministers. Nor
were their Parliaments antagonistic to the principle
of centralized government, even when they wished
to curb unrestrained royal control of it. Strong gov-

' See Toulmin Smith, The Parish, chaps, ii., iv., vii.; and
Gneist, Self-Government, book III., chap, ix., § 115.

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 311

ernment was in entire consonance with the spirit of
the time.

Yet this ambitious central government was work-
ing with very inadequate and unsuitable instru-
ments. Instead of a body of efficient and responsible
officials, directly and immediately dependent upon
their superiors, receiving wages and hoping for pro-
motion, such as successful centralized governments
have usually possessed, the king and council made
use of the old and cumbrous machinery of local self-
government as they found it. It was quite imsuit-
ed to their purposes. Sheriffs, coroners, high and
petty constables, church-wardens, even justices of
the peace, had come down from a period when gov-
ernment was of quite another and more primitive
character, in which the central power coimted for
far less, local powers for far more. Most of the
local officials were unpaid, and the others were de-
pendent on insignificant fees for such money reward
as they obtained. The labors imposed upon them
were performed only from a sense of duty, loyalty,
or necessity, not as a fair return for remtmeration
received.

There was little provision for a wise selection of
office-holders, so far as regarded their suitability to
the objects of the central administration. The
county and hundred officials were taken from one
restricted class, the rural gentry ; the township and
parish officials were chosen by their neighbors from
their own number. In a word, the government of

312 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

Elizabethi James, and Charles was trying to carry
on an ambitious, centralized administration by
means of an unpaid, tmtrained, and carelessly se-
lected group of local officials, whose offices had been
established and whose characters had been formed
for a .system of much more limited powers and of
more independent local life. *

At certain times, as in the period of personal gov-
ernment of Charles I., something like a hierarchy
seemed about to develop itself, in which the Privy
Council, speaking in the name of the king, gave in-
structions to the justices of assize, the justices of
assize to the sheriffs and justices of the peace, the
justices of the peace to the high-constable of the
hundred, and the high-constable to the petty con-
stable, chtirch-wardens, and other township or par-
ish officials. But no such regularity was attained;
the council frequently communicated directly with
the justices of the peace, the sheriff with the parish
officers ; and the administration became no more sys-
tematic as time went on.

The primary governmental division of the coun-
try, the shire, was the sphere of much activity ; but
it was not automatic, and acted wholly or almost
wholly in response to pressure from above. The
ultimate unit of local government, the parish, town-
ship, or manor, had many and interesting functions,
but they were for the most part either decUning
survivals of earlier powers, or new forms of ac-
tivity imposed upon it from above. It liad the

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 313

necessary officials and the political rights to enable
it to do a great deal, but it showed few signs of vig-
orous life. Thus government in England in the
early seventeenth century was so organized that at
the top was an energetic national government, mid-
way an active but dependent covinty organization,
and at the bottom the parish with a residuum of
anpient but unutilized powers of self-government.

No greater contrast could be noted in the posi-
tion of men than that between the Englishman at
home, in the early seventeenth century, and the
Englishman who emigrated to America. Almost
all the conditions that surrounded the former were
reversed in the case of the latter. The pressure of
central government was immediately and almost
completely withdrawn. Many of the most urgent
activities of government in England, such as the
administration of the poor law and the restriction
of vagabondage, almost ceased in the colonies. The
class of settled rural gentry from which most local
officials were drawn in England did not exist in
America. On the other hand, the wilderness, the
Indians, the freedom from restraint, the religious
liberty, the opportunity for economic and social rise
in the New World made a set of conditions which
had been quite unknown in the mother-country.

As a result, the colonists had to make a choice
from among the institutions with which they were
familiar at home, of those which were applicable to
their new needs. Of such institutions of local gov-

314 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1600

emment in England there were, as has been seen, a
considerable number and variety. Naturally, some
ftmctions which had been prominent at home wefe
reduced to insignificance in the colonies ; some which
had been almost forgotten or had remained quite
tmdeveloped in England gained unwonted impor-
tance in America. Almost every local official or
body which existed in England reappeared in some
part or other of the English colonies, although often
with much altered powers and duties. All the fa-
miliar names are to be fotmd, though sometimes with
new meanings and always more or less considerably
adapted to new conditions. Moreover, the choice
was in the main restricted to familiar English insti-
tutions, for in the great variety of system in differ-
ent parts of the colonies there was scarcely an official
or body which did not have its prototype in Eng-
land.*

In this as in other matters, the fotmdations of
America were laid in European conditions and oc-
currences. European needs sent explorers on their
voyages of discovery, and European ambitions
equipped adventurers for their expeditions of con-
quest ; the commercial projects of England, France,
Holland, and Sweden led to the establishment of the
principal New-World colonies; the economic exi-

' Howard, Local Constitutional History of the U. S. ; Channing,
Town and County 'Government in the English Colonies; Adams,
Germanic Origin of New England Towns. Cf. also Tyler, Eng-
land in America; Andrews, Colonial Self -Government; Greene,
Colonial Commonwealth {American Nation Series), IV., V., VI.

i6so] ENGLISH PARISH 315

gencies and the political and religious struggles of
Europe sent a flood of settlers to people them; the
institutions of Spain, France, Holland, and England
all found a lodgment in the western continent;
and those of England became the basis of the great
nation which has reached so distinct a primacy in
America.

CHAPTER XVII
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

NO general bibliography of the whole field of this vol-
ume exists, although two comprehensive publications
(both described below) have special bibliographic sec-
tions : The Cambridge Modern History has full lists of books,
less well analyzed than the systematic and useful bibliog-
raphies in Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Generale.

GENERAL SECONDARY WORKS

Several general histories of Europe covering the field
of this volume have been published in recent years or are
now appearing. The most important are: Lavisse et
Rambaud, Histoire Generale (12 vols., 1893-1901), of which
vols. III. and VI. apply most nearly to the subjects in-
cluded in this book ; The Cambridge Modern History (to be
in 12 vols., 1902-), especially vols. I.-IV. ; H. H. Helmolt,
History of the World, translated from the German (to be
in 8 vols., 1902-), especially vols. I. and VII. Helmolt
differs from all other general histories by its arrangement
in accordance with ethnographical and geographical divi-
sions rather than historical epochs; he pays also especial
attention to economic phenomena. The following three
volumes in the series entitled Periods of European History,
give an account of this period in somewhat shorter form:
Richard Lodge, The Close of the Middle Ages, 1272-1494
(1901); A. H. Johnson, Europe in the Sixteenth Century,

316

i6so] AUTHORITIES 317

I4g4-i5g8 (1897); H. O. Wakeman, Europe, 1398-1715
(1904).

Two excellent histories of the period of discovery are
O. F. Peschel, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen
(1858), and Sophus Ruge, Geschichte des Zeitalters der
Entdeckuftgen (1881). More recent works are S. Giinther,
Das ZeitaUer der Entdeckungen (1901), and Carlo Errera,
L'Epoca delle Grandi Scoperti Geografiche (190a).

SPECIAL QUESTION ON COLUMBUS

The seemingly well-established view that Columbus
when he discovered America was in search of a direct
western route to the East Indies and Cathay, and that he
had been led to form this plan by correspondence with
the Florentine scholar Toscanelli, was attacked by Henry
Vignaud, La Lettre et la Carte de Toscanelli sur la Route
des Indes par I'Orient (1901), and in a translation and ex-
tension of the same work under the title Toscanelli and
Columbus (1902). Vignaud considers the letter of Tos-
canelli a forgery, and the object of Columbus in making
the voyage the discovery of a certain island of which he had
been informed by a dying pilot. His work elicited many
replies in the form of book reviews or more extended works.
Of the former may be mentioned those of E. G. Bourne
{American Historical Review, January, 1903) and Sophus
Ruge (Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde zu Berlin,
1902) ; among the latter, the monumental work, Christopher
Columbus, His Life, His Work, His Remains, by John
Boyd Thacher (I., 1903). Few scholars seem to have been
convinced by the argiiments of Vignaud, but the whole
question must be considered as still undetermined. The
last word is E. G. Bounie, Spain in America {The American
Nation, III., 1904).

SOURCES

A large number of the contemporary accounts of the
early expeditions of discovery and adventure are pub-

3i8 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

lished by the Hakluyt Society. These volumes are pro-
vided with introductions of great value and with numerous
maps, glossaries, and other material illustrative of the
time. They cover a long period of time and include
many lines of travel not referred to in this book ; but many
of them refer to the early expeditions to the southeast,
west, and northwest which had much to do with the
discovery and exploration of America. Some of the most
important publications of this character in the series
are the following: Select Letters of Columbus, edited by R.
H. Major (II. and XLIII., 1849 ^^'^ 1870); Narratives of
Early Voyages to the Northwest, edited by Thomas Rundall
(V., 1851); India in the Fifteenth Century, edited by R. H.
Major (XXII., 1859) ; The Commentaries of the Great Afonso
Dalboquerque, edited by Walter de Gray Birch (LIII.,
LV., LXII., LXIX., 187s, 1880, and 1883); The Voyage of
John Huyghen van Linschoten to the East Indies, edited by
A. C. Bumell and P. A. Tiele (LXX. and LXXI., 1884);
The Journal of Christopher Columbus, edited by C. R.
Markham (LXXXVI., 1892); The Discovery and Conquest
of Guinea, Written by Gomes Eannes de Azurara, edited
by C. R. Beazley and Edgar Prestage (XCV. and C, 1896
and 1900); The First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, edited by
E. G. Ravenstein (XCIX., 1898); Texts and Versions of
John de Piano Carpini and William de Rubruquis, edited
by C. R. Beazley (1903).

The standard editions of the narratives of the early land
travellers in eastern Asia are those of the Recueil de Voyages
et de MSmoires public par la Societe de Geographie, including
(IV., 1839) Relations des Voyages de Guillaume de Rubruk,
Jean du Plan Carpin, etc. (edited by M. A. R. d'Avezac) ;
and Schafer et Cordier, Recueil de Voyages et de Documents
pour Servir a I'Histoire de la Geographie, especially "Voyages
en Asie . . . du . . . Odoric de Pordenone" (edited by Henri-
Cordier) . English translations of Rubruquis and Pordenone
also appear as an appendix in Travels of Sir John Mandeville,
edited by A. W. Pollard (1900). Sir John Mandeville is
worthless as an historical source, as his genuine material is

i6so] AUTHORITIES 319

all drawn from these sources and from Marco Polo, and
there is no probability that he ever travelled in the East.
His own additions are usually mendacious. The standard
edition of Marco Polo is that of Sir Henry Yule (2 vols.,
1871). This has just been reprinted with additional
editorial notes by Henri Cordier, under the title, The
Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian, Concerning the
Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, etc. (1903). A valuable
collection of narratives of early discovery is M. F. de
Navarrete, Coleccion de los Viages y Descuhrimientos (5 vols.,
1825-1837). Those of particular interest to England are
in Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, Voyages, and
Discoveries (1589, reprinted 1903, to be in 12 vols.).

GEOGRAPHY AND COMMERCE

Among the standard histories of mediaeval and modem
geography are Joachim Lelewel, Geographie du Moyen
Age (4 vols., 1852-1857); Vivien de St. Martin, Histoire de
la Geographie et des Decouvertes Geographiques (1873); M.
F. Vicomte de Santarem, Essai sur I'Histoire de la Cos-
mographie pendant le Moyen Age (3 vols., 1849-1852); and
C. R. Beazley, The Dawn of Modern Geography (vols. I.
and II., 1897 and 1901). A full account of the history
and development of maps, especially of the form known as
portolani, is to be found in the two works translated from
the Swedish of A. E. Nordenskiold : Facsimile Atlas to the
Early History of Cartography (1889), Periplus, an Essay on
the Early History of Charts and Sailing-Directions (i^vol.
and an atlas, 1897); G. Wauverman, Histoire de I'Ecole
Cartographique Beige et Anversois du i$* Swde (2 vols.,

1895)-

The state of geographical knowledge at the beginning
of the period of explorations is well described in C.
R. Beazley, Introduction to the volume of the Hakluyt
Society's publications for 1899. F. Kunstmann, Die
Kenntniss Indiens in XV. Jahrhunderts (1863); and G. H.
Pertz, Der Aelteste Versuch zur Entdeckung des Seeweges nach

320 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

Ostindien (1859), describe two important phases of that
subject.

The fullest and best work on the relations between the
Orient and the Occident, the trade-routes, the objects of
trade, and the methods of its administration is Wilhelm
Heyd, Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter (2 vols.,
1879). There is a French translation of this work (1885-
1887), which is later and has been corrected by the author.
There is a valuable article on ancient trade in Encyclo-
padia Bihlica, IV., 48, etc. Much that is suggestive and
informing concerning Eastern commerce and trade-routes
can be found in Sir W. W. Hunter, History of British
India, I. (1899), and on the products of the East in Sir
George Birdwood, Report of Commissioners for the Paris
Exhibition of i8^S (1878). Some information concerning
trade organization in the Mediterranean Sea and through-
out Europe can be found in William Cunningham, An Essay
on Western Civilization in Its Economic Aspects (2 vols.,
1898-1900). H. H. Helmolt, General History, VII., pt.
i., pp. 1-139, has a long and valuable chapter on "The
Economic Development of Western Europe Since the
Time of the Crusades," by Dr. Richard Mayr. John Fiske,
The Discovery of America (2 vols., 1892), contains an
interesting popular account of the trade conditions of the
time and of those explorations which were directed west-
Ward.

The formation of the later commercial companies is
described and the provisions of their charters analyzed in
P. Bonnassieux, Les Grandes Compagnies de Commerce
(1892). This work is somewhat superficial, being based,
apparently, entirely on works in the French and Latin
languages, and using secondary materials where primary
sources are attainable; but it stands almost alone in its
subject, and has, therefore, considerable importance.

Naval architecture is described in Auguste Jal, ArchSologie
Navale (2 vols., 1840); and J. P. E. Jurien de la Graviere,
Les Marins du XV. et du XVI. Siecle (1879); Sir William
g^irling-MaxT^ell, Don John of Austria (a vols., 1883).

i6so] AUTHORITIES 321

ITALY AKb THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN

The best general account of Italy during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries is in Lavisse et Ranabaud, Histoire
G6n6rale, III., chaps, ix. and x., and IV., chap. i. For
the intellectual and artistic history of Italy as a whole,
J. Burckhardt, The Civiliisdtion of the Renaissance in
Italy (i860, English translation, 2 vols.), is the most
satisfactory work. J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy
(7 vols., 1875-1886), takes up many sides of the period.
A good general history of Venice in small compass is H. F.
Bfown, Venice: aHistorical Sketch of the Republic (1893).

M. G. Canale, Storia del Cammercio dei Viaggi, . . .
degl' Italiani (1866), and Storia della Republicd di Genoa
(1858-1864), contain much information about Mediterra-
nean trade and voyages, especially of the Genoese.

Thfe commerce of Venice is described in H. F. Brown,
Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, Introduction, I. (1864).

Of the f ondaco and the German merchants in Venice a
de^qription is given in H. Simonsfeld, Der F ondaco dei
Tedischi in Venedig (2 vols., 1887). Many additional
sources are in G. Thomas, Capitolare dei Visdomini del
Fontego dei Todechi (1874). A valuable article on the same
subject is W. Heyd, " Das Haus der deutschen Kaufleute
in Venfedig," in Historiscke Zeitschrift, XXXII., 193-220.

The standard history of the rise of the Ottoman Empire is
J. W.. Zinkeisen, Geschichte des Osmanischen Reichs in Europa
(6 vols., 1840). More modem works are A. La Jonqui^re,
Histoire de I' Empire Oitoman{i 88 1 ) ; and G. F. Herzberg, Ges-
chichte des Byeantiscken Unddes Osmanischen Reiches(,i8& 3).

An excellent work on the fifteenth century, is Edwih
Pears, The Destruction of the Greek Empire and the Story
of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks (2 vols., 1903).
For later history, see L. von Ranke, Die Osmanen in XVI.
wnd XVII. Jahrhundert (1827). A short and good popular
account is A. Lane-Poole, Turkey (1886). Good sections
are devoted to the Ottoman Turks in the Cambridge
Modern History (I., chap, iii., by J. B. Bury) ; and in I/avisse

322 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

et Rambaud, Ilistoire Ginirale (III., chap, xvi., and IV.,
chap, xix.), by A. Rambaud.

PORTUGAL IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

A short but excellent history of Portugal is H. M. Stephens,
The Story of Portugal (1891, Stories of the Nations Series).

The interesting character and significant work of Prince
Henry the Navigator have made him the subject of many
biographies. One of the earliest of these was G. de Veer,
Prim Heinrich und seine Zeit (1864). More detailed is
R. H. Major, Life of Prince Henry the Navigator (1868,
abbreviated edition, 1874). A nxtmber of other biographies
were called forth by the interest in the five hundredth anni-
versary of Henry's birth, which was coincident with the
four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America. A
partial list of these is as follows: C. R. 'Beazle.y, Prince Henry
the Navigator (1890) ; G. Wauverman, Henri le Navigateur et
I'Academie Portugaise de Sagres (1890) ; J. P. O. Martins, Os
Filhos de Dom Joao I. (1891) ; M. Barradas, O Infante Dom
Henrique (1894); A. Alves, Dom Henrique o Infante (1894);
J. E. Wappaus, Untersuchungen uher . . . Heinrich (1842).
Two valuable essays, Prince Henry the Navigator and The
Demarcation Line of Pope Alexander III., by E. G. Bourne,
are republished in his Essays in Historical Criticism (1901).

The most important original source for the early ex-
plorations of the Portuguese is Gomes Eannes de Azurara,
Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea (2 vols.,
Hakluyt Society, 1896 and 1899). The voyages of Cada-
mosto are published by the Hakluyt Society. Long ex-
tracts from the accounts of the voyages of Diego Gomez
are given in C. R. Beazley, Prince Henry, 289-298, and in
R. H. Major, Prince Henry, 288-298. A number of
original documents illustrative of this period are con-
tained in Alguns Documentos do Archivo Nacional da Torre
do Tombo Acer en das Navagacdes e Conquistas Portuguezas
(1892). An accoimt of the latest stages of the Portuguese
advance to India is given in F. C. Danvers, The Portuguese

i6so] AUTHORITIES 323

in India (1894). An almost contemporary account of the
explorations is J. Barros, Decadas da Asia (first published
1552, etc.); the first five books have been translated into
German by E. Feiist (1844).

SPAIN IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES

The great collection of sources for the history of Spain
is the Coleccion de Documentos Ineditos para la Historia de
Espana (112 vols., 1842-1895). Matters more partictdarly
relating to the subjects of this book appear in vols. I.,
IIL, VI., XIII., XIX., XXIV., XXVIII., XXXIX.. and
LI. The proceedings of the cortes are published by the
Academia de la Historia, Cortes de los Antiguos Reinos de
Leon y de Castilla (4 vols., 1861-1884). The records of
those called by Ferdinand and Isabella are in vol. IV.
(1882). A careful analysis and introduction to these
records is by M. Colmeiro (2 vols., 1883-1884).

The three most important chronicles of Spain contem-
porary with Ferdinand and Isabella are Hernando del
Pulgar, Cronica de los Reyes' Catolicos (1780); and Andr6
Bemaldez, Historia de los Reyes (1878).

The institutions of Spain are described in detail in two
admirable works: J. M. Antequera, Historia de la Legislacion
Espanola (1874) ; and F. M. Marina, Ensayo Historico-critico
sobre la Antigua Legislacion . . . de Leon y Castilla (1834).
There is a short but systematic and valuable account of
Spanish institutions in The Cambridge Modern History
(I., chap, xi., by H. B. Clarke). The most satisfactory gen-
eral description of the changes in Spanish institutions
during the reign of the Catholic sovereigns is J. H, Marigjol,
L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle: le Gouvernement, les
Institutions, et les McBurs (1892), William H. Prescott,
The Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic (various
editions), is less uncritical in character, and consequent-
ly more trustworthy, than the other works of this author.
An important study of the personal character of Isabella
is Clemencin, Elogio de la Reina Catohca, in Real Acad-

VOL. I. — aj

324 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

emia de la Historia, M^morias, IV. An important and
suggestive study of this period is W. Maurenbrecher,
SpanieH unter den KathoUschen K'dnigeni Siudien und
Skizsen zur Geschichte der Refortnationseeit (i8s7)» Of
somewhat similar character is W. Havemann, Darstel-
hmgen aus der inneren Geschichte Spaniens w'ahrend des
XV., XVI. und XVll. JahrhundeHs (1850). The more
pufeiy political hiatsfy is best given in M. Danvilla y
Collado, El Poder Civil en EspaOa (6 vols., 1885-1887).
The expulsion of the Jews is described in the thitd volume
of J. Amador de los Rio&, Los Judios de Espana y Portugal
(3 voU., 1875-1876); that of the Moriscos in H. C. Lea,
The Moriscos of Spain^ their Conversion and Expulsion
(1901). Much valuable description of this period is also
given in H. C. Lea, Chapters from the Religious History of
Spain (1890). Mr. Lea has also an important article,*' The
Policy of Spain towards the Indies " (Yak Review, August,
1899). The militaty history of Ferdinand's reign is given
in P. Boissonade, Reunion de la Navarre a la CastilU (1893),
and in the large general histories Of Spain, Such as A.
Canovas del Castillo, Historia General de Espcma (1894),
and Vicente de la Fuente, Historia General de Espana (30
vols., 1850-1867).

The organization of the Casa da Contractacion is fully
described in Printeras Ordmanzas . . . de la Contractacion
de las Indias, by J. de Veitia Linage (1672, "made Eng-
lish" by Captain John Stevens, imder the title The Spanish
Rule of Trade to the West Indiesi 1762). It is also described
in Richard HaklU3rt, Principal Nauigations, IV. Economic
conditions are further described in two books by K. Hablef,
Geschichte der Fugger'schen Handlung in Spanien (1897); Die
WirtschaftUche Blute Spaniens im XV t. Jahrhundert und ihr
Verfall (1888).

PRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

The great mass of contemporary writings for this period
is publishSd partly in the great Collection de Documents

1650] AUTHORITIES 325

Inedits (about 280 vols., 1835-), partly in other collections,
such as that of Michaud et Poujoulat, Correspondance
d'Orient, 1830-1831 (7 vols., 1835), and partly as individual
publications. The royal enactments down to 15 14 are best
edited in Ordonnances des Roys de France (21 vols., ij2s-
1849). The Recueil G&nSral des Anciennes Lois Frangaises,
edited by Isambert and Taillandier (29 vols., 1822-1833),
extends later in time but is inferior in fulness and accuracy.

A short general history of France during this period is
A. J. Grant, The French Monarchy, 1483-1789 (2 vols.,
1900). Of the excellent work, Lavisse, Histoire de France,
the latest section to appear is V., pt. i., by H. Lemonnier,
which covers the period 1492-1547,

For the commercial history of France valuable works are
H. Pigeonneau, Histoire du Commerce de la France (2 vols.,
1887-1889); Pierre Clement, Histoire de la Vie et de V Ad-
ministration de Colbert (2 vols., 1846) ; G. Fagniez, " Le Com-
merce de la France sous Henri IV.," in Revue Historique,
May-June, 1881; and F. Bourquelot, Etude sur les Foires
de Champagne (Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
de rinstitut de France, series II., vol. V., 1865). For
the commercial companies in Canada, see H. P. Biggar,
Early Trading Companies of New France (1901).

THE NETHERLANDS AND GERMANY IN THE SIXTEENTH AND
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

The best history of the Netherlands is P. J. Blok, His-
tory of the People of the Netherlands (1892, in part trans-
lated by Ruth Putnam, 3 vols., 1898-1900); J. L. Motley,
Rise of the Dutch Republic (many editions), still has value
and much interest, but the work is uncritical and based on
inadequate study of the sources. C. M. Davies, History
of Holland and the Dutch Nation (3 vols., 1851), is of special
value for its attention to the internal organization of the
Dutch nation. Robert Fruin, Geschiedniss der Staatsin-
stellingen in Nederland (edited by H. T. Colenbrander,
1901), is a much more detailed and modem work, the

326 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

first two books of which refer to the period of this volume.
In it are to be found abundant references to the sources
of Dutch institutions. Douglas Campbell, The Puritan in
Holland, England, and America (2 vols., 1892), is a viva-
cious work including much description of conditions in
Holland and England dxu-ing this period. It is, however,
written in a spirit of controversial exaggeration which
reduces its historical value to small proportions. The
long and valuable paper "William Usselinx," by J. F.
Jameson (American Historical Society, Papers, II,. 1888),
contains much information concerning political and com-
mercial conditions in the Netherlands. There is a short
description of the municipal organization of Holland in an
article by J. P. Jameson in the Magazine of American
History, VIII., 315-330. The charter of the Dutch West
India Company is in E. B. O'Callaghan, History of New
Netherland, I., App. A (1855) ; and in Samuel Hazard, State
Papers, I,

The general history of Germany for this period can be
studied from the following volumes of the series entitled
Allgemeine Gesckichte in Einzeldarstellungen — viz., F. von
Bezold, Gesckichte der deutschen Reformation (1890); G.
Droysen, Geschichte der Gegenreformation (1893) ; G. Winter,
Der dreissigjahrigen Krieges (1893); B. Erdmannsdorfer,
Deutsche Geschichte von westf'Alischen Frieden bis Friedrichs
der Grossen (2 vols., 1892). The last work contains in its
first book a valuable r6sum6 of the results of the Thirty
Years' War and the condition of Germany at the time.
E, Armstrong, The Emperor Charles V. (2 vols., 1902), is
an excellent account of Germany during the middle years of
the sixteenth century. Anton Gindely, The Thirty Years'
War (English translation, 2 vols., 1884), is a standard
work on the Thirty Years' War.

The religious changes of the time are described in a
scholarly but extremely dry fashion in W. Moeller, History
of the Christian Church, III. (English translation, 1900).
L. von Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Refor-
mation, translated into English (3 vols., 1845- 1847), is

i6so] AUTHORITIES 327

a •well-known work. More detailed accounts of the
Anabaptists are given in H. W. Erbkam, Geschichte der
Protestantischen Sekten in Zeitalter der Reformation (1848);
L. Keller, Geschichte der Wiedertattfer (1880); and Max
Goebel, Geschichte des Christlichen Leben in der rheinsch-
westphdlischen evangelischen Kirche (3 vols., 1849-1860).

ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CEN-
TURIES

Bibliography. — ^The standard bibliographical guide in
early English history is Charles Gross, Sources and Literature
of English History from the Earliest Times to about 1485
(1900).

General Works. — ^The best general history of the
reign of Henry VII. is W. Busch, England under the Tudors
(I., Henry VII., 1895); on the early part of the reign of
Henry VIII., J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry VIII,
(2 vols., 1884); J. A. Froude, History of England from
the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada (12 vols.,
1856-1870). Notwithstanding the criticism to which this
work has been subjected it remains the most detailed,
serious, and valuable history of England in the sixteenth
century. A. F. Pollard, England under Protector Somerset
(1900), is a valuable survey of the period 1547-1551. S.
R. Gardiner, History of England from 1603 to 1642 (10
vols., 1883-1884), History of the Great Civil War, i642-i64g
(4 vols., 1886-1891), and History of the Commonwealth and
Protectorate (3 vols., 1894-1903), form a series of great
value, covering more than half of the seventeenth centiory.
Henry Hallam, Constitutional History of England (3 vols.,
1829), is serviceable. L. O, Pike, Constitutional History
of the House of Lords (1894), and A. V. Dicey, The Privy
Council (189s), are valuable monographs.

Sources. — ^The sovurces for English history during this
period are to be found principally in the Acts of the Privy
Council (in progress 1 890-) , Calendars of State Papers (about
300 vols.). Statutes of the Realm, 1235-1713 (11 vols.),

328 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

Journals of the House of Lords (16 vols, to ^^ 00), Journals of
the House of Commons (13 vols, to 1700), Sir S. D'Ewes,
Journals of the Period of Elizabeth (1682), J. Rushworth,
Historical Collections (1703), Historical Manuscripts Com*
mission, Reports (106 parts), Deputy Keeper of the Rolls,
Public Records, Reports (64 vols.), and in a vast number
of detached publications of contemporary journals, cor-
respondence, etc.

Many of the most important statutes and other state
papers are collected in G. W. Prothero, Select Statutes
and other Constitutional Documents of the Reigns of Eliza-
beth and James I., 1550-1625 (1894), and S. R. Gardiner,
Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1628-
1660 (1889). Each of these collections has an admirable
introduction discussing the history and institutions of the
period. Other collections illustrating the constitutional
history of the time are George B. Adams and H. Morse
Stephens, Select Documents of English Constitutional History
(1901); and Mabel Hill, Liberty Documents (1901). The
following collections of sotirces also illustrate social condi-
tions: C. W. Colby, Selections from the Sources of English
History (1899); Elizabeth K. Kendall, Source-Book of
English History (1900); Ernest P. Henderson, Side-Lights
on English History (1900).

Commercial History. — ^The Merchants Adventurers are
discussed and illustrated in W. E. Lingelbach, Laniis and
Ordinances of the Merchant Adventurers (1908), and The
Internal Organization of the Merchant Adventurers (1902);
in G. Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik (2 vols., 1881);
Richard Ehrenberg, England and Hamburg (1896); and
Charles Gross, The Gild Merchant (2 vols., 1890). The
commercial companies generally are described in Cawston
and Keane, The Early English Chartered Companies (1896),
a book of slight value and limited extent of information
apart from the fact that it is practically the only work
covering the field. David Macpherson, Annab of Com-
merce (4 vols., 1802), is a book of old-fashioned learning on
the subject. For the East India Company there is a large

x6so] AUTHORITIES 329

literatirre. Some of the sources are The Charters of the
E^st India Company (no date or place of pubUcation) ;
Birdwood and Foster, The First L,etter Book of the East
India Company, 1600-161Q (1893); Henry Stevens, Dawn
of British Trade to the East Indies (1886). Of more general
histories the most recent and one of the best is Beckles
Wilson, Ledger and Sword (1903).

Events in England affecting the early history of Vii^ginia
are related and the original papers given in Alexander
Brown, Genesis of the United States (a vols., 1891). Valua-
ble articles by H. L. Osgood bearing on this general subject
are : " England and the Colonies "(Political Science Quarterly,
II.); "Political Ideas of the Puritans" (ibid., VI., Nos.

1, 2); and "The Colonial Corporation" {ibid., XI., Nos.

2, 3). See also his' American Colonies in the Seventeenth
Century (2 vols., 1904). On general commercial conditions,
William Ctmningham, Growth of English Industry and
Commerce (revised ed., 1904).

Religious History. — W. E. Griffis, The Pilgrims *«
their Three Homes (1898); Daniel Neal, History of the
Puritans (4 vols., 1732-1738); W. A. Shaw, The English
Church Puring the Commonwealth (1900); E. Eggleston,
Beginners of a Nation (1897), gives interesting and un-
familiar details of the religious sects in England. A. B.
Hinds, The England of Elizabeth (1895), is a careful study
of the origins of English Puritanism on the Continent.
G. P. Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth
Century (1898), throws light on the various sects. William
Sewel, History of the Quakers (1725), is a standard history
on the origin of that body.

C. G. Walpole, The Kingdom of Ireland (1882), describes
the "Plantation of Ulster" and the conditions that led
to the emigration of the Scotch-Irish; Of value also are
W. E. H. Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century (8
vols., 1878-1890); J. P. Prendergast, The Cromvjellian
Settlement of Ireland (1865); and H. Green, The Scotch^
Irish in America (1895).

English Local Qgvernment. — For local government

330 EUROPEAN BACKGROUND [1200

the admirable bibliography is Charles Gross, Bibliography
of British Municipal History, Including Gilds and Parlia-
mentary Representatives {Harvard Historical Studies, V.,
1897). Contemporary legal treatises concerning county
government are Michael Dalton, Officium Vicecomitum,
or the Office and Authority of Sheriffs (1623), and The
Country Justice (1681); William Greenwood, Authority,
Jurisdiction, and Method of Keeping County Courts, Courts-
Leet, and Courts-Baron, etc. (1659); William Lambarde,
Eirenarcha, or the Office of the Justices of Peace (1588); A.
Fitzherbert, L'Office et Authorities de Justices de Peace
(1514), often quoted as "Crompton," an editor who en-
larged the original work in 1583; John Wilkinson, Office
and Authority of Coroners and Sheriffs (1628). All these
appear in numerous editions, the above dates being, as far
as ascertained, those of the earliest editions.

Few records of county government exist to any large
extent, and very few have been printed. Among them
are three bodies of quarter-sessions records. John Lister,
West Riding Sessions Rolls, 1 597-1602 (Yorkshire Archse-
ological and Topographical Association, Records Series,
III., 1888); J. C. JeafTreson, Middlesex County Records,
i54p-i(5o5 (Middlesex County Records Society, 1886-1892);
Ernest Axon, in Record Society of Lancaster and Cheshire,
Manchester Sessions, XLII. Some material for Wiltshire
and Worcestershire is published in the Historical Manu-
scripts Commission, Reports, VL, VII.

A. H. A. Hamilton, Quarter-Sessions . . . chiefly of Devon
(1878), contains much on the subject. E. M. ,Leonard, The
Early History of the English Poor Relief (1900), isa scholarly
study involving much description of local administration
and the central and local governments.

For the parish, Richard Bum, Ecclesiastical Law (2
vols., 1763); William Sheppard, Offices and Duties of Con-
stables, Borsholders, Tythingmen, etc. (1641); William
Lambarde, Duties of Church-wardens and Duties of Con-
stables, affixed to his Eirenarcha (1581); George Meriton,
Duties of Constables (1669).

1689] AUTHORITIES 331

For the actual life of the parish, recourse must be had to
the few bodies of such records that are printed separately
or in local histories. Some of these are as follows: J. L.
Glasscock, Records of St. Michael's Church (1882); Collyer
and Turner, Ilkley, Ancient and Modern (1885); W. T.
Woodbridge, Rushbrook Parish Registers (1903); W. O.
Massingberd, History of Ormsby (1893); J. P. Earwaker,
Constables' Accounts of Manchester (3 vols., 1891-1892);
John Nichols, Illustration of the Manners, etc., of England
from Accounts of Church-wardens (1797).

The book that has exerted the most influence on opinion
on this subject is Toulmin Smith, The Parish (1854). It
is, however, written in a spirit of controversy, many of its
interpretations of the statutes are quite incorrect, and it
must, therefore, be used with great caution. Its most
valuable contents are its references to sources, and extracts
from local records. Rudolf Gneist, Self-Government, Com-
munalver fas sung und Verwaltungsgeschichte in England
(1871), is almost the sole work covering the whole subject,
but it is quite unsatisfactory, being drawn from a com-
paratively small group of sources. George E. Howard,
Local Constitutional History of the United States {Johns
Hopkins University Studies, extra vol. IV., 1889), and The
Development of the King's Peace (Nebraska University
Studies, I., 1890); Edward Channing, Town and County
Government in the English Colonies of North America {Johns
Hopkins University Studies, II., No. 10), and some other
articles by Herbert B. Adams and others in the same
series, include considerable information on local conditions
in England, though their primary reference is to America.

INDEX

Adeiantado, Spanish, io6.

A.frica, voyage of Dona, 50;
Portuguese explorations, 63-
70; internal trade (141 5),
64, 65; beginning of slave-
trade, 67, 68; maps, 73.

Albuquerque in Inmes, 70.

Alexandria, trade, 24, 36.

Alfonso v., promotes explora-
tion, 63, -68.

Alva in Netherlands, 183.

America, discovery, a step in
development, 39; discovery-
inevitable, 70. See also Col-
onies, Colonization.

Araish, Anabaptists, 175.

Anabaptists, doctrines, 171-
173; persecuted, 173-175;
Manster revolt, 173; growth,
174; divisions, 175; rfiuge in
America, 176; bibliography,

327-

Antwerp, nse, 129.

Apprentice, Act of, administra-
tion, 283, 284.

Asia, incentive of exploration,
4, 6, 44; Columbus thinks he
reaches, 5; commodities for
Europe, 9-19; commodities
from Europe, 19; local trade,
19; antiquity of European
trade, 20, 21; trade-routes,
23-27; interruption of trade,
31-38; desire for new routes,
39; mars in, 45, 46; Polos in,
46--49; bibliography, 518-
320. See also East Indies.

Astrolabe, introduction, 57.
Atlantic, superstition, 51.
Audiencias, Spanish, 105.
Augsburg, decay, 129; peace

(1555). 189-191; renewed

(1648), 194.
Azores, discovery, %o, 65.

Banalitbs in France, 120.
Baptists. See Anabaptists.
Barclay, Robert, as a Quaker,

334.
Barrow, Separatist, 222, 223.
Behaim, Martin, cosmograpner,

in Portugal, 72.
Bianco, Andrea, map, 73.
Bibliographies, general, 316-

326; on England, 327-329; on

English local government,

330-

Blanco, Cape, discovered, 66.

Boehmists, 175.

Bourse, origin of name, 126.

Boyador, Cape, barrier, 65;
passed, 66.

Brazil, origin of name, 17; dis-
covered, 70.

Browne, Robert, Separatist,

Cabot, John, belief in Asian
landfall, j; on spice -trade,
12; patent, 135.

Cabot, Sebastian, voyages, 7.

Cabral, voyage, 70.

Cadamosto, voyage, 42, 68.

Calvinism, established, 170;

333

334

EUROPEAN BACKGROUND

and Augsburg peace, 190;
aggressive force, 190; rec-
ognized in Germany, 194.

Camaldolese map, 74.

Canada, feudal privileges, 120;
Catholic orthodoxy, 178. See
also New France.

Canaries rediscovered, 50.

Cape Verd Islands discovered,
68.

Caravel, description, 75.

Casa da India, 133.

Casa de Contractacion at Sev-
ille, 89, 134; bibliography,

324.

Castile, condition (1474), 81,
83. See also Spain.

Catholicism, Spanish orthodoxy
and intolerance, 96-101; In-
quisition, 97, 98, 177, 182;
Spanish royal control, 106,
107; French orthodoxy, 118;
in French colonies, 159, 178;
under Henry VIII., 202; and
Elizabeth, 203; disabilities,
204-208; and James I., 208-
212; popular opposition, 209,
212; colonization, 210, 213-
215; and Charles I., 213;
under Parliament, 213; en-
forcement of laws against,
214, 283, 284. See also Ref-
ormation.

Cavailham, exploration, 8.

Charles I., and Catholicism,
211, 213; and Puritans, 225-
227; civil war, 230; executed,
230; and civil rights, 259;
ship-money, 269.

Charles II., restoration, 234;
and Quakers, 235.

Charles V., religious edicts in
Netherlands, 180, 181; and
German Protestantism, 188-
191.

Chartered commercial compa-
nies, and colonization, 123,
164, 165; governmental re-
lation, 13s, 160, 162-164;

number and nationality, 136-
139; Merchants Adventturers,
140-142; English East India,
143-146 ; types, 147-160; Vir-

?:inia, 147-152; Dutch West
ndia, 152-156; New France,
156-160; characteristics,i6o-
167; period, 160; general
movement, 161; monopoly,
161; consolidated capital,
161; political powers, 162;
financial failure, 165 ; popular
opposition, 166; natural dif-
ficulties, 166; importance,
167; Swedish West India,
192, 193; bibliography, 320,
328.

Charters. See Chartered com-
mercial companies.

China, Polo in, 46, 47 ; awak-
ened interest, 48. See also

Christian IV. in Thirty Years'
War, 191.

Chronometers, introduction, 58.

Church of England, Elizabeth's
creation, 201; artificial sys-
tem, 217; Puritan reforms,
217-221; breach with Puri-
tanism, 223-227; Arminian,
224; Puritan control, 228-
230: restoration, 234.

Church - wardens, temporal
functions, 304; choice, 304;
financial powers, 305 ; secur-
ing funds, 305; accounts,
306; appointing power, 306;
overseers of poor, 307.

Civil rights, English contest,
258-260.

Classes, English rural gentry,
277; fourth, 297. See also
Nobility.

Colonies, English, immtmities,
150; influence of religion on,
176, 177; other influences,
176; Privy Council controls,
248; and English political
struggle, 257; hundred In,

INDEX

335

agi; manor in, 293; choice of
local government, 313; bibli-
ography, 329. See also Col-
onization.

Colonies, Dutch, 187. See also
Colonization, New Nether-
land.

Colonies, French. See Can-
ada, Colonization.

Colonies, Spanish, importance
to Spain, 83; Inquisition, 98;
home control, 88, 89, 105,
109, 112-114; courts and
administration, 105, 106;
church, 107, 177; local self-
government, III, 112; sla-
very, 113; trade regulation,
133. See also Colonization.

Colonization, Spain utilizes
Portuguese experiences, 77;
commercial influence, 124;
by chartered companies, 151,
IS3. 154, 1S8-160, 164, 165,
167; religious incentive, 168-
170, 176, 210, 227, 23s;
other motives, i68, 169;
Huguenot, 178; Dutch, 187;
German interests, 198; Eng-
lish Catholic, 210, 213—215;
Puritan, 227; Cavalier, 230;
Quaker, 236; Scotch-Irish,
238. See also Colonies.

Columbus, Christopher, pur-
pose, 4; belief in Asian land-
tall, 5; Polo's influence, 49;
in Portugal, 69, 76; bibliog-
raphy on objective, 317.

Commerce. See Trade,

Compass, use (1400), SS.~S7-

Congregationalism, Engfish Sep-
aratists, 221-223; establish-
ed in England, 230.

Constable of parish, appoint-
ment, 298; oath and duties,
298; hue and cry, 299;
whipping rogues, 300; war-
den of arms, 301; as in-
strument of county officers,
302, 303; character, 303.

Constantinople, fall, 33.

Coroner, English, elected, 272;
duties, 272.

Corregidores, 90.

Cortereal, Gaspar, voyage, 6.

Corvdes in France, 120.

Council of the Indies, 88.

Councils, royal Spanish, 87-
89; their ineffectiveness, 89.
See also Privy Council.

County government, English,
261-289; sheriff, 261-270;
county court, 266; parlia-
mentary election, 267; as-
sizes, 268, 283; lord-lieuten-
ant, 270-272; coroner, 272;
justices of the peace, 274-
288; administrative unit, 288,
289; centralized administra-
tion, 310; inadequate ma-
chinery, 311; character of
officials, 311; hierarchy, 312;
no automatic activity, 312;
bibliography, 330.

Courts, Spanish, 105; French
feudal, 119; English high,
243; county, 266; assizes,

268, 283; quarter-sessions,

269, 279; court-leet, 292;
court-baron, 292.

Cross-staff, 57.
Custos rotulorum, 280.

Dante, belief in round earth,

52-

Denmark, chartered compa-
nies, 135-139-

Diaz, Bartholomew, voyage, 8,
60, 69.

Diaz, Dinis, voyage, 66.

Discovery. See Explorations,
Voyages.

Dona, Tedisio, voyage, 50.

Drugs, Oriental trade, 16.

Dunkers, Anabaptists, 175.

Dye-wood, Oriental trade, 17.

Eannbs, Gil, voyage, 66.
Earth. See Geography.

336

EUROPEAN" BACKGROUND

East India Company, Dutch,
charter, 143; sphere, 153.

East India Company, English,
charter, 143; sphere, 144;
privileges, 144-146; organi-
zation, 146; territorial foot-
hold, 164; bibliography, 328,

East Indies, reached by Gama,
70; Iberian trade monopoly,
70, 132; chartered compa-
nies, 136; EngUsh and Dutch
trade, 142, 143. See also
Asia, East India Company.

Economic conditions. See
Trade.

Edward VI. and Catholics, 203.

Elizabeth, creates Anglicanism,
201; and Catholics, 203-208;
and Puritanism, 218-223.

England, Portuguese treaties,
61; trade activity, 123, 143;
early trade patents, 135;
chartered commercial com-
panies, 135-139; Merchants
Adventurers, 140-142; trade
with India, 142, 143; East
India Company, 143-146 ;
Virginia Company, 147-152;
hatred of Spain, 163; Dutch
immigration, 183; Reforma-
tion, 200; reUgious parties
(1600), 200; established
church, 201; CathoUcs as
separate body, 202; treat-
ment of Catholics, 203-213;
development of Puritanism,
216-221; Separatists, 221-
223; religious breach, 223-
225; oppression of Puritans,
225-227; Puritan emigration,
327; Puritan and parlia-
mentary control, 228-230;
CavaUer emigration, 230; new
sects (1650), 231; Quakers,
231-235; monarchy, 240-
243; courts, 243, 266, 268,
269, 279, 283, 292; Privy
Council, 244-248; control of
Ireland, 246-249; Parliament

and crown, 249-257; suffrage
(i 600) ,251; civil rights, 258-
260 ; county govemment,26i ;
sheriff, 261-270; lord-lieu-
tenant, 270—272; coroner,
272; justices of the peace,
274-289; rural gentry, 277;
importance of county, gov-
ernment, 289, 290; hundred,
290; parish, 291-310; charac-
ter of local government
(1600), 329-331; bibUog-
raphy on general history,
327, 328; bibliography on
trade, 328; bibliography on
colonies, 329; bibliography
on religious history, 329;
bibliography on local govern-
ment, 329-331. See also
Colonies, Colonization.

Ephemerides, 58.

Equator, superstition, 51 ; cross-
ed, 68.

Europe, bibliography, 316. See
also Colonization, Explora-
tions, Trade, Voyages, and
countries by name.

Explorations, Cavailham and
Paiva (i486), 8; incentive of
Asian, 44; Franciscan friars,
45, 46; Polo, 46-49; great
period, 60; dawn, 60; Port-
uguese, 62-70; bibliography
onperiod, 316-319. See also
Voyages.

Ferdinand and Isabella,
union, 81; power, 82, loi; en-
force order, 83, 84; and the
hermandad, 85-87; councils,
87-90 ; control of local aflfairs,
90; resume crown domains,
91; absorb military orders,
92-94; weaken nobiUty, 94;
conquer Granada, 94; and
Navarre, 95 ; and Jews, 96-99 ;
and Moors, 99-101 ; bibliog-
raphy, 323.

Feudahsm, relics in France,

INDEX

337

119; patroonships, 121;
Dutch survivals, 122.

Florence, trade, 35, 37.

Fonseca, Juan de, in colonial
council, 89,

Ftanoe, development of in-
stitutions, 114, 115; abso-
lutism, 115-118; local gov-
ernment, 1 1 5-1 1 8 ; Ortho-
doxy, 118; feudal privileges,
119; trade activity, 123;
chartered companies, 135-
139; Richelieu's trade policy,
156; New France Company,
156-160; religious wars, 178;
Huguenots ,178; sources ,324;
bibEography on trade, 325.

Prank-pledge, 292, 293.

Fur-trade, rise, 131; monopoly
of Canada Company, 157.

Gama, Vasco da, voyage, 8, 70.

Genoa, Oriental trade, 27-30,
36; war with Turks, 34; and
Portugal, 62 ; no exploration,
78; bibliography, 321.

Geography, knowledge (1250),
43, 44; effect of Asian
journeys, 48; knowledge
(1400), s°~S5> 59! belief m
round earth, 51-53; impor-
tance of Portuguese dis-
coveries, 74; bibliography,
319. See also Explorations,
Maps, Voyages.

Germany, official religions, 170;
sects, 171, 172; Anabaptists,
172^175; effect of Refor-
mation, 187; Schmalkaldic
War, 188; peace of Augsburg,
189 -191; Lutheranism rec-
ognized, 189; local intoler-
ance, 189, 190; ecclesiastical
property, 189; Thirty Years'
War, 191-194; renewal of
peace of Augsburg, 194; Cal-
vinism recognized, 194; suf-
ferings in war, 154; wars of
Louis XIV., 196; emigration

to America, 196; decline of
empire, 197; and settlement
of America, ig8; bibliog-
raphy, 326.

Gomez, Diego, voyage, 68, 73.

Gomez, Estevam, voyage, 6.

Gonfalvez, Antam, slave-trade,
67.

Gonneville, de, voyage, 77.

Good Hope, Cape of, discov-
ered, 8, 60, 6p; rounded, 70.

Government. See Colonies, and
counties by narne.

Governors, French provincial,
117.

Granada conquered, 94.

Greenwood, Separatist, 222,
223.

Guinea coast reached, 68.

Gustavus, Adolphus, in Thirty
Years' War, igi; and West
India Company, 191.

Hanseatic League, 31, 125,
126.

Henry VIII. and Catholics,
202, 203.

HAnry the Na,vigator, Prince,
promotes geographical dis-
coveries, 62, 63; motive, 63,
64; personal equipm«it, 64,
65 ; results, 65-68 ; and slave-
trade, 67; death, 68; promo-
tion of navigation, 72; sea-
training school, 76; bibliog-
raphy, 322.

Hermandad in Spain, 84-'87.

High - constable, sphere, 290;
appointment, 291.

Highways, surveyor, 306.

Holland. See Netherlanc|s.

Hudson, Henry, voyage, 7.

Hudson Bay Company, seatch
for northwest passage, 7.

Hue and cry, 299.

Huguenots, colonies, 178; in
English colonies, 178.

Hundred, loses importance
(1600), 290; use, 290; high-

338

EUROPEAN BACKGROUND

constable, 2po; in colonies,
291; responsibility, 299.

Independents. See Separa-
tists.

Indies. See Asia, East Indies,
West India.

Inquisition, Spanish, 97, 98,
177; in Netherlands, 182.

Intendant, French, 117.

Ireland, Scotch-Irish colony,
236-238; English control,
246-249; Parliament, 247;
process of lerislation, 248.

Isabella. See Ferdinand.

Italy, Oriental trade, 27-31;
wars with Turks, 34; decline
of cities, 38; intellectual
leadership, 41; share in dis-
coveries, 41-43; geographical
knowledge (1400), 50, 51;
explorers but no explorations,
78; bibliography, 321.

Jacome, map-maker, ^2.

James I., and Catholics, 208-
212; and Gondomar, 212;
and Puritans, 225; Ulster
plantation, 236; on preroga-
tive, 240; and Parliament,
252-255; and civil rights,
258; on rural gentry, 278.

Japan, awakened interest, 49.

Jews, converted, in Spain, 96-
g8; expelled, 99.

John II., promotes exploration ,
68; and navigation, 72.

John de Monte Corvino, jour-
ney, 46.

John de Piano Carpini, journey,

4S-
Justices of the peace, qualifica-
tions, 274, 275; compensa-
tion, 274; social position,
275; character, 276, 277;
type of rural gentry, 277;
. appointment, 278; commis-
sion, 278; exercise of powers,
278; quarter-sessions, 279; in

towns, 279; attendance at
sessions, 279; quorum, 280;
cusios rotulorum, 280; per-
sons present at sessions, 281 ;
length of sessions, 281;
powers and duties, 282, 283;
legislation concerning, 282 ;
competence, 285 ; adminis-
tration, 284; religious pros-
ecutions, 284; special relief,
285; control by Privy Coun-
cil, 286, 287; Book of
Orders, 287; instrument for
"thorough" government, 287.

Laud, and Catholics, 213; and
Puritans, 226; arrest, 228.

Legislation, Poynings's Act,
247; process in Ireland, 248;
English, on justice of the
peace, 282.

Levant, mediaeval trade, 25-
29; decline, 32, 36.

Lisbon, rise, 129, 133, 142.

Local government, Spanish her-
mandads, 84; Spanish, 90,
110-112; French royal con-
trol, 116-118; Dutch munici-
pal, 121; English centralized,
310-313 ; colonial choice, 313 ;
bibliography on English,
329-331. See also County,
Hundred, Justices, Parish.

London, rise, 129.

Longitude, determination
(1400), 58,

Lord-Ueutenant, origin, 270;
dignity, 270; regular duty,
271; residence, 271; irregular
ftmctions, 271; as custos
rotulorum, 281.

Louis XIV., despotism, 115;
ravages in Germany, 196.

Lutheranism, established, 170;
and peace of Augsburg, 189,
190.

Madeira Islands, discovery,
5°. 65.

INDEX

339

Malacca, trade centre, 32.
Malocello, Lancelot, voyage,

SO-

Mandeville, Sir John, book, 48,
318.

Manor, use of term, 291; de-
scribed, 392; obsolescent
(1600), 292; in colonies, 293.
See also Parish.

Manufactures, Oriental, 17.

Maps (1400), S3; portolani, 54;
of Africa, 73; Valsecca (1434),
73; Bianco (1448), 73; Mauro
(1457). 74; bibliography, 319.

Majry, Queen, religion, 203, 217.

Mary Queen of Scots and
English Catholics, 206.

Maryland, Catholic origin, 210;
religious condition, 314.

Mauro, Fra, map (1457), 74.

Mennonites, Anabaptists, 17s.

Merchants Adventurers, 140-
142; bibliography, 328.

Military orders absorbed in
Spain, 92-94.

Militia, duty of lord-lieutenant,
271; parish arms and armor,
301.

Moluccas, spice islands, 12.

Monarchy, Spanish absolutism,
82-94; French absolutism,
115-118; English, antiquity,
240; prerogative, 240-243;
exercise of powers, 243, 244;
and Parliament, 252-258;
and civil rights, 258-260.

Monte Corvino. See John.

Montserrat settled, 210.

Moors in Spain, 99-101; con-
version or expulsion, 101;
Moriscos, loi.

Miinster revolt, 173.

Navarre annexed to Spain,

9S-
Na^Kgation, portolani, 54; com-
pass, 55-57; cross-staff and
astrolabe, 57; ephemerides,
58; chronometers, 58; prog-
voL. :. — 14

ress under Prince Henry,
72; quadrant, 73; improved
ships, 75; improved slall, 77;
Spanish Bureau of Pilots,
89; bibliography, 320.

Netherlands, confederation,
121, 183; local government,
121 ; feudal survivals, 122;
trade activity, 123, 143,
186; chartered companies,
135-139; trade with Indies,
142, 143; West India Com-
pany, 152-156; character of
revolt, 179; nominally Cath-
olic (1520), 179; Protestant-
ism, _ 179, 180, 185, 186;
religious persecution, i8o-
183; petitions for toleration,
181 - 183; ima^e - breaking
riots, 183; Alvam, 183; emi-
gration, 183; revolt, 183-
187; toleration, 183, 184;
separation, 184; colonies,i87;
bibliography, 325.

New France Company, origin,
156; territory and power,
157; life, 157; commercial
powers, 157; subsidy and
privileges, 158; colonization,
158; religion, 159; control
over colony, 159; govern-
ment, 160.

New Netherland, commercial
creation, 121; institutions,
121, 122; and mother-coun-
try, 154.

New Sweden founded, 193.

Nobility, Spanish, weakened,
94; grades and character,
107; French privileges, 119;
Dutch privileges, 122; and
Canada Company, 158.

Northmen, discoveries without
results, 44.

Northwest passage, search, 6, 7.

Nova Zembla discovered, 8.

Odoric de Pordenone, on
spices, 13, 14; journey, 46.

340

EUROPEAN BACKGROUND

Paiva, Apfonso de, explora-
tion, 8.

Parish, confusion of terms, 391 ;
significance, 293; perambula-
tion, 294-297; quality of
officers, 297; duties of con-
stable, 297-304; arms and
armor, 301; church-wardens,
304-307; gifts and property,
305; securing funds, 305;
surveyor of highways, 306;
destruction of vermin, 306;
poor, 307; vestry clerk, 307;
other officers, 308; vestry,
308-310; character of gov-
ernment (1600), 312; bibliog-
raphy, 330, 331. See also
Local government.

Parliament, English, opposi-
tion to Catholics, 209, 212;
Puritan control, 225; Com-
monwealth, 228-231; con-
trol of Ireland, 248; and the
crown, 249, 252-257; or

fanization, 250; powers of
rords, .250, 252; election of
Commons, 251; privileges
and powers, 255; struggle for
civil rights, 258-260 ; and
centralized government, 310.

Parliament, Irish, 447.

Penn, William, Quaker, 234.

Pennsylvania, attracts Ana-
baptists, 176; Quaker im-
migration, 236.

Philip II. and Netherlands,
181, 182.

Piano Carpini. See John.

Polo, Marco, in Asia, 46, 47;
book, 47; efifect, 47—49; in-
fluence on Columbus, 49;
bibliography, 319.

Poor, control in England, 307.

Pordenone. See Odoric.

Portobello, trade, 134.

Portolani, 54, 73.

Portugal, search for Indian
route, 8; nationality, 60;
maritime alliances, 61; con-

quers Algarves, 62; explora*
tions, 62-70; slave-trade, 67,
68; and Columbus, 69; con-
trol in Indies, 70; geograph-
ical importance of discover-
ies, 74; improved ships, 75;
pioneer explorer, 78; an-
nexed by Spain, 95, 142;
trade regulations, 132-134;
bibliography, 322. See also
Henry the Navigator.

Precious stones, Oriental trade,
14.

Presbyterianism, Puritans fa-
vor, 220; established in Eng-
land, 230; Scotch-Irish, 237-
239. See also Calvinism.

Prester John, kingdom, 8, 51,

Privy Council, members, 244;
activities, 244; control of
outl3ring districts, 245; of
Ireland, 246-248; of justices
of the peace, 286, 287; and
poor law, 307.

Protestantism. See Reforma-
tion.

Puritanism, general name, 216;
roots, 216; foreign develop-
ment, 217; opposition to
ceremonies, 218, 219; term
of reproach, 219; opposition
to episcopacy, 319, 225, 229;
" Admomtion to Parliament,"
219; favors Presbyterianism,
220; asceticism, 221; con-
formists, 221; Separatists,
221-223; breach with An-
glicanism, 223-227; Calvin-
ists, 224; civil opposition,
225; oppressed, 226, 285; and
Laud, 226; colonization, 227;
control, 228; church reforms,
229; toleration, 230; bibhog-
raphy, 329.

Quadrant, first use, 73.
Quakers, doctrine and rise,
232; persecution, 233, 234;

INDEX

341

Barclay and Penn, 934; mo-
tive for colonization, 335.
Quarter-sessions. See Justices
of the peace.

Reformation, duty of Vir-
ginia Company, 151; in-
fluence on colonization, 168-
170, 176, 210, 227, 23s;
German official creeds, 170;
outlying sects, 171, 172;
Anabaptists, 172-176; in-
fluence in colonies, 176, 177;
wars, 177; and Spain, 177;
in France, 178; growth m
Netherlands, 179, 180, 185;
persecution there, 180-183;
revolt, 183-187; toleration
there, 183, 184; effect on
Germany, 187; Schmalkaldic
War, 188; peace of Augsburg,
189-191; Thirty Years' War,
191-104, 197; in England,
200; sects in England, 231;
bibliography, 326. See also
Puritanism, and sects by
name.

Regiomontanus, ephemerides,
73.

Religion. See Puritanism, Ref-
ormation, and sects by name.

Representation, Dutch, 122;
opposition to monopoly, i66.
See also Parliament.

Revenues, Spanish royal, 91— 94.

Richelieu, trade policy, 156;
colonial religious policy, 178.

Rogues in England, 300.

Rubruquis. See WilUam.

Rvu-al gentry, English, 277.

St. James's staff, 57.

Schmalkaldic War, 188.

Schout, Dutch, 121.

Schwenkf elders, 175.

Scotch-Irish, in Ulster, 236,
237; economic trouble, 237;
persecution, 238; migration,
338; bibliography, 339.

Separatists, rise, 221-223; per-
secution, 223; emigration,
227.

Seville, colonial trade, 134;
Protestants, 177.

Sheriff, Enp;lish, importance,
261; dignity, 262; social re-
quirements, 263; appoint-
ment, 263; unpopular office,
264; fees and expenses, 264;
residence, 265; deputy, 265;
county court, 266; at elec-
tions, 267; at assizes, 268; at
quarter-sessions, 269, 281 ; ir-
regular duties, 269; and ship-
money, 270.

Ships, Portuguese improve-
ments, 75. See afco Naviga-
tion.

Slave-trade, beginning, 67, 68.

Slavery in Spanish colonies, 113.

Social condition, mediaeval lux-
uries, 9-18.

Somerset, duke of, and Catho-
lics, 203.

Sources, on period of dis-
covery, 317; on Portuguese
discoveries, 322; on Spain,
323; on France, 324; on
England, 327, 328; on local
government, 330, 331.

Spain, utilizes Portuguese ex-
periences, 77; rise, 79, 101;
personal union, 81; develop-
ment of despotism, 82-94;
hermandads, 84-87; royal
councils, 87-90; local govern-
ment, 90, no ; royal revenues,
91-^4; nobility, 94, 107-109;
territorial unity, 94-96; racial
and religious homogeneity,
96, 177; and the Jews, 96-

?9; and the Moors, 99-101;
nquisition, 97, 98, 177;
greatness (1516), 102; de-
cline, 103; monarchy, 104-
107; courts and administra-
tion, 105, 106; control of
church, J06, 107; cortes, no;

342

EUROPEAN BACKGROUND

and slavery, 113; trade reg-
ulations, 133, 134; and Dutch,
154, 163; English hatred, 163,;
sources, 323; bibliography on
institutions, 323; bibliogra-
phy on political history, 324;
bibliography on economic con-
ditions, 324.

Spices, mediaeval luxury, 9-12;
where grown, 12-14; in-
creased demand, 38, 130.

Suffrage, English (1600), 251.

Sweden, chartered companies,
135-139! in Thirty Years'
War, 191, 193; West India
Company, 1 91-193; colony,
193-

Taxation, English, assessment
and collection, 290, 303, 305,

309-

Thirty Years' War, under Chris-
tian IV., 191 ; Swedish period,
191; truce, 191; French pe-
riod, 193; peace, 193, 194,
197; political struggle, 194;
sufferings, 194; effects, 196-
199; bibliography, 326.

Tithing. See Parish.

Town. See Parish.

Trade, foreign and colonial.
Prince Henry's interest, 64;
inter - African (1415), 64;
Portuguese slave, 67, 68;
Portuguese East Indian, 70,
132; revolution (1400-1600),
124-132; period of individu-
al effort, 124, 125; trading
cities and leagues, 125; for-
eign quarters and conces-
sions, 126-128; influence
of centralization, 128; decay
of leagues, 128; centres shift-
ed, 129; new products and
markets, 130, 167; longer
ventures, 131; new require-
ments, 131; Portuguese na-
tional control, 132, 133;
Spanish national control, 133 ;

individual patents, {^5; rise
of English- Dutch Indian,i42,
143 , 1 86 ; powers of chartered
companies, 144, 149, 153,
1J7; Richelieu's policy, 156;
bibliography on European,
320, 321; on Spanish, 324;
on French, 325; on English,
328. See also Chartered com-
mercial companies.

Trade, medieval Oriental, ob-
jects, 9; spices, 10-14; pre-
cious stones, 14-16 ; drugs, 16,
17; manufactured goods, 17;
European exports, 19; inter-
Asian, 19; antiquity, 20, 21;
routes, 22-27 ; European mer-
chants, 27; foreign quarters,
28, 29, 31; distribution in
Europe, 29-31; decay, 31;
Turkish barrier, 32-38; old
routes and methods destroy-
ed, 38 ; increased demand, 38 ;
desire for new routes, 39;
bibliography, 320.

Treaties, Windsor (1386), 61;
Pacification of Ghent (1576),
184; Passau (1552). 189;
Augsburg (1555). 189; re-
newed (1648), 194; West-
phalia (1648), 193, 197.

Tnstam, Nuno, voyage, 66.

Turkish Empire, nse, 32; bar-
rier to trade,3 2-3 8 ; wars with
Venice, 34; bibliography, 321.

Ulster plantation, 236-238;

bibliography, 329.
Union, Dutch confederation,

121, 122, 184.
Usselinx, William, and West

India companies, 152-154,

192.

Valsecca, Gabriele db, por-
tolano, 73.

Venice, Oriental trade, 27-31,
37; war with lurks, 34; and
Portugal, 61 ; no explorations,

INDEX

343

78; decay, 199; bibliography,

Vera Cruz, trade. 134.

Verd, Cape, discovered, 66.

Verrazzano, voyage, 6.

Vestry, members, 308; powers,
309; activity (1600), 309. See
also Parish.

Virginia Company, charter, 147;
corporation, grantees, 148;
territory, 148, 149; com-
mercial powers, 149; political
powers, 149, 150; privileges,
150; duties, 151; expected to
colonize, 151; religion, 151;
government, 151.

Vivaldi, Ugolino, voyage, 50.

Voyages, mcentive, 4-9, 40;
Columbus, 4; Cabot, 5; Cor-
tereal (1501), 6; for north-
west passage, 6, 7; B. Diaz
(i486), 8, 69; Gama (1496), 8,
70; Malocello (1270), 50;
Doria and Vivaldi (1291),
50; Portuguese African, 65,
66, 68-70; Eannes (1434).
66; Tristam (1441). 66; D.
Diaz (1445), 66; Cadamosto
and D. Gomez (1460), 68;
Cabral (1500), 70; lessons

of Portuguese, 74-78; train-
ing-school, 76; need of royal
patronage, 78.

Wapentake. See Hundred.

Wars, Turkish- Venetian (1479),
35; Granada, 94; Navarre
(15 1 2), 95 ; Munster revolt
(1535). 173; Netherlands re-
volt, 183-187; Schmalkaldic
(1546), 188; Thirty Years',
191-194; Palatinate (1688),
196.

West India Company, Dutch,
origin, 152, 326; sphere and
monopoly, 153; colonization,
IS3. 154; and Spain, 154,
163; political powers, 154;
subsidy, 154; duties, 154;
government, 155.

West India Company, Swedish,
origin, 191; charter, 192;
and Thirty Years' War, 193;
colony, 193.

William of Orange, petition for
toleration, 182; revolt, 183.

William de Rubruquis, journey,

45-
ZwiNGLiANisM established, 170

END OF VOL. I.