During this period, too, the Incorporated Companies—Turkey Merchants, or the Levant Company; the Company of Merchant Adventurers, trading to Holland and Germany; the Muscovy Company, trading to Russia and the North, where they prosecuted also the whale fishery—were in active operation, besides a great general trade with Spain, Portugal, and other countries. The Turkey Merchants carried to the Mediterranean English cloths, lead, tin, spices, indigo, calicoes, and other Indian produce brought home by the East India Company; and they imported thence the raw silks of Persia and Syria, galls from Aleppo, cotton and cotton yarn from Cyprus and Smyrna; drugs, oils, and camlets, grograms, and mohairs of Angora. In 1652 we find coffee first introduced from Turkey, and a coffee-house set up in Cornhill. On the breaking out of the Civil War, the Muscovy Company were deprived of their charter by the Czar, because they took part with the Parliament against their king, and the Dutch adroitly came in for the trade.

These great monopolies of foreign trade were supposed to be necessary to stimulate and protect commerce; but the system of domestic monopolies which were most destructive to enterprise at home, and which had arrived at such a height under Elizabeth, was continued by both James and Charles to the last, notwithstanding the constant outcries against them, and their being compelled, ever and anon, by public spirit to make temporary concessions.

The commerce of England was now beginning to receive a sensible increase by the colonies which she had established in America and the West Indies. One of the earliest measures of James was the founding of two chartered companies to settle on the coasts of North America. One, called the London Adventurers, or South Virginia Company, was empowered to plant the coast from the 34th to the 41st degree of north latitude, which now includes Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. The other, the company of Plymouth Adventurers, was authorised to plant all from the 41st degree to the 45th, which now includes the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England. In 1612 a settlement was made in Bermuda. The State of New England was founded by the planting of New Plymouth in 1620, and about the same time the French were driven out of Nova Scotia, and the island of Barbadoes was taken possession of; and within a few years various other West India islands were secured and planted. James granted all the Caribbee Isles to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, and the grant was confirmed by Charles, who also granted to Robert Heath and his heirs the Bahama Isles and the vast territory of Carolina, including the present North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the south of Louisiana. In 1632 Charles granted the present Maryland to Lord Baltimore, a Catholic (the charter being also renewed in favour of Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore), which became the refuge of the persecuted Catholics in England, as the New England States did of the Puritans.

These immense territories were gradually peopled by the victims of crime. According as the storm of religious persecution raged against the Catholics, the Puritans, or the Episcopalians and Royalists, they got away to New England, Maryland, or Virginia. By degrees the Indians were driven back, and cotton, tobacco, and (in the West Indies) the sugar cane became objects of cultivation. James abominated tobacco, and published his "Counterblast" against it, laying various restrictions upon its growth; but as the high duties imposed upon it proved very profitable to the revenue, gradually these restrictions were relaxed, and cultivation of it at home was prohibited in favour of the Colonies. The Dutch had managed, under James and Charles, to engross the carrying trade to the English American and West Indian colonies, having a strong position at New Amsterdam, afterwards known as New York; but of this Parliament deprived them in 1646, and extended, as we have seen, the famous Navigation Act of 1651 to all the foreign trade of England. In 1655 Cromwell's conquest of Jamaica completed English power in the West Indies.

The growth of English commerce was soon conspicuous by one great result, the growth of London. It was in vain that both James and Charles issued repeated proclamations to prohibit fresh building of houses, and to order the nobility and gentry to live more on their estates in the country, and not in London, in habits of such extravagance, and drawing together so much loose company after them. From the union of the crowns of Scotland and England, this rapid increase of the metropolis, so alarming to those kings, was more than ever visible. When James came to the throne in 1603, London and Westminster were a mile apart, but the Strand was quickly populated by the crowds of Scots who followed the Court; and though St. Giles's-in-the-Fields was then a distinct town, standing in the open country, with a very deep and dirty lane, called Drury Lane, running from it to the Strand, before the Civil War it had become united to London and Westminster by new erections in Clare Market, Long Acre, Bedfordbury, and the adjoining neighbourhood. Anderson in his "History of Commerce," gives us some curious insight into this part of London at that period. "The very names of the older streets about Covent Garden," he observes, "are taken from the Royal family at this time, or in the reign of Charles II., as Catherine Street, Duke Street, York Street. Of James and Charles I.'s time, James Street, Charles Street, Henrietta Street, etc., all laid out by the great architect, Inigo Jones, as was also the fine piazza there, although that part where stood the house and gardens of the Duke of Bedford is of much later date, namely, in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne. Bloomsbury, and the streets at the Seven Dials, were built up somewhat later, as also Leicester Fields, since the restoration of Charles II., as also almost all of St. James's and St. Anne's parishes, and a great part of St. Martin's and St. Giles's. I have met with several old persons in my younger days who remembered that there was but a single house, a cake-house, between the Mews-gate at Charing Cross and St. James's Palace Gate, where now stand the stately piles of St. James's Square, Pall Mall, and other fine streets. They also remembered the west side of St. Martin's Lane to have been a quickset hedge; yet High Holborn and Drury Lane were filled with noblemen's and gentlemen's houses and gardens almost a hundred and fifty years ago. Those five streets of the south side of the Strand, running down to the river Thames, have all been built since the beginning of the seventeenth century, upon the sites of noblemen's houses and gardens, who removed farther westward, as their names denote. Even some parts within the bars of the City of London remained unbuilt within about a hundred and fifty years past, particularly all the ground between Shoe Lane and Fewters, now Fetter, Lane, so called, says Howell in his 'Londonopolis,' from Fewters, an old appellation of idle people, loitering there, as in a way leading to gardens; which, in Charles I.'s reign, and even some of them since, have been built up into streets, lanes, etc. Several other parts of the City have been rendered more populous by the removal of the nobility to Westminster, on the sites of whose former spacious houses and gardens, whole streets, lanes, and courts have been added to the City since the death of Queen Elizabeth."

CECIL, SECOND LORD BALTIMORE.

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The extension of the metropolis necessitated the introduction of hackney coaches, which first began to ply, but only twelve in number, in 1625. In 1634 sedan-chairs were introduced to relieve the streets of the rapidly increased number of hackney-coaches, and other carriages; and in 1635 a post-office for the kingdom was established, a foreign post having been for some years in existence. In 1653 the post was farmed for ten thousand pounds a year.

The annual revenue of James I. has been calculated at about six hundred thousand pounds, yet he was always poor, and died leaving debts to the amount of three hundred thousand pounds. He was prodigal to his favourites, and wasteful in his habits. He left the estates of the Crown, however, better than he found them, having raised their annual income from thirty-two thousand pounds to eighty thousand pounds, besides having sold lands to the amount of seven hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds. He still prosecuted the exactions of purveyance, wardship, etc., to the great annoyance of his subjects. On the occasion of his son being made a knight, he raised a tax on every knight's fee of twenty shillings, and on every twenty pounds of annual rent from lands held directly of the Crown, thus raising twenty-one thousand eight hundred pounds. On the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, he levied an aid of twenty thousand five hundred pounds, the last of these odious impositions which were demanded. The Customs on his coming to the throne brought in one hundred and twenty-seven thousand pounds a year; but towards the end of his reign, showing the great increase of commerce, they amounted to one hundred and ninety thousand pounds a year. But this was the tonnage and poundage which was so hateful to the nation, and which James had greatly augmented by his own act and deed; an encroachment which caused Parliament to refuse to his son Charles the usual grant of those duties for life; and his persistence in levying them, in spite of Parliament, was one of the chief causes of his quarrel with that body, and the loss of his crown.