The Council for Plantations and its committees sat and deliberated apart, the latter in Grocer's Hall; but the subjects under examination were considered by both bodies. The subcommittees were frequently instructed to call in persons interested, to write to others from whom information could be obtained, and to pursue their investigations with due regard for both sides of the case. Sometimes questions would be submitted to the attorney general, to Dr. Walter Walker and others from Doctors Commons, to special members of the Council who were more familiar than the rest with the facts in the case. On at least one occasion all the members of the Council were requested to bring in what information they could obtain regarding a particular matter. Question after question was postponed from one meeting to another, because the Council had not obtained all the details that it felt should be in hand before the report was sent to the King in Council. On a few occasions members of the Council accompanied the report to the Privy Council apparently with the intention of explaining or emphasizing their recommendations. The subjects under debate concerned the internal or external affairs of all the colonies. They related to Jamaica, Barbadoes, Maryland, Virginia, and New England, including Nova Scotia, Massachusetts, Maine, and Long Island; they dealt with Quakers, Jews, vagrants, and servants, supplies, provisions, naval stores, emigrant registration, and abuses in colonial trade; they included that burning question of the period, the Dutch at New Amsterdam and the complaints that arose regarding Holland as an obstruction to English trade. The amount of time taken and pains expended on controversial points can be inferred from an examination of the New England case, which was taken up at the first regular meeting in January and was under examination from that time until April 30, when the Council sent in its report. Even then it was taken up by the Privy Council, referred to its own committee, called the Committee for New England, and in one or two particulars was sent back to the Council for further consideration. In the performance of its duties the Council for Plantations can never be charged with indolence or neglect. In the year 1661 alone it held forty meetings, or an average of one every nine days.
After August, 1664, the records of the Council come to an end, but there is reason to believe that the Council continued its sessions at least until the spring of 1665. That the last meeting was not held on August 24 is certain, not only from the wording of the minute, which reads: "ordered, being a matter of great moment and the day far spent, that the further consideration be deferred for a week," but also from two further references to the existence of the Council, of later date,—one dated September 7, when the Council sent in a report regarding the proposed establishment of a registry office, and the other in the form of an endorsement upon a letter from Lord Willoughby which says: "Refd to the Council, Feb. 24," that is February 24, 1665. It seems probable, therefore, that the Council was sitting as late as February-March of that year.[15] Probably its meetings were broken up by the plague which started in London about that time, in the westernmost parish, St. Giles-in-the-Fields, and lasted until the end of October. Whether the Council resumed its sessions after the plague had subsided it is almost impossible to say. No definite record exists of its meetings or work. Some of its members had died, Sir Martin Noell in October, 1665, and Sir Nicholas Crispe the next year; others had left England, Lord Willoughby, Capts. Watts and Kendall, and possibly Sir James Draxe; while others had accepted posts that took them away from London, as in the case of Capt. Middleton, who became commissioner of the navy at Portsmouth. Certainly Povey could have had very little to do with the affairs of a council in London in 1664–1666, when as surveyor-general of the victualling department he was required to be frequently at Plymouth and to spend a considerable amount of time travelling about England.[16] Yet there is nothing to show that its commission was revoked, and an order of the Privy Council, September 23, 1667, to which further reference will be made below, reads as if the Council were in existence at that time. If so, it must have been merely a nominal body.
After 1665, and until 1670, plantation affairs seem to have been controlled entirely by the Privy Council and its committees, which proved themselves capable and vigorous bodies. Before 1666, besides the Committee for Foreign Plantations, which has already been noticed, other committees were appointed as occasion arose,—committees for Jamaica, for Jamaica and Algiers, for the Guinea trade, for the Royal Company, for fishing in Newfoundland, for Jersey and Guernsey, and for New England. Committees for Trade and for hearing appeals from the Plantations also existed. On December 7, 1666, after the plague had subsided and the great fire had spent itself, the Privy Council reappointed its plantation committee, which now entered upon a career of greatly increased activity.[17] At the same time the Council made use of its other committees, particularly the "Committee for the Affaires of New England and for the bounding of Acadia," October 2, 4, 1667, which took into consideration the question of the restitution of Acadia to the French;[18] and it referred important matters of business to committees of selected experts. Under these conditions the affairs of the colonies were managed until the appointment of a new Plantation Council in August, 1670.
The Council for Trade met in Mercer's Hall some time before November 13, 1660, and at its preliminary session considered that part of its instructions which related to bullion and coin. On December 13, 1660, it passed a resolution urging and inviting people and merchants to send in petitions, and it requested the King to issue a proclamation defining its powers in all matters relating to trade and manufactures and calling on "any person, concerned in the matters therein to be debated or who have any petition or invention to offer, to apply to them for redress of evils brought on by the late times or for the improvement of trade regulations."[19] In response to, this appeal a large number of petitions, sent either to the Privy Council or directly to the Select Council itself, were received, and the discussion of these petitions and the preparing of reports upon them occupied the attention of the Council during the first two years. These reports show that the Council took its duties seriously and was thoroughly in earnest to improve, if possible, the trade of the kingdom, and to carry out to the full the commands which the King had laid upon it. There is not a clause of the instructions to which it did not pay some attention, and upon many matters it debated long and ardently, making reports that are as valuable for the student of the trade policy of the seventeenth century as are the familiar writings of well-known mercantilists. The Council took up and discussed the export of bullion and coin, expressing its opinion that the penalties should be withdrawn as injurious to trade, because they prevented the English merchants from bringing their money into the kingdom where it would be detained, and saying that money most abounded in countries which enjoyed freedom from restraints on exports. The trade in the Baltic, the East Indies, and the Levant to which trade freedom to export bullion was preeminently important; the Merchant Adventurers, regarding whose history and position the Council made a valuable report, viewing the subject from the beginning; the East India Company, whose petition,—largely reproduced in the report of the Council,—contained a bitter arraignment of the Dutch, calling to mind the "impudent affronts to the honor of this nation and the horrid injuries done to the stock and commerce thereof," and demanding damages and a definite regulation of trade in the forthcoming treaty with Holland then under debate; treaties with foreign powers, clauses in which concerning trade were taken up at the early meetings of the Council; prohibition of imposts on foreign cloths and stuffs, regarding which sundry shopkeepers, tradesmen, and artificers of London had petitioned the Privy Council in November, 1660,[20]—all these matters the Council took under consideration. It dealt with the granting of patents, with the encouragement of home industries, particularly the business of the framework knitters, silk-dyeing, and the manufacture of tapestry, and with the establishment of an insurance company.[21] As far as the plantations were concerned, its recommendations were few, and were made chiefly in connection with reports on the ninth and eleventh articles of its instructions, which touched upon convoys, imports, and composition-ports. It drafted a carefully drawn list of necessary convoys in which, of all the American plantations, only Newfoundland is mentioned. It considered the importation of logwood and tobacco, and upon the latter point made the suggestion "that all tobacco of English Plantations do pay at importation 1/2d. a pound and at exportation nothing." This recommendation was accompanied by a valuable essay on trade in general. It dealt with the question of making Dover a free port for composition trade and took the ground that the Acts of Navigation should be inviolably kept. On this question the Earl of Southampton, the Treasurer, and Lord Ashley (Cooper), Chancellor of the Exchequer, took the opposite ground, favoring the freedom of the port, "Dover having formerly been a port for free trade," and adding that "a free trade thus settled we conceive might conduce to the advantage of your Majesty's customs," trade being injured by the "tyes and observances which the Act of Navigation places upon it." They reported further that the farmers of the customs wished the Act to be dispensed with in some cases.[22]
Regarding the attitude of the Council toward the sixth article of its instructions, the promotion of the fisheries, we have fuller information. At the session of December 17, 1663, there were present the Earl of Sandwich, William Coventry, Sir Nicholas Crispe, Henry Slingsby, Christopher Boone, John Lord Berkeley, Sir Sackville Crowe, Thomas Povey, John Jolliffe, and George Toriano. Acting on a special order from the King, they debated how best the fishing trade might be gained and promoted, and how encouraged and advanced when gained. They considered the respective merits of a commission and a corporation, and whether, if a corporation should be agreed upon, it ought to be universal or exclusive, perpetual or limited, a joint stock or a divided stock, and what immunities and powers should be granted, the character of the persons to be admitted and the number. Taking up each point in turn, the members of the Council first considered "How to gain the Trade of Fishery" and laid down seven methods: 1, 2, by raising money either through voluntary contributions or through lotteries; 3, 4, by restraint of foreign importation or by impositions upon all foreign importation; 5, by letters to all countries urging them to contribute such especial commodities as cordage, lumber, boards, and the like, in exchange for fish; 6, by declaring a war against the Dutch, and at the same time, 7, by naturalizing or indenizing all Hollanders who would come into the English fishery. For the support of the trade when gained the Council proposed: 1, to impose a proportion of fish upon every vintner, innkeeper, alehouse-keeper, victualler, and coffee house in England; 2, to refuse all licenses for fish, which were to be paid for to the corporation; 3, to take the stock of the poor of every parish and provide for the impotent and aged only out of the product, and employ such as were able to work in the fishery—the impotent in the making of nets, etc.; 4, to require the gentlemen of all maritime counties to raise a stock of money in their counties to be employed toward the advance of the fishery; 5, to raise busses, i. e., Dutch herring boats, and to set them forth to their own use and to receive the profits in fish or in the product of it; 6, to employ the imposition laid upon fish by the last Parliament for the purpose of advancing the trade; to accept the offer of fishmongers to raise busses and money; 8, to require the master and wardens of the company, and, 9, to encourage private persons to do the same; 10, to bring over Dutchmen to teach the English the art of curing, salting, and marking fish, and of making casks. It was then decided, "after a long and solemne debate of the whole matter," nemine contradicente, "that there being no disadvantage in a corporation But many great Advantages, powers and Immunities that cannot be had by Commission That the best way of advancing & encouraging the Fishing Trade is by way of [a] Corporation." To this corporation were to be granted "the sole power of Lycensing the Eating and killing of flesh in Lent," the power to make by-laws, to dispose of "guifts that are or shalbee given for carrying on of this Trade," to administer oaths, to constitute officers, to exercise coercion in case of contempt against orders, to fine and in some cases to imprison, to send for papers, persons, books, etc. The corporation was to be universal, perpetual, and a joint stock company.[23] As a result of the report of the Council a charter of incorporation was issued to the Duke of York and thirty-six others, forming the Governor and Company of the Royal Fishery of Great Britain and Ireland, and George Duke, "late Secretary to the Committee of Trade," was recommended by the King as its secretary.[24]
This account of the debate in the Council upon the fishery question is important not only because it gives an interesting glimpse of the Council at work, and the only glimpse that we have at any length of its procedure, but because it illustrates a phase of mercantilism in the making. It shows, also, the intensity of the rivalry that existed between England and Holland, and furnishes an admirable example of one of the causes of that rivalry, the Dutch predominance in the fishing business.[25] The Council frequently appealed to the methods employed by the Dutch as a sufficient argument to support its contention, and when objections were raised against the universal corporation it answered, "You destroy the essence of a Corporation by lymitting it, And if you lymitt it, no man will venture their Stocke, and the mayne reason why the Dutch employ not only their Stocke but their whole families in the fisheries, is because their corporation is perpetual."
How much longer the Council of Trade continued its sessions it is impossible to say. Its last recorded action is a report, dated July, 1664, which contained its opinion upon the question of trade with Scotland, a matter soon to be taken up by the higher authorities. It is probable that, as in the case of the Council of Plantations, its sessions were suspended because of the plague and the fire and were not resumed. Its commission was not revoked and it certainly had a nominal existence until 1667. That it had no actual existence in April, 1665, seems likely from a letter sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury at that time, begging that the King appoint a council of trade to find out the cause of the decay in the coal trade.[26] By the summer of 1665 trade was reported dead and money scarce and to the plague was ascribed "an infinite interruption to the whole trade of the Nation." The fire and the Dutch war completed the demoralization of commerce and in 1666 the plantations were deemed in great want of necessaries on account of the obstructions of trade by the war. Though in that year many questions arose that might naturally have been referred to such a council had it been in session, no such references appear among the records. The advancement of trade was looked after by the Privy Council and its trade committee, and particularly by the Committee of Trade appointed by Parliament. The latter body had been named as early as March, 1664, to investigate the export of wool, wool-fells, and fullers' earth. A few weeks later it was entrusted with the duty of inquiring into the reasons for the general decay of trade. As this function was conferred on the Parliamentary Committee at a time when the Select Council was still holding its sessions, it is reasonable to suppose that the work of the latter body had not proved satisfactory. There is some slight evidence to show that the meetings of the Council were at this time but little attended and that its members were not working in harmony.[27] The Parliamentary Committee, acting as a Council of Trade, ordered representatives from all the merchant companies to prepare an account of the causes of obstruction in their different branches, and when the latter, among other obstacles, named the Dutch as the chief enemies of English trade, resolved that the wrongs inflicted by the Dutch were the greatest obstructions to foreign trade, and recommended that the King should seek redress. Other causes were considered and debated.[28]
An excellent idea of procedure can be obtained from studying the history of trade relations with Scotland during this decade. Immediately after the passage of the Navigation Act of 1660, the Scots petitioned that the Act might be dispensed with for Scotland, and special deputies were sent from the Scottish to the English Parliament to prevent, if possible, the extension of the Act to their country. The matter was referred to the Customs Commissioners and to the Privy Council, and the latter appointed a special committee to investigate it. Both of these bodies reported that the grant of such liberties to the Scots would frustrate the object of the Act, and gave elaborate reasons for this opinion.[29] As an act of retaliation the Scottish Parliament laid heavy impositions upon English goods, and English merchants in 1664 petitioned Parliament for relief. Parliament recommended the appointment of referees on both sides and in July, 1664, the Privy Council placed the matter in the hands of Southampton, Ashley, and Secretary Bennet. This committee laid the question before the Council of Trade, which suggested a compromise, whereby duties on both sides should be reduced to 5 per cent., the Scots should have the benefits of the Act of Navigation but no intercourse with foreign plantations, and should not buy any more foreign built ships. As a result of these and further negotiations Parliament passed an act in 1667,[30] "for settling freedom and intercourse of trade between England and Scotland," and under the terms of that act commissioners were appointed to meet with commissioners for Scotland in the Inner Star Chamber to negotiate a freedom of trade between the two countries. The commissioners duly met on January 13, 1668, and the papers recording their negotiations are full and explicit. The whole question of the relations between England and Scotland since the union, both political and economic, was investigated with great care; papers were searched for, records examined, memorials and petitions received, and various conditions of trade inquired into. The commissioners frequently disagreed and harmony was by no means always attained, resulting in delays in drafting the treaty and the eventual failure of the negotiations. In October the Scottish commissioners returned to Edinburgh, and the conditions remained as before.[31]
The fall of Clarendon, at the end of the year 1667, led to important changes in the organization of the government, and the widespread demoralization in trade demanded an improvement of the system of trade and plantation control. The year 1668 is significant as the starting point for a number of attempted remedies in matters of finance and trade supervision. We have no opportunity here to examine the political aspects of these changes or to determine how far they were effected in the interest of mere political control. Suffice it to say that too many conditions of the reign of Charles II have been attributed to extravagance and political intrigue, and too few to an honest desire on the part of those concerned to restore the realm to a condition of solvency and prosperity. Heavily burdened with debt at the outset of the reign, distracted by plague, fire, and foreign war during the years from 1665 to 1668, the kingdom needed the services of all its statesmen, and even the most selfish politician must have realized the need of reorganization. Acting upon a suggestion which Clarendon himself had made to the King, the Privy Council in 1667 began by strengthening its own committee system, and on January 31, 1668, established four standing committees—for foreign affairs, military affairs, trade and plantations, and petitions and grievances. These committees had almost the character of state departments, though they had no final authority of their own, all orders emanating from the Privy Council only. They became, however, more independent than had been previous committees by virtue of the fact that no order was to be issued by the Council until it had been "first perused by the Reporter of each Committee respectively," The following is a copy of the regulations:
His Matie among other the important parts of his Affairs having taken into his princely consideration the way & method of managing matters at the Council Board, And reflecting that his Councills would have more reputation if they were put into a more settled & established course, Hath thought it fit to appoint certaine Standing Comitties of the Council for several Businesses together with regular days & places for their assembling in such sort as followeth: