To give Directions accordingly.
2. And to this End you are to demaund of the said Governours respectively, or of their respective Deputies, the Coppies of all such Commissions and Instructions, as have mediatly, or immediatly been derived from us, or to procure and require the same from the Officers of Record, within this our Kingdome. Which having you shall cause them to be fairly transcribed and entred in a Booke provided for that purpose. That you may at all times be the better enabled to judge of the Duties of the said Governours respectively, and may Administer such directions to them, as may be suitable thereunto, and most agreeable to our service.
What Number of Parishes, Planters, Servants and Slaves are in the Severall Plantations.
3. And that you may the better provide for the Defence, Welfare, and Security of the said Plantations, you are diligently to informe your selves how all and every of the said Colonies and Plantations are inhabited (viz) What number of Parishes there are in each respective Goverment, and what number of Planters there be in each Parish and what number of Servants doe belong to the said Planters respectively, and whether the said Servants are Christians, or Slaves that are brought from other parts.
If thinly stockt to consider how they may be supplyed from other Plantations or from these Dominions.
And if you shall find any of the said Plantations to be so thinly and weakly inhabited as that it may endanger the losse of them, you are to consider how and which way they may most conveniently be supplyed either from some other of our Plantations, where they are overstored, or from any part of these our Dominions.
Not to give just Provocations to their Neighbours, Indians, or others.
To preserve Amity with them.
4. And forasmuch as most of our said Colonies doe border upon the Indians of severall Countries, or doe lye neare the Plantations of our Neighbours the French, Spanish, or Dutch, and that peace is not to be expected either with the said Indians, or with such as are our Neighbours, without the due observance and præservation of Justice to each of them respecively. You are therefore strictly in our Name to charge and Command all and every the Governours of our said Colonies respectively, that they at no time give any just provocation to any of the said Indians, nor to any of our said Neighbours, that are at peace with us, or their Subjects, but that they doe by all just wayes and meanes endeavour to preserve the Amity that is respectively setled betweene them, and to begett also for the future a good and faire Correspondency with them.
Governours to receive all Indians under their Protections.