To the famous, wise and learned sisters, the two Universities of England, Oxford and Cambridge.
Send forth your sons unto our new plantation;
Yet send such as are holy, wise, and able.
The same writer submitted to Charles I. a remarkable "proposition of profitt and honour," in which he unsuccessfully called for the King's help and patronage in regard to the colonization of the island.[27]
In 1637 the Commissioners of Foreign Plantations, who had been appointed three years before, resolved that the old colonial grants had lapsed, and transferred them to new patentees, prescribing, under the new fishing rules made by the Star Chamber (1634), one system and area of control for settlers, and another for fishermen, and restricting their respective activities. The first Governor under this régime was Sir David Kirke, who established himself at Ferryland (1638) with a number of settlers variously estimated at from thirty to one hundred persons. His charter was a liberal one, embracing the whole island, and was the reward of his gallantry in the capture of Quebec. He introduced the practice of levying rent, imposing licence fees, and exacting an excise of 5 per 120 fish on alien fishermen. The convulsions of the Civil War were felt even in Newfoundland, and Kirke paid for his Royalism by the loss, under the Commonwealth, of his noble possession (1651).
What has been described as a period of repression in the history of Newfoundland began with the reign of Charles I. and continued to the end of the eighteenth century. As a recent writer observes: "In the fairy story it is the youngest sister, but the eldest sister is the Cinderella of colonial history. If Newfoundland had experienced only the healthful neglect under which the other colonies prospered, she too would have grown into vigorous life. But a strong and influential class in England was interested in harassing the settlers, in depreciating the resources of the island, and in throwing every obstacle in the way of permanent settlement. This policy came in with Charles I. and continued down to the very commencement of the nineteenth century. Captain Mason, Sir William Vaughan, and Captain Whitbourne had written favourably of the island; but from their day down to 1842, when Sir Richard Bonnycastle wrote his book, every writer described it as barren; in summer gloomy with perpetual fog, and in winter given over to excessive cold and blinding snowstorms. The west country people of England, generation after generation, drew from the fisheries of Newfoundland enormous profits, upon which prosperous mercantile establishments and noble families were built up and sustained in England. They considered and called them 'their' fisheries, and their interests required that there should be no resident population to compete in their monopoly, to share the best fishing rooms, and to grow up to be dangerous rivals in foreign markets. The influence of this class upon the government was incessantly exercised in framing regulations and laws to choke the growth of the colony.
"The confused annals of this period can only be understood by remembering the existence of two antagonistic parties, the 'planters' and inhabitants on the one hand, who, being settled there, needed the protection of a government and police, with administration of justice; and the 'adventurers' or merchants on the other, who, originally carrying on the fishery from England, and visiting the island only for the season, needed no such protection for themselves, and had various reasons for preventing its being afforded to the others.
"If the Mother Country had only forgotten the island it would have prospered; but in 1633 the English merchants succeeded in procuring from the Star Chamber rules and regulations drawn solely to advance their own private interests, and these rules were supplemented always in the same direction, by the same oppressive agency."[28]
At this time the resident population of the island cannot have exceeded a few hundreds, and every step was adopted which a vicious political economy could suggest to keep the numbers down. It was made penal for a settler to dwell within six miles of the shore, for a planter to cut down wood or plant within six miles from the shore, for any planter or inhabitant to take up the best positions in the harbours before the arrival of the fishing-fleet in the spring; and every master who sailed with a crew to Newfoundland was under bond—lest here and there a permanent settler should filter through—to return with his exact complement of hands. Their Lordships of the Committee of Trade and Plantations were not superior to the prejudices of the day, and they resolved in 1675, "That all plantations in Newfoundland should be discouraged ... or that the western charter should from time to time be put in execution; by which charter all planters were forbid to inhabit within six miles of the shore from Cape Race to Cape Bonavista." Equally considerate and attentive were the efforts of the home country to cope with crime in the island. The Star Chamber ingeniously provided that persons charged with homicide, or with stealing to the value of 40s., should be brought home and submitted to the judicial experience of the Mayors of Southampton, Weymouth, and other specified towns. The discrimination may also be admired which prohibited stealing from the fishing nets. It must be supposed that time hung heavily on the hands of the settlers in the intervals of the fishing, for we find at the period much time and industry wasted on petitions to the Committee of Trade, who possibly treated them as Grenville's predecessors are said to have treated the American despatches. The Board of Trade, which inherited the duties and the incompetence of the Committee, proved more complaisant, and was indeed prepared to tolerate permanent settlers to the number of one thousand. A struggle was imminent, if only they had known it, when the presence of a few thousand resolute settlers in Newfoundland would be of high moment to the interests of England.
The life of such as were allowed to remain must have been wild and strange, alternating between the populous alacrity of the fishing season and the hand to mouth struggle of the long winter months. Perhaps the amenities of life were not missed because they can hardly have been known; but the restrictions on building and the absence of local authority must early have given rise to bitterness and discontent. Certainly we must admire the constancy of men who were content to live, a solitary cluster, on the coast, with an unexplored interior and savage inhabitants behind them, and with no more secure prospect of material progress than a process of undetected squatting on the forbidden ground.