The French, whose commercial navy was now beginning to emerge from obscurity and insignificance, formed settlements in Acadia, the present Nova Scotia, and extended their dominion into the territory now known as the New England States. But in 1620 both they and the Dutch, who had founded the town of New Amsterdam (now the city of New York and capital of the province), were dislodged by English adventurers.[165]
English shipowners resist the demand for ship-money.
Passing on to events in England connected with merchant shipping, by far the most conspicuous about this period were the attempts of that unwise and unfortunate monarch Charles I. to burden the mercantile community with the expense of a fleet which his, perhaps natural, anxiety to support the Palatinate had rendered necessary. Demanding from the city of London and from the other seaports the requisite number of ships or their equivalent in money, the people of the maritime towns not actually dependent upon trade passively resisted, thereby making the burden yet more intolerable to those who remained on the coast. The proclamation which consequently followed, commanding the parties who had withdrawn to return to their dwellings, brought about the famous struggle of Hampden, who resisted the writs as illegal. The first writ recited that certain “Thieves, pirates, and robbers of the sea, as well Turks,[166] enemies of the Christian name, as others, gathered together and wickedly took by force, and spoiled the ships, goods, and merchandise, not only of the King’s subjects, but the subjects of our friends in the sea, which hath been defended by the English nation.” The writ went on to recite how men “were carried away into captivity, and the merchant shipping of the kingdom endangered by the preparations made to molest our merchants. Accordingly, the Princely honour of the King required that force should be employed to defend the kingdom, guard the seas, and give security to shipping.” Upon these grounds Ship-money was demanded by the King, without the sanction and authority of Parliament, and, out of this unconstitutional proceeding arose the quarrel which had so fatal a termination for that ill-advised monarch. The city of London petitioned the King, setting forth that they were exempted by their privileges from the demand. But the King persevered; Hampden was defeated in the courts of law, which, under the influence of corrupt judges, pronounced the writ legal, and thus the levy of Ship-money, at first peculiar to the maritime towns, was imposed upon the entire kingdom.
Its payment enforced by law.
This great struggle was no doubt the proximate cause of the final severance of the merchant vessels from the royal navy, as, after the Restoration, the constitutional action of Parliament provided the requisite funds for the maintenance of a royal navy on a permanent footing, so that the shipowners were relieved from duties which at intervals pressed heavily on their class, and only contributed to the cost of a national navy in a rateable proportion together with their fellow subjects. Combined with other concurring causes which supervened, these legislative measures gave hereafter no ordinary impulse to the merchant shipping of England. But they engendered a sanguinary civil war, besides a series of much more sanguinary struggles with the Dutch, to disenthrall the English merchant service from the state of dependence in which it had lingered during many ages.
Dutch rivalry.
While England was fighting for political freedom, the Dutch, having already become a free republic, were the real masters of the seas. They were now at the height of their maritime glory. Their merchant ships penetrated to every quarter of the globe. No wonder then that they openly and derisively claimed the dominion of the Narrow Seas. We may now smile at such absurd pretensions, but these were then the cause of deep alarm and excitement in England, for statesmen well knew that the dominion of the Narrow Seas was an attribute of real and material power. It was at this period that the great Selden wrote his celebrated work,[167] which was honoured with every mark of royal approbation and popular commendation. The Dutch, having a vast number of merchantmen afloat, feared the increasing naval power of England, but nevertheless made all the encroachments they dared. Their busses fished on her coasts and were fired upon, but at last paid the stipulated sum of 3000l., tribute to the King, to obtain his consent to their prosecution of the coast fisheries for one summer, undertaking to continue the payment annually. This personal bribe to the King did not, however, render the proceedings of the Dutch more palatable to the parties who conceived themselves damnified.
Increase of English shipping.
Struggles of the East India Company.
Sir William Monson states that the shipping of the port of London had so augmented during the first fifteen years of the reign of Charles I. that it was now able to supply a hundred sail of stout vessels capable of being converted into men-of-war; while ten large ships had during that period been added to the effective force of the Royal Navy; but that, so far as regards the East India Company, there was no improvement. Their commanders in the Indian seas had still to fight their way harassed and outraged by the Dutch and the Portuguese at every point. Whatever may have been the state of the relations of the sovereigns of the various European subjects who trafficked in India, it was the proverb of the sailors of those days, “that there was no peace beyond the line.” Sanguinary encounters were constantly taking place, and the trade of the English to India at the period to which we refer had become so precarious that the most enterprising of her capitalists could hardly be induced to embark in it. Even in 1646, when the Company obtained possession of Madras,[168] which for a long period was the chief seat of their commerce and power, only 105,000l. was subscribed for the new stock rendered necessary by this acquisition. It was feared that the Company would not, in their commercial operations, be able to contend successfully with the formidable Dutch and Portuguese monopolies which had been established in the East, and, though Portugal and Spain were then beginning to decline from the exalted position they had so long held, Holland, in possession of public liberty and a wise system of commerce, was in the zenith of her commercial and maritime greatness, and proved a rival whom the most enterprising of English merchants might well hesitate to encounter.