The Founding of New England. James Truslow Adams

company, regarding its rights to fish within the limits assigned to the North Virginia patentees, which rights he denied, had won for him the hostility of a part of the Virginia Company’s membership. As the new charter for which he had applied contained a clause giving the New England Company a monopoly of the fishing along their entire section of the coast, it was bitterly attacked by the southerners, who had annually gone to the northern fishing-grounds for an important part of their year’s supplies. The dispute was taken into Parliament, where Gorges defended himself with ability, and thence to the King. The factional fight then in progress between Smythe and Sandys, in the Virginia Company, led Smythe’s party to support Gorges against their opponents in their own company; and as Gorges had also strengthened his cause by including among his associates many of the influential nobles of the court, an order in council was finally issued in his favor, on the 18th of June, 1621, for the delivery of the new charter.⁷⁰ Thus was originated the “Council established at Plymouth in the County of Devon for the Planting, Ruling, and Governing of New England in America,” which now became the proprietor of all the territory between 40° and 48° North Latitude, and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in utter disregard of the French claims in Nova Scotia and Canada, and of the colonies planted there. The charter stated that there were no subjects of any foreign power in possession of any part of the territory, although Quebec had been settled for thirteen years, and French fishermen and fur traders were constantly being met by the English.⁷¹ Upon the new company were bestowed rights of trading, colonizing, and governing. The members were allowed to elect their own officials in England, and to appoint those for ruling in the settlements. The members of the Virginia Company numbered nearly a thousand persons, who elected their council, and were responsible for the administration of the colony; but under the Gorges charter, the council was the whole company, limited to forty members, who were self-perpetuating, and whose relation to the colonists was thus direct and final.⁷²

      The new company was never either active or successful. The controversy which had marked its slow birth tended to keep people from investing; and from its narrow and monopolistic nature, it could make no appeal to popular support. While the passage of the charter was still pending, chance decreed that under it was to be made, even before its issue, the first successful planting within its granted limits, and without efforts of their own, the grantees, when they received the powers bestowed upon them by the King, were to find the Pilgrim colony already established at Plymouth.

      Notes

      1. W. R. Scott, Constitutions and Finance of English and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720 (Cambridge, 1910) vol. ii, p. 244.

      2. The southern limit was that of the Providence Company (Scott, Joint-Stock Companies, vol. ii, p. 327); and the northern that of the Newfoundland Company, (D. W. Prowse, History of Newfoundland [London, 18951, pp. 122-25).

      3. F. Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World (Boston, 1909), p. 303.

      4. Henry II asked and obtained the Pope’s consent to conquer Ireland. W. B. Scaife, “The Development of International Law as to newly discovered Territory,” in American Historical Arsociation Papers, vol. iiv, p. 269.

      5. Cf. B. A. Hinsdale, “The Right of Discovery,” in Ohio Archeological and Historical Quarterly, vol. ii, pp. 351-78; and Scaife, “International Law,” pp. 269-93.

      6. The number of colonists living in Spanish possessions varies greatly in estimates. DeLannoy thinks that it may have been 152,000 by 1574 (DeLannoy and Van der Linden, Histoire de l’Expansion Coloniale des Peuples Européens [Paris, 1907], vol. i, p. 414); while Leroy-Beaulieu puts it as low as 15,000 in 1550. De la Colonisation chez les Peuples modernes (Paris, 1898), vol. i, p. 5.

      7. A. P. Newton, The Colonising Activities of the English Puritans (Yale University Press, 1914), pp. 13-17.

      8. W. Cunningham, English Industry, vol. ii, pp. 77 ff.

      9. E. P. Cheyney, “Some English Conditions surrounding the Settlement of Virginia,” in American Historical Review, April, 1907, p. 526.

      10. F. Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds (Oxford, 1913), pp. 3-20.

      11. A Discourse of the Commonweal of this realm of England, 1581; reprinted, Cambridge, England, 1893.

      12. Harrison’s Introduction to Holinshed’s Chronicle, reprinted as Elizabethan England (London, n. d.), p. 118.

      13. Scott, Joint-Stock Companies, vol. i, p. 98.

      14. Ibid., pp. 465 ff.

      15. Cf., however, Leroy-Beaulieu, who thinks that “la colonisation anglaise eut donc pour origine une nécessité réelle, une crise économique intense.” Colonisation, vol. i, p. 91.

      16. A. B. Hinds, The Making of the England of Elizabeth (New York, 1895), p. 138.

      17. S. R. Gardiner, History of England (London, 1895), vol. i, p. 187.

      18. For discussion as to authorship and date, vide Brown, Genesis, pp. 36-42, where the document is printed in full.

      19. Cf. P. Bonnassieux, Les grandes Compagnies de Commerce (Paris, 1892), pp. 510 ff.

      20. W. W. Hunter, History of British India (London, 1899), vol. i, p. 244.

      21. Compiled from Brown, Genesis, pp. 811-1068.

      22. Cited by Scott, Joint-Stock Companies, vol. i, p. 132.

      23. Hazard, Historical Collections (Philadelphia, 1792), vol. i, pp. 50-58.

      24. Brown, Genesis, pp. 64-75.

      25. Osgood, American Colonies, vol. i, pp. 25-35.

      26. Gorges, “Briefe Narration,” Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series III, vol. vi, pp. 51 f. Various members of the company were associated with Gorges, but he seems to have been the leader in this venture, as Popham was in the next. An account of the voyage, written by John Stoneman, the pilot, is in Purchas, Pilgrimes, vol. XIX, pp. 284-96.