their proceedings."[1]

It is evident from the wording of these instructions that the committee
was designed to be a continuous one and to carry on the work of the
former committee for foreign plantations of the Council of State. There
is no essential difference between these committees, except that one
represented a commonwealth and the other a monarchy. We pass from the
one arrangement to the other with very little jar, and with much less
sense of a break in the continuity than when we pass from the system
under the Republic to that under the Protectorate. The Privy Council
committee had all the essential features of a standing committee and,
after the experiment with separate and select councils had proved
unsatisfactory, it assumed entire control of trade and plantation
affairs in 1675, a control which it exercised until 1696. Though an
occasional change was made in its membership and some reorganization was
effected in 1668, the Lords of Trade of July 4, 1660, commissioned with
plenary powers by patent under the great seal, became the Lords of Trade
of February 9, 1675.

From 1660 to 1675 this committee of the Privy Council played no
insignificant part although, after the creation of the councils, it was
bound to be limited in the actual work that it performed. During the
four months after its appointment it was the only body that had to do
with trade and plantations except the Privy Council, which occasionally
sat as a committee of the whole for plantation affairs. During the
summer the committee considered with care and a due regard for all
aspects of the case the claims of various persons to the government of
Barbadoes. Despite the opposition of Modyford, who had been commissioned
governor by the Council of State the April before, and John Colleton,
one of the Council of Barbadoes, and despite the efforts of Alderman
Riccard and other merchants of London, Francis Lord Willoughby was
restored to the government under the claims of the Earl of Carlisle.
At the same time the claims of the Kirks, Elliott, and Sterling to Nova
Scotia were examined and eventually decided in favor of Col. Temple, the
governor there. Willoughby immediately appointed Capt. Watts governor of
the Caribbee Islands, himself, through his deputy, took the governorship
of Barbadoes, Modyford became governor of Jamaica, Berkeley of Virginia,
and Russell of Nevis. It is at least worthy of recall that Willoughby,
Watts, Temple, and Russell were