s would be
submitted to the attorney general, to Dr. Walter Walker and others
from Doctors Commons, to special members of the Council who were more
familiar than the rest with the facts in the case. On at least one
occasion all the members of the Council were requested to bring in what
information they could obtain regarding a particular matter. Question
after question was postponed from one meeting to another, because the
Council had not obtained all the details that it felt should be in
hand before the report was sent to the King in Council. On a few
occasions members of the Council accompanied the report to the Privy
Council apparently with the intention of explaining or emphasizing
their recommendations. The subjects under debate concerned the internal
or external affairs of all the colonies. They related to Jamaica,
Barbadoes, Maryland, Virginia, and New England, including Nova Scotia,
Massachusetts, Maine, and Long Island; they dealt with Quakers, Jews,
vagrants, and servants, supplies, provisions, naval stores, emigrant
registration, and abuses in colonial trade; they included that burning
question of the period, the Dutch at New Amsterdam and the complaints
that arose regarding Holland as an obstruction to English trade. The
amount of time taken and pains expended on controversial points can be
inferred from an examination of the New England case, which was taken
up at the first regular meeting in January and was under examination
from that time until April 30, when the Council sent in its report.
Even then it was taken up by the Privy Council, referred to its own
committee, called the Committee for New England, and in one or two
particulars was sent back to the Council for further consideration.
In the performance of its duties the Council for Plantations can never
be charged with indolence or neglect. In the year 1661 alone it held
forty meetings, or an average of one every nine days.

After August, 1664, the records of the Council come to an end, but there
is reason to believe that the Council continued its sessions at least
until the spring of 1665. That the last meeting was not held on August
24 is certain, not only from the wording of the minute, which reads:
"ordered, being a matter of great moment and the day far spent, that the
further consideration be deferred for a week," but also from two further
references to the existence of the Council, of later date,--one dated
September 7, when the Council sent