be presented to
them and shall make report thereof to this board and of the true state
of the said plantations." The committee deliberated on the "New England
Case," summoned many of the "principal adventurers in that plantation"
before it, listened to the complainants, and reported favorably to the
colony. The essential features of its report were embodied in an order
in council, dated January 19, 1633.[16] This committee, still called the
Committee for New England, was reappointed in December, 1633, with a
slight change of membership, Laud, who had been made primate the August
before, taking the place of the Archbishop of York as chairman. But this
committee was soon overshadowed by the greater commission to come.[17]

The first separate commission, though, in reality, a committee of the
Privy Council, appointed to concern itself with all the plantations,
was created by Charles I, April 28, 1634. It was officially styled
the Commission for Foreign Plantations; one petitioner called it
"the Lords Commissioners for Plantations in General," and another
"the learned Commissioners appointed by the King to examine and rectify
all complaints from the plantations." It is probable that the term
"Committee of Foreign Plantations" was occasionally applied to it,
as there is nothing to show that the committee of 1633 remained in
existence after April, 1634.[18] Recommissioned, April 10, 1636, it
continued to sit as an active body certainly as late as August, 1641,
and possibly longer,[19] though there is no formal record of its
discontinuance. Its original membership was as follows: William Laud,
Archbishop of Canterbury; Richard Neile, Archbishop of York; Sir Thomas
Coventry, the Lord Keeper; Earl of Portland, the Lord Treasurer, Earl
of Manchester, the Lord Privy Seal, Earl of Arundel, the Earl Marshall,
Earl of Dorset, Lord Cottington, Sir Thomas Edmondes, the Master
Treasurer, Sir Henry Vane, the Master Comptroller, and the secretaries,
Coke and Windebank. Later the Earl of Sterling was added.[20] Five
constituted a quorum. The powers granted to the commission were
extensive and almost royal in character: to make laws and orders for the
government of the English colonies in foreign parts; to impose penalties
and imprisonment for offenses in ecclesiastical matters; to remove
governors and require an account of their government; to appoint judges
and magistrates, and to establish courts, both civil and ecclesiastical;
to hear a