rade and plantations, and on February 18 and December 2,
1651, repeated the same order.[20] During the early part of this period
it depended to a considerable extent on committees, either of merchants
and others outside the council, men already engaged in trade with the
plantations, such as Worsley, Maurice Thompson (afterward governor of
the East India Company), Lenoyre, Allen, Martin Noell, and others,
or of councillors forming committees of trade (sitting in the Horse
Chamber in Whitehall), of plantations, of the admiralty, of the navy,
of examinations, of Scottish and Irish affairs, and of prisoners, to
whom many questions were referred and upon whose reports the Council
acted. It also appointed special committees to take into consideration
particular questions relating to individual plantations, Barbadoes,
Somers Islands, Bermudas, New England, Newfoundland, Virginia. Of all
these committees none appears to have been more active, as far as the
plantations were concerned, than the Committee of the Admiralty, before
whom came a large amount of colonial business, which was transacted
with the cooeperation of Dr. Walker, of Doctors Commons, advocate for
the Republic, and David Budd, the proctor of the Court of Admiralty.

An important departure was introduced on December 17, 1651, when a
standing committee of the Council was created, consisting of fifteen
members, to concern itself with trade and foreign affairs. This
committee took the place of that which had formerly sat in the Horse
Chamber in Whitehall, and renewed consideration of all questions which
had been referred to that body. It was organized, as were all the
Council committees, with its own clerk, doorkeeper, and messenger, and
as recommissioned on May 4, 1652, and again on December 2, 1652, when
the membership was raised to twenty-one and the plantations were brought
within the scope of its business, became a very independent and active
body until its demise in April, 1653. Its members were Cromwell, Lords
Whitelocke, Bradshaw, and Lisle, Sir Arthur Haslerigg, Sir Harry Vane,
Sir William Masham, Sir Gilbert Pickering, Colonels Walton, Purefoy,
Morley, Sidney, and Thomson, Major Lister, Messrs. Bond, Scott, Love,
Challoner, Strickland, Gurdon, and Alleyn.[21] This committee, to which
new members were frequently added, sat in the Horse Chamber at Whitehall
and took cognizance of a great variety of commercial and colonial
business. It considered the question o