nder James I and Charles I.

In considering the subject which forms the chief topic of this paper, we
are not primarily concerned with the question of settlement, intimately
related though it be to the larger problem of colonial control. We are
interested rather in the early history of the various commissions,
councils, committees, and boards appointed at one time or another in the
middle of the seventeenth century for the supervision and management of
trade, domestic, foreign, and colonial, and for the general oversight of
the colonies whose increase was furthered, particularly after 1650, in
largest part for commercial purposes. The coupling of the terms "trade"
and "foreign plantations" was due to the prevailing economic theory
which viewed the colonies not so much as markets for British exports
or as territories for the receipt of a surplus British population--for
Great Britain had at that time no surplus population and manufactured
but few commodities for export--but rather as sources of such raw
materials as could not be produced at home, and of such tropical
products as could not be obtained otherwise than from the East and West
Indies. The two interests were not, however, finally consolidated in
the hands of a single board until 1672, after which date they were not
separated until the final abolition of the old Board of Trade in 1782.
It is, therefore, to the period before 1675 that we shall chiefly direct
our attention, in the hope of throwing some light upon a phase of
British colonial control that has hitherto remained somewhat obscure.
Familiar as are many of the facts connected with the early history of
Great Britain's management of trade and the colonies, it is nevertheless
true that no attempt has been made to trace in detail the various
experiments undertaken by the authorities in England in the interest
of trade and the plantations during the years before 1675. Many of
the details are, and will always remain, unknown, nevertheless it is
possible to make some additions to our knowledge of a subject which
is more or less intimately related to our early colonial history.

At the beginning of colonization the control of all matters relating
to trade and the plantations lay in the hands of the king and his
council, forming the executive branch of the government. Parliament
had not yet begun to legislate for the colonies, and in matters
of trade and commerce the parliaments of James I accomplished much
les