s, among which are mentioned swords and rapier blades,
madder-dyed silk, needle making, and knitting with frameworks; and
domestic concerns, such as the preservation of timber. It made a number
of recommendations regarding "the exportation of several commodities of
the breed, growth, and manufacture of the Commonwealth," "the limiting
and settling the prices of wines," "vagrants and wandering, idle,
dissolute persons," and the "giving license for transporting fish in
foreign bottoms." These recommendations were drafted by the Trade
Committee, or by one of its subcommittees, and after adoption were
reported to the Council of State and by it referred to its own committee
appointed to receive reports from the Trade Committee. When approved by
the Council of State, the recommendations were sent to Parliament and
there referred to the large Parliamentary committee of trade of fifty
members, appointed October 20, 1656. That committee drafted bills which
were based on these recommendations and which later were passed as acts
of Parliament and received the consent of the Protector. For example,
the recommendation regarding exports, noted above, became a law November
27, 1656.[33]

Under the head of "navigation and trade" came the commercial interests
of the plantations, and though there existed during this year, 1656,
other machinery for regulating plantation affairs, a number of questions
were referred from the Council to the Trade Committee that were strictly
in the line of plantation development. These questions concerned customs
duties on goods exported to Barbadoes, the political quarrels in
Antigua which threatened to bring ruin on that plantation and the
remedies therefor, the pilchard fishery off Newfoundland, and finally
the controversy between Maryland and Virginia which had already been
referred to a special committee of the Council. Upon all these questions
the Trade Committee reported to the Council; its recommendations and
findings were debated in that body or further referred to one of its own
committees or to the outside committee for America, and finally embodied
in an order regulating the matter in question.[34]

Of the activity of the Trade Committee during the few months of the year
1657, when it continued its sessions, scarcely any evidence appears.
There is a very slight reason to believe that it took up the question of
free ports, but there is nothing to show that it accomplished anything
in that directi