e his parliaments as autocratically as ever Charles had done;
and when he died, when his iron hand dropped from the helm, no man knew
what was to follow. No one wanted war. Each little wrangling party
looked a different way for peace and security. At length the majority
agreed to call back their Stuart kings. Charles II, son of the Charles I
they had beheaded, was voluntarily replaced upon the English throne.
Religion had once more proved inefficient as the central principle of
government.[17]

ACQUISITION OF COLONIAL POSSESSIONS

Equally important for the future, though not for their own day, were the
movements toward colonization in this period. Even while their war with
Spain was in progress the Dutch merchants had begun to look for
trading-stations in the distant seas. Following the Portuguese, they
sailed around Africa, and wrenched from their feeble predecessors most
of the Indian trade. They took possession of the Eastern isles, Java and
Sumatra. In the very year of the truce, 1609, they turned their
attention westward and sent Henry Hudson to explore the American
coast.[18] Claiming possession of the river he had found, they built
settlements at Albany and New York.[19]

England was their chief rival on the seas. Her ships followed theirs to
India and fought with them, refusing to be dispossessed like the
Portuguese.[20] The English colonists at Jamestown had preceded the
Dutch in defiance of Spain and the denial of her claims upon America.
England and Holland quarrelled for the carrying trade of the world. They
became the two foremost naval powers, and in Cromwell's time fought a
fierce and vigorous naval war. The two Protestant champions of Europe
wasting their strength one against the other for commercial causes!
Clearly indeed do we approach an age when religion becomes of little
international prominence.

France also had the colonizing fever. Henry IV had sent an expedition to
Quebec. Richelieu authorized one which settled Montreal, destined to be
the chief metropolis of Canada.[21]

These early settlements had been movements authorized by their
governments, encouraged by the parent state for its own purposes; but
now there began a civilization very different in character. Some of the
English Puritans finding the oppressive hand of King James I fall heavy
upon them, extracted from his ministers a half-unwilling permission to
settle on his American lands. So came the famous voyage of the Mayflower
an