ABSTRACT

English commerce with the colonies was never confined to a single trading corporation. As the Indian and African trades have already been discussed, there remains only the question of English commercial relations with North America and the West Indies during the period now under examination. 1 So far as these two areas are concerned, colonial historians have of recent years drawn especial attention to the significance of the Long Parliament's Act of October 3, 1650, which totally forbade not only European but even English commercial intercourse with the colonies of Antigua, Barbados, Bermuda, and Virginia, the four colonies which had openly declared themselves Royalist in sympathies. Now it may be true that this Act is of fundamental constitutional significance in British colonial history, but nevertheless, it can hardly be doubted that its economic importance was small. 2 It was a war measure, the retaliation of the victorious party in the civil war upon the vanquished. It was obviously not intended as a permanent measure, and when the Barbados were subdued by a fleet sent out under the command of Sir George Ayscue from England, the articles of settlement arranged between Ayscue and the colonists specifically stated that they were to be free to trade ‘with all nations that do trade and are in amity with England’. Similar agreements were made with the other Royalist colonies whose submission followed in due course. 3 A year later the Navigation Act was passed which confined the import trade to the plantations and the export trade thence to England entirely to British vessels. Although historians have been able to quote one or two references during the Protectorate to trading in the colonies being carried on in defiance of the Act of 1650, the majority of cases of illicit trading were clearly violations of the Navigation Act. 1 The Act of 1650 was never repealed, but it is certain that so far as economic affairs were concerned the Act of 1651, which Cromwell himself evidently regarded as the most important Statute governing the relations between England and her dominions, 2 was intended to supersede it. Contemporary pamphleteers and observers even suggested that the Navigation Act was put on the Statute book largely through the efforts of English monopolists interested in the colonial trade. 3 This Act governed, or was intended to govern, the trading relations between England and her colonies until the Restoration.