The Newfoundland trade was by far the greatest English enterprise in America in the middle of the seventeenth century. With the accession of Queen Elizabeth, however, new and more severe demands fell upon the English navy. Professor Seeley has brought out very clearly the masterly inactivity of Elizabeth's foreign policy. It may be doubted, however, whether England was yet strong enough to maintain a war against the Empire which in 1580 had absorbed the whole power and colonial possessions of Portugal. Colonies, becoming the dominion of the King, are necessarily subject to the legislative power of Parliament, and the Englishman, who settles in a colony founded by settlement, remains, at common law, as free and possesses the same privileges as Englishmen at home. Several voyages were undertaken during the first years of the seventeenth century; but the real history of the Colony begins with the formation of the Virginia Company in the year 1606.