Cromwell was the first English ruler who systematically employed the power of the government to increase and extend the colonial possessions of England. His colonial policy was not a subordinate part of his foreign policy, but an independent scheme of action, based on definite principles and persistently pursued. As we have seen, it was his extra-European policy which ultimately determined his part in the great European struggle of his days.

All the English colonies had grown up during Cromwell’s lifetime. When he was born England had none. He was seven years old when James I. granted a charter to the Virginian Company, and married in the year when the Pilgrim Fathers sailed in the Mayflower. It is probable that at one time he thought of emigrating himself, and it is certain that he felt the keenest interest in the Puritan settlers in New England. Ever since 1643, the Protector had been officially connected with the government of the colonies. He was one of the 391commissioners for the government of the plantations in America and the West Indies whom Parliament appointed in November, 1643, and was reappointed in 1646. But, in spite of their high title, these commissioners had little real power. Their authority might be obeyed in the islands, but on the continent of America it was hardly felt at all. The Civil War tended to loosen the tie which bound the colonies to the mother country. In May, 1643, soon after it began, the four colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven had formed themselves into a confederation, under the name of “The United Colonies of New England.” Strong enough to defend themselves without the aid of the mother country, they were little minded to submit to her control. When malcontents appealed from the courts of Massachusetts to the Parliament, parliamentary orders in their favour were disregarded, and the appellants were punished. At the same time, however, the New England colonies heartily sympathised with the Parliament in its struggle with the King. These outposts of Puritanism across the Atlantic sent many volunteers to the Puritan armies, more than one of whom did distinguished service and rose to high command. Still more important was the influence which the example and the ideas of New England exercised on the development of Democracy and Independency in England. At the time when the Commonwealth was established, the political tie between the English Government and the New England colonies was little more than nominal, but the intellectual sympathy of the two was never stronger.

392In the islands, and in the southern colonies, exactly the opposite process took place. There the general feeling was hostile to the Puritans and favourable to the King. When the war ended, fugitive Royalists flocked to Barbadoes and Virginia, just as exiled Puritans had once sought refuge in New England. After the death of Charles I., Virginia, under the government of Sir William Berkeley, proclaimed Charles II., and made it penal to justify his father’s execution. Instigated by Lord Willoughby, Barbadoes refused to acknowledge the Republic, suppressed conventicles, banished Roundheads, laid claim to freedom of trade with all nations, and seemed about to declare its independence.

But the statesmen who had made three kingdoms into one Commonwealth by force of arms were not the men to suffer the colonies to shake off their allegiance. In the autumn of 1651, Sir George Ayscue, with a British fleet, was sent to reduce Barbadoes and Virginia to obedience, while at the same time the passing of the Navigation Act proved that the republicans meant to strengthen—not to relax—the hold of the mother land on the colonies. That act bound the colonies to England by ensuring their commercial dependence upon her, and increased the maritime power of England by enriching its shipowners and merchants. But it was not simply the result of the jealousy of English against Dutch merchants, and it was something more than a sign of the rising power of the commercial classes. It was the first attempt on the part of England to legislate for the colonies as a whole, and to treat 393them as integral parts of one political system. By it the statesmen of the Republic declared that England was to be henceforth regarded not simply as a European power, but as the centre of a world-wide empire.

It is often said that the zeal for maritime and colonial dominion which marked the policy of Cromwell and of the Commonwealth was inspired by Elizabethan traditions, and to a certain extent it is true. But with statesmen and thinkers, this zeal for the expansion of England was also the result of a definite political theory. A stationary state, argued Harrington (and he expressed the views of his contemporaries), was a state doomed to weakness. The policy of the Republic must aim at increase and not merely at preservation. If it was to be lasting, it must lay great bases for eternity. If it was to be strong, it must have room to grow. “You cannot plant an oak in a flower pot,” said Harrington; “she must have earth for her roots, and heaven for her branches.”

The imperial purpose which had inspired the colonial policy of the Commonwealth found its fullest expression in the actions of the Protector. When Cromwell became Protector, the sovereignty of the English Government was everywhere acknowledged, but it could scarcely be said that it had been cordially accepted. In the southern colonies, there prevailed a strong anti-Puritan feeling; in New England, a growing spirit of independence; while in continent and islands, alike, there was general aversion to the restrictions which the Navigation Act had 394imposed on colonial trade. Under that act the products of a colony could not be imported to England except in English or colonial ships, and no foreign ships might import to the colonies anything but the products of their own country. From Virginia came loud complaints that the law was “the ruin of the poor planters.” In Barbadoes, where the Dutch had carried on a considerable trade, the hostility to the law was still stronger. “It is strange to see how they generally dote upon the Dutch trade,” wrote Winslow in 1655. Undeterred, the Protector continued to enforce the act by confiscating Dutch ships caught trading in prohibited commodities to the islands or the southern colonies, though in the New England colonies the non-observance of the act seems to have been tacitly permitted. As a compensation to the colonists, the growing of tobacco in England, where its production was beginning to obtain considerable success, was rigidly suppressed, and some attempt was made to develop a trade in shipping materials with the northern colonies.

In the internal affairs of the colonies, or their relations with each other, Cromwell interfered very little. He protected the Puritan party in the islands, and appointed or removed governors. He endeavoured to arbitrate on the boundary disputes between Maryland and Virginia, and to settle the internal divisions of the Marylanders. In New England, he sought to mediate between Rhode Island and the other colonies, ordering them to give the Rhode Islanders seasonable notice of any wars 395with the Indians, and to permit them to trade freely. “To maintain a loving and friendly correspondence in all things that may contribute to the common advantage and benefit of the whole,” was his advice to the New Englanders about their dealings with Rhode Island, and it aptly defines the aims of the Protector’s own policy towards the colonies in general. The corner-stone of his policy was the maintenance of good relations between New England and the Home Government. The New Englanders constituted, as it were, the Puritan garrison in America, and there were weighty political reasons for conciliating them. Apart from this, Cromwell’s feeling towards them as brethren in the faith was peculiarly warm, and warmly reciprocated. In 1651, Massachusetts thanked the Lord General for the “tender care and undeserved respect” he had on all occasions manifested towards it, and wished him prosperity in his “great and godly undertakings.” When he became Protector, it congratulated him on his being called by the Lord to supreme authority, “Whereat we rejoice, and shall pray for the continuance of your happy government, that under your shadow not only ourselves but all the churches may find rest and peace.” Recognising the sensitiveness with which Massachusetts feared any encroachment upon its right of self-government, Cromwell invited rather than commanded it to support his policy, and treated its remonstrances against his proposals with respect. Yet he was not jealous of its growing strength, made no attempt to prevent its coining money, and even favoured its extension over the smaller settlements 396on its northern border. Citizens of Massachusetts and New Englanders in general were freely employed by him, both in Great Britain and in the colonies themselves. “The great privileges belonging to New England,” wrote a Massachusetts agent, were “matter of envy, as of some in other plantations, so of divers in England who trade to those places,” but the Protector and many of his Council were “their very cordial friends.” When Cromwell died, he was characterised in the diary of a Bostonian as “a man of excellent worth,” and one “that sought the good of New England, though he seemed to be wanting in a thorough testimony against the blasphemers of our days.”

As characteristic of Cromwell’s policy as his love for New England was his zeal for the extension of England’s colonial possessions. When he became Protector, the war with the Dutch and the hostile relations existing with France supplied him with an opportunity which he was not slow to seize. At the beginning of the Dutch war, the Long Parliament had called on the New England colonies to attack the Dutch possessions in America, but the New England Confederation was divided, and remained inactive. Massachusetts, partly from conscientious objections to attacking neighbours with whom it had no sufficient ground of quarrel, partly no doubt from political motives, stubbornly opposed the war. Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth, whose interests were more directly concerned, were eager to act, but unable to move without the support of their great associate. The confederation seemed 397threatened with disruption. To some of the colonists, the whole future of New England seemed to depend on the result.

“Our cure is desperate if the Dutch are not removed,” wrote William Hooke of New Haven to Cromwell. “They lie close upon our frontiers westward, as the French do on the east, interdicting the enlargement of our borders any farther that way, so that we and our posterity (now almost prepared to swarm forth plenteously) are confined and straitened, the sea lying before us, and a rocky rude desert, unfit for cultivation and destitute of commodity, behind our backs, all convenient places upon the seacoast being already possessed and planted.”

Cromwell answered the appeal without a moment’s delay. In February, 1654, he despatched three ships and a few soldiers to New England with instructions to capture the Dutch settlements “in the Manhattoes” and on the Hudson. The expedition was commanded by Major Robert Sedgwick of Massachusetts, with whom was associated Captain John Leverett of the same colony—once a captain in the army of the Eastern Association, and to be in future years governor of Massachusetts. Cromwell’s letter to the colonial governments told them that he would not enquire why they had not hitherto taken action, but he saw no consideration which should prevent any colony from co-operating with the rest in this work, which concerned their common welfare. When the expedition arrived, even Massachusetts yielded so far as to permit the levy of five hundred volunteers, while the other three colonies were 398zealous in raising men “to extirpate the Dutch.” But before they could march, news came of the conclusion of peace with the Dutch, and the design had to be abandoned (June, 1654).

On this, Sedgwick and his fleet, according to their instructions, made sail for the coast of Acadia to take whatever French ships or settlements they could come across. Old complaints of their aggressions and the state of hostility which existed between France and England in Europe were held to justify the attack. Moreover, this “deluding crew,” as Leverett called the French settlers, “had given it out amongst the Indians, that the English were so and so valiant against the Dutch at sea; but that one Frenchman could beat ten Englishmen ashore.” “Wherein,” he adds, “the Lord hath most obviously befooled them,” for Sedgwick with but 130 men took first the Fort of St. John’s, next Port Royal (now Annapolis), and finally their strong fort on the Penobscot River. So the whole territory from the Penobscot to the mouth of the St. Lawrence passed under English dominion, and remained in English hands till it was given up by Charles II. in 1668.

After the French and the Dutch, came the turn of the Spaniards. There were grievances more than enough to justify hostilities, and all the diplomatic representations of the Long Parliament had failed to procure their redress. England and Spain had been at peace in Europe ever since 1630, but that peace had never been observed in the western hemisphere. Spain still claimed, by virtue of the Pope’s 399donation, exclusive dominion over islands it left unoccupied, and attacked all foreigners who attempted to colonise them. In 1634, the Spaniards drove out the English settlers from Tortuga; in 1641, a fleet from Cartagena captured and expelled the English colonists of New Providence on the Mosquito coast; in 1651, Santa Cruz was surprised, a hundred English inhabitants killed, and the rest forced to fly from the island. If an English ship sailing to an English colony met a Spanish fleet anywhere in western waters, it was likely to be attacked and plundered. If chance or storm drove an English ship on the coast of Cuba or Central America, the ship was confiscated, and the crew set to work as convicts.

Mixed with the desire to exact satisfaction for these injuries were other motives. Cromwell was bent on conquest for both religious and economic reasons. The islands Spain held ............