Читать книгу The Life of Sir Henry Morgan. With an account of the English settlement of the island of Jamaica онлайн

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A spontaneous national movement towards colonial expansion in England, arising mainly from the economic wants of the country, had enlisted the active support of the King, his brother James, and several leading statesmen. This they saw could only be accomplished at the expense of those rival nations, who already possessed the advantage of priority in that inviting field of enterprise. Charles II was a shrewd and intelligent man of affairs, and warmly favoured colonial and commercial ventures. "Upon the king's first arrival in England," Clarendon wrote, "he manifested a very great desire to improve the general traffick and trade of the Kingdom, and upon all occasions conferred with the most active merchants upon it and offered all he could contribute to the advancement thereof." Charles doubtless believed that national prosperity would benefit himself as well as his subjects. Clarendon, as his chief adviser, took an active interest in colonization and the promotion of commerce. He relates with frank satisfaction how he "used all the endeavours he could to prepare and dispose the king to a great esteem of his plantations, and to encourage the improvement of them by all the ways that could reasonably be proposed to him."[63] Jamaica was fast becoming a plantation of some importance, and Clarendon acquired a considerable tract of land by royal patent in the parish, which the Council named in his honour.