that for the first time,
as far as we know, the working members received pay for their services.
The allowances and salaries were as follows: the Earl of Sandwich, as
president, received L700; Lord Gorges, Lord Allington, Thomas Grey,
Henry Brouncker, Sir Humphrey Winch, Sir John Finch, Edmund Waller,
Henry Slingsby, Silas Titus, and John Evelyn, each L500, paid quarterly.
Dr. Benjamin Worsley, who held the position of advisor and assistant
secretary under Slingsby, the secretary of the Council, was allowed
L300, while for contingent expenses L1,000, the same amount that had
been placed at the disposal of each of the secretaries, Sir Philip
Frowde and Col. Duke, of the former councils, was appropriated.[3] Five
members, always including the president or one of the officers of state
authorized to attend, constituted a quorum of the Council, which was
ordered to meet for the first time at Essex House, the residence of
the Lord Keeper, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, near Temple Bar, at two in the
afternoon. After the addition of the new members, May 16, 1671, it
removed to the Earl of Bristol's house in Queen Street near Lincoln's
Inn Fields;[4] and after February 12, 1672, to Lord Arlington's lodgings
in Whitehall, in order, as Evelyn tells us, that the King might be
present and hear the debates. It was authorized to employ clerks,
messengers, solicitors, doorkeepers, and other inferior officers and
attendants as it should think fit and necessary for its service.

By their commission the members of the Council were empowered "to inform
themselves by the best ways and meanes they can of the present State and
condition of our Plantations, together with the Increase, or Decay of
the Trade, and strength of each of them respectively, And the Causes and
Reasons of such Encrease or Decay, And to use all Industry and Diligence
for gaining the full knowledge of all things transacted within any part
of those our Dominions, either by the respective Governours themselves
or their respective Deputies or by them and the respective Councills, or
Assemblies, belonging to any of our said respective Plantations, and
thereof from time to time to give us a true faithfull and certaine
Accompt togeather with their best advice and opinion thereupon." The
range of colonial interest was a wide one, "all the affaires which doe
or may touch or concerne any of our Forreigne Plantations, Colonies, or
Dominions, situate, lying and being in any part of America