r protection and of guarding
their persons, goods, and possessions according to law. Furthermore,
it was to procure copies of all necessary documents, to purchase maps,
plats, and charts when needed, to study those portions of treaties
made with other countries that related to peace and commerce, and to
determine how far those articles had been upheld and performed. And
lastly, it was to consider the practice of other countries in matters
of trade, commerce, and the colonies, and to see how far such practices
might be of value to England.

The Council had its first meeting on October 13, at Essex House, and
there the commission was read and the oaths were taken. Soon after, it
took up its abode at Villier's House in King's Street near Whitehall,
which it rented of the Duchess of Cleveland for L200 a year. There it
had a council chamber, an office for the clerks, two messengers, a
porter, a maid, and a chamber keeper, all of whom were paid out of the
L1,000 allowed for contingent expenses. We have record of seventy-six
meetings held between October 13, 1672, and December 22, 1674, a period
of twenty-six months; but it is quite certain that more meetings than
this were held, inasmuch as the session-days were every Wednesday and
Friday at ten in the morning.[10] So far as the plantations were
concerned the Council did little more than continue the work of its
predecessor, the Council of 1670, but in addition it concerned itself
with a large number of questions that had to do with domestic and
foreign as well as with colonial trade. The most important of these
related to the petition of the English consul at Venice that his
consulage be levied on goods and not on ships, a matter that aroused
prolonged debate; to the petition of the Gambia adventurers against
the importation by the East India Company of the dyeing wood called
"sanders" which, because cheaper, was taking the place of their redwood
from Africa; to the ordinances issued in Sweden against the English
"privileges" concerning naval stores; to the exportation of wool from
England, a matter already dealt with in an Act of Parliament; and to
the treatment of merchants at the hands of the Spaniards, regarding
which a number of petitions had been received by the board. A few new
petitions were taken into consideration from traders and others in the
plantations, notably those of the Jew Rabba Couty, whose ship had been
seized at Jamaica on the ground that he was a forei