and Navigation of these
Kingdomes." Of all the busy promoters whose private interests were, by
some strange whim of Providence, in such happy accord with the nation's
welfare and the theories of economists, none was more conspicuous than
Martin Noel. He was a man of varied activities: a stockholder in the
East India Company; a farmer of the inland post office and of the
excise; a banker who made loans, and issued bills of exchange and
letters of credit. His many ships traded in the West Indies, in New
England and Virginia, and in the Mediterranean. During the wars of the
Protectorate he was himself a commissioner of prize goods, issued
letters of marque, and judged the prizes taken by his own vessels. A
center of great interest was his place at the Old Jewry; the resort of
ship captains, merchants, investors, contractors, officials of the
Government. The capital for financing one of the Jamaica expeditions was
raised there by Noel, who was rewarded by a grant of twenty thousand
acres of sugar land after the conquest of the island. He had been
intimate with Cromwell, and after the return of Charles won the
reputation of being, in all affairs of trade and plantations, "the
mainstay of the Government." It was through Martin Noel, and men of his
kind, that the old colonial system began to be shaped to serve the ends
of the moneyed and mercantile interests of England.

[Illustration: Areas settled by 1660, and between 1660 and 1700.]

Enterprising men like Noel were prosperous enough, but their extended
vision enabled them to complain intelligently of the decay of trade. In
the year 1660 exports made not more than a fourth part of the eight and
a half millions of England's foreign commerce. Money was scarce,
interest high, rents and prices low. No one doubted that the effective
remedy for these ills lay in establishing a "favorable balance of
trade." But in the path of this achievement stood the old rivals of
England--Holland, Spain, and France. Imports from France overbalanced
exports thither in the proportion of 2.6 to 1.6. Spain still worked the
rich silver veins of the Andes, and the conquest of Jamaica had opened
English eyes to the high value of her West Indian possessions. Above
all, the thrifty Dutch, intrenched in the East Indies and on the west
coast of Africa, supplied Europe with the major part of Oriental
products and denied England's right to share with them the honor and
profit of importing slaves into Spani