BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH COLONIZATION 53 



It was in the midst of this conflict of ideas, tendencies, Nxvfound- 

 colonies, and nations, that the new birth of the English colony p ermanenl . 

 of Newfoundland took place. It was a product of the same ly recreat- 

 ideas ; some of its godfathers, notably Sir J. Popham, were ea 

 the same as those of its sister colonies ; its re-birth and their 

 birth or re-birth occurred at the same time ; the same brief 

 effort was made to combine Londoners and Westerners in 

 one company; and Anglo-French rivalry was an ever-present 

 source of dread or spur to action. 



^Newfoundland differed from its sister colonies in the small- by -west- 

 ness of its stature, in its tendency to become for a century or ^ " 

 more a preserve for men from the south-west of England and by 

 in spite of appeals to Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and ^amongs" 

 Papists in its comparative freedom from the felon's taint, in non-colo- 

 its remoteness from the scene of war (at all events before 1662 

 and after 1713), and, above all, in the secular strife which 

 raged between disciples of the fishing and colonial schools, 

 and their respective representatives the fishermen who came 

 and went each year, and the settlers, who, by the irony of 

 fate, were also fishermen, and depended for recruits on those 

 with whom they strove. This strife began in 1611, and 

 went on indecisively for two centuries or so. Accordingly, (being 

 soon after its re-birth, the English colony of Newfoundland /^ 

 began to go on its own insular way almost unaffected by its apart} 

 continental neighbours on the south ; or, to borrow a classic 

 simile, the Newfoundlanders began to dwell, as it were, in 

 a cave of their own, and turned their faces towards the inner 

 wall, on which they only saw from time to time the shadows 

 of the actors in the great real world passing and repassing. 

 Not but what they had some rude awakenings. 



There is a State paper of almost the same date as the although 

 charter of the East India Company, in which the colonization j^nyTho 

 of Newfoundland was advocated for purposes of trade, and, ed the 

 of course, of the North-west Passage, but the King as well as 

 the traders and the poor (but 'not the impotent poor') must 



