THE CRISIS AND THE CONVOYS, 1656-1688 77 



different people, and with more reason and success. Such 

 was the origin of the added clause of 1661, which was 

 directed against absentee boatmen not against settlers. But 

 this added clause was soon destined to receive additions to 

 itself, which seemed to involve resident as well as absentee 

 boatmen in a common proscription. 



In 1670 the question, to colonize or not to colonize (i]in 1670, 

 Newfoundland, was once more placed upon the balance, and a /^ r ,^ 

 the colonial cause would have kicked the beam, had not new anti-pas- 

 fetters been forged and thrown into the rising scale. The ^fi^ewas 

 eleventh commandment of 1661 was expanded, and in \tsdirected 

 expanded form forbad fishermen to take out settlers as 

 ' passengers ' ; and a twelfth commandment ordered them to 

 take out one apprentice * for every four sailors, and to bring 

 back all whom they took out. Hitchcock's name was writ 

 large in the twelfth commandment, and it is easy to see in the 

 eleventh a corollary from the twelfth commandment, and to 

 trace some seventeen other new rules which were now passed 

 allowing subjects and forbidding aliens to bait between Capes 

 Race and Bonavista, and re-enacting the six-mile veto on all 

 who settled within those limits, 2 to a desire to codify, or to 

 the usual enthusiasm for distant fishing and for a numerous 

 population in England. The settlers on the spot were 

 sacrificed to the fishermen from afar, and an ominous re- 

 commendation that the settlers should settle in some other 

 colony passed the Council of Plantations, although it was 

 afterwards rejected by the Privy Council. Nor was this 

 rejection more than a brief reprieve. 



The question, to be or not to be, was asked for the third 

 and last time in 1675, and on the third time of asking the % 

 noes prevailed. The colonists were to be assisted in going captains 

 to Jamaica, St. Kitts, or elsewhere, or, if they refused, the ^dest^oy 

 prohibition to live within six miles of the shore was to be the colony, 

 enforced for the first time. No one lived except within 

 1 Called 'green men'. 2 Ante, p. 69. 



