2 Industrial Experiments in Colonial America. 



nine years later, specifies woods and wood-grounds amongr 

 the appurtenances of the grant; while among the articles and 

 "necessary persons" enumerated in the "Records of the Mas- 

 sachusetts Bay Company" to be brought over to the settlement, 

 are mentioned "men skylfull in making of pitch."^ By 1691, 

 when the second charter was granted to Massachusetts, the 

 importance of the "king's woods" had become so obvious that 

 a special clause — destined by reason of its ambiguity to cause 

 infinite mischief some twenty years later — provided for the 

 strict reservation of timber for the royal navy.- 



In 1633 Emanuel Downing, writing to Secretary John Coke 

 with reference to the attempt of Gorges and Company to over- 

 throw Winthrop's patent or to have another government estab- 

 lished, observed that the whole trade of the plantations was 

 maintained by undertakers in England who intended to per- 

 suade the planters to accept a new patent, and thereby be bound 

 to transport no masts, etc., for cordage and shipping but to Old 

 England; that the proprietors were desirous of royal protection 

 against foreign enemies and of an extension of the patent a little 

 to the north "where are the best firs and timber." "Let this cor- 

 poration," he says, "but enjoy the liberty of their patent and 

 to choose their own officers as every corporation does here. 

 Then shall this kingdom clearly gain by the fruits of their 

 labours that commodious trade of cordage, pitch and tar."^ 

 Two years after the date of this letter a ship brought the first 

 masts from New England ; " and now," writes Mr. Dcnvning 

 again, "the trade being by us discovered, there is fear that the 

 Dutch will use their wits to appropriate it." But if the planta- 

 tion "prosperously proceeds," he doubts not but that England 

 will make good that trade against Dutch and French.* Further 

 testimony comes from one Thomas Morton, Gentleman, of 



'Mass. Records, Vol. I, p. 24. 

 ■^Cf. Part III, eh. i, page 109 et seq. 



'Emanuel Downing to Secretary John Coke, Sainsbury, "Calen- 

 dar of State Papers," Vol. 119, Sect. 119. 

 *Ibid. 



