106 Industrial Experiments in Colonial America. 



reservation of large districts of the best pine and oak woods 

 for the^use of the Crown, basing the king's right to such woods 

 on a legal technicality of the charter of 1691. 



Timber had not been included among the "enumerated com- 

 modities" subjected to duties and confined to the British mar- 

 ket by the navigation laws of 1660, because the product was not 

 supposed to be worth controlling. Bridger and Holland/ how- 

 ever, wrote home from New England, in December, 1699: "We 

 have discovered a trade to Portugal from this place, in timber, 

 knees, etc., there being no law or act of the country which for- 

 bids it."^ The next year. Governor Bellomont found Mr. Part- 

 ridge, who was a member of the commission sent to New Eng- 

 land and a lumber merchant, engaged in a very lucrative trade 

 with Portugal. Bellomont attempted to prevent the sailing 

 of one of Partridge's vessels laden with timber, and the two be- 

 came involved in a serious quarrel." Bellomont informed the 

 Board of Trade that Partridge had openly boasted of a profitable 

 voyage his ship had made, by which, for an outlay of less than 

 £300, he had cleared £1,600 at Lisbon. "He has set all the 

 country agogg," wrote the indignant governor, "so that some 

 merchants at Salem are now loading a ship with 12,000 feet of 

 the noblest ship plank that ever was seen in America, and 

 scarce a knot in them. Your Lordships may see by this what 

 vigilance is necessary for a governor of these plantations, and 

 what eternal trouble I am at in contending for the interest of 

 England with the people of my three governments."* Partridge 

 and the other merchants protested that the timber sent to Spain 

 and Portugal was not fit for the royal navy,^ and the Board of 

 Trade sent orders that their ships should be allowed to pass. 

 By the act of 1705, however, the three chief sorts of timber, 



^Holland took the place of Furzer, the Commissioner who died at 

 Barbadoes, Cf. p. 10. 



2Mr. Bridger to the Board of Trade, B. T. New Eng., F: 33. 



sLord Bellomont to the Board of Trade, B. T. New Eng., G: 21, 41. 

 Lord Bellomont to Mr. Partridge, Ibid. G: 41. 



*Lord Bellomont to the Board of Trade, B. T. New York, L: 23. 



^Mr. Partridge to the Board of Trade, B. T. New Eng., I: i. 



