PROJECTED ENGLISH COLONY. ll 



as mucli as 5, 6, 7 pounds or more in England, in this famous Island at 

 llieir first arrivall, which, no other country hath afforded. 



By RICHARD BOOTHBY, Merchant. 



London : Printed by E. G. for John Hardesty at the Signe of the Black- 

 Spread Eagle in Dtick Lane, 1646. 



It seems from the preface to Boothby's work, which is a 

 small octavo of seventy-two pages, that two years previous to 

 the publication of this book there had been a project to found 

 an English plantation in Madagascar, Prince Eupert having 

 been named at the Privy Council board as Viceroy for King- 

 Charles I., from whom he was to have had twelve men-of-war 

 and thirty merchantmen to form the colony. The Governor 

 and Committee of the East India Company were also ordered 

 to give all possible assistance to the enterprise. Eupert, how- 

 ever, going away to the Continent, the Earl of Arundel, Earl 

 Marshal of England, was appointed ; and it appears that 

 that nobleman had also written a book on the subject, urging 

 the desirability of forming a magazine or victualling station 

 on the island. However, the calling of the parliament im- 

 mediately preceding the Long Parliament, and the political 

 troubles which soon ensued, put a stop to this projected 

 English colony in Madagascar. It is stated in Boothby's book 

 that the island had been previously visited by other dis- 

 tinguished Englishmen, viz., the ambassadors from Charles I. 

 to the King of Persia, who landed there on their way to the 

 East. 



The appointment of Prince Eupert called forth another 

 book upon the island, but this time in the shape of a poem, 

 by Sir William Davenant, entitled " Madagascar, with other 

 Poems, by W. Davenant, Knight " (London, 1 648). This pro- 

 duction occupies only twenty-one pages of print, and gives 

 no information whatever about Madagascar itself, being simply 

 a complimentary effusion, "written to the most illustrious 

 Prince Eupert." Following the strange conceits common to 

 the literary productions of the time, such as are seen in 

 Beaumont and Eletcher, Donne, Herbert, and other writers, 

 the poem is in the form of a dream, in which the country 



