The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919

By myself,
I couldn't hear nobody pray.

Chilly waters,
Couldn't hear nobody pray,
In the Jordan,
Couldn't hear nobody pray,
Crossing over,
Couldn't hear nobody pray,
Into Canaan,
Couldn't hear nobody pray.

In Negro folk songs the music and expression are everything. The words, often striking and suggestive, to be sure, represent broken fragments of ideas, thrown up from the depths of the Negroes' consciousness and swept along upon a torrent of wild, weird and often beautiful melody. One reason the verses of the Negro folk songs are so broken and fragmentary is that the Negroes were not yet in secure possession of the English language. Another explanation is the conditions under which they were produced. The very structure of these verses indicate their origin in the communal excitement of a religious assembly. A happy phrase, a striking bit of imagery, flung out by some individual was taken up and repeated by the whole congregation. Naturally the most expressive phrases, the lines that most adequately voiced the deep unconscious desires of the whole people, were remembered longest and repeated most frequently. New lines and variations were introduced from time to time. There was, therefore, a process of natural selection by which the best, the most representative verses, those which most adequately expressed the profounder and more permanent moods and sentiments of the Negro were preserved and became part of the permanent tradition of the race.

Negro melodies still spring up on the plantations of the South as they did in the days of slavery. The Negro is, like the Italian, an improviser, but the songs he produces today have not, so far as my knowledge goes, the quality of those he sang in slavery. The schools have introduced reading, and this, with the reflection which writing enforces, is destroying the folk songs of the Negro, as it has those of other races.

Not only are the Negro folk songs more primitive—in the sense I have indicated—than the folk songs of other peoples with which we are familiar but the themes are different. The themes of the Scotch ballads are love and battles, the adventures and tragedies of a wild, free life. The Negro songs, those that he has remembered best, are religious and other worldly. "It is a singular fact," says Krehbiel, "that very few secular songs—those which are referred to as 'reel tunes,' 'fiddle songs,' 'corn songs' and 'devil songs,' for which slaves generally expressed a deep abhorrence, though many of them no doubt were used to stimulate them while in the fields—have been preserved while 'shout songs' and other 'speritchils' have been kept alive by the hundred."[89 - Krehbiel, Afro-American Folksongs, p. 16.]

If it is the plantation melodies that, by a process of natural selection, have been preserved in the traditions of the Negro people, it is probably because in these songs they found a free and natural expression of their unfulfilled desires. In the imagery of these songs, in the visions which they conjure up, in the themes which they again and again renew, we may discern the reflection of dawning racial consciousness, a common racial ideal.

The content of the Negro folk songs has been made the subject of a careful investigation by Howard Odum in his Study of the Social and Mental Traits of the Negro. He says: "The Negro's fancies of 'Heaven's bright home' are scarcely exceeded by our fairy tales. There are silver and golden slippers, crowns of stars, jewels and belts of gold. There are robes of spotless white and wings all bejeweled with heavenly gems. Beyond the Jordan the Negro will outshine the sun, moon and stars. He will slip and slide the golden street and eat the fruit of the trees of paradise.... With rest and ease, with a golden band about him and with palms of victory in his hands and beautiful robes, the Negro will indeed be a happy being.... To find a happy home, to see all the loved ones and especially the Biblical characters, to see Jesus and the angels, to walk and talk with them, to wear robes and slippers as they do, and to rest forever, constitute the chief images of the Negro's heaven. He is tired of the world which has been a hell to him. Now on his knees, now shouting, now sorrowful and glad, the Negro comes from 'hanging over hell' to die and sit by the Father's side."[90 - Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, edited by The Faculty of Political Science of Columbia University, Vol. 37, New York, 1910, No. 3—Social and Mental Traits of the Negro, by Howard W. Odum, Ph.D., p. 91.]

In the imagery which the Negro chooses to clothe his hopes and dreams, we have, as in the musical idiom in which he expresses them, reflections of the imagination and the temperament of Africa and the African. On the other hand, in the themes of this rude rhapsodical poetry—the House of Bondage, Moses, the Promised Land, Heaven, the apocalyptic visions of Freedom—but freedom confined miraculously and to another world—these are the reflections of the Negro's experience in slavery.

The Negro's songs of slavery have been referred to by Du Bois in his Soul of Black-Folk as sorrow songs, and other writers have made the assertion that all the songs of the slaves were in a plaintive minor key. As a matter of fact, investigation has shown that actually less than twelve per cent of Negro songs are in a minor.[91 - Krehbiel, Afro-American Folksongs.] There are no other folk songs, with the exception of those of Finland, of which so large a percentage are in the major mood. And this is interesting as indicating the racial temperament of the Negro. It tends to justify the general impression that the Negro is temperamentally sunny, cheerful, optimistic. It is true that the slave songs express longing, that they refer to "hard trials and great tribulations," but the dominant mood is one of jubilation, "Going to sing, going to shout, going to play all over God's heaven."

Other worldliness is not peculiar to the religion of the slave. It is a trait which the slave encountered in the religion of his master. But in the Negro's conception of religion it received a peculiar emphasis. In fact, these ecstatic visions of the next world, which the Negro slave songs portrayed with a directness and simplicity that is at once quaint and pathetic, are the most significant features of the Negro's songs of slavery.

It is interesting to note in this connection that nowhere in these songs do we discover the slightest references to Africa. They reflect no memories of a far off happier land. Before the Negro gained his emancipation Africa had, so far as he was concerned, almost ceased to exist. Furthermore, the whole tone and emphasis of these songs and of all other religious expressions of the American Negro are in marked contrast with the tone and emphasis of African religious ideas. The African knew of the existence of another world, but he was not interested in it. The world, as the African understood it, was full of malignant spirits, diseases and forces with which he was in constant mortal struggle. His religious practices were intended to gain for him immunity in this world, rather than assurance of the next. But the Negro in America was in a different situation. He was not living in his own world. He was a slave and that, aside from the physical inconvenience, implied a vast deal of inhibition. He was, moreover, a constant spectator of life in which he could not participate; excited to actions and enterprises that were forbidden to him because he was a slave. The restlessness which this situation provoked found expression, not in insurrection and rebellion—although, of course, there were Negro insurrections—but in his religion and in his dreams of another and freer world. I assume, therefore, that the reason the Negro so readily and eagerly took over from the white man his heaven and apocalyptic visions was because these materials met the demands of his peculiar racial temperament and furnished relief to the emotional strains that were provoked in him by the conditions of slavery.

So far as slavery was responsible for the peculiar individuality of the Negro's religion we should expect that the racial ideals and racial religion would take on another and a different character under the influence of freedom. This, indeed, is what seems to me is taking place. New ideals of life are expressed in recent Negro literature and slowly and imperceptibly those ideas are becoming institutionalized in the Negro church and more particularly in the cultural ideals of the Negro school. But this makes another chapter in the history of Negro culture in America.

I have sought in this brief sketch to indicate the modifications, changes and fortune which a distinctive racial temperament has undergone as a result of encounters with an alien life and culture. This temperament, as I conceive it, consists in a few elementary but distinctive characteristics, determined by physical organization and transmitted biologically. These characteristics manifest themselves in a genial, sunny and social disposition, in an interest and attachment to external, physical things rather than to subjective states and objects of introspection; in a disposition for expression rather than enterprise and action. The changes which have taken place in the manifestations of this temperament have been actuated by an inherent and natural impulse, characteristic of all living things, to persist and maintain themselves in a changed environment. Such changes have occurred as are likely to take place in any organism in its struggle to live and to use its environment to further and complete its own existence.

The general principle which the Negro material illustrates is that the racial temperament selects out of the masses of cultural materials, to which it had access, such technical, mechanical and intellectual devices as meet its needs at a particular period of its existence. It clothes and enriches itself with such new customs, habits, and cultural forms as it is able, or permitted to use. It puts into these relatively external things, moreover, such concrete meanings as its changing experience and its unchanging racial individuality demand.

Everywhere and always the Negro has been interested rather in expression than in action; interested in life itself rather than in its reconstruction or reformation. The Negro is, by natural disposition, neither an intellectual nor an idealist like the Jew, nor a brooding introspective like the East Indian, nor a pioneer and frontiersman like the Anglo-Saxon. He is primarily an artist, loving life for its own sake. His metier is expression rather than action. The Negro is, so to speak, the lady among the races.

In reviewing the fortunes of the Negro's temperament as it is manifested in the external events of the Negro's life in America, our analysis suggests that this racial character of the Negro has exhibited itself everywhere in something like the rôle of the wish in the Freudian analysis of dream life. The external cultural forms which he found here, like the memories of the individual, have furnished the materials in which the racial wish, that is, the Negro temperament, has clothed itself. The inner meaning, the sentiment, the emphasis, the emotional color which these forms assumed as the result of their transference from the white man to the Negro, these have been the Negro's own. They have represented his temperament—his temperament modified, however, by his experience and the tradition which he has accumulated in this country. The temperament is African, but the tradition is American.

I present this thesis merely as a hypothesis. As such its value consists in its suggestion of a point of view and program for investigation. I may, however, suggest some of the obvious practical consequences. If racial temperament—particularly when it gets itself embodied in institutions and in nationalities, that is, social groups based upon race—is so real and obdurate a thing that education can only enrich and develop it but not dispose of it, then we must be concerned to take account of it in all our schemes for promoting naturalization, assimilation, Americanization, Christianization, and acculturation generally.

If it is true that the Jew, as has been suggested, just because of his intellectuality is a natural born idealist, internationalist, doctrinaire, and revolutionist, while the Negro, because of his natural attachment to known, familiar objects, places and persons, is preadapted to conservatism and to local and personal loyalties: if these things are true, we shall eventually have to take account of them practically. It is certain that the Negro has uniformly shown a disposition to loyalty, during slavery to his master, and during freedom to the South and the country as a whole. He has maintained this attitude of loyalty, too, under very discouraging circumstances. I once heard Kelly Miller, the most philosophical of the leaders and teachers of his race, say in a public speech that one of the greatest hardships the Negro suffered in this country was due to the fact that he was not permitted to be patriotic.

Of course, all these alleged racial characteristics have a positive as well as a negative significance. Every race, like every individual, has the vices of its virtues. The question remains still to what extent so-called racial characteristics are actually racial, that is, biological, and to what extent they are the effect of environmental conditions. The thesis of this paper, to state it again, is: (1) That fundamental temperamental qualities, which are the basis of interest and attention, act as selective agencies and as such determine what elements in the cultural environment each race will select, in what region it will seek and find its vocation, in the larger social organization; (2) that, on the other hand, technique, science, machinery, tools, habits, discipline and all the intellectual and mechanical devices with which the civilized man lives and works, remain relatively external to the inner core of significant attitudes and values which constitute what many call the will of the group. This racial will is, to be sure, largely social, that is modified by social experience, but it rests ultimately upon a complex of inherited characteristics, which are racial.

It follows from what has been said that the individual man is the bearer of a double inheritance. As a member of a race, he transmits by interbreeding a biological inheritance. As a member of society or a social group, on the other hand, he transmits by communication a social inheritance. The particular complex of inheritable characters, which characterizes the individuals of a racial group constitutes the racial temperament. The particular group of habits, accommodations, sentiments, attitudes and ideals transmitted by communication and education constitute a social tradition. Between this temperament and this tradition there is, as has been generally recognized, a very intimate relationship. My assumption is that temperament is the basis of the interests; that as such it determines in the long run the general run of attention, and this, eventually, determines the selection in the case of an individual of his vocation, in the case of the racial group of its culture. That is to say, temperament determines what things the individual and the groups will be interested in; what elements of the general culture, to which they have access, they will assimilate; what, to state it in pedagogical terms, they will learn.

It will be evident at once that where individuals of the same race and hence the same temperament are associated, the temperamental interests will tend to reinforce one another, and the attention of members of the group will be more completely focused upon the specific objects and values that correspond to the racial temperament. In this way racial qualities become the basis for nationalities, a nationalistic group being merely a cultural and eventually a political society founded on the basis of racial inheritances. On the other hand, when racial segregation is broken up and members of a racial group are dispersed and isolated, the opposite effect will take place. This explains the phenomena which have frequently been the subject of comment and observation, that the racial characteristics manifest themselves in an extraordinary way in large homogeneous gatherings. The contrast between a mass meeting of one race and a similar meeting of another is particularly striking. Under such circumstances characteristic racial and temperamental differences appear that would otherwise pass entirely unnoticed.

When the physical unity of a group is perpetuated by the succession of parents and children, the racial temperament, including fundamental attitudes and values which rest on it, are preserved intact. When however, society grows and is perpetuated by immigration and adaptation, there ensues, as a result of miscegenation, a breaking up of the complex of the biologically inherited qualities which constitute the temperament of the race. This again initiates changes in the mores, traditions and eventually in the institutions of the community. The changes which proceed from modification in the racial temperament will, however, modify but slightly the external forms of the social traditions but they will be likely to change profoundly their content and meaning. Of course, other factors, individual competition, the formation of classes, and especially the increase of communication, all coöperate to complicate the whole situation and to modify the effects which would be produced by racial factors working in isolation. All these factors must be eventually taken account of, however, in any satisfactory scheme of dealing with the problem of Americanization by education. This is, however, a matter for more complete analysis and further investigation.

    Robert E. Park

THE COMPANY OF ROYAL ADVENTURERS OF ENGLAND TRADING INTO AFRICA, 1660-1672

INTRODUCTION

The English commercial companies trading to the west coast of Africa during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have practically escaped the attention of historical students. Doubtless this neglect is the result of the little importance which has until recently been attached to African territory since the abolition of the slave trade. Previous to that time the west coast of Africa vied with the East Indies for popular attention, and the English African companies often appeared to be but little less important than the great East India Company.

The cause for the popular esteem of the African coast during the earlier centuries was the intimate connection which the slave trade had with the development of the English plantations in the West Indies. About the middle of the seventeenth century the growing of sugar cane and other products in the West Indies began to open up enormous possibilities which, it was universally agreed, could be realized only by the extensive use of Negro slaves. At the restoration of Charles II in 1660 the English commercial class directly supported and assisted by the king's courtiers determined to secure as large a portion of the West African coast as possible. To reach this end they organized that year The Company of the Royal Adventurers into Africa. This decision at once brought the company into conflict with the Dutch West India Company, which, during the twenty years of domestic trouble in England, had all but monopolized the desirable portion of the West African coast.

It happened therefore that the Company of Royal Adventurers played a very important part in the events which led up to the Anglo-Dutch war of 1665-67. The war resulted in the financial ruin of the company which was in existence only about eleven years, at the end of which time it was succeeded by the much larger and better organized Royal African Company.

It has seemed to the author as if the English African companies were a very profitable field of historical investigation. Therefore, the present dissertation on the Company of Royal Adventurers will be followed shortly by a history of the Royal African Company, 1672-1752.

For assistance in writing the history of the Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the librarians, and officials of the British Record Office, the British Museum, the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Rijks Archief at The Hague, and the Cornell University Library. To Professor R. C. H. Catterall, now deceased, I am greatly indebted for reading the manuscript of this book, and for many valuable suggestions. Above all, I wish to express my deep appreciation to my wife, Susie Zook, for her unfailing inspiration and her constant assistance in the writing of this book.

CHAPTER I

Early Dutch and English Trade to West Africa

In 1581 the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands declared their independence of Spain. As the intrepid Dutch sailors ventured out from their homeland they met not only the ships of their old master, Philip II, but those of the Portuguese as well. Since the government of Portugal had just fallen into the hands of Philip II the Dutch ships could expect no more consideration from Portuguese than from Spanish vessels. Notwithstanding the manifest dangers the prospects of obtaining the coveted products of the Portuguese colonies inspired the Dutch to such a great extent that in 1595 Bernard Ereckson sailed to the west coast of Africa, at that time usually called Guinea. There he and the Dutch who followed him discovered that the Portuguese had long occupied the trading points along the coast, and had erected forts and factories wherever it seemed advisable for the purpose of defense and trade. The Dutch merchants and sailors turned their dangerous situation into an opportunity to despoil the weakened Portuguese of their forts and settlements in Africa.

On August 25, 1611, the Dutch made a treaty with a native prince by which a place called Maurée was ceded to them. In the following year they erected a fort at that place which they named Fort Nassau.[92 - Jonge, Johan Karel Jakob de, De Oorsprong van Neerland's Bezittingen op de Kust van Guinea, p. 16.] Shortly after this, in 1617, they bought the island of Goree at Cape Verde from the natives in that region. Four years later the West India Company was formed, its charter including not only the West Indies and New Amsterdam but also the west coast of Africa. This new organization found much in the new world to occupy its attention but it did not neglect the Guinea coast. The Dutch realized that the African trade was indispensable to their West India colonies as a means of supplying slave labor. Hostilities, therefore, were continued against the Portuguese who still had possession of the principal part of the African trade. In 1625 the Dutch made a vigorous attempt to capture the main Portuguese stronghold at St. George d'Elmina which had been founded on the Gold Coast in 1481.[93 - Gramberg, J. S. G., Schetsen van Afrika's Westcust, p. 12.] They were unsuccessful at that time but in 1637 Prince Maurice of Nassau with 1,200 men succeeded in capturing this base of the Portuguese trade.[94 - Jonge, Oorsprong van Neerland's Bezittingen, pp. 18, 19, 20.] In 1641 a ten years' truce was signed between Portugal and the United Provinces, but before the news of the truce had reached the coast of Guinea the Dutch had taken another of the Portuguese strongholds at Axim which, according to the terms of the treaty, they were permitted to retain. From these various places factories were settled along the coast, and treaties made with the native rulers. Furthermore, in the treaty of peace, August 6, 1661, the Dutch retained the forts and factories which they had conquered from the Portuguese on the African coast.[95 - In return for this concession the Dutch evacuated Brazil. Dumont, J., Corps Universel Diplomatique du Droit des Gens, VI, part 2, p. 367.] After the truce of 1641 and the peace of 1661, therefore, the Dutch regarded themselves as having succeeded to the exclusive claims of the Portuguese to a large portion of the west coast of Africa including a monopoly of the trade to the Gold Coast.[96 - De Gids, "Derde Serie," Zesde Jaargang, IV, 385.]

Although it was the Dutch who succeeded in depriving the Portuguese of the most important part of the West African coast, the interest shown by the English in this region can be traced back to a much earlier date. In 1481, when two Englishmen were preparing an expedition to the Guinea coast, John II, king of Portugal, despatched an ambassador to the English king, to announce the overlordship of Guinea which he had recently assumed, and to request that the two Englishmen should refrain from visiting the Guinea coast. Edward IV complied with this request.[97 - Hakluyt, Richard, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, & Discourses of the English Nation, VI, 123, 124.] Thereafter no English expedition to Guinea was attempted until 1536 when William Hawkins, father of the famous John Hawkins, made the first of three voyages to Africa during which he also traded to Brazil. Again in 1553 Hawkins sent an expedition to the Gold Coast. Near Elmina the adventurers sold some of their goods for gold, and then proceeded to Benin where they obtained pepper, or "Guinea graines," and elephants' teeth. After losing two-thirds of the crew from sickness the expedition returned to England.[98 - Ibid., VI, 145-162.] In the following year another expedition under Hawkins' direction secured several slaves in addition to a large amount of gold and other products.[99 - Ibid., VI, 154-177.] Also, in the years 1555, 1556, 1557, William Towrson made three voyages to the Guinea coast in which his ships were harassed by the Portuguese, who attempted to prevent them from trading. English cloth and iron wares were in such demand, however, that notwithstanding this opposition a lucrative trade was obtained.[100 - Ibid., VI, 177-252.]

Beginning with 1561 Queen Elizabeth lent her influence and assistance to a series of voyages to the African coast. Not only did she permit the use of four royal vessels for the first expedition but she spent five hundred pounds in provisioning them for the voyage. The value of the goods sent to Africa in these vessels was five thousand pounds. According to the arrangement Queen Elizabeth received one-third of the profits, which amounted to one thousand pounds.[101 - Queen Elizabeth's profit may have been only five hundred pounds, as it seems likely that the five hundred pounds which she spent in provisioning the ships should be subtracted from the one thousand pounds which she received. Scott, W.R., The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint Stock Companies to 1720, II, 6.] In the year 1563 similar arrangements were made with the queen for another voyage to the Gold Coast, during which there was considerable trouble with the Portuguese. Notwithstanding this opposition the ships succeeded in returning to England with a quantity of elephants' teeth and Guinea grains.[102 - Hayluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 258-261.] In 1564, an expedition composed of three ships, one of which belonged to Queen Elizabeth, was particularly unfortunate. One of these ships was blown up, while the other two were attacked by the Portuguese and probably had to return without obtaining any African products.[103 - Ibid., VI, 262.]

In these voyages to Guinea the English trade had been in exchange for gold, elephants' teeth and pepper. Trading for slaves had scarcely occurred to these early adventurers. Nevertheless, as early as 1562, John Hawkins sailed for Sierra Leone with three vessels, and there captured three hundred Negroes whom he sold to the Spaniards in Hispaniola.[104 - Ibid., X, 7, 8.] The success of this voyage was so great that in 1564 there was fitted out a second slave raiding expedition in which one of the queen's ships, the Jesus, was employed. As before, Hawkins sold his slaves in the West Indies, this time with some difficulty, because the Spanish officials, who were forbidden to have any trade with foreigners, regarded the Englishmen as pirates.[105 - Ibid., X, 9-63.]

Again, in 1567, Hawkins was on his way to Guinea. By playing off one set of natives against another he procured about 450 slaves and once more set out for the Spanish Indies. Although at first the voyage promised to be successful, he was later set upon by a number of Spanish ships and barely escaped with his life and one badly wrecked vessel.[106 - Ibid., X, 64-74.]

Hawkins' voyages to Africa are worthy of note because he was the first Englishman to engage in the slave trade. To be sure, his piratical seizure of free Negroes broke all the rules of honorable dealing long recognized on the African coast. As a result of his actions the natives held all Englishmen in great distrust for a number of years.[107 - For example, the expedition of George Fenner to Africa in 1566. He had a great deal of trouble with the natives. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 266-284.] The unregulated method of carrying on the African trade, pursued up to this time, ceased to a certain extent when Queen Elizabeth granted the first patent of monopoly to the west coast of Africa, May 3, 1588.

The charter of 1588 gave to certain merchants of Exeter, London and other places in England for ten years an exclusive trade to that portion of West Africa lying between the Senegal and Gambia rivers. The great slave and gold producing country of the Gold Coast remained open to all traders. It was therefore evident that, instead of continuing the slave raiding projects of Hawkins, the company intended to resume the exchange of English manufactures for African products. According to its charter the company was not required to pay duties in England either on imports or exports.[108 - Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 443-450, patent of Queen Elizabeth, May 3, 1588.] Although nothing is known of the success of this company, the patent was regarded as of sufficient importance for the earl of Nottingham and others to obtain a continuation of the monopoly.[109 - Scott, Joint Stock Companies, II, 10.]

Since the charter of these Senegal adventurers did not prevent anyone from resorting to the Gold Coast and the regions to the east thereof, two voyages were made to Benin, one in 1588 and another in 1590.[110 - Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, VI, 450-458, 461-467.] In 1592 certain English merchants received a patent from the queen authorizing them to trade to certain specified portions of Africa.[111 - Ibid., VII, 102.] The trade to Africa continued in this desultory fashion until 1618. At that time a patent comprising the whole explored western coast of Africa south of the territory of the Barbary Company was granted to some thirty persons, among whom the most important was Sir William St. John, who was said to have built the first English fort in Africa.[112 - Scott, Joint Stock Companies, II, 11.] The early years of their trade, which consisted in the exchange of English for African products, was especially unfortunate. Vessels were either lost or brought back small returns. After 1621 it was difficult to procure fresh additions of capital. To add to this trying situation, the House of Commons attacked the company's monopoly and, later, voted it to be a grievance. Thereafter, although the company sometimes issued licenses for the African trade, the interlopers who resorted to Africa quite freely, usually did not deem it necessary to obtain them.[113 - Ibid., II, 12, 13.]

The moving spirit of the next company, which received a patent in 1631, was Sir Nicholas Crispe, who had been a successful interloper during the life of the previous company. In 1624 he had built the first permanent English settlement at Kormentine. Although not incorporated, this company enjoyed for thirty-one years a monopoly of trade to all the region lying between Cape Blanco and the Cape of Good Hope. Just previous to the Civil War Charles I confirmed the charter for twenty years. The company's monopoly was looked on with disfavor by the leaders of the Puritan party, however, and in 1649 the company was summoned before the Council of State, where it was accused of having procured its charter by undue influences. Later, the company's case was considered by the committee of trade, and finally, on April 9, 1651, the Council of State recommended that the company's monopoly to that part of West Africa extending from a point twenty miles north of Kormentine to within twenty miles of the Sierra Leone River be continued for fourteen years.[114 - Ibid., II, 14-16.]

This company also suffered numerous misfortunes on the African coast. A factory which the English had set up at Cape Corse in April, 1650, was seized the following year by some Swedes who for several years thereafter made it the seat of their trade in Guinea.[115 - S. P. (State Papers), Holland, 178, f. 123, undated paper concerning the title of the English to Cape Corse; A. C. R. (Records of the African Companies), 169: 69, deposition of Thomas Crispe, February 5, 1685/6; Dammaert, Journal (Journal gehouden bij Louijs Dammaert ungewaren met 't schip Prins Willem), September 19, 1652 (N. S.).] Notwithstanding this fact the Swedes permitted the English to retain a lodge at Cape Corse with which the agents at Kormentine sometimes traded.[116 - Remonstrantie, aen de Ho. Mo. Heeren de Staten Generael der Vereenighde Nederlanden, p. 18; Dammaert, Journal, September 19, 1652, May 18, 1653, December 7, 19, 1655, April 22 1656 (N. S.).] Even after the place was seized by Hendrik Carloff, a Danish adventurer, in 1658, the English seem to have been allowed to remain at Cape Corse. By this time, however, the English African Company had become unable to support its factories on the coast of Guinea. Therefore they were turned over to the English East India Company, and became occasional stopping places for its vessels on their way to and from the East Indies.

CHAPTER II

The Royal Adventurers in England

On account of the collapse of the king's cause at the death of Charles I, Prince Rupert, with his small fleet of royal vessels, was driven about from one part of the world to another. In 1562 he sought refuge in the Gambia River,[117 - At one time Prince Rupert had been governor of the African company founded in 1631. Jenkinson, Hilary, "The Records of the English African Companies." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Third Series, VI, 195.] where he listened to stories told by natives of rich gold mines in that region. For a number of years the Negroes had brought gold from the inland of Africa to the Dutch on the Gold Coast. There seemed every reason to believe that the source of this gold supply was none other than that described by the natives of the Gambia River, and that it might be discovered somewhere in that region. Prince Rupert was so much impressed with the possibility of finding these mines that his voyage to Guinea was still vivid in his memory when Charles II assumed the throne in 1660. In the duke of York and other royal courtiers he found a group of willing listeners who determined to form a company for the purpose of sending an expedition to the Gambia to dig for gold. As early as October 3, 1660, the plans were formulated. Each member was required to invest at least £250 in the undertaking[118 - Pepys, Diary (The Diary of Samuel Pepys, edited by Henry B. Wheatley), I, 253.]. On December 18, 1660, the king, who was pleased with the adventurers for having "undertaken so hopeful an enterprise," granted them a charter[119 - That some expense attached to the procuring of such charters appears from an item of £133.10s.3d. which the company incurred for this charter. A. C. R., 1221, April 12, 1661. Wherever possible the volume and page of the company's books will be given, but since they have not all been paged the only other method of reference is by dates.] under the name of "The Company of the Royal Adventurers into Africa."[120 - Carr, Cecil T., "Select Charters of Trading Companies, 1530-1707," Publications of the Selden Society, XXVIII, 172-177.]