the parliament. The loudest acclamations resounded through the house on this intelligence. Granville was called in; and the letter, accompanied with a declaration, was greedily read. The declaration was well calculated to promote the satisfaction inspired by the prospect of a settlement. It offered a general amnesty, leaving particular exceptions to be made by parliament: it promised liberty of conscience: it assured the soldiers of their arrears, and the same pay they then enjoyed; and it submitted to parliamentary arbitration an enquiry into all grants, purchase, and alienations18.

The peers perceiving the spirit with which the nation as well as the house of commons, was animated, hastened to reinstate themselves in their ancient rights, and take their share in the settlement of the government. They found the doors of their house open, and were all admitted without exception. The two houses attended while the king was proclaimed in palace-yard, at Whitehall, and at temple-bar; and a committee of lords and commons was dispatched to invite his majesty to return, and take possession of the kingdom. The respect of foreign powers soon followed the allegiance of his own subject; and the formerly neglected Charles was at the same time, invited by France, Spain, and the United Provinces, to embark at one of their sea ports. He chose to accept the invitation of the latter; and had the satisfaction, as he passed from Breda to the Hague, to be received with the loudest acclamations. The states-general, in a body, made their compliments to him with the greatest solemnity; and all ambassadors and foreign ministers expressed the joys of their masters at his change of fortune19.

The English fleet came in sight of Scheveling; and Montague, who had not waited the orders of the parliament, persuaded the officers to tender their duty to their sovereign. The king went on board, and the duke of York took the command of the fleet, as high admiral20. When Charles

18 Charendon.

19. Ibid.

20. Whitlocke. Clarendon,

disembarked

1

disembarked at Dover, he was received by general Monk, whom he cordially embraced, and honoured with the appellation of father. He entered London on the twentyninth of May, which happened to be his birth-day, amid the acclamations of an innumerable multitude of people, whose fond imaginations formed the happiest presages, from the concurrence of two such joyful occasions; and the nation in general expressed the most sincere satisfaction at the restoration of their ancient constitution and their native prince, without the effusion of blood21

We must now, my dear Philip, take a retrospective view of the progress of navigation, commerce, and colonization, before we carry farther the general transactions of Europe. Without such a survey, we should never be able to judge distinctly of the interests, claims, quarrels, and treaties of the several European nations.

LETTER XI.

THE PROGRESS OF NAVIGATION, COMMERCE, AND COLONIZATION, FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE SIXTEENTH OF THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

THE discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese in the East Indies, and of the Spaniards in America, soon excited the ardour, the avarice, and the ambition of other European nations. The English and Dutch were particularly tempted by their maritime situation and commercial spirit, as well as by their great progress in navigation, to use every effort to share in the riches of the east and west; and the reformation, by abolishing the papal jurisdiction, left them free from religious restraints. Nor did the Dutch long want other motives, which necessity made them obey, for en

21. Ibid.

tering into a competition with the destroyers of the new world and the conquerors of India, in those distant seats of their wealth and power. Before I relate the bold enterprizes of these republicans, however, it will be proper to trace the farther progress of the Portuguese and Spaniards in navigation, commerce, and colonization'.

A. D. 1521.

No sooner had Cortez completed the conquest of the Mexican empire, than he ordered ship-builders to repair to Zataluna, a port on the South Sea, in order to equip a fleet destined for the Molucca Islands. From their trade with those islands the Portuguese drew immense wealth; all which he hoped to secure for the crown of Castile, by a shorter navigation2. But he was ignorant that, during the progress of his victorious arms in the new world, the very plan he was attempting to execute had been prosecuted with success by a navigator in the service of his country.

Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese gentleman who had acted several years in the East-Indies with distinguished valour, as an officer under the famous Albuquerque, disgusted with his general, and slighted by his sovereign, renounced his allegiance to an ungrateful master, and fled to the court of Spain, in hopes that his merit would there be more justly estimated. He endeavoured to recommend himself by reviving Columbus's original project of discovering a passage to India by a westerly course, and without encroaching on that portion of the globe allotted to the Portuguese, by the pope's line of demarkation. Cardinal Ximenes, who at that time directed the Spanish councils, listened with a favourable ear to Magellan's proposal, and recommended it to his master Charles V. who, entering into the measure with ardour, honoured Magellan with the habit of St. Jago and the title of captain-general, and furnished him with five ships, victualled for two years, in order to enable him to accomplish his undertaking.

1. For an account of their first discoveries and conquests, sec Part I. Let. LVII.

2, Hercra, dee. III. lib. ii. c. x.

With this squadron Magellan sailed from Seville on the 10th of August, 1519; and after touching at the Canaries, stood directly south, toward the equinoctial, along the coast of America. But he was so long retarded by tedious calms, and spent so much time in searching every bay and inlet for that communication with the South Sea which he wished to discover, that he did not reach the river de la Plata till the 12th of January, 1520. Allured to enter by the spacious opening through which that vast body of water pours itself into the Atlantic, he sailed up it for some days; but concluding at last, from the shallowness of the stream, and the freshness of the water, that the wished-for strait was not situated there, he returned and continued his course toward the south. On the 31st of March he arrived at Port St. Julian, about forty-eight degrees south of the line, where he resolved to winter, the severe season then coming on in those latitudes. Here he lost one of his ships, and the Spaniards suffered so much from the excessive rigour of the climate, that they insisted on his relinquishing the visionary project, and returning to Europe. But Magellan, by ordering the principal mutineer to be assassinated, and another to be publicly executed, overawed the remainder of his followers, and continued his voyage still toward the south. In holding this course he at length discovered, near the fiftythird degree of latitude, the mouth of a strait, into which he entered, notwithstanding the murmurs of his officers. After sailing twenty days in that winding dangerous passage, which still bears his name, and where one of his ships deserted him, the great Southern Ocean opened to his view, and inspired him with new hopes, while his adventurous soul effused itself to heaven in a transport of joy for the success which had already attended his endeavours3.

Magellan, however, was still at a great distance from the object of his wishes; and greater far than he imagined! Three months and twenty days did he sail in an uniform di

3. Herrera, dec. II, lib. ii. c. 3. lib. vii. c. 2.

rection

rection toward the north-west, without discovering land; during with voyage, the longest that had ever been made in the unbounded ocean, his people suffered incredible distress from scarcity of provisions, putrid water, and all their attendant maladies. One circumstance, and one only, afforded them some consolation, they enjoyed an uninterrupted course of fair weather, with such mild winds as induced Magellan to bestow on that ocean the epithet of Pacific. At length they fell in with a cluster of small islands, which afforded them refreshments in such abundance that their health was soon restored. From these islands, which he called Ladrones, he continued his voyage, and soon made a discovery of the Manillas; since denominated the Philippine-Islands, from Philip II. of Spain, who first planted a colony in them. In Zebu, one of the Philippines, Magellan got into an unfortunate quarrel with the natives, who attacked him with a numerous body of well-armed troops: and while he fought gallantly at the head of his men, he was slain together with several of his officers, by those fierce barbarians4.

APRIL. 26.

On the death of this great navigator, the expedition was prosecuted under different commanders. They encountered many difficulties in ranging through the smaller islands scattered in the eastern part of the Indian-Ocean, touched at the great island of Borneo, and at last landed at Tidore, one of the Moluccas, to the astonishment of the Portuguese; who ignorant of the figure of the earth, could not comprehend how the Spaniards, by holding a westerly course, had reached that sequestered seat of their most valuable commerce, which they themselves had discovered by sailing in an opposite direction!-At this, and the adjacent islands, the Spaniards found a people acquainted with the benefits of extensive trade, and willing to open an intercourse A. D. 1522. with a new nation. They took in a cargo of spices, the distinguished produce of those islands; and with that,

4. Herrera, dec. II, lib. ix. c. 3.

together.