history-books, influenced by the Whig prejudice against Charles
II., always treat these wars as humiliating and disgraceful, while
they treat the Dutch war of the Commonwealth as just and glorious,
the plain fact is that the first Dutch war of Charles II. led to
the conquest of the Dutch North American colony of the New
Netherlands (1667), and so bridged the gap between the New England
and the southern colonies. They engaged in systematic
colonisation, founding the new colony of Carolina to the south of
Virginia, while out of their Dutch conquests they organised the
colonies of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware; and the end of the
reign saw the establishment of the interesting and admirably
managed Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. They started the Hudson Bay
Company, which engaged in the trade in furs to the north of the
French colonies. They systematically encouraged the East India
Company, which now began to be more prosperous than at any earlier
period, and obtained in Bombay its first territorial possession in
India.

More important, they worked out a new colonial policy, which was
to remain, in its main features, the accepted British policy down
to the loss of the American colonies in 1782. The theory at the
base of this policy was that while the mother-country must be
responsible for the defence of all the scattered settlements,
which in their weakness were exposed to attack from many sides, in
she might reasonably expect to be put in possession of definite
trade advantages. Hence the Navigation Act of 1660 provided not
only that inter-imperial trade should be carried in English or
colonial vessels, but that certain 'enumerated articles,'
including some of the most important colonial products, should be
sent only to England, so that English merchants should have the