[Sidenote] Disturbances in England promote foreign settlements.

During the reign of the family of Stuart, a series of weak and oppressive
measures, pursued in England, occasioned domestic troubles and discontent
to the nation, and contributed greatly to promote American settlements.
James the first, surrounded by a crowd of flatterers, began to entertain
high ideas of his power and prerogative, to inculcate the extravagant
doctrines of divine indefeasible right, passive obedience, and
non-resistance, on a people whom he was ill qualified to govern, and who
had conceived an irreconcilable aversion from such political principles.
The consequence was, he lost by his weakness and pedantry the affections
of the nation, yet his reign is memorable for giving rise to many foreign
settlements. From him the East-India Company received a new patent, which
encouraged the corporation to enlarge their stock, and to fit out a
greater number of ships for that trade. In his reign Barbadoes was
settled by an association of noblemen, of whom the Earl of Pembroke was
the chief. And though it afterwards changed its master, and fell into the
hands of the Earl of Carlisle, yet it prospered from its first
population, and soon became a rich and flourishing island. St.
Christophers may also date its origin from the close of this king's
reign. The Plymouth Adventurers, who had carried a colony to New-England,
at different times added numbers to it, and, notwithstanding every
difficulty, it grew and prospered. Sir William Alexander received a grant
of that territory now called Nova Scotia from the same king, but never
made and serious attempts towards settling it.

During the succeeding reign several thousands emigrated to the western
continent. Both the King and Queen were attached to the Popish religion,
which vast multitudes of the nation abhorred. This served to alienate the
people's affections not a little from the royal family; but the